Sandy Krolick writes in the KulturKritic:
As David Abram rightly points out in The Spell Of The Sensuous, when human communication made its dramatic transformation from the spoken to the written (particularly the alphabetic) word, non-human nature suddenly fell silent and men began speaking only amongst themselves, mesmerized by the magic of their own written discourses. It is at this point that the fundamental dichotomy between human and non-human nature fully emerged, with a dead and now alien nature confronting humankind, simply waiting to be managed and controlled. And, of course, this was validated by the written biblical word, while being executed almost flawlessly by missionaries, explorers, and developers ever since.
