03 - Rethinking Nature through Literature, Hip Hop, and Cars | with Timo Müller

00:00:00: Some researchers began to ask, well isn't it important to research how we think about automobility and why we think of automobilty in those terms?

00:00:09: And Why Automobility is so normal.

00:00:11: So ubiquitous even though its so damaging In many ways.

00:00:16: Even classic hip-hop there's a lot of environmental language because they're probably so inventive about language.

00:00:50: Welcome To Off the Road A Podcast About Environmental Humanities

00:00:53: Beyond policy or science, we explore meaningful stories and conversations about climate and culture.

00:00:59: We are Gilbert Tomatsoli

00:01:01: And Janusz Buszki – our guest today is Timo Müller whom we happen to know very well since he's the research head of The Project that both part of.

00:01:10: But just introduce Timo real quick, Timo is Professor of American Studies at a University of Konstanz.

00:01:17: His research focuses on literary modernism African-American literature hip hop and unsurprisingly, the environmental humanities.

00:01:26: We can find this in his current ERC-funded research project of The Road – The Environmental Aesthetics Of Early Automobility

00:01:33: which also gives a name to our podcast!

00:01:37: So In today's episode we will explore the beginnings & implications of these research projects Which XMI'ed how the earliest car influenced what people thought about the environment.

00:01:54: We welcome Timo, our guest of today.

00:01:56: Hi, Timo!

00:02:00: Good

00:02:01: to be here, hi!

00:02:02: Before we get into the details... ...we want a bit off-the road with personal questions that will hopefully lead us in Timo's areas of expertise which include cultural perspectives on the environment cars and music.

00:02:21: So, Billy Joel and My Stars Are Aligned is what I have to say about this because when I was born a Billy Joel song was number one in the charts.

00:02:33: This where my Billy Joel fandom starts And like this suggests most of it as tongue-in-cheek.

00:02:41: so i'm not really a Billy joel fan.

00:02:44: It cannot take much of his music seriously actually but its great to sing along.

00:02:49: And also he has the song New York State of Mind, which is an amazing song.

00:02:53: So that's one song I do take seriously and that I like.

00:02:57: He's great to sing along because it doesn't have a lot of range.

00:03:00: so i can sing along for him as well Because they know how to sing.

00:03:04: That's also an advantage.

00:03:05: Plus his music is great for road trips.

00:03:07: You can sing long or feel American

00:03:11: Great.

00:03:13: Now we move on another journey.

00:03:17: We will come up later actually But we'll now talk about your journey into literature.

00:03:26: You came up as a scholar of literary modernism, the literature of the twenties and forties which is all about technology cultural innovation in a fashion fascination with text itself.

00:03:39: Your background seems unlikely to lead you to environmental questions.

00:03:43: When?

00:03:44: And how did that happen?

00:03:46: Yeah, I think that's a great question and people sometimes ask me this.

00:03:50: It has to do with my supervisor.

00:03:52: when i was a student um...I already worked for Hubert Zapp who also supervised my PhD later on And he was one of the first scholars in Germany To bring up his new approach ecocriticism in nearly two thousands.

00:04:07: And so we'd read a lot of early eco-criticism in his seminars, and most of that was pretty esoteric.

00:04:13: So that was the early phase of ecocriticism where people wanted to get closer to nature... ...and want it sort of throw texts out at the cannon that weren't environmentally aware enough or things like that.

00:04:25: I was put off by that initially.

00:04:29: Eventually got around because the field just kept evolving….

00:04:34: witness that because in Hubbard's classes and later on, his research colloquial we read a lot of stuff.

00:04:42: And so more and more I felt like there is something to it even if you do.

00:04:47: modernism which for early ecocritics was not interesting For the very reasons he said wasn't about nature really.

00:04:54: It was more.

00:04:54: technology didn't have sort-of easy connection to nature In this preachy tone with a lot But later on, with things like the energy amenities and other things.

00:05:08: that became a lot more doable in a way.

00:05:11: And a lot interesting.

00:05:13: but of course it's also a way of rubbing ecocriticism against itself because if you come up these complicated texts that are very self-involved then we have to ask questions about limits of field or early approaches.

00:05:26: I found this interesting.

00:05:28: Maybe to jump into here could tell us real quick what eco criticism is?

00:05:32: Yeah, so ecocriticism was basically a new approach to reading and studying literature that emerged in the nineteen nineties.

00:05:39: Before that a lot of people either read literature for how it worked internally.

00:05:44: So what symbols did you use?

00:05:47: What perspectives and so on And that's key an important foundational to literary studies.

00:05:51: Of course then when they try to branch out They are literally scholars ask contextual questions about How literature represents class and women and race And then nature became another of these topics.

