The Pain of The Dutch Landscape

María Puig de la Bellacasa chapter 5 "Soil Times" in Matters of Care reminded me about a talk I had heard last year by the Dutch journalist Jantien de Boer about her new book Landschapspijn. The concept of "Landschapspijn," which can be roughly translated as 'landscape pain', details the undernourishment of the senses by the surrounding landscape (de Boer). Most farmland is turning into a green desert with no biodiversity; instead, the land is reserved for the species which can sustain the massive uptake the farming industry demands of them. I really liked the way de Boer highlights, especially after reading Matters of Care, the way it affects all senses, and not just sight, since, for example, one is unable to hear the wide variety of birds that once were, and when one touches and digs through the soil of the pastures it looks dead, rather than crawling with life as it should. The pain emanating from these sights is a powerful connection between "more than human worlds", and it can inspire one to value and care for these landscapes. In Puig de la Bellacasa's words, "it obliges in ways embedded in everyday doings and agencies; it obliges because it is inherent to relations of interdependency" (120). The landscapes cannot recover on their own; rather, it is a call to us to acknowledge our responsibility in caring for them or to neglect that intervention where necessary.

         Furthermore, such thinking is also a way to re-frame, and re-orientate oneself, in more abstract debates, such as that of the current nitrogen crisis ongoing in the Netherlands at the moment. This crisis is framed in terms of the timeline of productivity. Still, the call from the landscape itself opens up a space to regard this crisis in a different way, by also taking other worlds, and timelines, into account. Technology might not be the answer to this issue; instead, care can open up a new space where value can be given to different ways to engage with the landscape surrounding us.

Sources:

Boer, Jantien de. “Jantien de Boer over Landschapspijn: ‘Het Is Hier Doodstil, met De Nadruk op         Dood.’” Down to Earth, Down to Earth Magazine, 28 October 2017,                     v               https://downtoearthmagazine.nl/jantien-de-boer-landschapspijn/

Puig de la Bellacasa, María. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in more than Human Worlds.

 University of Minnesota Press, 2017.