Activism, Apocalypse, and the Avant-Garde. The fifth biennial
conference for the Association for Study of Literature and the
Environment (ASLE), The University of Edinburgh, 10-13th July 2008.
Page
Name
Page
Name
1
Bergthaller
36
Beebee
2
Raglon
37
Deckard
3
Rowley
38
O’Brien
4
Paplow
39
Barat
5
Öhman
40
Feder
6
Danielsson
41
Vander Meer
7
Dunkerley
42
Wheeler
8
Gifford
43
Costin
9
Wood, B
44
Wiedner
10
McKechnie
45
Sultzbach
11
Miller
46
Fremantle
12
Allen
47
Poetzsch
13
Westling
48
Been
14
Coope
49
Yang
15
Hildyard
50
Kluwick
16
Mabon
51
Domke
17
Mason
52
Whitlock
18
Goldberg
53
Ingram
19
Hansson
54
Jones
20
Booth
55
Gairn
21
Matthewman
56
Borthwick
22
Campbell
57
Philip
23
Niblett
58
Court
24
[]
59
Somerville
25
Bellarsi
60
Bristow
26
Hewitson
61
Bealer
27
Swain
62
Middleton
28
Taneja
63
Filipsson
29
Yeow
64
Allenrandolph
30
Edney
65
Wood, S
31
Cooper
66
Kerridge
32
McMullen
67
Goodbody
33
Garrard
68
Thear
34
Hsu
69
Bracke
35
Pilla
Hannes Bergthaller (National Taipei U of Technology)
hbergtlr@ntut.edu.tw
‘A
Pax
Germanica
of
the
Agricultural
World’:
Anti-totalitarian
Rhetoric and Popular Ecology in Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.
For scientific facts to capture the public imagination, it is not
enough for them to be established as scientifically true – they must
also be made to resonate with the narratives which society relies on
to
explain
its
own
workings.
In
the
U.S.,
these
narratives
are
largely those of what intellectual historian Louis Hartz refers to as
the
“liberal
tradition.”
As
ecological
science
is
retooled
for
consumption by a non-scientific audience, it is configured into an
allegory of liberal society, producing what I call popular ecology.
In this paper, I will trace this process in one of the founding
documents of the modern environmental movement, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand
County Almanach. In the Almanach, the “land community” is assumed to
function like a liberal market economy where all members, by pursuing
their self-interests, involuntarily contribute to the welfare of the
whole. By arrogating to themselves the function formerly fulfilled by
the ecological “invisible hand,” humans step into a role equivalent
to that of a dictator. Both with respect to the structure of his
argument and in the choice of political analogies used to underscore
his environmentalist message, Leopold’s critique closely parallels
that levelled at the progressivist Left by the New Liberals – perhaps
most famously in Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s book The Vital Center,
published in the same year as the Almanach. In a move that was as
problematic
as
it
remains
instructive
for
contemporary
environmentalism, Leopold thus harnessed the rhetorical force of the
incipient discourse of anti-totalitarianism for the environmentalist
cause.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 1
Rebecca Raglon (University of British Columbia)
raglon@gmail.com
From My First Summer in the Sierra to Nature Noir: Writing for the
New Post Natural Wilderness
Wilderness and the literature celebrating wild places, over the past
decade have faced numerous bold critiques, which collectively imply
that the era of
“unproblematic” celebration of natural places found
in texts like John Muir’s My First Summer in the Sierra is passé.
Wilderness is now described as incarcerated, socially constructed,
gendered, politically fraught, and anything but pure and pristine.
But
while
these
critiques
may
have
helped
forge
a
better
understanding of human interrelationships, it is less evident that
they
have
been
successful
in
developing
an
alternative paradigm,
capable of preserving and protecting vulnerable life from continued
human intrusion and “development”. This paper examines a number of
contemporary U.S writers and their works (Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a
Cracker
Childhood,
Sullivan’s
Jordan
Meadowlands)
Fisher
which
Smith’s
revivify
the
Nature
idea
Noir,
Robert
of wilderness
in
unexpected places. In addition to journeying into new kinds of “wild
areas”, these writers have attempted to forge a new, tougher, less
romantic language to describe the anthropogenic nature found in overused
parkland,
junkyards,
suburban
back
yards,
and
clear
cuts.
Surprisingly, in the process of developing a description of a new
“post
natural
wilderness,”
the
core
concerns
of
nineteenth
and
twentieth century wilderness preservation have been both rigorously
defended and renewed.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 2
Rosemarie Rowley (Independent)
rowleyrosie@yahoo.ie
Yeats and Environmental Ethics in a Time of Apocalypse
My paper will look at some examples of the avant-garde, particularly
at modernists, eliciting the example of Yeats who has left us such
striking
Coming”.
nature
apocalyptic
poems
such
and
other
modernists
answer
to
Yeats,
as
an
the
as
“Byzantium”
strove
intellectual
to
and
“The
place
crisis
of
Second
art
above
scientific
materialism that is now having its apogee in our own day.
Since
Hiroshima, the world is indeed living in an existential crisis, but
if a poet like Yeats chose intellectual order as the only reality, we
might ask as to how this distancing from nature has affected our most
significant apocalyptic vision of today – the destruction of nature.
A study of these key texts of Yeats’ show how his dedication to the
life of the mind
world.
Aengus”
mirrored the loss of contact with the natural
I hope to show that in an early poem “The Song of Wandering
that
significant
in
times
developing
not
only
an
antithetical
opposed
to
self,
Nature
Yeats
was
intellectually
at
and
spiritually, but also emotionally. The privileging of the life of the
mind over the animal self, has played in his own life and in his
influence what may have been a costly division.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 3
Thorsten Päplow (Mälardalen, Sweden)
thorsten.paplow@mdh.se
Place
and
Narrative:
The
'Mines
of
Falun'
Motif
in
Selected
Nineteenth-Century German Literary Texts.
In 1719 the perfectly preserved body of a miner, who had died 42
years earlier, was found in the mines of Falun in central Sweden. On
being brought up to the surface the body started to disintegrate
rather quickly. For obvious reasons, this occurrence attracted a lot
of interest at the time and, although the story of the Falun-miner
seems to have reached the German speaking areas with a ninety year
delay, also inspired a considerable number of literary adaptations.
For the last 200 years it has been a theme or motif in German
literature that has received quite a lot of critical attention. One
aspect that has been consistently overlooked or underestimated in
these scholarly reading is the importance of place for the different
adaptations, accounts or texts. This paper will therefore explore the
aspect of place in the first narratives that feature the Falun-miner
or the mines of Falun, mainly von Schubert’s Viewpoints on the dark
side
of
the
natural
sciences
(1808), Hebel’s
Unhoped-for
Reunion
(1811) and Hoffmann’s The mines of Falun (1819).
ASLE08 Edinburgh 4
Marie Öhman. (Mälardalen, Sweden)
marie.ohman@mdh.se
The Natural Ape, or Aping the Natural: Imitation and Serious Play in
Peter Høeg´s The Woman and the Ape.
The
Danish
writer
Peter
Høeg’s
fifth
novel,
The
Woman
and the Ape (1996), revolves around an unnatural ape, significantly
called Erasmus and in certain respects the most human character in
the novel.
Erasmus encounters a scientist searching for the missing
link and subverts his mission by imitating a human imitating an
ape, making the natural seem strange.
fond
of imitation.
suggests that
“nature.”
Drawing
civilization
on
and
Like the ape, Høeg is also
contemporary
cultural
cultural
imitation
clichés,
have
he
replaced
The Scandinavian reception of The Woman and the Ape was
mixed. Some critics focused on the novel´s exploration of boundaries
between
animal
critique of
stressed
and
Western
human
culture
the author´s
traditions,
but
and
and
pointed
its
civilization.
skilful
implied that
out
play
stylistic
potential
Others
with
the edge off the novel´s critical dimension.
a
approvingly
literary
playfulness
as
generic
risked
taking
My paper brings these
two perspectives together by suggesting that “the ape” certainly is
an
embodiment
nature-culture
literary
of
philosophical
dichotomy,
strategy,
by
but
which
and
also
these
ethical
serves
as
questions
questions
a
are
about
metaphor
conveyed
the
for
the
to
the
reader. A starting point for my discussion is Aristotle’s statement
about imitation and mankind in Poetics:
“Imitation is natural to
mankind from childhood on: Man is differentiated from other animals
because he is the most imitative of them.”
ASLE08 Edinburgh 5
Karin Molander Danielsson (Mälardalen, Sweden)
karin.molander.danielsson@mdh.se
Norris’s Buckskin Mare: Natural, Cultural and Apocalyptic.
The inner, metaphorical, animal in Frank Norris’ characters, such
as
the
“animal
in
the
man”
in
McTeague
(283)
or
the
brute
of
Vandover and the Brute, has been the object of many studies. As
Pizer, Feldman and others have shown, Norris was much influenced by
the
teachings
of
Joseph
LeConte,
a
geologist
and
evolutionary
theorist at Berkeley who taught, e.g., that the inner animal was not
an “essential evil to be extirpated” but a “useful servant to be
controlled.” (qtd in Feldman 177).
animals,
Norris’
many
actual
However, unlike the metaphorical
animal
characters
have
been
largely
overlooked. One of them is Annixter’s high-spirited buckskin mare in
The
Octopus,
a
complex
character
with
a
symbolic
as
well
as
a
narrative function.
This
paper
explores
how
the
horse
in
Norris’s
fiction
manifests
itself at once as a potent natural force—testing the determination
and courage of the characters involved,—while also assuming various
symbolic roles—of the West, of women and of apocalypse. From an ecocritical vantage, the horse in Norris’s work proves to negotiate the
bridge
between
portrays
nature
nature,
tamed
and
and
culture
in
subdued
various
by
notable
feminine
and
ways;
it
masculine
cultures, but also culture, ruptured by the primal and wild. In The
Octopus a horse also serves Norris as a narrative vehicle for his
story, and as a powerful symbol of his apocalyptic vision.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 6
Hugh Dunkerley (Chichester)
H.Dunkerley@chi.ac.uk
Poetry and Unknowing: Contemporary Approaches to the Wild
In the last few years there has been a resurgence of poetry about the
natural world. Alongside books by poets such as Kathleen Jamie, the
anthologies Wild Reckoning and The Thunder Mutters have collected
more familiar poems next to new work. In this paper I will analyse
the work of a number of recent poets writing about nature in terms of
two approaches. Using the terminology of Christian mysticism, I will
show how the categories of the Positive and Negative Ways can be used
to clarify two contemporary approaches to describing the otherness of
nature. Faced with anxiety about both human domination of nature and
the restructuring of the wild by language itself, poets have adopted
different strategies.
While some have reacted to the otherness of
nature by celebrating diversity, by multiplying the names, others
work by cancelling out names, by suggesting another language beyond
the human. In this second approach, there is an ascesis, a holding
back, a refusal to name when names could all too easily draw the
subject into the web of human concerns.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 7
Terry Gifford (Chichester/Alicante)
T.Gifford@chi.ac.uk
Earth Shattering: Another Textbook or Radical Intervention?
There
have
been
environmental
Astley’s
a
poetry
Bloodaxe
number
of
published
anthology
anthologies
over
Earth
the
last
Shattering
of
green/nature/
decade,
(2007)
but
claims
Neil
to
be
different. The Bloodaxe enterprise is largely funded by the success
of its anthologies as educational set texts and this book appears to
be clearly aimed in that direction. Yet its claims are as much for
its commentary as for its selection of poems, seeking to frame them
in
‘an
ecological
and
literary
perspective’
(18).
Drawing
upon
canonical texts of ecocriticism, this book’s commentary attempts to
turn an anthology into a radical intervention in education and the
culture of British poetry. To what extent is it successful and what
theoretical observations can be made from the process of evaluating
this book as ecocritical intervention?
