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The Aesthetics of a Teletubby Landscape: A Short History of a Romantic Gaze

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Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Anthropocene

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Abstract

This chapter highlights how mental health and wellbeing is ‘conceptually’ spread. It unpacks some oft-used environmental concepts such as Landscape, Nature and Wilderness in order to highlight how each concept distorts our realities and the physical consequences of such inventions. Hence, certain urban and rural environments may be perceived as welcoming or healthy due to the wealth—epistemological, social, monetary, spiritual, hegemonic and so on—associated with their aesthetic appeal. The author suggests a post-romantic/post-nature perspective is needed to rebalance sociological inequities of mental health and wellbeing.

Hi! This is just a reminder that you were invited to read the chapters in-between the introduction and conclusion in any order to disrupt the linear narrative. For example, if you feel this chapter doesn’t belong here, it can serve as a reminder that this inquiry is a rumination and not a unidirectional hypothetico-deductive form of clinical reasoning.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although according to Antrop (2013), landscape’s meaning as scenery ‘comes with Dutch painting from the seventeenth century, international renown introduced the word into English but with an emphasis on “scenery” instead of territory’ (p. 12).

  2. 2.

    ‘A First Nation elder, that I befriended at a conference in Canada […] whispered to me after hearing the anthropologist, Tim Ingold speak. “That Ingold fella”, he said, “we would give an ‘A’ for anthropology but an ‘F’ for participation; for he is an observer, not a participant”’ (Mcphie, 2015b, p. 229).

  3. 3.

    ‘[R]epresentationalism is the belief in the ontological distinction between representations and that which they purport to represent; in particular, that which is represented is held to be independent of all practices of representing. That is, there are assumed to be two distinct and independent kinds of entities—representations and entities to be represented’ (Barad, 2003, p. 804).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Science, Natural Resources and Outdoor Studies, University of Cumbria, Ambleside, Cumbria, UK

    Jamie Mcphie

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  1. Jamie Mcphie
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Correspondence to Jamie Mcphie .

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Mcphie, J. (2019). The Aesthetics of a Teletubby Landscape: A Short History of a Romantic Gaze. In: Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Anthropocene. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3326-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3326-2_9

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