Yesterday I did something I wasn't going to do. I changed something about the structure of my book plan. Not a big change, and I think it's a good one, but still. I don't want the whole structure suddenly to be be up for grabs, what usually happens when I write a paper and keeps me flailing like someone in a rip current as I go through endless drafts ordering and reordering and arguments, with names like "X draft 2" and "X draft 3+" and "X draft 3+++"! For a project this big, I can't afford that kind of diffusion, so I have just one draft. And have committed to keeping to one outline: seven chapters, four subsections each, 2000 words per. 2000 words is supposed to stop me from getting sucked into endless parsings and bogs of footnotes, and each section is to have its own little arc - a beginning, middle and an end - so it might, theoretically, be read on its own. Ambitious, perhaps, but it's been working. I'm still in one piece, and still have most of my hair!
What was the change I made? Chapter 6, "The invisibility of good," is part of a larger argument that it is in the nature of good that we take it for granted, that - unlike evil - it doesn't force thought. This chapter tries to restore a sense of the goodness of the nonhuman, of things beyond "moral good" conceived in solely human terms; while accepting that why premodern ways of thinking about this cannot simply be revived without bad faith, I suggest ways in which they might still be reclaimed. It's my most out-there chapter, and I'm finding myself taking positions which I didn't realize I held or didn't realize were going to find a place in this book. I've long been a feminist, but it's taken the Australian bush and its custodians to bring out the ecofeminist in me.
The original plan was for sections on (i) order, (ii) design in nature, (iii) Darwinism and its consequences, and (iv) the consumer model of good. Now I've decided to fold (ii) and (iii) together - they make more sense as part of the same arc, though 2000 words feels very tight! But tight is good. And this way I get to add a new (iv) on - or really atacking - ideas of wonder, the sacred, reenchantment. I'll argue that all of these, at least as generally conceived, are implicated in the view of the world the rest of the chapter has been calling into question, of a world essentially inert, indifferent and meaningless, of goods as objects we observe or for reasons of our own desire or possess or consume but don't really interact with. A world in need of reenchantment is already disenchanted, and probably neutralizes or undermines our every effort at enchantment. We wonder at new things - but only until we come to understand them. And the things we call sacred seem to come from another world, to shine through this world, rather than to be part of its working, or indeed, part of our working in it.
Don't suppose any of this makes sense in these abbreviated terms. If there's interest, it might do me good to go into a bit more detail here.