How
satisfactorily
does
the
book
answer
my
question
about
the
integrity of the category ‘green poetry’ in Green Voices (1995) as
Astley suggests that it should (17)? What contribution does the book
make to the notion of ‘ecopoetry’ that has evolved in the work of
Bryson (2002), Scagij (1999), Bate (2000) and Rasula (2002) since
Green Voices? What are we to make of Astley’s observation that living
British and Irish poets are absent from the work of Buell and other
American ecocritics, such as Elder’s Imagining The Earth (1996 2nd
edition), just as ‘most Americans are absent from recent British
anthologies and critical studies’ (16)? How radical is this book in
contributing to the ecocritical debate about the nature of ecopoetry
when Astley admits to joining the critical shunning of the British
avant-guard
of
O’Sullivan,
Prynne,
Caddel,
Clark
and
others
that
Harriet Tarlo has called ‘radical landscape poetry’ (2007)?
ASLE08 Edinburgh 8
Briar Wood (London Metropolitan)
drbriarwood@hotmail.com
Crisis and Recovery in Contemporary Anglo Cornish Poetry
Amy Hale and Philip Payton argue in an Introduction to New Directions
in
Celtic
Studies
development
of
Celtic
language writing
ideas
about
that
organic
Studies
metaphors
in
the
are
C18th
integral
and
to
C19th,
the
Cornish
and in the invented and reconstructed nature of
Celtic
identity
and
tradition.
Deconstructing
the
organicism of this tradition, while recognising the significance of
environmental referents as an important aspect of ecocritism, Hale
and Payton also consider the importance of ‘an acute sense of place’
in writing about ‘identity and landscape.’
The way tropes about
identity and place intersect in some recent Anglo Cornish poetry, in
terms
of
the
relationship
‘ambiguities
to
more
of
general
Celtic
culture’,
ecocritical
as
well
paradigms
as
about
their
crisis
management will be addressed in this paper. Drawing on Greg Garrard’s
study of ecocritical metaphors and tropes such as nature, culture,
wilderness,
cultivation, pastoral,
apocalyptic, human,
non-human
I
will argue that recent Anglo Cornish poetry addresses ongoing themes
of crisis and recovery in historical and ecological terms and that
this can be relevant to global discourses about contemporary crisis
and ecocriticism. Contemporary Anglo Cornish poetry offers a long
term
perspective
downshifting,
on
language
dramatic
industrialization
and
swings
a
meditative
contemplate
ways of engaging
alternative
to
both
decline
in
and
revival,
economic
and
economic
structures,
transmittable
space
to
in that search for a ‘ “third-way”
mystico-spiritual
ecology
and
technophiliac
embrace of cyborgian existence’.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 9
Claire Charlotte McKechnie (Edinburgh)
C.C.McKechnie@sms.ed.ac.uk
‘Has a Frog a Soul?’: Shaping Evolution in the Gothic Fiction of
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
This paper explores the ways in which Edward Bulwer-Lytton made use
of amphibiousness in his gothic science fiction fantasy narrative,
The Coming Race. T. H. Huxley’s essay ‘Has a Frog a Soul, and of What
Nature is that Soul, Supposing it to Exist?’ read at the meeting of
the Metaphysical Society in November 1870, revived the experiments of
Robert Whytt and Albrecht von Haller, who, more than a hundred years
earlier, had investigated the locus of the soul in animals. The frog,
as
Huxley
and
Mivart
articulate
convincingly,
conflates
accepted
physiological traits of life and death and blurs species boundaries
to
such
a
large
extent
that
it
becomes
a
biological
chimera,
something in-between, a creature that is not complete; indeed, not
intact, seemingly subject to endless evolutionary change. The frog
occupied
because
a
it
liminal
was
sphere
the
most
in
scientific
popular
practice
animal
for
to
the
some
extent
purposes
of
vivisection, but why did the frog fascinate physiologists so much?
When Mivart suggested in his study The Common Frog in 1874 that
batrachians may hold the key to the origin of humankind, he raised a
new question about man’s place in the evolutionary scale. In his 1871
science-fiction
novel,
The
Coming
Race,
Bulwer-Lytton
anticipates
Mivart’s evolutionary theory in a rather uncanny way, and these two
instances, amongst others, demonstrate the prevalence of the frog in
Victorian popular culture and evolutionary theory.
The suggestion that humans were linked biologically to frogs added
weight to the vivisectionists’ argument; it was becoming increasingly
clear that man belonged to, indeed was immersed in, the animal world.
This paper will examine the amphibious ‘other’ in gothic narratives;
like the tadpole’s metamorphosis to the frog, the Victorians were
gradually transforming themselves into modern scientific thinkers,
and it was the animals which man loved, hated and violently exploited
that paid the price for their new-found knowledge.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 10
John Miller (Glasgow)
j.miller@englit.arts.gla.ac.uk
Mutinous Tigers and Elephant Umbrella Stands
Writing in 1907 the British soldier Harry Storey in Hunting and
Shooting in Ceylon described the possible uses of elephant anatomy
for the successful sportsman. The feet, he commented, ‘make fine
footstools… or, if cut long in the leg, umbrella stands’; the ears,
meanwhile, could be ‘lined with cloth… and used as newspaper racks’.
Even an elephant’s toenails could be polished into ‘bon-bon dishes’,
as
which,
he
added,
they
made
excellent
‘wedding
presents’.
Storey’s partitioning of elephant remains appears as a self-conscious
piece of imperial whimsy that nonetheless evokes a sizeable industry
and a complex ideological manoeuvre. The demand for ivory billiard
balls, above all, constructed elephants as a valuable resource for an
accelerating commodity culture. As such, elephants, in the terms of
Marx’s
commodity
transcending
their
fetishism,
animal
undergo
origins
as
a
mystical
they
transformation,
become
invested
with
‘relations of production’.
Clearly, this movement is redolent with
the
power:
operation
of
colonial
the elephant’s
re-arrangement
a
symbolisation of control that also emerged powerfully in contemporary
representations of tigers, especially in fin-de-siècle re-imaginings
of the 1857 Indian ‘mutiny’ in the novels of G. A. Henty and Flora
Annie Steel. Here tigers embody the intransigent opposite of the
assimilated animal: a cipher for political insurrection that requires
a firm hand.
This
paper
considers
the
implications of
these
significations
of
animals for an emerging postcolonial ecocriticism and particularly
examines the (im)possibility in this context of reading animals not
just as metaphorisations of power but, in Erica Fudge’s words, ‘as
themselves’.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 11
Jude Allen (Bath Spa)
judeallen1@gmail.com
Metamorphosis in Garnett and Vercors: Is Being Foxy a Good Thing?
My paper shall focus on two texts; David Garnett’s Lady into Fox and
Vercors’ Sylva.
Both are the stories of vulpine metamorphosis, the
first from a woman, Mrs. Tebrick, into fox and the second from fox
into
a
young
woman
named
Sylva.
Vercors’
story
is
a
conscious
response to Garnett’s and as such mirrors the decline from human to
animal, offering a reverse scenario.
In Garnett’s text the metamorphosis from lady to fox is a negative
process which has degenerative repercussions for the husband, Mr.
Tebrick.
As he follows his fox-wife around the countryside, it is
not acceptable for Mr. Tebrick to become fox or even seem to be fox
without
being
labelled
as
mad.
In Vercors’
metamorphic reversal,
however, the change from fox to human – although not achieved without
a glimmer of a pastoral sense of loss – is a matter for celebration.
It is much better to become a human than to become a fox.
I shall
consider how, particularly in Vercors’ text – which likens Sylva’s
transformation to a compressed evolution of mankind - the process of
being
world.
humanised
constitutes
a
necessary
rejection
of
the natural
Correspondingly, Mr. Tebrick’s embracement of the natural
world signifies a journey away from his human-ness.
It seems as if
it is not possible to be a human without being isolated from one’s
environs. (221).
ASLE08 Edinburgh 12
Louise Westling (Oregon)
lhwest@uoregon.edu
Stranded on the Ark
This paper considers Yann Martel's The Life of Pi as an allegory of
apocalyptic
conditions
for
cross-species
communication
cooperation, as well as predation or even cannibalism.
animality
theory
in
Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty,
and
It engages
Derrida,
and
Cary
Wolfe, together Vicki Hearne's Wittgensteinian concepts of language
games between humans and other animals to provide a context for an
examination of how Martel explores Pi Patel's efforts to listen to
and
speak
with
animal
others
under
extreme
circumstances
of
entrapment and environmental threat. Martel's novel eschews fantasies
of
sentimental
nourishment
as
alliance
to
different
acknowledge the
species
struggle
violence
to
required
coexist
on
for
their
symbolic lifeboat in a huge, indifferent sea.
Clearly the tiger
Richard
the
Parker
understands
and
cooperates
with
discipline
Pi
establishes on the lifeboat, in a language game radically different
from yet paradoxically similar to those used in the zoo of Pi's
former
home
in
India.
Pi
and
Richard
Parker,
their
umwelten
unavoidably overlapping, remain estranged from each other's alien
ways of being but are forced to abide by an uneasy truce in order to
stay alive.
If global climate change is indeed moving as fast as now
seems to be the case, radical forms of adaptation to geographical
impoverishment will be required of all creatures, who will have to
share smaller spaces and limited resources for survival.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 13
Jonathan Coope (Chichester)
jonathan_coope@hotmail.com
Does
Ecocriticism
Help
or
Hinder
Effective
Climate
Change
Communication?
This paper begins by noting significant differences in assumptions
and
theoretical
public
orientation
understanding
of
between
climate
contemporary
change
and
some
research
recent
in
the
works
of
ecocriticism. This paper explores how such differences may highlight
shortcomings in ecocritical theory.
It is noticeable, for example,
that the recent IPPR report Positive Energy: Harnessing People Power
to Prevent Climate Change (2007) underlines the need to draw upon far
more sophisticated understandings of human cognition, motivation and
behaviour
than
information
the
‘rational
campaigns
have
choice’
hitherto
model
upon
tended
which
public
rely
(more
to
sophisticated psychological models have drawn upon cross-disciplinary
insights e.g., from anthropology, consumer research and environmental
psychology). Despite this, the ‘rational choice’ model still remains
the
hegemonic
suggests
that
psychologically
psychological
some
framework
versions
of
under-dimensioned.
for
some
ecocritics,
ecocritical
Furthermore,
theory
the
which
may
be
ecocritical
priority given to disaggregated ‘comic apocalyptic’ narratives may be
at odds with the urgent need, identified by other researchers, to
prioritise a coherent ‘story on climate change’ which is meaningful
and compelling to broader publics.
Until recently, the concern to
‘evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness
as responses to environmental crises’ has tended to be the preserve
of
ecocritics.
potentially
However,
fruitful
ecocriticism
challenges
from
may
now
need
research
in
to
confront
the
public
understanding of climate change if is to be a help rather than a
hindrance
in
bringing
about
urgently
needed
changes
in
public
behaviours towards the environment.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 14
Rupert Hildyard (Lincoln)
rhildyard@lincoln.ac.uk
Ecocriticism and The Theory of Poetry
Robert Pogue Harrison ends his ecocritical re-reading of the canon,
Forests, by talking, perhaps counter-intuitively for an ecocritic, of
the
necessity
of
estrangement
from
nature.
Heidegger
famously
regarded poetry as essential to the disclosure of being and our
dwelling on earth. A long time ago Shklovsky talked of strangeness as
a
constitutive
characteristic
of
art.
Much
more
recently
the
contemporary critics Derek Attridge and Nicholas Royle have written
about the singularity of literature having to do with its relations
with otherness and the uncanny.
This paper seeks to make connections between these points and to use
those connections to produce an ecocritical perspective on the theory
of poetry.
One of the fundamental questions in the theory of poetry is to say
what is at stake in the reversal of the normal hierarchy of language
that is described by the slogan ‘the primacy of the signifier’. A
good many justly celebrated poems – about love, about death, about
memory, for example – have been seen as fundamentally about poetry
and language itself.
If language is the most important sign system
we have, then poetry is the art of that sign system, the means by
which humans explore language and its limits, what it is to live in
the symbolic realm.
This paper seeks to give a specifically ecocritical twist to this
commonplace of poststructuralist literary theory.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 15
Leslie Mabon (Edinburgh)
l.j.mabon@sms.ed.ac.uk
Storytelling, Stimuli and Subarus: Narratives and Ecological Identity
Work
This paper explores the possibility of using narratives to elicit or
express
environmental
values.
