Greg Garrard (2012) Ecocriticism Beginnings: Pollution pp. 1 asserts that modern environmentalism began with Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). Would be worth having a look at this text! Pp.2 asserts that the title Silent Spring and indeed overall image, functions as a synecdoche (where a part is used to represent a whole e.g. hungry mouth=poor person) for climate change. The elements of ‘mythical ecocatastrophe’ in Silent Spring may be similar to The Tangled Lands? pp.3 asserts that ecocriticism is a very political mode of analysis, similar to feminism and Marxism in that respect. Pp. 4 Is also closely linked with environmental philosophy and politics. Pp. 5 Also asserts that whilst ecocritics ‘may not be qualified to contribute to debates about problems in ecology […] they must nevertheless transgress disciplinary boundaries and develop their own ‘ecological literacy’. Pp. 8 POI The word ‘polluere’, from which ‘pollution’ derives, used to refer to pollution of the body and ‘moral contamination’ through sexual acts e.g. masturbation. It was a subjective term, but its meaning shifted somewhere between the 17 th-19th century to the objective meaning we now associate it with. Chapter Five: Apocalypse Generally, in Western culture, apocalyptic narratives can be traced back to biblical scripture and seem to serve as motivation to following Christian teachings always because they’re not quite sure when the apocalypse will occur, only that it will. Augustine mocked those trying to work out exactly when the apocalypse would be for their literal biblical interpretation. He employed comic apocalypticism which emphasises evil as error, redemption through recognition rather than victimage and an emphasis on fallibility rather than sacrifice. pp.93 apocalyptic narratives can be traced back to arounds 1200, although this is contested by some scholars. Pp. 97 also heavily connected to the romantic poets (Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake) and Nietzsche. Pp. 98 further asserts that Nietzsche sought to avoid anthropomorphism when referring to the world of the ubermensch. Also aligns him with deep ecologists in that he ‘seeks a biocentric perspective’ but is aware of the way nihilism threatens this. pp.101 Theorist Buell (1995) states that ‘Apocalypse is the single most powerful master metaphor that the contemporary environmental imagination has at its disposal’. pp. 102-103 Malthus’s ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’ (1798) made mathematical predictions regarding the human population outgrowing the capacity of the Earth’s resources if it remained unchecked. This idea has, unsurprisingly, been very influential although it is essentially anti-apocalyptic in that it predicts a constant battle between population and resource growth rather than a cataclysmic event. pp. 106 ‘Developed countries now have stable or falling populations, but they have paid for the transition in economic growth fuelled by non-renewable energy sources, first coal and then oil.’ pp. 114 Regarding the presentation of catastrophic events in the news ‘Apocalypse provides an emotionally charged frame of reference within which complex, long-term issues are reduced to monocausal crises involving conflicts between recognisably opposed groups, such as Greenpeace verses whalers.’
