Grassland logic, Agrilogistics and Hanspace Cosmologies — Robin Visser’s Disruptive “Questioning Borders”

Newly published Questioning Borders: Eco-Literatures of China and Taiwan by Robin Visser makes for fascinating reading, and it: 

. . . features works by Mongol, Tibetan, Taiwanese, Tao, Bunun, Yi, Bai, Kazakh, Uyghur, and Han writers set in rapidly transforming ecologies in Xinjiang, the Tibetan Plateau, Inner Mongolia, Southwest China, and Taiwan. 

Authors whose works are cited in detail include — but are far from limited to — Inner Mongolia’s Guo Xuebo (郭雪波); Xinjiang’s Perhat Tursun (پەرھات  تۇرسۇن, 帕尔哈提·吐尔逊), Li Juan (李娟), Yerkesh Hulmanbek and Liu Liangcheng (刘亮程); and Taiwan’s Wu Mingyi (吴明益) and Liu Ka-hsiang (劉克襄).

Here’s a list of some terms in Visser’s book that I found intriguing and edifying — tho’ a bit difficult to grasp at first:

• socialist ecological civilization 
• ethnospatial determinism 
• reifying
• grassland logic
• ecofeminist critique
• agrilogistics
• Hanspace cosmologies
• carbon imaginary