Drawing
on
concepts
of
ecological
identity and environmental ethics, the potential positive utility of
research participants’ oral and written descriptions and stories of
environmental experience as a means of examining ecological identity
construction will be considered. Similarly, the deployment of visual
imagery or written narratives as stimuli to draw out such stories
will be discussed.
More practically, the paper will then evaluate
how narratives may be put into practice in the context of the motor
sport community in Scotland. Guided by the theoretical principle of
environmental pragmatism, the aim of this case study is to identify
areas of common ground between the motor sport community and other
users of the natural environment. It will then be suggested (after
Satterfield, 2000) that if visual or written accounts can be deployed
in a non-confrontational manner to draw out a range of values, then
the
potential
exists
to
develop
a
broader
understanding
of
how
members of motorsport participants (and non-participants) come to
negotiate their ecological identities. In turn, it may be possible to
begin to identify areas of common ground between different interest
groups.
Finally, the possible broader theoretical and methodological
implications
of
a narrative-based
environmentally-responsible
approach
practice
and
in
terms
applying
of fostering
ideas
from
environmental ethics will be discussed. Potential limitations and
shortcomings
Keywords:
in
such
ecological
an
approach
identity,
will
also
environmental
be
considered.
pragmatism,
place
values, applied environmental ethics, narrative.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 16
Lucy Mason (Edinburgh)
lucey_ma@hotmail.com
Deconstruction
and
Reaffirmation
of
Hierarchical
Dualisms
in
'Activist' Literature
This paper will focus on the tension in the relationship between
ecocriticism, postmodern theory and environmental advocacy. Through
an analysis of works of non-fiction 'activist' literature, including
'Do or Die' journals and texts produced by the CrimethInc collective,
such as 'Days of War, Nights of Love' and 'Recipes for Disaster',
terms
such
as
'activist',
'state'
and
'authority'
will
be
scrutinised. The potential for literature to operate as environmental
advocacy
will
be
analysed,
with
particular
attention
to
ecocriticism's uneasy relationship with postmodern language theory.
Ecocriticism's
simultaneous
dependence
on
poststructuralist
challenges to dualisms in order to explode linguistic hierarchies and
a more 'modernist' grand narrative of environmental degradation under
ever-expanding
capitalism
will
be
interrogated
in
relation
to
ecocriticism's political agenda.
This
grand
narrative
has
led
to
the
justification
of
state
legislation in works of non-fiction. It is this deconstruction and
reaffirmation of hierarchical dualisms in 'activist' literature which
will be examined with particular reference to such texts' inclusion
of anti-militaristic and militaristic language, and their negotiation
of the state's role in environmental degradation. How these texts are
simultaneously useful and damaging to ecological activism will be
considered, in a broader analysis of how the traditional rhetoric of
literary analysis limits the scope which ecocriticism can have.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 17
Myshele Goldberg (Strathclyde)
myshele@gmail.com
Telling
Mythologies:
Pasts
and
Possible
Futures
in
Activist
Literature
Our perceptions of the past shape our expectations for the future,
which in turn shape our present actions. This paper examines the
mythological dimensions of activist literature, to better understand
its vision, as well as the possible futures it holds. In particular,
it
questions
whether
the
stories
implicit
in
activist
literature
match the stated goals of “the movement.” By focusing on tone as well
as content, I identify three interlocking core mythologies which were
recounted explicitly or implicitly in a selection of books identified
through an activist survey: Fall From Grace: Hierarchical cultures
have “fallen” from an ideal indigenous state, with social, economic,
and ecological conditions becoming steadily worse, eventually leading
to armageddon. Activists must prevent armageddon by creating utopia.
Entrapment: We are trapped in an oppressive cultural system, which
constricts our choices and turns circumstances to its own advantage.
Activists must either destroy the system or escape it.
The Great
Battle: Activists struggle against oppressors to determine the fate
of the world. “The masses” are unaware of this struggle, but must be
saved from the oppressors and won to the side of the activists.
These stories reflect familiar mythological themes, but have roots in
fear
and
inaction,
fundamentally
obstructing
the
politics
of
liberation that most activists consciously support. To counteract
this
tendency,
mythological
activist
dimensions
of
writers
their
must
work.
be
If
more
they
aware
are
of
fearless
the
and
visionary in telling radical stories, they can inspire activists to
build the positive futures they desire.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 18
Petra Hansson (Uppsala)
petra.hansson@did.uu.se
What Does It Mean To Read Nature?
In the context of environmental or sustainability literacy, it is
essential to scrutinise the meaning of ”reading nature”.
Without
doubt, ecocriticism is an influential field when it comes to the
study
of
representations
environmental
literacy
of
is
in
nature
one
in
way
or
literature.
another,
Hence,
related
to
ecocriticism. The aim of this paper is to clarify the contribution of
ecocriticism
to
environmental
literacy
as
being
one objective
of
education for sustainable development (ESD).
First, the meaning of environmental literacy as it is understood
within
ESD
is
environmental
discussed.
literacy,
Second,
i.e.
given
the
this
ability
specific
to
read
meaning
nature
of
in
a
pedagogical context, an analysis of different meanings of reading
nature within ecocriticism is carried out. This includes answering
the following questions: Which views of nature are represented in the
ecocritical field? How can representations of nature be read? What
skills
do
students
contribution
of
need
in
ecocritical
order
to
readings
read
of
nature?
nature
in
Third,
texts,
the
i.e.
ecocritical “literacy”, to environmental literacy in the context of
ESD is clarified.
This paper relates theoretical assumptions of the meaning of reading
nature
within
ecocritical
responses
literature
ecocriticism
texts
to
and
nature
can
in
and
focuses
texts
contribute
to
ESD
on
to
students’
understandings
and
the
students’
the
development
of
responses
of
ideas
to
students’
of
how
environmental
literacy within ESD.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 19
Sherry Booth (Santa Clara)
sbooth@scu.edu
Why Apocalypse Doesn’t Work: Pedagogy and Undergraduate Education
In
his
book
Earth
in
Mind,
David
Orr
argues
that
the
kind
of
education that has led to current ecological crises won’t solve the
problems that we face—and that our students are going to have to
solve.
The question for me is not whether the apocalypse looms for
humans and many species, environmentally, but how to engage, educate,
and
motivate
the
next
generation
to
work
toward
sustainability.
My paper will examine three sites of ecocritical work, each different
from the others and requiring different approaches, both theoretical
and practical.
The first site is an interdisciplinary workshop for
university faculty at our institution which has the goal of embedding
sustainability
across
the
curriculum.
For
this
faculty
group,
ecocritical theory is largely inaccessible—and seemingly irrelevant.
But environmental education philosophy is central, a sturdy branch
that surely belongs on the ecocritical tree. The second site is the
7th floor of a residence hall full of student researchers we call
SLURPers—young
residence life.
(undergraduate)
researchers
into
sustainability
in
The work these students undertake crosses academic
disciplines and is grounded in basic research questions which they
design
and
then
test.
The
last
site
directly
involves
the
undergraduate classroom: teaching a humanities two-course sequence,
“Nature in the Imagination.”
students
understand
how
The last location is targeted to help
we
have
come
to
the
beliefs about nature we hold, and that how we represent nature in
myth, art, and literature has large implications for the way we live
now and in the future.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 20
Sasha Matthewman (Bristol)
S.Matthewman@bris.ac.uk
From Apocalypse to Ecopolis: Hopeful Heuristics for Urban Poetry
This paper explores questions of ‘ecocritical pedagogy’ in relation
to poetry about urban environments. It was prompted by a recent
school assembly in which Peter Porter’s poem Your Attention Please
was declaimed to a soundtrack of REM’s ‘It’s the end of the world as
we know it’, accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation of various
ecological disasters. These images of a coming ‘apocalypse’ betray a
lack of faith in people’s ability to deal with ecological crises.
While this may be justified in terms of personal belief, there are
pedagogical
problems
with
enacting
a
‘pedagogy
of
despair’.
Accordingly, this paper seeks to explore the potential of poetry to
offer ‘resources of hope’.
The paper will focus on the ethics of teaching pessimism and despair
in relation to poetic visions of urban futures. It will draw upon
recent work in urban studies that seeks to recognise and foreground
the relations between natural processes and cultural factors, and
which suggests possible models for future sustainability. Heuristics
may be developed from these theories which are based on understanding
the city as ‘ecopolis’: an ecosystem of human, non-human, natural and
cultural forces. The paper explores how these ‘hopeful heuristics’
can
inform
critical
readings
of
city
poems
(by
poets
such
as
Armitage, Auden, Eliot and Fuller) which contain the possibilities
for re-visioning the city as a sustaining habitat.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 21
Chris Campbell (Queen Mary, London)
c.campbell@qmul.ac.uk
Illusions of Paradise and Progress: An Ecocritical Perspective on
Earl Lovelace.
This paper constitutes an exploration of Earl Lovelace’s figuring of
the
natural
characters
critique
world
within
of
uncovering
and
it.
notions
of
the
his
As
of
careful,
such,
rural
costs
-
it
caring
is
concerned
paradise
social,
situation
and,
with
of
Lovelace’s
equally,
cultural,
human
with
environmental
his
-
of
promises of political progress and an apparently all-consuming thirst
for economic development. It will attempt to situate the work of
Lovelace within recent developments in ecocritical, and postcolonial
literary theories, arguing that a study of Lovelace’s writing could
mediate between perceived schisms and apparent incompatibilities and,
more generally, exemplifies how a Caribbean approach to ecocriticism
might successfully define itself.
Throughout
his
work,
Lovelace
has
privileged
discussions
of
the
tensions between urban and rural living, often exploring feelings of
displacement and of personal and environmental alienation. Alongside
this, and associated with cultivating a sense of belonging in place,
the importance of a responsibility towards human community and the
natural
world
is
readily
apparent.
Starting
with
Louis
James’s
insight that the ‘real hero’ of The Schoolmaster is the village of
Kumaca
itself,
problematised
ecocritical
pastoral
this
paper
‘paradise’,
discussions
mode
in
will
examine
addressing
concerning
Caribbean
the
presentation
recent
the history
literature.
The
of
postcolonial
and
novel
future
will
a
and
of
the
also
be
considered as a valuable contribution to eco-literary reflections on
the effects of road-building programmes across Trinidad, as Lovelace
here
strikes
up
meaningful
dialogue
with
the
work
of
his
contemporaries Sam Selvon and Derek Walcott.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 22
Michael Niblett (Warwick)
M.Niblett@warwick.ac.uk
“A Field of Islands”: Regionalism and Political Ecology in Caribbean
Literature
This
paper
political
will
issues
explore
in
how
the
the
overlap
between
circum-Caribbean
construction of a regional identity.
ecological
intersects
with
and
the
The need for some form of
regional unity is a theme that has arisen throughout the history of
the
Caribbean
in
connection
external dependency.
with
a
desire
to
break
the ties
of
However, in Ideology and Caribbean Integration,
Ian Boxill suggests that support for regionalism is weak due to the
lack
of
a
coincident
perceptions.
ideology
bound
to
popular
practices
and
This paper will examine how the environmental history
depicted by the writers Eric Walrond, Wilson Harris, and Édouard
Glissant becomes also a pan-Caribbean history, one that foregrounds
sustainable development.
Not only is the landscape (and seascape)
shown to be a means of conceptualising the colonially-balkanised area
as a whole; in addition, the ‘migration’ of material relationships to
the land indicates the role of the environment as a mediating factor
that can create linkages between states, or at least between their
populations.
Walrond’s
short
stories
of
the
1920s
detail
socio-ecological
exploitation, but also uncover a potential for regional solidarity
tied to an approach to nature that breaks its objectification under
capitalism.
The paper will compare this to how Harris unearths an
alternative history from within the landscape.
