Article - An ecophenomenological dendrochronology: Shlain’s Dendrofemonology through a lens of Stein’s temporality
A journal article, “An ecophenomenological dendrochronology: Shlain’s Dendrofemonology through a lens of Stein’s temporality,” has been published in Cogent Arts & Humanities, an open access journal. I hope you enjoy this article.
Abstract:
In their growth, many trees trace time in annual rings – dark and light striation that illuminates a pattern of climatic conditions. Cross-sections of elder trees are displayed in U.S. state and national parks such as Muir Woods in northern California with significant dates that are often Western, colonial events. As an alternative to androcentric tree cross-section timelines, multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain’s work, Dendrofemonology, traces historical events centering women and gender non-conforming people from 50,000 BCE to the present on a slab of deodar cedar wood. This paper investigates trees and temporality from a phenomenological and ecofeminist perspective through an analysis and critique of Dendrofemonology. Trees often live longer than humans, and their slow movement is imperceptible to casual observation. What can tree rings uncover regarding human perceptions of time? Drawing on phenomenological perspectives of time with special attention to Edith Stein’s philosophy of finitude and employing both an ecofeminist and multispecies lens, I will investigate arboreal and vegetal perspectives on temporality. I will explore Dendrofemonology in order to speak to the relationship between the life span and body of a tree to temporal being. Such a dendrochronological view paired with phenomenology can offer an invitation to opening avenues of human thought on both time and temporality.
