Living in ‘The Dish With One Spoon’: Transdescendence and Convivance in Daniel Coleman’s Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place

The subtitle of Daniel Coleman’s third book of non-fiction acknowledges in place the existence
\nof a form of life and agency that the essay explores in exquisite detail. The living under scrutiny
\nbegins in the yard at the back of the Colemans’ house in Hamilton, the industrial city on the western
\ntip of Lake Ontario where the Canadian critic and writer has made his home. The plasticity of the
\nessay, a prospective, tentative form by definition, means that it is a most suited genre to try out
\nnew propositions regarding the practice of place in a vast area that used to be known as a “Dish
\nWith One Spoon” by the Indigenous populations who had agreed to preserve it as a neutral ground
\nfor their common use before the onset of colonisation. With the influx of European settlers, and
\nthe treaties that caused the morcelization of the region between the lakes, the area underwent
\nprofound transformations culminating with the industrial boom that boosted the development of the
\ncity of Hamilton in the twentieth century while causing great damage to its environment. The area
\nis presently showing signs of ecological resilience that may lead to a renaissance with the waning
\nof the industrial age. Although the timeline matters, Coleman is not writing a history of Hamilton.
\nHis approach is more geographical in spirit, looking at the languages, discourses and practices that
\nhave transformed a physical location into a place, i.e. portion of space imbued with signification for
\nits human inhabitants, but also a milieu shared by myriad life-forms. This article will analyse the
\ndecentering Yardwork operates from the ego-centered genre of the biography to a form of writing
\nwhich is eco-centered, by which I mean that it is rooted in an ontology where convivance serves as
\nchallenging model to help us rethink the borders that cut across life-giving places

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