Finally consideration
will be given to the project Glissant has proposed for the creation
of an economic ‘green zone’ that would encourage a re-orientation of
Caribbean trade practices.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 23
[]
ASLE08 Edinburgh 24
Franci Bellarsi (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
fbellars@ulb.ac.be
“Apocalypse of Nature and Self:the Deep Ecology of Allen Ginsberg’s
The Fall of America”
As a volume of anti-war poetry, Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America
(1965
-
1971)
offers
an
extended,
apocalyptic
psycho-geography
chronicling the betrayal of Whitman’s hopes for the American nation.
In its protest against the combined destruction of the primitive
wilderness and the “garden” of a bygone agrarian America, the volume
psychologizes environmental desecration and decodes it in terms of
“self-hatred.”
criss-crosses
interchanges
With rare pastoral interludes, the poet repeatedly
a
and
bleak
(post-)industrial
military
landscape
installations.
The
of
highways,
“ecological
fall”
thereby revealed epitomizes a “diseased” nation not only at war with
Vietnam, but also, and far more fundamentally, at war against itself
from within.
However, already heavily marked by Ginsberg’s interest
in Buddhism and its “ecology of mind,” The Fall of America also
represents an intensified attempt at perceptual purification.
The
peculiar writing technique uncovers an entirely different mode of
presence to the real.
the
page
that
consciousness
Indeed, Ginsberg produces a field of energy on
dynamically
responsible
for
counters
the
the
nation’s
falsely
“fall
from
translated into the defilement of its natural habitat.
dualistic
grace”
as
The Fall of
America thus constitutes a paradoxical and insufficiently recognized
work of deep ecology in which the attentively observed “wilderness of
the mind” becomes superimposed on the suburban and industrial chaos
encroaching upon an ever receding natural wilderness.
If Ginsberg
presents a world and self traumatized by the accelerating “end of
Nature,” he nevertheless also sees human consciousness as the last
“remnant of Nature” from which healing may still proceed.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 25
James Hewitson (Tennessee)
jhewitso@utk.edu
Environmental
Management
and
the
Technological
Apocalypse:
Mark
Twain’s Life on the Mississippi and A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur’s Court.
Mark Twain’s writings often describe technological enchantment and
its capacity to reorient perceptions of the environment. In Life on
the Mississippi, for example, he describes the thrill of riverboat
piloting
and
the
challenge
of
keeping
pace
with
the
changing
Mississippi River. Becoming a pilot involved an intense period of
apprenticeship
in
which
he
was
trained
to
“read”
the
river
environment, memorizing all of the islands, bends, points and banks;
and learning to recognize environmental alterations as indicating
changing water levels, as well as the formation of new bars, chutes
and reefs. Such considerations preclude other apprehensions of the
environment: “the romance and beauty were all gone from the river” as
it was reduced to data. Because of their need to collect, pool and
compare
technical
information,
moreover,
pilots
were
effectively
separated from the larger society: as a union they guarded their
knowledge, effectively controlling river traffic. In his Connecticut
Yankee,
Hank,
Twain
the
extends
Yankee,
a
this
analysis
of
nineteenth-century
environmental
arms
management.
manufacturer
and
mechanical savant, is transported to Camelot, where he proceeds to
rapidly modernize Arthurian society. Because of his obsession with
progress, those who resist his changes are considered sub-human; when
his efforts are frustrated he and a small cadre of technicians use
advanced weapons to massacre the forces arrayed against them. Hank’s
solution to resistance by this “primitive society” is analogous with
nineteenth-century
imperial
practices;
it
further
illustrates
how
such forms of domination produce a dehumanizing fixation on order and
efficiency ultimately expressed in apocalyptic violence.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 26
Kelley Swain (Randolph-Macon Woman's College)
kelley.k.swain@gmail.com
Literary Tryworks: How Melville Renders Poetry from Blubber
"Literary
Tryworks"
looks
at
the
works
of
naturalists
from
whom
Melville took much of his information on cetology for Moby-Dick. The
scientists
William
Scoresby,
Thomas
Beale,
and
Frederick
Bennett
wrote early natural histories of whales, but upon examination we can
see that the "natural" history comes straight from the destructive,
consumptive whale fishery.
The first image printed in the first English book on Sperm Whales
(Beale's Natural History of the Sperm Whale) is not an anatomical
diagram, but sections of the whale, divided based on where to find
the best oil. This paper looks at "early awareness and early denial"
by these naturalists of the havoc wreaked upon whale populations,
then moves to a comparison of their observations with a few sections
of Moby-Dick, where, it can be argued, Melville himself exhibits
early environmental awareness of cetaceans.
Can Melville be considered an early "whale-hugger" for his time? If
so, why? This paper addresses these questions and suggests potential
answers. In an 1850 letter to Richard Henry Dana Jr., Melville writes
(of Moby-Dick,) "It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear;
blubber is blubber you know; tho' you may get oil out of it, the
poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree..." Melville
tried to render a book (his "poetry") from blubber (the subject of
whales), and with the environmental awareness question in mind, this
paper
points
out
a few
of
the
finest
points
in
Moby-Dick
where
Melville renders poetry from blubber.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 27
Payal Taneja (Queens)
4pt1@queensu.ca
Revelations
of
a
Post-apocalyptic
Ontology
in
the
works
of
D.H.
Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence in Apocalpyse expresses nostalgia for “a hint of the
old cosmic wonder” towards different forms of existence, human and
nonhuman,
so
superseded
that
by
the
an
instrumentalist
ecological
sensitivity towards nature.
ethos
of
consciousness
modernity
promoting
can
be
greater
To replace the logic of utility and,
even worse, hostility, towards nonhuman things, his utopian ontology,
I contend, hinges on overcoming not only anthropocentric, but also
androcentric
Lawrence
perspectives.
dismantles
My
the
tropes
paper
explores
the
of
domination
ways
in
mobilized
which
against
natural things – mountains, rivers, seas, and animals – that are
feminized
in
the
Book
of
Revelation.
Because
Lawrence
anthropomorphizes nonhuman entities in his revaluation of apocalyptic
images,
he
makes
us
anthropomorphism.
question
Instead
of
the
deep
ecologist
promoting
the
repudiation
masculinist
of
and
imperialist desires of attaining mastery over nature, such forms of
anthropomorphism
neither
efface
the
differences
among
human
and
nonhuman things, nor overstate their disjunctions.
Such self-conscious uses of anthropomorphism, while suggesting the
possibility of mutually sustaining relations among human and nonhuman
animals
and
their
shared
environments,
defy
the
more
nihilistic
strains of apocalyptic discourse, according to which the destruction
of natural resources is imminent. The genre of apocalypse, I argue,
functions not only as an “ecocritical trope” deployed by Lawrence,
but also as a utopian project aimed towards imagining new forms of
embodiment
for
human
beings,
without
which
the
possibility
of
overcoming the destruction of nature remains an elusive fantasy.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 28
Agnes S. K. Yeow (Malaya)
agnesyw@um.edu.my
Visions of Apocalypse in Selected Malaysian Poetry in English
In
Malaysia,
where
tropical
explorers
from
the
West
and
local
environmental activists continue to decry widespread deforestation
and environmental degradation, there is an ideological schism between
the conservationist camp and the camp which subscribes to the catchup development imperative of a third-world nation which aspires to
achieve developed nation status in the year 2020. In the clamour of
contesting voices, the poet's prophetic role in relation to tropical
nature asserts itself in a myriad of creative and interesting ways.
This
paper
seeks
to
examine
representations
of
environmental
wastelands in selected English-language Malaysian poetry. It argues
that
although,
Malaysian
as
poetry
a
rule,
have
the
apocalyptic
ostensibly
more
to
trope
do
and
with
imagery
the
ruin
in
of
civilization and the imaginative rebirth of a new era of sociocultural
and
spiritual
wholeness
and
possibility
than
with
eco-
apocalypse, ecological concerns are very much embedded within the
discourse. Notably, writers like Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Wong Phui Nam
and Cecil Rajendra approach the notion of world's end from very
different perspectives and along seemingly dissimilar trajectories.
This paper will mainly be interested in showing that, among these
diverse voices, there is a common call ringing with eschatological
urgency for environmental justice and sustainability.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 29
Sue Edney (Bath Spa)
sueedney@btinternet.com
The Radical Language of Everyday Life in Robert Burns and John Clare,
and Why We Should Still Read Thomas Carlyle for a True Sense of the
Apocalyptic.
In his essay 'signs of the Times' (1829), Thomas Carlyle wrote: 'The
time is sick and out of joint'. In 1946, George Orwell complained
about the 'slovenliness' of English, pointing out, in the manner of
Carlyle,
that
'if
thought
corrupts
language,
language
can
also
corrupt thought'. When thought and language fail to make sense of
each other: 'the concrete melts into the abstract'. Carlyle's concern
was that there was too much emphasis on 'mechanism'. He urged his
heroes,
among
whom
were
poets,
to
make
a
difference
to
'the
Mechanical Age'. I would like to examine how working class poetry of
Carlyle's period begins to construct models of identification with
place
that
make
effective
use
of
concrete
language,
especially
dialect, to express and re-vivify abstract connections. I will look
specifically at Robert Burns's poem 'To a Mouse', and John Clare's
'The
Mouse's
Nest'
and
'The
Lament of
Swordy
Well'
to show
how
everyday speech offers fresh interpretations of the balancing act
humans have to manage between concrete and abstract. The nineteenthcentury
labourer's
world
was
small;
their
apocalypses
were
also
local. Clare's distress at the loss of fields and heaths inspires a
radical language of the everyday that surpasses the merely political.
Although the time is always sick and out of joint, it's possible to
adjust the focus of our apocalyptic lens so that we can express
clearly what we really see.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 30
David Cooper (Lancaster)
d.cooper1@lancaster.ac.uk
"Every
man
his
own
pathmaker":
Coleridgean
Movement,
Mapping
&
Notetaking in the Work of Sean Borodale
In
August
1802,
Samuel
Taylor
Coleridge
undertook
a
nine-day
‘circumcursion’ of the Lake District. Nearly two hundred years later,
the
contemporary
similar
journey,
psychogeographer,
following
a
route
Sean
Borodale,
mapped
out
embarked
by
on
Coleridge
a
and
Wordsworth in their Lake District tour of 1799. This paper focuses on
texts
by
both
Coleridge
and
Borodale
to
explore
the
complex
relationships between writer, place, maps, note-taking and reader.
The first half of the paper draws upon the spatial theory of Michel
de Certeau to show how Coleridge’s account continually oscillates
between the phenomenological and the cartographical. That is to say,
his text moves between the articulation of embodied experience and
the
impulse
to
map
the
Cumbrian
topography.
Alongside
this,
Coleridge’s documentary account raises questions regarding texts and
textuality.
Does
site-specific
note-taking
allow
the
writer
to
encapsulate the complexity of spatial experience? How does the reader
handle this kind of text?
The paper then moves on to argue that such issues, or tensions, are
foregrounded in the generically-hybrid work of Sean Borodale. The
relationships between text and mapping, and text and reader, are
explored in the book, Notes for an Atlas (2003). These preoccupations
can also be located in the earlier work, Walking to Paradise (1999),
in which Borodale conceives the Lake District landscape as a site of
spatial intertextuality. Borodale’s textual mappings expose the gap
between
the
phenomenological
account
of
that
spatial
experience
experience;
of
what
place
is
and the
more,
his
written
three-
dimensional artwork suggests a privileging of the map over text.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 31
Greg Garrard (Bath Spa)
g.garrard@bathspa.ac.uk
All Praise to the Great Web? Globalisation, Ecopiety and Evolution.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 32
A. Joseph McMullen (Bucknell)
ajm026@bucknell.edu
A Layered Landscape: The Function of Place-names as Land Genealogy in
Early Irish Myth
Throughout early Irish mythology exists an enveloping trope of the
value
of
describe
the
how
Senórach
landscape
the
(Tales
land
of
and
has
the
the
necessity
changed
Elders
over
of
for
origin
stories
to
From
Acallam
na
time.
Ireland)
to
the
dindshenchas—we find works devoted to place-name lore.
Metrical
This emphasis
on the land is often manifest within arguably “ecocentric” narratives
of interactions with the Otherworld.
liminal
connection
to
the
earthly
The Otherworld, a realm of
world,
exists
both
within
and
without of the natural topographical features of the textual early
Ireland.
