Playing Underground

Abstract

This article situates Thoreau’s Walden within the tradition of “mole philosophy” in which philosophers figure new forms of thought as a kind of burrowing, and often as a burrowing mole. Like the others, Thoreau’s mole philosopher partakes in what is fast becoming a geological fantasy about depth and interpretation, but his mole differs from his predecessors’ in that its burrowing has to do primarily with getting out of the sun. The sun, it seems, lacks a certain mystery. Indeed, the idea that nature provides familiarity and reliability through its rhythms or cycles is at odds with, among other things, Walden’s requirement that we ask, unceasingly, “Who knows when?” and “Who knows what?” Burrowing, then, alerts us to a queer antipastoral mode at play in Walden when so-called natural cycles (solar, seasonal, reproductive, etc.), as well as other commonplaces of a maturing American literary pastoral mode, threaten to stall the text’s erotic curiosity.