“Just a Piece of Wood”: Jan Švankmajer’s Otesánek and the EcoGothic

Abstract

In prevailing Western culture, it is widely assumed that there is a stark distinction between humankind and the natural world. Consequently, we have created what Val Plumwood (1991) has termed “the human-nature dualism” (p. 3), in which nature is cast as separate—and subsidiary—to humanity. The plant kingdom, which dominates much of the natural world and is ordinarily encountered in our everyday lives, is surely a significant part of what we term “nature.”¹ And yet, as Michael Marder (2013) contends, plants are widely overlooked in modern societies and so rendered as mere “background” (p. 3) to human activity. J. H. Wandersee and E. E. Schlusser (2001) argue that this “backgrounding” of the vegetable world has reached such a degree that we are now afflicted with what they term “plant blindness” (p. 2). The effect of this so-called “blindness” is twofold. On the one hand, plants are viewed as utterly mundane. They are undervalued objects which exist only to serve humankind (they feed us, they provide aesthetic decoration, and, of course, they enable us to breathe). They are seen as entirely inanimate and wholly devoid of any sentience or agency. They comply, therefore, with Matthew Hall’s (2011) assertion that nature is now viewed, predominantly, in terms of a “passive resource” (p. 4). In this sense, then, plants are decidedly not frightening. On the other hand, however, this “backgrounding” of the vegetable world means that plants may be seen, as Marder (2013) insists, as “uncanny” (p. 4). They literally surround us and so carry the potential—if viewed as suddenly strange and intrusive—to be thoroughly disquieting. This is only emphasized when considered in the context of anthropogenic (human-caused) ecological crisis. We now live in a time, as Hall (2011) asserts, when “[m]ost people are aware that human beings are harming nature” (p. 1). There is a widespread (if sometimes subliminal) fear that we are thus due its retribution.