00:06:06: People often draw this analogy, how ecocriticism emerged.

00:06:09: and now literature was read for how it represents the environment?

00:06:13: Like many other approaches that were pretty normative at the beginning.

00:06:17: so people had a certain idea if literature should represent an environment.

00:06:21: That is still part but also evolved.

00:06:25: beyond that I would say People just ask more open-ended questions about how texts and the widest sense shape, How we perceive nature basically because most of Nature We've never seen.

00:06:38: if you take a global environment right?

00:06:40: We only know limited part Of it And even that limited part is off course shaped by what we've heard About It.

00:06:46: so whenever You really went out into nature.

00:06:48: You come with certain ideas of how you should go.

00:06:51: What do you pay attention to?

00:06:52: what Do want your experience?

00:06:54: and these notions are shaped By text whether they like oral texts, would our parents tell us?

00:07:00: Would friends tell us?

00:07:01: but also literary text films and so on.

00:07:03: And that's what eco-criticism studies.

00:07:07: Your supervisor Hubert Zafi is probably one of the first people in Germany at least to pursue this kind of interest in academia.

00:07:16: Were there any other people who were helping you develop these ideas?

00:07:23: Well, initially there weren't a lot of people in German academia who were working on ecocriticism per se.

00:07:30: But there was a lot scholarship that was sort of adjacent to it.

00:07:35: so literary anthropology for example.

00:07:38: Wolfgang Ise one of my predecessors here at Constance and the English department was an important proponent how literature represents humans and the human, right?

00:07:52: And how it sort of negotiates the boundaries of the human for example.

00:07:55: So there's a lot in German tradition I would say especially sort of these older generations where they ask big questions about literature or literary theory that we can really learn from as ecocritics even today.

00:08:09: so thats something i've also tried to work on every now-and then would still be worthwhile doing.

00:08:17: Ecocriticism is very much Anglo-centric, like most scholarship today and so we in Germany definitely have something to contribute there by also recovering these earlier approaches and... ...these impulses that they can give us today.

00:08:31: even

00:08:32: We now continue with exploring our humanities study an approach.

00:08:39: the environment.

00:08:41: You say Scholarship within the environmental humanities is anchored in the recognition that nature and environment are not self-evident.

00:08:51: Objective categories but complex, discursive and material entities.

00:08:57: Could you explain what do mean by this in layman terms?

00:09:02: Sure yeah so... I mean there's this presupposition that we often have, a lot of people have.

00:09:09: Nature is basically what's out there so you can... There's water and trees.

00:09:15: You can touch it or feel like.

00:09:17: just know its'there That something the environmental humanities problematize because they inquire into language used to describe nature In a very basic sense, in the very sort of post-structuralist sense.

00:09:37: Of course we could ask how do we know what a tree is?

00:09:41: and then What do you mean by three?

00:09:43: And why did we call it three?

00:09:44: and so on But even in a more practical sense.

00:09:48: there's a lot about nature that we think of as self evidence.

00:09:51: So they're just obvious that its their own but it isn't.

00:09:55: It really isn't.

00:09:57: different cultures for example have to have very different ways of thinking environment about the weather, for example.

00:10:04: So we would say in Western culture there's sunshine and rain or snow where other cultures differentiate between different kinds of rains that are closer to maybe other water phenomena but not really weather.

00:10:21: And so a lot is used when talking about nature When this becomes really important, I think when we talk about things like environmental destruction and environmental catastrophes.

00:10:36: Because then it becomes important to think for whom is there a catastrophe?

00:10:40: Why is it a catastrophe?

00:10:41: what's catastrophic about that?

00:10:43: so most environmental catastrophies are not catastrophes of the environment.

00:10:47: they're catastrophes from people built into the environment or for people who moved into that environment, often in not very thoughtful ways like when we built houses next to rivers.

00:11:00: And so in that sense what we think of as nature the environment is shaped by how people talk about things.

00:11:07: and another term for How People Talk About Things Is Discourse In The Sense Of The Term Shaped Especially By Michel Foucault The French Theorist Who Was Very Important uncovering these mechanisms by which we sort of sord knowledge into certain categories of thinking and speaking.

00:11:27: That is not to say that all of nature is just what we say about it, right?

00:11:31: So that was like a radical position that some post-structuralists took in the twentieth century.

00:11:38: Nature's, of course material—and its centrally material—its stuff, its substance.

00:11:43: that impacts on us.

00:11:48: But I think the interesting thing for humanities scholars is to think about how this interplay between discourse and matter, so the substances.

00:11:59: And how we can talk about them?

00:12:02: How that impacts our understanding of nature or how it relates with what we can do in-nature or too-nate right?