Primarily accessed through síde—the Neolithic mounds which
acted
portals
as
to
the
Otherworld—the
Otherworld
existed
as
a
separate realm to be entered but located within the temporal earthly
world.
This
layering
of
Otherworldly
landscape
with
the
temporal
is
textually translated as a layering of land and place-names within
early Irish narrative.
Land is often changed or recreated within the
myth in emphasis of a theme.
Wooing
of
Étaín)
the
land
For example, in Tochmarc Étaíne (The
is
reformed
and
transactions and lawful exchange of possession.
recreated
by
Otherworldy
beings,
the
myth
reshaped
during
When the land is
becomes
a
type
of
cosmogony.
The origin of the land develops into a type of land
genealogy—a
landscape
meaning.
layered
with
both
mythic
and
contemporary
This layered landscape signals not only an emphasis on
place-names and their societal function but also, more importantly,
the formation of an early Irish “land ethic.”
ASLE08 Edinburgh 33
Hsu Li-hsin (Edinburgh)
hsulihsin@yahoo.com
Going Further: Emily Dickinson, China, and Migration
This paper proposes to investigate Emily Dickinson’s embracing of
cultural and geographical diversity through her contact with China.
Travel and migration are a significant motif for Dickinson to linking
the
self
with
conformity
the
with
foreign,
the
occident
transgression.
with
Through
the
the
oriental,
and
experience
of
displacement, Dickinson articulated her poetic revision of oriental
otherness, embodied in Asiatic exuberance, or the Lacanian surplus
that the “romantic illusion” of China represented. Being a reluctant
traveller,
Dickinson’s
encounter
with
China
only
went
as
far
as
Boston Chinese Museum visit and travelogue reading. Nevertheless,
both
forms
exposed
her
to
borderlines
beyond
her
New
England
environs. Foucault’s heterotopias, and Mary Louise Pratt’s “contact
zone,” demonstrated in John Peters’ Chinese museum, endowed Dickinson
with
the
role
of
“defamiliarization”
a
that
tourist,
Denis
Porter
possessing
suggests
the
is
a
power
of
therapeutic
process in travel. Furthermore, the Asiatic images in her poems, such
as “His oriental heresies,” contain a dynamic interaction between two
continents, subverting colonial and human-centric subjugation, and
regenerating an ecosystem with mutations and adaptation. This paper
will be in three parts. The first part will discuss American contact
with China through imperial expansionism encoded in travel writing
and curiosity-collecting in the nineteenth-century. The second will
analyze
visiting
Dickinson’s
with
the
tourist
role,
aesthetic
correlating
experience
her
of
Chinese
museum
dislocation
and
foreignhood. The third will examine Dickinson’s periodical reading in
relation to her Asiatic images of “exhilaration,” delineating the
poet’s interaction with the oriental to reconstruct new geopolitical
landscapes.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 34
Eleni Pilla (Royal Holloway)
pillaeleni@ucy.ac.cy
The Significance of Psycho-Geographies in two Cinematic Adaptations
of Shakespeare's Othello
Deriving from my completed interdisciplinary PhD on the Renegotiation
of Space in Screen Versions of Othello, this paper compares and
contrasts the use of Psycho-Geograhies in two well-known cinematic
adaptations
Oliver
of
Parker
Shakespeare's
(1996).
The
Othello
paper
by
Orson
begins
by
Welles
(1952)
exploring
how
and
the
depiction of the two central spaces in Shakespeare's play, Venice and
Cyprus, articulates perspectives on the relationship between humans,
culture and the environment. The paper proceeds to a comparison and
contrast of the notion of psycho-geographies in Welles's film noir
and
Parker's
erotic
thriller.
The
discussion
will
explore
the
representation of Venice and Cyprus, the storm, the sea and how they
coincide with each director's vision of the film.
A diverse range of
material will be invoked in the discussion such as: production notes,
criticism of the play and the films, and historical material on the
relationship between Venice and Cyprus during the Venetian occupation
of Cyprus. Theories of space such as: Henri Lefebvre's The Production
of Space, Michel Foucault's "Of Other Spaces" and Gaston Bachelard's
The Poetics of Space will also be employed to explore the characters'
relationship to culture and the environment.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 35
Fay Beebee (Essex)
fbeebe@essex.ac.uk
Beyond the Myth: Language of Environmental Urgency in William J.
Lines’s A Long Walk in the Australian Bush and Eric Rolls’s From
Forest to Sea.
Contemporary
Australian
nature
writers William
J.
Lines and
Eric
Rolls do not merely portray a history of Australian flora and fauna
in A Long Walk in the Australian Bush (1998) and From Forest to Sea
(1993); instead it is my intention to illustrate how Lines and Rolls
interweave
their
epic
journeys
into
Australian’s
once
“pristine
forests” in order to challenge Western environmental exploitation. I
cite
Scott
Slovic’s
Anticipated
Loss,
article
and
“‘Be
Prepared
Environmental
for
the
Valuation”
Worst’:
from
the
Love,
journal
Western American Literature (Fall 2000), to illustrate that language
can be a powerful tool to communicate environmental urgency if it is
used
to
its
Australian
full
Bush,
potential.
Lines
adopts
Equally,
in
A
Long
emotive,
challenging
Walk
in
the
language
to
explore how colonisation, capitalism and the desire to control nature
have rapidly transformed the continent. Similarly, in From Forest to
Sea, Rolls uses a persuasive discourse to communicate the legacy of
colonisation
and
the
continuing
affects
of
“controlling”
nature.
Here, Lines’s epic walk takes him along 400 mile of the Bibbulmun
trail
in
southwestern
Australia.
While Rolls
explores
the
Tanami
Desert in central Australia. Poignantly, both witness large-scale
logging, animal habitat destruction and the decline of endangered
species. Lines identifies that the language of capitalism lies at the
heart
of
Lines
and
Australia’s
Rolls
irreversible
argue
that
degradation.
people
in
Collectively,
today’s
society
both
need
a
“fundamental shift in consciousness” towards appreciating the natural
world.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 36
Sharae Deckard (Warwick)
sdeckard@gmail.com
Another Fragile World Forever Altered”: Post-colonial Apocalypse in
Romesh Gunesekera’s Heaven’s Edge
Sri
Lankan
writer
Romesh
Gunesekera’s
third
novel
Heaven’s
Edge
(2002) combines generic elements of postcolonial utopia, romance, and
ecological thriller in order to excavate the neocolonial discourses
and
historical
processes
which
have
produced
cyclical
violence,
social corruption, and environmental degradation in contemporary Sri
Lanka.
The novel is set in a dystopian future after the island’s
environment
has
been
nearly
destroyed
by
an
apocalyptic
nuclear
event, and as such reflects Gunesekera’s attempt to construct an
effective “ontology of the present” by performing an augury of the
future: the dystopic, post-apocalyptic Sri Lanka which will occur if
the dominant political, economic and environmental policies of the
present war-ridden state continue unaltered. However, invoking tropes
of apocalypse and paradise and re-working plot elements from W.H.
Hudson’s
Green
Mansions,
the
novel
also
gestures
towards
the
emergence of post-national eco-topia through the character of ecowarrior,
Uva,
only
to
shatter
this
utopian
possibility
at
the
conclusion of the narrative, when the last of Uva’s eco-havens is
destroyed: “another fragile world forever altered.” Through the prism
of
Fredric
Jameson’s
theory
of
utopia
as
“archaeologies
of
the
future” and eco-critical critiques of apocalypse, this paper will
investigate
the
limits
and
possibilities
of
apocalyptic
and
millenarian rhetoric within Gunesekera’s narrative to delineate the
links between environmental and political crisis in contemporary Sri
Lanka, to dismantle the false utopias of nationalist and secessionist
race-based discourses, and to imagine a viable alternative to tragic
environmental apocalypse.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 37
Susie O'Brien (McMaster)
obriensu@mcmaster.ca
Things
Keep
Falling
Apart:
Ecological
Resilience
in
Postcolonial
Fiction
Apocalyptic thinking is in the air days, permeating everything from
environmentalist
discourse
on
climate
speeches about the Middle East.
Joseph
Meeker's
book,
The
change
to
Comedy
of
Survival:
comedy provides a template for life on earth.
that
comedy
environments,
but
bolsters
also
that
Bush's
In this context, human ecologist
In
Environmental Ethic (1972) makes curious reading.
just
George
the
health
ecological
of
Search
of
an
Meeker argues that
By this he means not
human
processes
and
are
natural
inherently
comic, that evolution “proceeds as an unscrupulous, opportunistic
comedy, the object of which appears to be the proliferation and
preservation of as many life forms as possible”.
In this paper I
take Meeker's theory of comedy as a starting point for analyzing the
theme of resilience (the capacity to survive and adapt in the face of
trauma or adversity) in postcolonial fiction.
I suggest that novels
by writers such as Chinua Achebe, Arundhati Roy, and Amitav Ghosh
explore how tragic/apocalyptic thinking (dominated by larger-thanlife
human
transcendence)
heroes,
absolutist
informs
environmental destruction.
moral
practices
of
codes
and
colonial
drive
for
oppression
and
However they also suggest the limitations
of comedy, whose conservativism, emphasis of balance and will-toreconciliation are inadequate to a world in which “transformation is
the
rule
of
life”
(Ghosh).
Drawing
on
the
critical
insights
of
Elizabeth Grosz and Thomas Homer-Dixon, I look to these novels to
find alternative imaginative strategies for living--if not laughing—
in the face of apocalypse.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 38
Urbashi Barat (Rani Durgavati Vishwavidyalaya)
urbashi@gmail.com
Finding the way with the Hungry Tide: Wayfinding and the Ecotone in
Amitav Ghosh and Modern Bengali Literature
To find the way, to navigate the path of discovery, is an integral
part of human subjectivity and human agency, and in the work of
Amitav
Ghosh
in
particular,
whose
a postcolonial
characters
interrogation
of
are
perpetual
travellers,
also
place, time
and
identity.
But finding the way is never simply a human act, as
Ghosh’s Hungry Tide shows: it is an inextricable part of a larger,
‘non-human’, wayfinding in nature, whether it is the hungry tide that
continually
destroys
and
restructures
land,
sea,
river,
relationships, the transhumant travels of the river dolphins or the
tiger’s hunt for its prey. This wayfinding confirms, then, that human
existence is deeply embedded within the ‘non-human’ environment, that
human histories and stories are profoundly implicated with natural
ones, and that the environment itself is a process, a search, rather
than simply a framing device for a ‘human’ one.
Appropriately, the wayfinding here occurs in an ecotone:
the great
Gangetic delta of the Sunderbans, with its constantly shifting edges
of land and water, its volatile, unpredictable natural world, which
has always represented to the Indian imagination both the fragility
and
uncertainty
of all
existence
and the
perpetually
peripatetic
instinct that drives all life. Indeed, Ghosh’s environmental concerns
belong to the long tradition of Bengali environmental literature, in
which the Sunderbans has been an integral part.
This paper reads The
Hungry Tide with a few exemplary modern Bengali texts (Tagore’s The
Shipwreck,
Manik
Bandopadhyay’s
The
Boatman
of
the
River
Padma,
Dilara Hashem’s Hamela, and Jibanananda Das’s poem “Suchetona”) to
suggest
the
importance
of
including
a
contemporary
non-Western
approach to the ecological crisis the world is facing today.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 39
Helena Feder (East Carolina)
federh@ecu.edu
Ecocriticism, Biology, and Animal Cultures
Lewis Thomas, Glen A. Love, and others have called on the humanities
to
pay
attention
to
biology.
By
doing
just
this,
by
turning
to
biology, we will find the broader and more nuanced notion of culture
necessary for a materialist ecological literary criticism. While the
human experience of nature is to varying degrees culturally mediated
and
constructed,
culture
is
itself
a
product
of
nature.
This
realization, alive and well in the biological sciences, places human
culture firmly in the realm of nature, as one of many cultures in the
material world. Nature and other prominent journals have published
the findings of dozens of studies demonstrating that many species,
including apes, dolphins, birds, and rats, learn socially and pass on
traditions,
skills,
and
knowledge.
