[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-596604-105":59,"doc-detail-596604-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","working-the-dark-edges","Working the Dark Edges","","Environmentalism’s current scope is framed by overlooked “regions of seeming darkness” that constrain what counts as acceptable environmental thinking. The essay turns to two scarcely addressed forms of darkness: outer space (the cosmos) and the inner, chthonic powers of land and other natural beings. By treating “dark matter” as a provocative metaphor for exclusions and complicities, it outlines how environmental critique might expand through new pedagogies and philosophical inquiry at both edges.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/working-the-dark-edges/596604/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/working-the-dark-edges/596604.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Muffet","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-22","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":81},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What are the two kinds of “dark edges” the essay focuses on?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The essay focuses on outer space (the cosmos) and the inner or chthonic powers of land and natural beings. It treats them as largely unacknowledged possibilities for environmental thought and pedagogy.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the “Dark Matter” metaphor function in the argument?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The metaphor suggests that certain exclusions and complicities may exert immense gravitational effects on environmental thinking, even when they are not directly observable or explicitly addressed.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"Why does the essay challenge the idea that environmentalism is Earth-bound?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It argues that Earth is not a closed system and is materially and non-materially linked to broader cosmic fluxes. Life depends on cosmic dynamics such as the Sun, Moon, and other gravitational rhythms, and Earth continuously receives extraterrestrial material.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},596604,1792696861,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":81,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":52,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144},962090768927,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_085a072bc5b1113ac321206ff7593b45","Working the Dark Edges  \nAnthony Weston, Elon University, United States  \nAbstract  \nEnvironmentalism’s wider and wilder possibilities today appear as regions of seeming darkness that bracket or frame acceptable environmental thinking. Oneof these barely-mentionable darknesses is outer space—the cosmos. Another is the inner and chthonic powers of the land and natural beings generally. This essay aims to bring these two kinds of darkness briefly but provocatively into view, both in the interests of a more expansive sense of environmentalism’s possibilities and to point toward some pedagogies that might edge us farther in such directions.  \nRésumé  \nLes vastespossibilités de l’environnementalisme semblent aujourd’hui des régions de ténèbres qui enferment et encadrent nos propos sur l’environnement. Une deces zones sombres à peine nommable est le cosmos. Insondables sont aussi les puissances intérieures et souterraines de la terre et des êtres vivants en général. Cet essai a pour but d’amener ces deux zones ténébreuses à la vue de façon brèvemais provocante, ceci afin de promouvoir une vision plus expansive des possibilités de l’environnementalisme et de pointer quelquespédagogies qui nous orientent dans ces directions.  \nKeywords: astronomy, cosmos, darkness, environmentalism, radical environmentalism, science, space, totemism  \nThe Call for Papers for the Loon Lake Gathering invited respondents to take up certain matters that are “uncomfortable and difficult,”“questions we avoid, resist, or ignore”: unacknowledged exclusions and complicities, farther possibilities uncontemplated, resisted, or sometimes feared, even by “us”—that is, I take it, by radical environmentalists. The “Dark Matter” metaphor provocatively reminds us that some of these exclusions and complicities may have immense gravitational effects, so to speak, on all of our thinking, like the more literal form of “dark matter” that according to astrophysicists makes up almost all of the physical universe but is not observable, known to us only by the contortions it creates in what is visible.  \nThis paper considers two kinds of dark matters, so conceived, that also, strikingly, carry specific and marked symbolic overtones of darkness themselves, while still bordering or edging the familiar regions where we do shine our philosophical and pedagogical lights. One of these barely-mentionable darknesses is outer space—nothing less than the rest of the universe. If “environment” does  \n70 Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 19, 2014  \nnot in fact stop at the surface of the planet—if life on Earth, including our own, is actually in flow with the whole cosmos—what then for environmentalism? The other of these seemingly dark matters lies at another and opposite edge: it is the inner or chthonic powers of the land and natural beings. Philosophers and historians have thoroughly documented the backgrounding and (indeed) obliteration of older and indigenous worldviews in which natural beings and nature itself were enspirited and met us as powerful presences in their own rights, requiring careful negotiation at every turn. Few environmentalists today, however, dare to put so much as a toe back into these waters, at least in their official writings or practice. But what then does our critique imply?  \nFor symmetry’s sake I am tempted to say that one “dark edge” is a kind of darkness beyond Earth and the other is a kind of darkness within Earth—the Cosmic and the Chthonic, as it were—but no doubt this is to make things too neat. Moreover, it may well be possible to move willingly enough in one direction while resisting the other. My main aim is simply to open up some provocative possibilities on two quite different edges of environmentalism as we know it today, and thus to explore, if only briefly, what it might look like to edge out in both directions, pedagogically and philosophically as well.  \nNews of the Universe  \nFrom an astronomical perspective, environmentalism is ","cbCaikpQgX2KMb21","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaikpQgX2KMb21","pdf",86323,"English","# Abstract\n# The Call for Papers and the “Dark Matter” Metaphor\n## Uncomfortable exclusions and complicities\n# Two Kinds of “Dark Matters” for Environmentalism\n## Outer space\n## The inner/chthonic powers of land\n# News of the Universe\n## Earth-bound environmentalism\n## Earth as an open system linked to cosmic fluxes","[{\"question\":\"What are the two kinds of “dark edges” the essay focuses on?\",\"answer\":\"The essay focuses on outer space (the cosmos) and the inner or chthonic powers of land and natural beings. It treats them as largely unacknowledged possibilities for environmental thought and pedagogy.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the “Dark Matter” metaphor function in the argument?\",\"answer\":\"The metaphor suggests that certain exclusions and complicities may exert immense gravitational effects on environmental thinking, even when they are not directly observable or explicitly addressed.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the essay challenge the idea that environmentalism is Earth-bound?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that Earth is not a closed system and is materially and non-materially linked to broader cosmic fluxes. Life depends on cosmic dynamics such as the Sun, Moon, and other gravitational rhythms, and Earth continuously receives extraterrestrial material.\"}]","Working the Dark Edges | PDF",1792083386,15]