00:12:08: Is it okay to build these here as a decay to fly for long trips on vacation, what does this do?

00:12:17: To the climate and so on.

00:12:18: So these are questions where we're both a matter of nature or the material quality of nature but also the discursive quality of Nature coming into play.

00:12:27: Thanks Also... What Nature does to us in this sense like concerning our bodies And how it impacts our daily life In many ways.

00:12:40: Yeah, maybe to make this a bit more easily understandable for folks out there who are not too academic.

00:12:49: You have taught several classes about the subject.

00:12:51: I think you've had like four or five classes on the environment in some way of form related literature and culture.

00:13:02: How do you approach that subject?

00:13:04: Maybe give us some insight into what a first day of these classes looks like?

00:13:08: What do you have the students pay attention to, how do you explain these ideas for them on their very first day.

00:13:15: Yeah so that's a great question.

00:13:17: I think there are a lot of different strategies you can use in teaching but i-what I do from the beginning is try to unsettle this idea that nature itself evident or just out there.

00:13:28: And there are many different ways of doing that, I would say.

00:13:31: One is for example to give them sources from different cultural backgrounds and talk about the same natural phenomenon in a different way.

00:13:40: so climate change For example In the West we talked about this as sort of recent phenomenon That it's now beginning impact us whereas a lot of people in the global south would say that we've been living under these conditions for decades, if not since the beginning or since early phases of colonialism when a lot technology that colonizes abroad already changed microclimates into different places cost floodings and so on.

00:14:12: and cause drought where people couldn't form their lens anymore.

00:14:17: So there are definitely different perspectives you can give them, what I also like to do is show them different photographs or visual representations of the same place.

00:14:29: in

00:14:29: U.S.,

00:14:29: national parks are a great example.

00:14:31: so national parks basically re-alms were nature's curated for our visual consumption that we can either walk to, but also mostly drive with our cars.

00:14:45: And those vista points are carefully selected and the nature that we see from there is carefully maintained.

00:14:51: so it looks wild or beautiful or sublime.

00:14:55: But of course if you've ever been one these places and taken photographs yourself It's pretty difficult to get a shot where really look well in beautiful and sublime because lots of tourists will be in picture there might not be the right weather that you want and so on.

00:15:11: And, if you give students these different points of view in this same natural phenomenon it's also a great way for getting them to think about how is nature represented?

00:15:22: What are the limits of our perception of Nature basically?

00:15:26: That raises an important question which can take us anywhere we like – what is Nature?

00:15:32: You mentioned... as examples gardens or national parks, which are in a way spaces that aren't natural.

00:15:41: In the sense of there trees and flora and fauna but they're also constructed by humans anyway.

00:15:47: so just a logical question would be how these still natural places?

00:15:52: But that raises to bigger questions.

00:15:54: what nature is?

00:15:56: I think it's another question that the field tries to pursue.

00:15:59: maybe you can speak more about this very basic idea.

00:16:02: Yeah, absolutely.

00:16:03: I think this is a great example of what we've already said that um... What we understand by nature isn't self-evident but it's something that has negotiated and contested right?

00:16:12: Because there are many different definitions of nature And we could break down some basic ones.

00:16:17: so Nature as sort the environment around us humans Nature as organic matter.

00:16:23: So in that sense trees would be nature on lakes But not ships or houses.

00:16:27: And then there's also this idea of nature as being something essential.

00:16:32: So human nature, for example what is human nature?

00:16:36: In ecocriticism I think in the environment humanities we tend to background a sort more metaphorical idea of human nature even though it's interesting too.

00:16:47: look at why nature was used and that context about nature And to focus more on the one-hand organic matter, but also its interplay with inorganic matter.

00:16:57: We could of course ask why do we think if a stone is nature?

00:17:00: But a stone and house are not nature so that's a boundary there.

00:17:04: When I say nature when i've said nature so far usually mean this sense of environment or primarily organic environment Because that, I think is the most widespread use of the term nowadays when we say nature.

00:17:19: We go out into nature right?

00:17:20: So... ...we think of nature as basically spaces where there's mostly organic matter and whereas most of us now live in spaces where they're mostly inorganic matter aside from air off course which was always their Hopefully.

00:17:36: And our bodies, which we also tend not to think of as nature and that's also an interesting part of the term there is this division between us humans in nature a very strong division in western cultural history and intellectual history That other cultures don't have on their degree You could argue has caused many problems relating with

00:18:02: nature today.

00:18:03: Great!

00:18:03: I have one more question about the subject.

00:18:06: That is more about how you view your own teaching in a sense, because you mentioned things like natural catastrophe and how the catastrophe's not really for nature but something that's felt by humans.

