Martin Johnson Heade exercises biocentrism through examinations of intra-species, inter-species, species-ecosystem, and species-planetary relationships that span his oeuvre. Heade realizes the anthropogenic change occurring around him constitute an incompressible scale of implications, turning to the self inflection of ecological reflexivity as a mode of interpreting the early stages of the Anthropocene.
However, Heade’s attitude is not unwavering and remains a source of contention within the artist until his death. Despite being vocally opposed to the agent of empire and its impact on indigenous peoples, Heade falters in his consideration of the relationships that develop between humans and nature in the face of human exploitation. He detracts the agency of indigenous people from his equations of preservation, remarking on the “semibarbarism [that] still reigns [in Florida] and the natives [that] still shoot deer in the summer and quail in season, and out.”39 Heade is selectively dismissive of the racial and sociopolitical dynamics in Florida integral to framing a biocentric perspective. He becomes frustrated by the disregard for hunting practices, notably constructed by a privileged circuit of white individuals and forced onto communities already pushed to the margins of society.
This issue brings into consideration the misuse of ecological reflexivity, specifically the dangers of the responses it 'enables.' The threshold between what may and may not be justified in the name of conservation- one which Heade crosses- becomes distorted or neglected. In entering, then stepping out of his biocentric position, we not only witness Heade's struggle, but more importantly the alarm of advancing towards irreversible dissonance if we do not recast our existence of entitlement as one of cohabitative being-in-the-world.