Writing
on
animal
cultures
in
2003, primatologist Frans de Waal exclaimed, “one cannot escape the
impression that it is an idea whose time has come.”
The
binary
of
nature
and
culture
is
only
properly
“undone”
by
reframing it as a set of co-mediating or dialectical relations. To
argue that culture mediates nature (as a one-way process) or to
assert that everything is nature (in a simplistic or undifferentiated
way)
erases
the
political
relations
between
human
and
nonhuman
beings. The social networks and practices of myriad species transform
the
material
inhabitants
of
conditions
the
planet
of
life
for
everyday.
themselves
Not
only
is
and
the
other
everything
and
everyone interconnected, we all materially, culturally impact each
other.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 40
Elizabeth Vander Meer (Edinburgh)
lizvmeer@yahoo.com
The Language of Biodiversity Conservation:
Developing a “Feeling for
the Organism”
The mainstream language of biodiversity conservation, as expressed in
the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), characterises nonhuman
organisms in particular ways and in so doing influences the ways in
which we relate to and value them.
This language is replete with
instrumental and utilitarian characterisations, while also harkening
back
to
the
days
collector’s gaze.
of
Victorian
conquest
over
nature
and
the
Certainly, there has been progress when it comes
to the ways that conservation describes and attempts to remake human
relationships with other organisms and their contexts.
But, this
progress has been more keenly felt on the periphery, rather than
embraced in mainstream conservation of biodiversity.
This paper will present examples of the limiting effects of the CBD’s
vocabulary on relationships between humans and nonhumans, while also
exposing the values that lie beneath understandings espoused through
the Convention’s text.
I then suggest use of a different language
based on the notion of “a feeling for the organism”, which abandons
instrumental
characterisations
of
nonhuman
beings
and
the
objectifying collector’s gaze for characterisations based on care and
the naturalist’s relationship with subjects of study.
This approach
can be found most profoundly in the scientific writings of Charles
Darwin and Barbara McClintock, as well as in a plethora of nature
writing and poetry.
I focus on Darwin and McClintock because of
their importance in shaping a science that can successfully undergird
efforts
to
protect
nonhuman
organisms
and
allow
for
continuing
biodiversification.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 41
Wendy Wheeler (London Metropolitan)
w.wheeler@londonmet.ac.uk
Signs of Science, Signs of Grace: Creativity and the Biosemiotic Self
In
this
paper
I
suggest
a
model
of
the
self,
biosemiotically
understood, which can help us understand why creative aesthetic being
is both closely tied to ethical being and has also, with the decline
of religious and magical world views in the West, become the model of
creative life in a secular world. Deploying C.S. Peirce’s semiotics
of logic, I shall argue that phenomenological openness to the world
depends upon Peirce’s most primarily creative logic of abduction, or
abductive inference. I shall ask why abductive inference is occluded
in the rise of European modernity, such that only deduction and
induction alone are taken to be logical procedures for the production
of new, especially scientific, knowledge. I shall argue that the
cause of such phenomenological occlusions lies deep in the theology
of
the
Protestant
Reformation,
and
in
the
newly
freed
reader’s
conflicted encounter with interpretation and faith. Finally, I shall
suggest that the growth of ecocritical consciousness represents an
attempt to rethink the nature, and culture, of the modern liberal
Enlightenment self.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 42
Jane Costin (Exeter)
jc313@exeter.ac.uk
Walking a Different Path: D.H. Lawrence and the Avant Garde
This
paper
will
look
at
D.H.
Lawrence's
relationship
with
the
landscape of Cornwall and, in particular, an ancient pathway known as
the Zennor Churchway, and will consider the connections between the
topography of the area and evidence of the occult. This paper will
argue that Lawrence's interpretation of the landscape of this area of
Cornwall, specifically in terms of pre-Christian religion, Druidry
and blood sacrifice, constructed his identity of Cornwall as a place
of primitivism, which was a significant influence in developing his
thinking about spirituality.
Lawrence's
well
known
interest
in
the
occult
reflected
the
preoccupations of his age. Yet, as Leon Surrette has observed, there
is a reluctance to discuss the influence of the occult on canonized
authors.
By
examining
biographical,
geographical
and
historical
evidence this paper will situate Lawrence, not in the tradition of
high modernism, but as part of the other tradition of the Avant
Garde, which comes out of spiritualism and develops into the British
Occult Avant Garde.
This paper will then explore some of Lawrence's later writing to
demonstrate the influence that his relationship with the landscape
around Zennor had on his work and will conclude that Lawrence's
relationship with the landscape of this area was pivotal to his later
thinking and writing.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 43
Chad Weidner (Utrecht)
c.weidner@roac.nl
Animal Empathy in William S. Burroughs’ The Cat Inside
William
Burroughs
(1914
–
1997)
was
a
core
member
of
the
Beat
Generation, a postwar literary movement that developed in the United
States. A prolific and inventive writer, Burroughs made a significant
contribution to American letters. Scholars and critics have commonly
described his work as a reaction to Cold War fears and mid-century
economic and moral homogeneity. Such a connection between his work
and social tensions is not surprising. Indeed, much of his early
published
pieces
did
chronicle
doom
in
the
form
of
bureaucrats,
police machinery, drug addiction, or organized religion. However,
viewing his work as a reflection of the Cold War has limited recent
reception of his work, and unjustly places it in the past. Can a
green rereading of Burroughs' "The Cat Inside" show that the onetime
urban
addict
was
really
ecologically
conscious?
This
paper
will
examine how human and animal suffering is represented in the work.
The interactions between humans and animals will also be investigated
in the text. What can a green rereading of Burroughs tell us about
his continued relevance in a time of environmental crisis?
ASLE08 Edinburgh 44
Kelly Sultzbach (Oregon)
ksultzba@uoregon.edu
Apocalypse Averted in Virginia Woolf’s “Time Passes”
Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and the “Time Passes” section in
particular, have generally been analyzed as an elegiac commentary on
the apocalyptic crisis of World War One.
Christine Froula asserts
that “Time Passes” “evokes a world emptied of life,” and “foreshadows
death’s oblivion” (153-54).
Julia Briggs claims that it represents
the characters’ “dreams of chaos and violence [that] generate the
communal madness of war” (175).
Though valid in part, these analyses
overlook the complexity of Woolf’s efforts to depict the non-human
world
in
this
remarkable
section
of
the
novel.
I
contend
that
Woolf’s vision of human experience depends on a dialectic that has
despair and loss as one pole, but unity and hope as the other.
The
absence of humans as “a thistle thrust itself between the tiles of
the larder” in “Time Passes” isn’t necessarily dismal.
Woolf’s work
consistently engages with the non-human world as the epitome of the
kind of unacknowledged life that Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” champions.
Non-human life is distinct from human concerns, and yet participates
in
and
responds
to
the
same
events
and
stimuli.
“Time
Passes”
rejects a romantic “oneness”—a belief that nature exists to serve
humans,
or
mirror
intertwining.
their
emotions—in
favor
of
this
kind
of
An ecophenomenological study of environmental imagery
in this passage reveals that there is an ever-present tension between
dark
impulses
breaking
down
of
the
apocalypse,
past
and
and
the
letting
invigorating
something
else
potential
grow
in
of
its
compost.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 45
Chris Fremantle (Independent)
chris@fremantle.org
Helen
Mayer
Harrison
and
Newton
Harrison:
Storytelling
for
the
Future
Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, the eminent conceptual and
ecological artists, have prophesied environmental crisis and imagined
alternative futures since the early 70s.
for the future.
Their work is storytelling
Starting with the questions “How big is here?” and
“How long is now?”
the Harrisons, imagine ways of living which
consider the eco-cultural wellbeing of the whole ecology.
Their work
is underpinned by extensive knowledge of many disciplines.
involves
contributions
from
experts
and
lay
It always
people.
It
is
underpinned by whole systems thinking, and yet operates at one level
as conversation. The Harrisons have influenced town planning policy
in Holland, and their recent work Greenhouse Britain has been funded
as part of DEFRA’s Climate Challenge Fund.
Fremantle
will
examine
the
role
of
the
artist,
with
reference to the Harrisons, in environmental policy.
particular
This paper
will consider the multiple strategies at work within the Harrisons’
practice
including
the
verbal,
the
visual
and
the
dialogic.
Fremantle will draw on the theoretical framework provided by Grant
Kester (Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern
Art, University of California Press, 2004).
ASLE08 Edinburgh 46
Markus Poetzsch (Wilfrid Laurier)
mpoetzsch@wlu.ca
From
Eco-Politics
to
Apocalypse:
The
Contentious
Rhetoric
of
Eighteenth-Century Landscape Gardening
My
paper
is
centered
on
the
factious
debate
between
landscape
gardeners, like Humphrey Repton, and theorists of the picturesque
(principally Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price) over the proper
“improvement” and ornamentation of the English countryside in the
early 1790s.
Set against the backdrop of England’s military and
ideological campaigns against revolutionary France, the debate is
permeated
by
anti-Jacobin
rhetoric
and
the
politicization
of
aesthetic principles, with nature becoming a site not of possible
pleasure merely but of revolutionary upheaval.
Knight’s critique (in
The Landscape, A Didactic Poem) of Repton’s practice of “leveling”
trees and shrubs in the creation of shaven, manicured lawns and
Repton’s
fosters
rejoinder
an
that
ungovernable
the
system
wildness
of
picturesque
unsuitable
to
embellishment
the
ideals
of
a
constitutional monarchy (“Letter to Mr. Price”) similarly betray the
fear
that
extreme
policies
in
environmental
practice
not
only coincide with but in fact encourage the most dire political
consequences.
Ironically,
what
this
debate
highlights
is
the
resistance of “nature” as an ecopolitical construct to the kinds of
instrumental appropriations (or wars) practiced by eighteenth-century
landscape
contesting
improvers.
Indeed,
appropriations
and
nature’s
thus
capacity
in
to
effect
accommodate
to
resist
‘commodification’ (Budge iv; Bate 127) at the hands of picturesque
theorists and practitioners speaks to its transcendent status in the
discourse of Romantic ecology.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 47
Mary Been (Lake Superior)
mbeen@lssu.edu
Marrying model to content: Rewriting “Argument as War” into “Argument
as
Conversation”
in
First-Year
Writing
Students’
Papers
on
Sustainability
When composition teachers teach argumentation, they must cope with
the detritus of negative and even violent notions of “argument.” The
models students encounter in popular culture posit argumentation as
adversarial: students believe they must defeat the opposition and win
the
battle.
But
scholars
who
suggest
reframing
argument
as
non-
adversarial ask students to think of their argument as a contribution
to a long-running conversation; before they reply, they must first
listen, understand, and be able to summarize the points others have
raised.
With
this
reframing,
students
move
from
a
metaphor
of
“argument as war” to a metaphor of “argument as conversation.”
Recently, as I have developed “sustainability” as a theme in my
writing
argument
classes,
is
a
sustainability,
I
have
found
natural
fit
in
ways,
many
that
to
the
conversational
sustainability.
are
the
result
The
of
model
of
premises
of
protracted
and
extremely difficult conversations between stakeholders in positions
that have long been adversarial: environmentalism/conservationism and
industrialism/development.
those
stakeholders
to
Yet sustainability offers a framework for
identify
needs
and
craft
solutions.
In
sustainability, industrialism is not a foe to the environment if
industry
is
development
managed
need
not
with
be
sustainable
antithetical
to
principles.
conservation
Likewise,
if
the
development is resituated, for example, not as sprawl but as urban
renewal.
The rhetoric of sustainability as mutual solution is a natural match
to the rhetoric of argumentation as conversation. This paper outlines
this marriage of rhetorics and the results as generated in student
papers and comments.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 48
Wei-Yun Yang (Yuan Ze)
wyyang427@yahoo.com
Reading Doris Lessing’s Mara and Dann
This paper employs the concept of critical dystopia to examine Doris
Lessing’s
futuristic
novel,
Mara
and
Dann.
