Network of Bones
Conjuring Key West and the Florida Keys
Will be published approx. on 30. April 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-62349-737-8 (ISBN)
Description
Both a far-removed place of refuge for the fringe of society and a high-status vacation destination, the Keys remain a legendary yet fragile place, still threatened by a human-made disaster, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Likewise, Key West, Florida, can be many things to many people, evoking laidback Margaritaville for some and Ernest Hemingway for others.
In this mixture of memoir, travel writing, philosophical reflection, natural and cultural history, and meditation on language, Sean Morey wrestles with the varied and often contradictory nature of his hometown. Morey turns a sharp eye inward, teasing out the layers of natural and cultural developments that have shaped the Keys for both millions of years and the past few decades. He asks: What does it take for humans to accept our impact on Earth and, more importantly, what will move humans to take action to reverse adverse impacts? The answer, Morey posits, lies in imaginative thinking-in building connections between locations and individual interests and backgrounds to create a foundation for widespread ecological ethics.
In Network of Bones, Morey guides readers through different images of Key West and connects them to global environmental issues, including overfishing, rising sea levels, and polluted oceans. Morey's writing stimulates memory and invites engagement with the world as he shows us how learning about one place-no matter how specific and eccentric that place might be-can teach us about all other places. It's just a matter of imagination.
In this mixture of memoir, travel writing, philosophical reflection, natural and cultural history, and meditation on language, Sean Morey wrestles with the varied and often contradictory nature of his hometown. Morey turns a sharp eye inward, teasing out the layers of natural and cultural developments that have shaped the Keys for both millions of years and the past few decades. He asks: What does it take for humans to accept our impact on Earth and, more importantly, what will move humans to take action to reverse adverse impacts? The answer, Morey posits, lies in imaginative thinking-in building connections between locations and individual interests and backgrounds to create a foundation for widespread ecological ethics.
In Network of Bones, Morey guides readers through different images of Key West and connects them to global environmental issues, including overfishing, rising sea levels, and polluted oceans. Morey's writing stimulates memory and invites engagement with the world as he shows us how learning about one place-no matter how specific and eccentric that place might be-can teach us about all other places. It's just a matter of imagination.
Reviews / Votes
In Network of Bones: Conjuring Key West and the Florida Keys, Sean Morey promises 'weird shit' in his networked/layered exploration of Key West, and he delivers. In this fascinating and complex account of place, conservation, the environment, choral (or coral) drifts, and memoir intersect in order to reveal the 'secrets' of place. Network of Bones will, no doubt, become a major text for the study of place because of how it breaks down anticipated categories and expectations. As someone who also grew up in South Florida, I discovered a whole world of ideas and moments previously invisible to me. Network of Bones teaches us how to make place visible in ways location does not."" - Jeff Rice author of Florida""Sean Morey is the Ernest Hemingway of choragraphy. His experiment demonstrates a leap out of scientific metaphysics, itself a cause of the General Accident known as the Anthropocene, into the electrate apparatus of digital civilization. Using flash reason learned from poetics, he takes implicit instruction from the name of his hometown, Key West. 'West' as choral word conjugates a German verb, Heidegger's Wesen, shifting ontology from being to event: the Key is to Dwell in the particularity of Cayo Hueso as paradigm. What crucial role must the humanities disciplines play in the present emergency? An answer is outlined not with ideas (universals) but events (essential happenings)-local, unique, specific to Sean Morey's experience: his childhood apprenticeship fishing in the mangals becomes a networked allegory with which to catch in imagination a response to the coming climate catastrophe."" - Gregory L. Ulmer author of Konsult: Theopraxesis
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
College Station
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
30 black & white photographs
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 130 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
330 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-62349-737-8 (9781623497378)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Sean Morey is associate professor in the department of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the author of Rhetorical Delivery and Digital Technologies: Networks, Affect, Electracy and coeditor of the collections Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature and Augmented Reality: Innovative Perspectives across Art, Industry, and Academia. He resides in Knoxville but never passes up a chance to get back home to the Keys.