00:18:18: And then also something we have to sort of agree on what constitutes a kind of catastrophe or for whom?

00:18:27: These are questions embedded into very practical social context.

00:18:30: if there breaks... If a dam breaks people houses get destroyed also social and political in that sense.

00:18:37: And so the questions you're pursuing are not solely concerned with literature, culture but have real implications for a real world politics in a sense especially since your teaching young people?

00:18:49: So I wanted to ask on what extent do view your own teachings as civic rather than purely educational or academic education?

00:18:58: Yeah, I mean that is something that is definitely ingrained in this field and approach of ecocriticism.

00:19:03: And if the environmental humanities more broadly so it does have there's political impetus.

00:19:08: It has this.

00:19:08: believe you'd had this politically impetus from the beginning?

00:19:12: um and That of course sits an easily with sort of the idea of academic research as a pursuit to disinterested pursuit of knowledge.

00:19:19: basically now i think in Academic research should be as disinterested as possible on its pursuit of Knowledge but of course it never is completely.

00:19:30: So the researchers themselves bring certain presuppositions, certain attitudes or ideas to research and there's also a researcher that is more directly activist in its goals whereas other researchers are less activists than their goals.

00:19:47: When I teach students my sense this they're already very much interested in the activist side.

00:19:53: They're very much attuned into them ready for doing so.

00:19:57: So I often think of as more counterbalancing that by pointing out to them maybe the areas where we could do some critical thinking first before we jump into activism.

00:20:10: And so in that sense, any education is always both and it's important be aware of that but especially in a field already politically charged like ecocriticism sort of not jump to conclusions and do not assume that certain things are right, and certain things wrong or certain things immoral.

00:20:39: I think a lot is the political polarization we have in society largest due this tendency.

00:20:45: so i would see it as my job teaching rather to problematize point to underlying structures of thinking, um...to just get students aware and also able to give them the tools.

00:21:00: To critically analyze how people speak and think about things in how people act whether that's with regard to their environment or other political topics.

00:21:10: So now let's get into your current research project which is called Off The Road The Environmental Aesthetics Of Early Automobility Which Is Also The Name Of This Podcast.

00:21:18: so thank you.

00:21:19: I'm gonna read a short part from the project description, so hold on.

00:21:48: Yeah, absolutely.

00:21:49: So I think that's what you just quoted as a great example of this nexus of politics and research.

00:21:56: right.

00:21:56: so there is a political impulse here behind this project namely to rethink automobility which um And sort of the political assumption behind us.

00:22:05: we should re-think automobilty.

00:22:07: We need to rethink Automobility because in its current form.

00:22:11: it's destructive Of the environment end up everyone who lives.

00:22:17: But rethinking automobility to me is important because it allows us to explore different ways of how automotive could and should change, not just one preset or pre-formulated solutions that we all jump too.

00:22:31: And then try to implement right now politically.

00:22:35: for example electronic vehicles are marketed as the solution which they totally an excellent environmental footprint, making them is environmentally very damaging.

00:22:51: So this a great example of how we should be more open-minded and sort of more comprehensive in thinking about automobility.

00:22:59: And so that was one aspect that went into the creation of this research project namely because I'm interested in history how people thought about this relationship between automobility and the environment early on when Automobility first appeared.

00:23:18: And, that was in the modernist period so around nineteen hundred when Modernism started as well at least in the Anglophone world.

00:23:27: So That Was a Parallel That Interested Me.

00:23:31: The Other Venue That Led to This Project Is What We Talked About Earlier Eco-Criticism My Interest In This Field my tendency to ask questions that a lot of other ecocritics don't ask.

00:23:44: and one of them, these questions I do not discuss so much in ecocorticism is about automobility.

00:23:49: So early on ecocrites sort of thought of cars as an example of the bad thing they were fighting.

00:23:56: And it was only after like fifteen or twenty years.

00:24:01: some researchers began asking well isn' t important research how we think about automobility and why we think of automobilty in those terms.

00:24:10: And, Why Automobility is so normal?

00:24:12: So ubiquitous even though it's so damaging in many ways... This is basically the energy humanities emerged a subfield that looks at how we talk about energy use.

00:24:28: petro-culture was sort of the germ of this subfield, I would say.

00:24:32: So inquiry into how our reliance on oil is culturally framed and normalized.

00:24:43: And so that also an impulse right?

00:24:45: Then i started looking at texts from early twentieth century That are about automobility.

00:24:51: People who are interested in road trips and cars tend to start after World War II when there is this system of roads where you can just drive, have these adventures that Jack Karak has on the road.