According
to
the
definition presented in Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and Dystopian
Imagination, critical dystopias still maintain a utopian impulse. The
new critical dystopias allow both readers and protagonists to hope by
resisting closure. In Lessing’s science fiction, characters learn how
to
survive
from
the
onslaught
of
ecological
disasters.
But
more
importantly, the disasters provide the protagonist, Mara, a chance to
sharpen her consciousness into a more objective perception into the
difficult situation. The novel was written just a year before the
millennium, which seemed to usher in a new urgency reminding the
reader of the disastrous effect of the global warming and wars in
different forms. Mara and Dann portrays a hazardous adventure of a
sister
and
brother,
Mara
and
Dann,
who
want
to
escape from
the
terrible drought in the future Africa. Their adventure leads them to
the north, where the hope of water and food lies.
Confronted with
many dangerous life-threatening situations, Mara survives through a
game she learned from childhood, “what do you see.”
Seeing things
clearly and objectively empowers Mara to become a more integrated
survivor.
My
analysis
shows
that
Mara
and
Dann
as
a
critical
dystopia not only gives warning to the possible pessimistic future,
but also keeps the hope for a better future, which is realized at the
end of the story.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 49
Ursula Kluwick (Berne)
ursula.kluwick@ens.unibe.ch
Performing the Paradigm Shift: Re-reading the Relationship Between
Humanity and Nature in Shakespeare
When
Titania
confronts
Oberon
with
the
apocalyptic
disaster
that
threatens the earth as a result of their quarrel, she demonstrates an
astounding ecological sensitivity, drawing an impressive picture of
the
interconnection
of
all
things
natural
and
cultural.
She
sketches an ecosystem in which disturbances in one part have dire
consequences for the whole, and where ecological change entails both
economic and social change. As A Midsummer Night’s Dream progresses,
however,
Titania’s
own
actions
demonstrate
a
striking lack of respect for the balance of the ecosystem, and she
relates
to
the
environment
in
a
decidedly
hierarchical
manner,
commanding her fairies to violate the animals of the forest for her
own pleasure. With the gradual invasion of the wood by inhabitants of
the city, we witness a more varied spectrum of attitudes towards
nature, but are faced with similar ambiguities. As they seek refuge
in nature from social disaster, the young Athenians are not quite
prepared for the kind of interaction they will be forced to enter in
the forest. In their attempts to negotiate their relationship with
nature, they resemble other characters from Shakespeare’s plays, such
as
the
courtiers
in
As
You
Like
It
and
King
Lear
and
Edgar,
whose utterances about nature teem with contradictions. This paper
suggests
that
expectations
nature,
Shakespeare’s
and
reflect,
exploitative
but
by
characters,
urges
staging
in
torn
their
also
between
pastoral
relationship
help
with
implement,
a
paradigmatic shift occurring in the early modern period, which was to
permanently
transform
humankind’s
relation
to
the
natural
environment.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 50
Rebecca Domke (Glasgow)
r.domke.1@research.gla.ac.uk
Global
Warming,
Natural
Catastrophes,
and
Apocalypse
in
Mary
Shelley’s The Last Man
Mary Shelley, best known for her first novel, Frankenstein - one of
the first science fiction novels- set her forth novel, The Last Man,
in the end of the 21st century. The main themes of this novel are
love, friendship and sticking together against a common foe. Shelley
tries to build a monument for her dead husband and Lord Byron. As a
result, there are hardly any science fiction elements in the novel,
except for air travel and not further specified machines that provide
for daily necessities. However, descriptions of nature and natural
catastrophes throughout the novel seem to coincide with phenomena we
are able to observe today.
The Last Man is an apocalyptic novel in which Shelley describes the
outbreak of the plague and its progress until there is only one man
left alive. During the cause of the novel, Shelley describes nature,
storms that suspend air travel, floods that destroy a town and all
the ships on its shore (similar to what is expected to happen when
the polar ice caps melt) as well as a flood wave that is reminiscent
of the tsunami in Indonesia (2004). Shelley also mentions spring
temperatures
in
winter
(an
indication
of
global
warming).
These
descriptions are used to create an apocalyptic atmosphere, a sense of
depression. This is what I would like to discuss in more detail. Let
us hope that Mary Shelley’s final prediction - that in 2100 there
will only be one human being left on our planet - will not come true.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 51
Katie Whitlock (California State)
klwhitlock@csuchico.edu
Junkyard Utopia:
The
landscape
referencing
Environment and Apocalypse in Digital Games
of
digital
worlds
fictional
places
modernity
bloated
environmental
both
blend
by
issues
games
recognizable
concepts
sterile
in
contains
of
multiple
and
extraordinary.
savage
natural
technological
multiple
ways,
environments
beauty
innovation.
sometimes
These
with
Games
pointing
a
use
to
the
environment as thematic referent, sometimes as a focus for resource
management
players.
issues,
A
and
common
continually
thread
emerges—
as
a
a
visual
cautionary
landscape
tale
of
for
worlds
destroyed by powerful corporations and/or leaders determined to mine
and
deplete
apocalypse.
all
natural
resources
leading
to
disaster,
This often leads to the birth of monsters, demons, etc.
that seek to devour humanity.
Humans must then fight to heal the
damage done, returning the world to its original state.
‘tropes’
often
identified
by
Greg
Garrad,
this
paper
Using the
examines
game
landscapes through an ecocritical lens, reexamining the ‘pastoral’,
‘wilderness’,
‘dwelling’,
etc.
Focusing
predominantly
on
role-
playing games from Japan, what emerges is a stark view of the natural
world often in the aftermath of an apocalypse.
Megami
Tensei
(Digital
Devil
Saga)
and
The work of Shin
Hironobu
Sakaguchi
(Final
Fantasy Series) in particular presents images and narratives of the
environment that resonate with current critical perspectives.
From
the stark vistas of a demolished green planet in which nature has
become
an
adversary
to
desolate
abandoned
cityscapes
haunted
by
monsters and demons, games present a myriad of images that present
possible futures of our world even if in fantastical realities.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 52
David Ingram (Brunel)
david@ingramxx.freeserve.co.uk
Music, Deep Ecology and New Age Speculations
Music
plays
a
central
role
in
deep
ecological
and
New
Age
speculations on the relationship between human beings and the rest of
the
natural
world.
A
recurrent
claim
is
that,
for
reasons
of
ontology, music is the art form best suited to raising ecological
awareness. For these ecophilosophers, the sense of hearing overcomes
the alienating dualism of visual culture, and enacts thereby the
supposedly fundamental ecological principles of holism and monism.
From a deep ecological perspective, musicologist Charles Keil, in his
recent Web-publication Born to Groove (2006), argues that educating
children
in
drumming
and
dance
will
foster
a
concern
for
both
cultural and biodiversity.
The theory of ‘entrainment’, or the mutual phase-locking of two or
more
oscillating
bodies,
recurs
in
such
speculations.
Scientists
propose the theory to account for the physiological changes that take
place in both musicians and audiences alike when engaged in musicmaking. New Age ecophilosophy conflates 'entrainment’ with the notion
of
music
as
cosmic
vibration
derived
from
the
ancient
Aruveydic
belief in energy fields.
‘World music’ plays a key role in disseminating these McLuhanite,
‘One
World’
ideologies
of
quasi-mystical,
ecological
interconnectedness, themselves a product of economic and cultural
globalisation. The paper ends with a consideration of Planet Drum
(1991), by ex-Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. Citing notions of
entrainment and the sacred, Hart dedicated his album to the San
Francisco
bioregionalist
organization
from
which
he
derived
its
title. His music enacts Keil’s idea that concerns for biodiversity
and cultural diversity are part of the same ecological vision.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 53
Melanie Jones (Glasgow)
melreneejones@gmail.com
The Organic, the Mechanical and the Radioactive: Watchmen and the
Armageddon
Unidentified red liquid spills overtop a yellow clock.
The frames
pan out, revealing a mass of bodies, casualties of a giant octopus
type creature created to bring about “A Stronger Loving World.”
Alan
Moore is infamous for such endings, a sarcastically juxtaposed frame
where text and image are quite literally at war with each other.
Nowhere
is
Watchmen,
this
a
style
more
revealing,
collaborative
effort
more
with
startling
Dave
than
Gibbons,
in
where
superheroes, vigilantes, intentionally genetically modified beings
and accidental casualties of radiation play out Moore’s and Gibbons’
fantasies and worst nightmares of the upcoming age.
The comic is a
literary space unique in its ability to lend itself to addressing
predictions
of
the
future
in
innocence and an optimism.
implications.
that
the
form
implies
a youth,
an
Watchmen is not interested in these
Moore and Gibbons call into question the sanity and
legitimacy of former superheroes, the logic behind the merging of the
organic,
colored,
the
mechanical
mostly
and
uniformed
the
frames
conclusion: the end of the world.
Moore’s
sarcastic
story
radioactive,
telling
march
and
through pastel-
towards
the
logical
It is these eerily pastel frames,
and
the
postulations
of
various
characters in the form of articles, both academic and journalistic,
which makes the story of Watchmen both preventable and unavoidable.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 54
Louisa Gairn (Edinburgh)
louisa.gairn@ed.ac.uk
Strange Lands: Ecologies of Stravaiging and Storytelling in the Work
of Robert Louis Stevenson
The Scottish poet and theorist of ‘geopoetics’ Kenneth White has
noted the challenge of reconciling home and travel, asking whether it
is possible ‘to conceive of a “great residence” that would reconcile
movements
and
things,
removing
and
remaining,
stravaiging
and
staying?’. Robert Louis Stevenson suggests that such ‘stravaiging’ is
an essential characteristic of the writer or poet, while both his
biographical and fictional writings reflect this desire for movement
and adventure. Rejecting novels like The Master of Ballantrae as
‘box[es]
of
tricks’,
White
finds
in
Stevenson
a
‘yearning
for
something other and greater than just spinning a yarn’, contending it
is only in non-fiction works such as Travels with a Donkey in the
Cevennes where he takes the ‘high line’, in which ‘history, culture,
religion
.
affinities
.
.
between
[are]
finally
White’s
transcended’.
intellectual
While
nomadism
and
recognising
Stevenson’s
walking theories, I suggest that storytelling is, for Stevenson, part
of that ‘something other and greater’, a way of being-in-the-world.
Drawing
a
parallel
between
wayfinding
and
the
telling
of
tales,
Stevenson attempts to reconcile self and other, familiar and foreign
– reflected in Benjamin’s theory of the storyteller; an inherent
duality ‘embodied in the resident tiller of the soil’ and in ‘the
trading
seaman’.
Stevenson’s
outlook
attempts
to
reconcile
‘stravaiging and staying’, suggesting a sensitive, responsible global
consciousness - ideas central to the mode of Scottish ecological
thought developed by John Muir, Patrick Geddes, and later Scottish
writers seeking to reconcile the local and global, the human and
natural world.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 55
David Borthwick (Glasgow)
d.borthwick@crichton.gla.ac.uk
‘The Alchemy of Studied Absence’: John Burnside’s Novels and Failed
Ecology
In The Three Ecologies, Félix Guattari outlines the case for a new
form of ecological awareness: ecosophy, a conception of ecology that
encompasses social and personal ecologies, a means of reuniting human
subjects with the earth, of allowing the individual to enact an
authentic process which can ‘capture existence in the very act of its
constitution, definition and deterritorialization.’
Ecosophy runs
counter to the imperatives of global capitalism which, according to
Guattari, seek to ‘capture’ the individual, interpellating him into a
state of homogeneity, a supine consumer.
Protagonists
in
novels
by
John
Burnside
evade
any
such
capture,
enacting instead the liberating processes of ‘subjectification and
singularization’ that Guattari describes, ‘manifesting themselves as
their own existential indices, processual lines of flight’.
their
liberation
from
alienating
discourses,
these
Despite
protagonists’
immersion in nature merely augments their sense of alienation.
cannot
achieve
any
sense
of
ecosophical
unity,
anathema to social and personal relationships.
their
They
otherness
As Alina notes of her
brother in Living Nowhere: ‘in Jan’s world there were trees and birds
and
running
water,
but
there
were
almost
no
human
beings.’
