Macfarlane, A Completely Man-Made And Artificial Cataract?
Article Review: (Macfarlane, “A Completely Man-Made and Artificial Cataract”: The Transnational Manipulation of Niagara Falls n.d.)
Niagara is a unique high modernist case because, rather than seeking to dominate the natural setting visually, as did other comparable projects in the 1950s and 1960s, the control works at and above the actual cataract were hidden. Instead of making the technology (the remedial works) prevalent, they were designed to be unseen, although the downstream power projects, to be sure, were meant to invoke awe. This can be in large part explained pragmatically: public pressure to preserve the scenic appearance, and state interest in retaining the tourist appeal. But it also speaks to a different variant of high modernism …show more content…
Through the study of the making and maintaining of the Niagara Falls, Macfarlane seeks to highlight the similarities as well as differences in American and Canadian conceptions of the links “between border waters, progress, technology, and nationalism” (Macfarlane 2013, 760). Through the article Macfarlane seeks to borrow the term high modernism and offers a variation of it: “negotiated high modernism” (Macfarlane 2013, 761) between the United States and Canada, pointing to the ways in which Canadian and American governments had “to adapt, negotiate and legitimize themselves in relation to both the specific natural environments and the societies they aimed to control” (Macfarlane 2013, 761). In specific, one of the key differences between high modernism and negotiated high modernism was the desire to keep (in this case) Niagara ‘natural’. Through the article, Macfarlane traces the manmade nature of the naturalness of the Niagara Falls, exposing the normalization of its …show more content…
Macfarlane’s article lets me think about the ways in which infrastructure in politicized, manipulated and often coalesced with certain ideas of nature and naturalness.
Bibliography
Evenden, Matthew. 2015. Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-electricity during Canada's Second World War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Macfarlane, Daniel . 2013. "A Completely Man-Made and Artificial Cataract: The Transnational Manipulation of Niagara Falls." Environmental History (Oxford University Press) 18: 759-784.
Macfarlane, Daniel. n.d. "“A Completely Man-Made and Artificial Cataract”: The Transnational Manipulation of Niagara Falls." Environmental History (Oxford University Press) 18: 759-784.
Nye, David. 1996. American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Scott, James C. . 1999. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University
Niagara is a unique high modernist case because, rather than seeking to dominate the natural setting visually, as did other comparable projects in the 1950s and 1960s, the control works at and above the actual cataract were hidden. Instead of making the technology (the remedial works) prevalent, they were designed to be unseen, although the downstream power projects, to be sure, were meant to invoke awe. This can be in large part explained pragmatically: public pressure to preserve the scenic appearance, and state interest in retaining the tourist appeal. But it also speaks to a different variant of high modernism …show more content…
Through the study of the making and maintaining of the Niagara Falls, Macfarlane seeks to highlight the similarities as well as differences in American and Canadian conceptions of the links “between border waters, progress, technology, and nationalism” (Macfarlane 2013, 760). Through the article Macfarlane seeks to borrow the term high modernism and offers a variation of it: “negotiated high modernism” (Macfarlane 2013, 761) between the United States and Canada, pointing to the ways in which Canadian and American governments had “to adapt, negotiate and legitimize themselves in relation to both the specific natural environments and the societies they aimed to control” (Macfarlane 2013, 761). In specific, one of the key differences between high modernism and negotiated high modernism was the desire to keep (in this case) Niagara ‘natural’. Through the article, Macfarlane traces the manmade nature of the naturalness of the Niagara Falls, exposing the normalization of its …show more content…
Macfarlane’s article lets me think about the ways in which infrastructure in politicized, manipulated and often coalesced with certain ideas of nature and naturalness.
Bibliography
Evenden, Matthew. 2015. Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-electricity during Canada's Second World War. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Macfarlane, Daniel . 2013. "A Completely Man-Made and Artificial Cataract: The Transnational Manipulation of Niagara Falls." Environmental History (Oxford University Press) 18: 759-784.
Macfarlane, Daniel. n.d. "“A Completely Man-Made and Artificial Cataract”: The Transnational Manipulation of Niagara Falls." Environmental History (Oxford University Press) 18: 759-784.
Nye, David. 1996. American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Scott, James C. . 1999. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University