00:25:09: These guys an easy rider have... In your early twentieth century didn't have those roads.

00:25:16: You had to find a road if you were driving one of these new cars.

00:25:20: And so that meant people had a very different relationship to the environment when they were driving.

00:25:26: and also cars sort of shaped their relationships with the environment.

00:25:30: because for a lot of wealthy people in the cities who were the first car users going out into countryside with the car meant they had to pay attention to a lot environmental factors like underground, material substances that are driving on.

00:25:45: If this was a sand path and it started raining then the car would get stuck.

00:25:51: if it started rain you have to stop anyway And also you encountered animals in different ways.

00:25:59: You had to pay attention to animals on the roads, so there are kinds of ways and which automobility especially early-automobility shaped how people thought about the environment.

00:26:10: So this insight that Early Automobility was a thoroughly environmental experience is something I find can help us zoom out our current thinking sort of take a broader view.

00:26:24: And it doesn't mean to greenwash automobility, right?

00:26:26: Or the on-automobility was also environmentally damaging even more so when you came through technology because these cars needed a lot of gas and this smoke that came out of those things wouldn't be sustainable anymore today.

00:26:41: but we have many cars with the same problems.

00:26:44: over again though the technology has adapted But nevertheless, I think if you look to those early texts we find ways in which car driving can be mindful of the environment.

00:26:57: And that's something where we should start again today and because cars aren't going away anytime soon.

00:27:05: their demise has been predicted quite often now.

00:27:10: but If they are there how communities sort-of use them in ways take the environment into account?

00:27:16: That is an important question.

00:27:18: Yeah, do you see any Continuities between these very early cars and maybe some cause of the future?

00:27:26: Do you see that at any trends to sort of try to make that connection again?

00:27:31: So I think there is an interesting trend.

00:27:34: That it's less about the tick.

00:27:36: also There is of course electronic vehicles existed early on.

00:27:39: so when cars were first invented engineers try different ways of fueling them, right?

00:27:45: So one was with oil, gas and batteries.

00:27:50: With electricity.

00:27:51: so there is a competition between these technologies in ultimately GASP-I.

00:27:56: And nowadays we sort think that we are discovering electronic vehicles but actually rediscovering them.

00:28:03: So that's an interesting continuity, but I think the more interesting continuities are in the way we think about automobility and its relationship to the environment.

00:28:11: If you look at the cultural history of how... ...automobility has been represented in films and songs and novels there is a development where early on These representations were a lot about the spaces that people were driving through, for example.

00:28:33: About the road and material consistency in quality of the road because it was important what the road was made of right?

00:28:41: And then from sort of mid-twentieth century on these factors become less relevant.

00:28:50: societies, Western societies and especially the US had implemented this system of automobility where you could drive from A to B without taking the environment into account in most cases.

00:29:00: So this has become an exception.

00:29:03: every day driving that we have to take environmental factors into account like snow for example.

00:29:07: then road gets slippery And it took enormous resources And this was celebrated in a lot of road movies and a lot songs.

00:29:23: Not the sense that people said, it's great we don't need to talk about the environment anymore but they thought driving as liberatory experience is an adventure only because they didn't have to take the environmental account.

00:29:36: so you can just drive anywhere you like.

00:29:39: You could meet people or feel unfettered even though actually relying on best infrastructure these cars going.

00:29:49: And that changes around two thousand, especially in the US.

00:29:52: so I'm an Americanist.

00:29:53: we look at U.S culture in particular... So from around two-thousand on you suddenly get road movies and novels and so on that are set or they approach automobility in ways where this system isn't working anymore.

00:30:07: a big branch of that are dystopias like For example, post climate disaster dystopias but also like

00:30:14: a Mad Max movie.

00:30:15: Mad Max movies are great examples.

00:30:17: so there you have to take into the environment or like Cormac McCarthy's The Road where that disaster is not even specified But you can't drive cars anymore.

00:30:28: So people walk on roads.

00:30:31: These dystopian representations...

00:30:33: By the way That has been turned into a movie

00:30:35: right?

00:30:37: Viggo Mortensen.

00:30:39: So that was turned into a movie.

00:30:40: And there's also, I mean my favorite example because it is one of the earliest, this David Lynch movie The Straight Story which is about an old guy in the Midwest who can't drive anymore and wants to visit his brother or his dying brother right?

00:31:03: Decides to take his lawnmower.

00:31:05: He has this little lawn mower tractor kind of thing To make that trip and so he it takes him forever, right?

00:31:13: It would be a like three-hour trip in real life Like with the car And it takes them I think several weeks Because he's driving So slowly as you drive on the side of the road Right here is the stop.

00:31:26: when it rains he has to be very mindful of the other cars, that car breaks down.

