Once Upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination

by Jan Zwicky

Western civilization is over. So begins Jan Zwicky’s trenchant exploration of the root of global cultural and ecological a way of thinking that is also linked to some of the West’s most noted achievements.The Renaissance merged imperial enterprise with Islamic algebra and recently recovered Greek mathematics to precipitate mechanized industry and resource extraction; these in turn made possible the growth of capitalism, the military-industrial complex, and Big Technology. Despite its self-image as objective, Zwicky argues, the West’s style of thought is not politically neutral, but intensely anthropocentric. It has led those who adopt it to regard the more-than-human world as nothing more than timber licences and drilling sites, where value is not recognized unless it is monetized. Oblivious to context and blind to big-picture thinking, it analyzes, mechanizes, digitizes, and systematizes, while rejecting empathy and compassion as distorting influences. Lyric comprehension, in Zwicky’s view, offers an alternative to this way of thinking, and she provides a wide range of examples. Once upon a Time in the West documents how a narrow epistemological style has left Western thought blind to critical features of reality, and how the terrifying consequences of that blinkered vision are now beginning to unfold.

Genres: Philosophy

200 pages, Hardcover

Published May 15, 2023

About the author

Jan Zwicky’s books of poetry include Songs for Relinquishing the Earth, which won the Governor General’s Award, Robinson’s Crossing, which won the Dorothy Livesay Prize, and, most recently Forge, which was short-listed for the Griffin Prize. Her books of philosophy include Wisdom & Metaphor, Lyric Philosophy, and Alkibiades’ Love (forthcoming 2015).

Reviews

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jan Zwicky, lyric philosophy, oh ya.

"Over the millennia, lyric attention has been practised by many human beings — in the West, most have been artists, naturalists, or religious — but since the seventeenth century, lyric thought has been increasingly derogated in European and Euro-colonial cultures. I focus on it not because it represents a solution to our problems — I do not think solutions exist — but because it provides a foil against which the nature of resourcist thinking reveals itself even more starkly. Historically, in some cultures, lyric awareness has balanced resourcist thinking. Now that the West’s unbalanced style is global, the threat posed by that style is global, too" (p.5).

A series of essays about what matters, the way it should matter: "Because the thinking of being is trued by love of the real" (p.50).

[Karen Ocana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once Upon a Time in the West is an excellent mixed collection of essays in signature Zwicky style: much lecturing and self-lecturing in classical philosophical style. How to live the good life? Do as the earth does, love freely and with few constraints.

My favourite essay was "On Ontological Attention and Lyric Form. I took a few notes.
"...witness attends to being ... this... see... real... death... attends to the resonance of the whole." In a nutshell, this is the major, undying message of Zwicky's other work I read in 2023: _Lyric Philosophy_.

Another of the essays speaks to the question "why poetry?" Poets answer each in their own style. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote "Das Schoene ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch gerade ertragen." Sue Sinclair says, "epiphany is what I go to poetry for." Robert Bringhurst wrote, "what poetry knows, or what it strives to know, is the dancing at the heart of being." [My favourite definition!] Tim Lilburn wrote, "when the vocals (of a poem) shift and it enacts a trajectory... an ontophony, a music of being." And finally Anne Michaels: "a poem can give us night vision."

"In her notebooks, Simone Weil speaks of an "immense responsibility to testify as an apple tree in blossom testifies, or as the stars do." ... to what does an apple tree in blossom testify? Weil describes it as the presence of the divine in the material world."

A few essays I didn't entirely appreciate, likely due to my own ignorance.
First, "Once upon a Time in the West: Heidegger and the Poets." The facetious tone was, in the long run, grating rather than illuminating.
Second: "The Novels of Pascal: A Review of "Correction" by Thomas Bernhard." I wasn't interested.
Third, "Integrity and Ornament." It argues for considering integrity as an ecological concept. And ornament as decadence. The argument is tied up with the distinction between essence and accident. Somehow, the essay doesn't land on its feet, doesn't finally cohere. Perhaps it wasn't meant to?

One essay I particularly enjoyed: "The Ethics of a Negative Review." Splendidly argued into crystalline coherence. If you don't like a book, go find one you do, and don't bother writing a negative review, unless you really feel compelled; or as an object lesson you think readers absolutely need; or you're doing it to earn a living (and to practice thinking).

I will have to return to this collection, I know, to squeeze more juice out of the bits I loved most. _Once Upon a Time in the West_ being a library book and not mine, this will have to wait.