As I continued doing thinking about my environmental theory project this weekend, I also began to conceptualize my eventual thesis through several project proposals for my other environmental studies course this semester. One of my ideas has to do with the process and impulse of naming landscapes and as I hit the databases looking for background theories on place-names, I came to a sort of epiphany regarding theory as a vehicle (Proctor 2013).
What do people DO when they engage in theory? They write. Theories are written down, spoken, communicated, representative of experience/research/thought/etc. Theory occurs in language. Language and words are the very medium through which they materialize in the world. I wish to focus on the language of theory both as a lens through which to explore my criticisms of theory AND as a way to demonstrate the prevalence and importance of theory to an everyday audience. Specifically, I think that the way the names and language appear in the landscape (in my case, Portland, Oregon) can reveal important theoretical underpinnings of ethics, power, knowledge, and reality in a space.
So, I’m moving from “theory” to language, and then from language to landscape in order to do two things. The first is to use the example of gentrification (a big word in itself) as it categorizes landscapes through words as a parallel to how theory categorizes thought and knowledge. I hope to draw attention to specific ways we might be able to make theory better by putting a light to its shortcomings through a concrete and popular example. As well, I hope to use the medium of film to communicate my theory on theory in an accessible and image-rich way that also highlights important claims of authorship.
As I am explaining this to others, I often feel lost in the layers of theory-on-theory, but in general people have reacted with understanding.
Another important piece of this project is to highlight my own biases in a transparent way. This is for a class at Lewis & Clark College. I think theory is really fun, interesting, and meaningful. I am an English major. While an entire biographical and psychoanalytic background would be boring and meaningless, I nonetheless want this project to be transparent, genuine, and inviting for those who may choose to agree, disagree, or respond to it. The process of writing and creating this project will be an experiment in approaching “better big words.”