00:31:32: It's really tough to go uphill and downhill with this lawnmower

00:31:35: thing.".

00:31:36: And so all these environmental factors are coming into play here again right?

00:31:40: With this conceit...and I think we're seeing more and more of that man Max as a great example.

00:31:48: Great!

00:31:49: Some of those movies are certainly about also the joy of riding.

00:31:54: Do you enjoy riding cars?

00:31:56: That's

00:31:58: it.

00:31:59: So I can see where the American joy of writing comes from, because especially when compared to Germany which is just absurd about organizing car driving.

00:32:13: so not having a speed limit is absurd and Of course Germans being Germans It's a stressful experience to drive right?

00:32:22: And they're rude.

00:32:24: They will honk at you, they'll cut your off.

00:32:28: So that's... I never saw the joy of driving in Germany and still downed into US.

00:32:37: especially if we get out to coastal areas where a lot people drive it is very different story right?

00:32:43: You got roads but really only person on road.

00:32:46: these roads go through beautiful nature.

00:32:48: there are no other roads nearby.

00:32:50: just look at landscape.

00:32:53: Also, you're driving pretty slow by European standards because even out in the countryside.

00:32:58: You have like a seventy mile speed limit And so I can definitely see where sort of the allure Of the American road trip comes from right?

00:33:05: Because driving is more enjoyable In that context and also it takes longer because It's slower and the US as much bigger.

00:33:13: So we actually have this space at less compressed than Europe Right say after space to have these adventures and discoveries.

00:33:21: And so I do enjoy this kind of road trip.

00:33:24: And they know that you've been on a roadtrip in the US recently, right?

00:33:26: Well

00:33:27: would you mind telling us where you went and if you learned anything new about sort of the relationship between Automobility and The Environment?

00:33:35: Yeah, I went to the Midwest mostly.

00:33:37: So um That was great and it wasn't my first time and It's definitely is a different kind of driving compared to driving like in the I-Ninety five corridor on the East Coast, for example.

00:33:53: Like Boston near city Washington where there's just a lot of cars and it's really crowded out in the Midwest.

00:34:01: So went to Minneapolis Iowa Nebraska Kansas Missouri basically.

00:34:05: so that was the trip.

00:34:08: they're hardly any cars on those roads right?

00:34:11: There's a lot space but hardly any car.

00:34:14: So that was a great driving experience, beautiful nature as well.

00:34:20: In terms of did I learn anything new about the relationship to the environment?

00:34:24: It definitely struck me how much roadkill there was.

00:34:26: so that's something that is also different from Germany at Gebetter and now you work on this!

00:34:30: And in Germany i don't recall seeing a lot of roadkillers...I mean.. I grew up in a rural area where we were warned of deer around the road but rarely ever saw it Whereas in the

00:34:44: U.S.,

00:34:44: I constantly saw animals of all sorts, including megafauna basically on-the-road or next to the road, carcasses of animals and so that was definitely a reminder.

00:34:59: these roads are more part nature than our German roads.

00:35:03: they're less closed off there's less dominant environment in the Midwest.

00:35:09: That is an interesting experience.

00:35:12: And what you say, this is the sort of focus that you have while driving.

00:35:16: Um That comes as a result of what they do in your profession like the kinds of research topics that you pursue and What ways today inform?

00:35:25: I guess your everyday experience of driving

00:35:29: Mmm.

00:35:29: I mean the ironies to day.

00:35:31: i've never owned a car.

00:35:32: so um ever too late Yeah

00:35:35: should get one off these old ones

00:35:36: yeah.

00:35:37: So We've taken over my grandma-in-law's car basically recently, so I'm in the process of Acquiring ownership over a car.

00:35:46: It is very old car A Very mechanical car in a way But of course if you don't own a car You get to drive a lot of different cars because often car share or your rent cars.

00:35:59: So that has given me pretty broad experience with cars i would say.

00:36:05: but In terms What's the question?

00:36:07: how it impacted my research?

00:36:09: No, no.

00:36:10: The other way around or your research sort of impacts you're I guess everyday experience.

00:36:14: off writing driving a car.

00:36:16: yeah i mean again would probably say that its less about the ins and outs of actual car driving than my perception of automobility as a whole that gets impacted by the research.

00:36:30: So, Of course when I drive or car i do pay attention to things like roadkill right?I Do pay attention how their road is laid out The topography of the roads.

00:36:38: so I am aware this in different ways than it used be but especially sort of the system of Automobility.

00:36:49: Think about automobility how they talk about Automobility and how the infrastructures of Automobilty shape this thinking I'm talking And vice versa, How?

