Loss and Wonder at the World’s End

by Laura A. Ogden

In Loss and Wonder at the World's End , Laura A. Ogden brings together animals, people, and things—from beavers, stolen photographs, lichen, American explorers, and birdsong—to catalog the ways environmental change and colonial history are entangled in the Fuegian Archipelago of southernmost Chile and Argentina. Repeated algal blooms have closed fisheries in the archipelago. Glaciers are in retreat. Extractive industries such as commercial forestry, natural gas production, and salmon farming along with the introduction of nonnative species are rapidly transforming assemblages of life. Ogden archives forms of loss—including territory, language, sovereignty, and life itself—as well as forms of wonder, or moments when life continues to flourish even in the ruins of these devastations. Her account draws on long-term ethnographic research with settler and Indigenous communities; archival photographs; explorer journals; and experiments in natural history and performance studies. Loss and Wonder at the World's End frames environmental change as imperialism's shadow, a darkness cast over the earth in the wake of other losses.

Genres: Anthropology

200 pages, Paperback

Published November 12, 2021

Reviews

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short accessible book but it is a bit disjointed in terms of knowing about the people past and present in Tierra del Fuego. I am torn about rating this 2 to 3 stars for that. I believe this is Ogden's attempt at "undisciplined research" and hence experimental writing and sections outline. I found more information on Wikipedia on the Fuegians because you don't get a sense of who and what was happening in this part of the world. No context. That is what's strange for an anthropology book. Clearly, this is a semi-autobiographical work interspersed with sections of ethnographic research. In her endnotes, she explains that parts of the section were from journal articles that might explain this fragmented approach. I do not see any other large reference to previous work in Tierra del Fuego. If there is, then it makes sense that she did not discuss it.

Roughly, there are three parts to this book - the ghost of colonial explorer Charles Wellington Furlong, beaver anthropology (multispecies research) or Lewis Henry Morgan, and the return to a female ghost, anthropologist Anne Chapman. Her point is that colonial incursion has implications to present ecological and (indigenous) human destruction in Isla Navarino more specifically. In her perspective, this affects how she or outsiders or anthropologists can methodologically view a situation of loss/wonder in a site like Tierra del Fuego.

And so her three questions: (1) what evidence do we use to know the present; (2) where is this evidence archived; (3) what temporalities constitute the present all point to our ways of seeing. This explains why she shows a kind of anxiety representing the current players in Tierra del Fuego - the descendants of indigenous populations, the colonial settlers, the business people, the ecologists, park rangers, scientists, and tourists. She carries too-often colonial guilt that I have seen about the legacy of salvage ethnographic works in a region that has suffered genocide and extermination. The first half of the book on Furlong shows her anger over the action of an early twentieth-century white male figure but does not see the irony of her figure as a female white anthropologist bringing students (possibly from elite Dartmouth College) to follow Darwin. She criticizes the archive of Furlong in Dartmouth but does not critically show what was missing in the ethnographic data for instance or how change in life, livelihoods, and relations has since changed, or how her interlocutors interpret or use this data. In her endnotes (not in the main text) she disabuses any part she plays in representation. "During meetings about the collection, community members mainly expressed interest in identifying the identities of relatives and confirming the accuracy of locations and sites represented in the images. This is a separate project, not mine to publish, but one that I am committed to continuing." It is clear that the pictographic and extensive notes of Furlong continue to represent the savage, the pure, and the wonder of people at the edge of the world. It's an ambivalent position because residents disdain this representation but at the same time profit from it with tourism but also ecological attention. This is not a unique position as this colonial aesthetic is found in other parts of the globe. Check out Rene Masferre's photos of the people of the Cordillera. There is little information about how the dominant Argentinian and Chilean states and populations contributed to the decimation of the population in this area.
Salvage ethnography has its place because any loss is a loss to our humanity but simultaneously change is constantly happening and the indigenous view is tenuous.

Take the case of the beaver. An invasive species was introduced during the Pinochet administration as a way to promote trade but ultimately failed, producing a beaver overpopulation. Trees have more economic value than animals thus, beavers here are considered pests. This section on beavers shows the true skill of Ogden as an ecological anthropologist to surface the invisible beaver to the residents. This line of inquiry is quite similar to the Anthropocene Working Group approach to multispecies research. More importantly, she finally and grudgingly examined the early work of Lewis Henry Morgan on beavers (because he was a white male, she avoided reading him) and saw great value in how LHM's anthropomorphic view on beaver translates to how he conceived his own ethnographic analysis.

Ogden noted that Chapman as a female figure has been relegated as a notable area studies anthropologist yet absent in the "history of ideas." This has been the case with most area studies specialists in the discipline. She didn't talk much about Chapman surprisingly.

The stars I awarded this author is for her concept of loss/wonder as an approach to the haunting legacy of colonial destruction and extermination. She did not fully elaborate on it but her references are a goldmine in other works that influenced her such as a similar perception of amazement alongside devastating poverty in The Cow in the Elevator ethnography, the uses of wonder in resistance in Andrea Ballesteros Future history of water. I am also interested in the concept of traces and so she provided some interesting leads to this.

This book is significant for those interested in environmental change, and multispecies research but also for archives. Ultimately, the people of Fuego appear as a side character to the central characters of the colonists (including Darwin himself - did I mention the locals hate Darwin?) and anthropologists who have shaped their representation.

[Hannah Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant

[Soyoon Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

must re-read immediately

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book that takes a fearless look at loss, grief, modernity and the ways that we talk about these topics can add a temporal stasis to ourselves and to the causes of these emotions. All of this is set in Tiera del Fuego and the Indigenous communities that lived and live there.

While there is a lot about this book to like, I really enjoyed the ways it dealt with the recording of loss and the responsibilities of those who hold those recordings. Specifically the author interacts with an archive from the early 1900s of a white Anthropologist who traveled to Tiera del Fuego to record "the last people" and the cultures at the end of the world. As one who now has access to these time capsules I enjoyed the ways the author thought about (and struggled with) what to do with the images. What was her ethical responsibilities to the material, and important what were her ethical responsibilities to the people around which the archives were built? These are important questions with few easy answers, and this book's struggle reflects the same ones that many people have. I enjoyed Dr. Ogden creating a space to talk about these issues and framing them through the lens of history and through the lens of wonder.

I am excited to teach this book - I can't wait to dive into it with my students, but I am also excited to buy copies of this for my friends because I want to see what they got out of it and to share a cup of tea.

P.S. This book also 100% made me dust off my old Superchunk CDs and take a trip down memory lane...

[Anja Trevisan · Rating 4 out of 5]

questo saggio parla di:
- colonizzazione
- castori intesi come specie infestante
- narrazione sbagliata riguardo gli indigeni della terra del fuoco
- furlong in patagonia che se la tirava.
il tutto però non mi è sembrato chiaro. probabilmente sono io in difetto perché di queste cose ne so poco. una stella buona è per la copertina che adoro. non so, ho paura di aver sprecato tempo perché non ci ho davvero capito molto, purtroppo. una cosa però sì; gli uomini bianchi dovrebbero essere vietati in certe parti del mondo!!!

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is astoundingly readable. Archives of loss and wonder, how they continue to accrue "histories, memories, and erasures," and how in touching us, they hold "the potential to transform relations of living and dying in the present and the future" (137-138).

[Margherita S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting topic but also very good hand!
I’ve met in person the writer in Venice for the launch of the book and I’ve found her very humble and authentic.
Really recommended for whoever is interested in the Tierra del Fuego but also in the environmental anthropology field

[Matea Polojac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for class