Competing Visions of Nature: The Construction of Narrative in Grizzly Man and the Problematization of “Connectivity Thinking”

Abstract

This paper approaches Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary Grizzly Man through a narratological lens, analysing how the documentary contests the nature-culture divide by constructing a multi-faceted narrative that allows a variety of different perspectives on nature to co-exist. In the first section, the paper engages with Erin James’ concept of Anthropocene Narrative Theory (ANT), which argues that there is a reciprocal relationality between our current geological epoch—the Anthropocene—and narrative. ANT is used to illustrate how the documentary intentionally plays with this link between the Anthropocene and narrative, constructing a site of contestation in which different people’s perspectives on nature come together, reminiscent of the diversity of natural ecosystems themselves.1 In the second section, the analysis focuses on how Grizzly Man problematizes Thom van Dooren and Deborah Bird Rose’s concept of “connectivity thinking”—a term that highlights the importance of storying nonhuman worlds in an open way that engenders connection between the human and the nonhuman—by warning of the limits of translatingthis sort of thinking beyond the realm of narrative, into real-life interactions with nature.

1. The abbreviation “ANT” is used by James herself and should not be confused with the same abbreviation used in the foreword to this issue, where it refers to Bruno Latour’s “Actor-Network Theory.”