00:36:57: The way we think it talked about Automobilty shapes the infrastructures We build at the infrastructure as we demand.

00:37:03: I think there's a lot Of understanding that have gained of that through the research.

00:37:07: definitely

00:37:09: And did you count the roadkill?

00:37:11: no i didn't count.

00:37:12: um i know That early scientists did.

00:37:15: yes so your research has shown them.

00:37:17: Yeah, in Iowa in particular they made a lot of road trips counting roadkill in the early twenties.

00:37:24: So it seems an area that provides a lot knowledge about it.

00:37:29: Mm-hmm

00:37:30: yeah I think that's fascinating and can totally see where there comes from right because There is so much That if you're scientifically minded You would probably start counting and categorizing.

00:37:41: And what about roads?

00:37:43: Where...you said you felt that they were very into nature, so they didn't break the landscape in this sense.

00:37:52: But where there are other devices like edges or crossing for animals... You also came across that?

00:38:01: Yeah I mean i was thinking of that when I saw all of these roadkill.

00:38:04: and why that is, there's more roadkill because they are fewer of these devices.

00:38:11: And I think a few of those devices have so many cars it isn't worthwhile economically probably building them.

00:38:20: So i definitely had the sense There was a lot more continuity between the road and its environment in these settings Because The road just this little thing In huge environments often times Whereas like Central Europe The roads are usually part of built environments, but it's very rare I think to drive for a longer period time on the road where you're not in build environment.

00:38:46: It's unusual we notice, right?

00:38:48: Also a lot of European roads are now built in the way that they protect their environment from noise.

00:38:54: For example.

00:38:54: so you don't actually see anything on the road if your drive on it and so really become this closed off space non-place as anthropologists would say looks same everywhere whereas these small roads I mean, even the materiality of the road could change because sometimes they just became paths like gravel paths for example.

00:39:20: And so sometimes Google Maps would propose routes that weren't very feasible in certain types of cars.

00:39:29: So in that sense... ...I become aware of this and i did.

00:39:36: I did look out for infrastructures that tried to close roads off and it was noticeable.

00:39:43: of course, the closer you got to big cities more or less than there were.

00:39:48: So definitely a transition here.

00:39:53: Now we move inside the car.

00:39:57: so we are curious also which kind of soundtrack you picked on your road trip because we know that you're an avid listener of hip-hop.

00:40:05: what is your favorite artists?

00:40:07: Yeah, that's a hip-hop is also great road trip soundtrack.

00:40:10: I think it depends of course what you want from the soundtrack.

00:40:13: if You want to sing along hope?

00:40:14: It's more difficult.

00:40:16: But if you want sort of the energy right and the storytelling and so on then hip-hops grade And hip hop but of course was intricately connected to car culture From the very beginning.

00:40:27: um, and that's A fascinating topic that hasn't been researched enough.

00:40:31: i feel like i've Written one article about it, but there is definitely a lot more To do their.

00:40:39: And so in that sense, I do enjoy listening to hip-hop also when i'm driving because you can feel it my... In my sense some of this was written for cars.

00:40:55: It's not just about driving and cars but the groove rhythm smoothness cruising which is popularized by Hip Hop.

00:41:05: And so yeah, I'm an old-school hip hop person.

00:41:09: Mostly a classic hip hop personal or golden age hip hop sort of late eighties early nineties but also some earlier eighties stuff.

00:41:16: So i'll listen to A lot of like KRS one and these all things But also like JZE Sort of the mellower stuff that you get from from Spotify culture like Drake or French hip-hop.

00:41:33: I love as well and also often quite mellow.

00:41:36: So you get to different about for different driving moves, that would say so That's definitely great

00:41:42: Yeah.

00:41:42: And he'd say that um where you mentioned at one article that she wrote then maybe just for folks who don't know She team on calls it a hip hop ecology.

00:41:51: we sort of try to think about Hip-Hop as an environmentalist practice in a way which is an unusual reading because People usually associate hip-hop with urban environments, social problems but maybe not directly related to the environment.

00:42:11: In what ways do you see that connection there?

00:42:15: Yeah!

00:42:15: That was another of these topics.

00:42:17: I got me interested because people weren't talking about it and because i like hip hop... ...I've been working on hip hop also as part of my interest in black poetry And on the other hand, I was working in environmental humanities.

00:42:29: So it started thinking like what is that relationship?

00:42:35: It's very noticeable that classic hip-hop isn't set into this environment context so its not out of nature and the wilderness or countryside.

00:42:47: Of course there are a whole racial politics behind that The ghettoization of black people in inner cities.

00:42:55: And there's this long tradition in black culture of problematizing the relationship to the environment, right?

00:43:00: On one hand it is a resistance because Black people themselves were for a long time categorized as nature basically.

00:43:07: As opposed to humans so lot.

00:43:09: if Black scholars have written about these and theorists then they're just problems.

00:43:14: that curated nature was often closed off.

00:43:16: two people with color on US national parks where supposed be visited by white.

00:43:22: That was sort of the implication.

00:43:23: Also, parks and cities.

00:43:25: there's a lot Of debate in research into that or how black people also are trying to reclaim parks and city where they weren't supposed To be In this early...in the way parks were designed as sort of leisure grounds for The middle class.

00:43:42: starting in the late nineteenth century And I mean In the Black Arts Movement, you find people saying we aren't writing about trees because there are no trees on the south side of Chicago or in Harlem.

00:43:56: And part of the reason they're not trees is as a part of this securitization of these environments so that police didn't want trees because they thought They were an impediment to controlling populations and those inner city neighborhoods.

00:44:10: So That's why South Central LA has huge heat problems for example Because it cut down all of the trees.

00:44:17: And yeah, so there's this problematic relationship.

00:44:20: But on the other end of course even in classic hip-hop There is a lot of environmental language because hip hop is so inventive about language.

00:44:28: and So One very famous early Hip Hop song by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five right?

00:44:36: Because like it's like a jungle out there This metaphor for the concrete jungle is something we find in early hip-hop.

00:44:43: We found a lot of animal metaphors, right?

00:44:46: So that's one thing that got me started thinking about this.

00:44:51: and then there it was the sort of transition I think into two thousands probably where more rappers became interested in environmental topics.

00:45:03: We find more of that in Europe with people like Sami Deluxe In Germany for example had a hit song that was also about environmental destruction, about awareness in general.

00:45:15: I worked with a French colleague who pointed me to some MC Solar songs and Dr.

00:45:21: Nico's song that are all about the environment And so then we decided to do a workshop right?

00:45:26: We decided to put out a call for people hip-hop lovers, hip-hops scholars To tell us about hip hop they knew had environmental implications.

00:45:37: There wasn't a whole lot, but there was something.

00:45:41: I learned about Indigenous hip-hop for example which is inherently more environmental in many ways.

00:45:48: I learnt about poets who are inspired by hip hop and to take up environmental topics And also some younger rappers that just see climate change as the problem they want to talk about.

00:46:02: That's really fascinating how this knowledge came together and also widened our understanding of hip-hop.

00:46:10: How does this unlikely connection challenge our ideas about what nature is?

00:46:16: And the kinds of texts that we see as speaking to environmental issues...

00:46:20: Yeah, I think it's a really important point.

00:46:24: so if you think of these texts as an environmental text or speaking to them on mental issues That also widens our sense of what kinds of texts and what kind people speak to environmental issues, have something to say about environmental issues.

00:46:39: A lot of environmentalist discourse for a long time was basically done by middle- and upper-middle class white people who had the leisure to think about these things curated landscape neighborhoods.

00:47:01: But of course, HIPAA also has something to say about environmental issues right?

00:47:05: It has something too say as well how we speak up and the environment in which these metaphors are used.

00:47:11: How do we use animal metaphors?

00:47:12: Who will be using animal metaphores for?

00:47:16: And so it's important to broaden the horizon here and take this kind of voices into account.

00:47:22: And so one through line, I think in our discussions about hip-hop ecologies was that it did change our understanding of the urban space because the urban spaces is an environmental space as well.

00:47:38: So that goes back to what we said at the beginning—that we tend to think if nature's organic matter and there isn't a lot of organic matter left... We don't think these spaces are natural environments.

00:47:50: But of course the people who live in these spaces, they are environments.

00:47:54: It is important what the weather's like right?

00:47:56: Is it important whether its hot or cold and if it's raining or not And how and where water comes into play.

00:48:06: It isn't important when animals come to play but it's important that there're plants.

00:48:11: What kinds of plants Whether they give shade for example Or provide recreational space.

00:48:20: And so we definitely, I mean talking about hip-hop ecologies.

00:48:26: Um...I think they've developed a more nuanced understanding of the city as an environment.

00:48:30: i would say

00:48:32: Great Timo you have given us some much to thank about.

00:48:34: um..i'll be trying to count roadkill when i write down on street next time here in Constance if there is any.

00:48:42: Yeah thanks for coming out and taking your times.

00:48:45: Thanks for having me.

00:48:46: it was great.

00:48:47: Thank You very Much

00:48:48: And that is it for today with Off the Road, a podcast about environmental humanities.

00:48:53: Thank you to our guest Timo and we all hope to see you next time!

00:48:57: Take care!

00:48:58: Bye.