Burnside’s protagonists may opt out of anthropocentric, capitalist
discourses, but this allows them to enact and also to become victim
to, terrible acts of violence and cruelty.
Situated in dystopic
environments—from
backwaters—Burnside’s
steeltowns
to
hostile
protagonists are slowly removed of their very humanity.
This paper
will examine Burnside’s novels as examples of failed ecology, where
immersion in nature leads to solipsism and malignity.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 56
Martin Philip (Edinburgh/Open University)
revscool@aol.com
'Contending
joyfully’:
Agency
and
Environment
in
the
Honest
Imperialism of John Buchan.
John Buchan’s work encapsulates a central dilemma in the ecocritical
movement:
the
contention
between
deep
ecologists
and
the
more
anthropocentric environmentalists. In Buchan’s novels we are forced
to
question
whether
any
form
of
environmental
management
is
exploitative. Specifically, Buchan will be discussed as an ‘honest
imperialist’ through an ecocritical assessment of his novel Prester
John.
Buchan perceives the relationship between the human and the non-human
as a ‘joyful contention’.
In Prester John the power struggles of all
human agents within the colonial context are ultimately resolved in
the common subjugation of the non-human other.
In this sense, Buchan
is completely honest with regard to the exploitative nature of the
relationship between human and other – regardless of the fact that
his perception of justified exploitation is now insupportable.
He perceives the landscape as a theatre in which contending powers
play out their dramas, yet this anthropocentrism belies a sense of
the
natural
world
as
a
powerful
agent
in
its
own
right.
The
intervention of the non-human other and indeed the landscape itself
within the central conflict of the novel is decisive.
Despite the shift in our moral context, we cannot dismiss the high
priority
and
complexity
which
Buchan accords
between humanity and the natural world.
to
the
relationship
Maturity, in Prester John,
is an acknowledgement of human beings as entities within the natural
world.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 57
Andrew Court (Edinburgh)
courtaj@gmail.com
Criticism, Humanism, and Darwinism: A Short But Not-So-Sweet History
This
paper
Literary
provides
Darwinism
an
in
historical
modern
perspective
criticism
on
and
the
place
literary
of
theory.
Particular attention is given to the question of a viable Darwinian
Humanism. By exploring how Darwinian ideas have been appropriated by
literary critics throughout the twentieth century, and the reactions
for and against such appropriations, the contributions of Literary
Darwinism can be clearly delineated. Literary critics in the first
six
decades
of
the
twentieth
century
tended
to
reject
literary
appropriations of Darwinism, and indeed the appropriations of all
scientific theories, as conceptually inappropriate for a criticism
conceived as being concerned with questions of aesthetic and human
value. With the rise of Theory in the latter half of the century came
a reaction against the coupling of criticism and humanism. Here the
assault on science continued in different terms, taking the form of a
rejection of perceived hegemony. This appears to provide polemical
grounds
for
legitimate
problems
a
a
in
Darwinian
new
the
criticism
humanism
relations
while
which
in
rejecting
between
human
a
double
Theory.
values
move
But
and
would
have
the
scientific
theories been resolved? Can Darwinian Humanism really provide the
conceptual and theoretical bases for literary criticism? To answer
this question (a definitive answer is not guaranteed!) we need a
clear picture of the kind of theory of criticism required by critics
and teachers of literature. I will sketch some possible outlines and
discuss
parameters
by
which
to
assess
the
relevance
of
Literary
Darwinism to the needs of the profession today.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 58
Erin Somerville (Reno)
e.d.somerville@warwick.ac.uk
Postcolonial
Ecocriticism?:
Environmentality
in
V.S.
Naipaul’s
Textuality
Ecocriticism has a methodological problem. While theories such as
feminism and postcolonialism have a clear stance to read from, no
ecocritic is willing to suggest he/she can accurately speak on behalf
of the Other. You may speak as an environmentalist, but your language
is
necessarily
anthropocentric;
encourages, think like a mountain.
has
been
what
Scott
Slovic
you
cannot,
as
Aldo
Leopold
The response to this conundrum
labels
‘narrative
scholarship,’
a
methodology that seeks to embed literary criticism within real-life
encounters with nature. The tone is personal and the emphasis on
allowing
nature
methodology,
to
inspire/influence
inspired
by
early
academic
American
nature
scholarship.
writers and
This
their
descendents, makes perfect sense when considering texts written by
people who commune with nature. But what happens when you study
writers who don’t commune with nature? What happens when you apply
narrative
scholarship
historically
and
to
writers
systematically
who
descend
denied
from
nature?
communities
What
about
postcolonial writers that, instead of depicting the environment in
the realistic ways favoured by American nature writers, translate
their distance from the physical world into literary, imaginative and
symbolic depictions of nature?
This paper considers the challenge of a simultaneous ecocritical and
postcolonial reading of a text to offer a new green methodology—
environmentality in textuality. Instead of a frustrated search for
mimesis in postcolonial texts, this paper engages with the form of
V.S. Naipaul’s work to argue textuality, or the way the texts are
written, is essential to understanding how Naipaul understands and
presents the physical world.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 59
Tom Bristow (Edinburgh)
t.bristow@sms.ed.ac.uk
Towards Interdisciplinary Environmental Criticism
Drawing from: (i) advances made in Earthographies: Ecocriticism and
Culture New Formations 64 (2008) in light of ecocritical anthologies
of a decade earlier; and (ii) the findings of the Edinburgh based
Embodied
Values
reciprocal
Project
transfers
of
-–
an
exploratory
spiritual,
and
aesthetic
critical
and
study
ethical
of
values
between humans and environments -- I shall forward a methodology that
combines philosophy of the environment, human geography, and literary
criticism (particularly ecocriticism).
These three disciplines are
brought together as means to interrogate interdisciplinary advances
upon
literary
theory,
and
approaches to ‘texts’.
literary
comparative
studies
to
suggest
new
conceptions
of
and
An initial inquiry into flexible and open
i.e.
literature
post-structuralism,
does
promote
eco-criticism
interesting
parallels
and
in
methodology with contemporary debates in environmental values (within
the philosophy of the environment and within human geography).
use
value
of
these
interdisciplinary
parallels,
methodology,
is
and
of
their
development
crucial
importance
Humanities in the twenty-first century University.
The
into
an
to
the
I seek to develop
several platforms to enable a clear discourse upon the contribution
environmental thought can bring to literary studies.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 60
Adele Bealer (Utah)
ahbealer@msn.com
The Charm and the Terror: Rearticulating Ecosocial Crisis
In the inaugural issue of Environmental Communication: A Journal of
Nature
and
Culture,
Robert
Cox
advocated
that
environmental
communication define itself as a “crisis discipline,” a posture that
would
require
the
acknowledgement
of
an
ethical
duty
which
he
summarized as “the obligation to enhance the ability of society to
respond appropriately to environmental signals relevant to the wellbeing of both human communities and natural biological systems.” This
paper
rejects
appropriate
this
proposal
apocalyptic
ethic
and
refutes
can
or
the
should
notion
be
that
an
enunciated.
My
methodology is grounded in the cybernetic epistemology of Gregory
Bateson, whose prescient vision for ecological holism clearly warns
of
the
trauma
biocontexts
inherent
whose
in
purposive
interconnectivity
and
may
be
ad
hoc
intervention
little
perceived
in
when
surgically pinned to the flattened plane of a linear and causal
landscape.
The
dangers
of
rhetorically limiting
the
semantics
of
environmental communication to a heuristic rather than a holistic
approach will be further explored using the work of Deleuze and
Guattari. Their extension of Bateson’s plateaus of nonprogressive
change would challenge the crisis machine, articulating instead a
multiplicity of noncompeting perspectives. Finally, turning to the
work of Alain Badiou, I argue for a disinterested activism and an
evolutionary ethic of truths, one that evolves not from the hubris of
an external and humanitarian obligation but rather as an organic
fidelity to a procreative set of immanent truths. This paper provides
a
discursive
and
multicritical
space
for
the
exploration
of
the
interface of these texts.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 61
Michael Middleton (Utah)
m.middleton@utah.edu
Global Trauma/Grassroots Activism: Ecologies and Bodies in the Age of
Globalization
The
trauma
of
globalization
traces
its
consequences
both
bodies it assimilates and the ecologies it disrupts.
suggests
that
intersections
in
of
order
global
for
activism
economy,
to
respond
environment
the
This paper
to
and
on
the
evolving
bodies
it
must
articulate critical perspectives and political practices grounded in
what
French
truths.
philosopher
Alain
Badiou
articulates
as
an
ethic
of
Thus, the paper explores the ways in which apocalyptic
trauma traces itself on environments and bodies in the service of
globalization and attempts to identify responses emerging from the
texts, practices, and performances of communities experiencing these
traumas.
In doing so, this analysis turns to Esteva and Prakash’s
notion of grassroots postmodernism to develop the grounds on which to
base an immanent critique of globalization’s apocalyptic relationship
to ecologies and bodies which accounts for their intersections and
avoids the pitfalls of mainstream approaches.
Taking the Zapatista’s
1992 pleas of “Basta! (Enough!)” and their subsequent practices of
resistance, from the aesthetic to the digital, as an example, I
contend
that
only
through
considering
the
unnamed
intersections
between capital and economy in ways that account for the singular
instances
of
their
confluence
activism be articulated.
can
ecologically
sound
forms
of
Consequently, this paper offers a number of
insights for scholars attempting to interrogate both the foundations
of humanistic inquiry in relation to efforts aimed at social or
environmental
vernacular,
justice
or
and
subaltern,
the
ways
practices
in
of
which
the
exclusion
resistance
limit
of
the
transformative potential of contemporary mainstream activism.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 62
Karin Filipsson (Växjö)
karin.filipsson@vxu.se
Eco-warriors in a Postcolonial Age: A Study of the Relation between
the
Environmental
Crisis
and
Globalization
in
modern
South
Asian
literature.
How is the representation of nature and the environment in the novels
portrayed
in
relation
to
globalization
and
the
effects
of
colonization and neo-imperialism?
My focus in this study is to explore how the portrayal of nature and
the
interaction
between
humans
and
non-human
nature
(including
animals) are placed in relation to the effects of colonization and
neo-imperialism as well as to the anti-globalization movement. Do the
novels
represent
nature
from
an
ecocentric
perspective
or
do
anthropocentrism prevail in the texts? Do the texts open up an avenue
for a non-dichotomised view of nature and environmental problems or
do they simply suggest a reversal of binaries and a subversion of
present power structures? How do the texts relate to the anarchist,
violent or non-violent, anti-civilization movement and its analyses
of possible solutions to environmental problems? In what ways do the
texts explore the connection between the inequities of power between
men and women, the coloniser and the colonized, and humans versus
non-human nature?
How do the novels relate to the binary consisting
of scholarly knowledge/science versus indigenous knowledge/activism
as an extension of the traditional dichotomies of mind-body, masterservant, civilized-barbarian et cetera?
Key
words:
anthropocentrism,
animals,
India/Sri
Lanka,
resistance,
biosphere,
humans,
colonization,
activism,
ecofeminism,
environmental
globalization.
Amitav
problems,
Ghosh,
Romesh
Gunusekera, Mahasweta Devi.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 63
Jody Allenrandolph (Independent)
jallenrandolph@gmail.com
The Problem with Paradigms: From the Postcolonial to the Planetary in
Caribbean, Irish and South African Poetry
Much of the current comparative work in literary studies is focused
on the breaking down of paradigms. Over the past ten years we’ve seen
the
intense
fragmentation
unfamiliar areas of study.
of
older
ideas
like
of
familiar
fields
into
exciting
but
Many different facets coming from breakup
postcolonial
are
now
finding
fragmentations in areas like Diaspora and Anglophone.
new
exciting
Driving this
fragmentation of older paradigms is the momentum that has gathered
behind the concept of "globalization," which from mid-1990s onward
began
to
replace
postcolonialism
as
the
central
theorizing contemporary cultures and literatures.
category
for
As globalization
widened the conceptual territory, scholars began to think beyond the
national and transnational links set by postcolonial geography to the
rapidly changing environments and entangled cultural products of a
planetary paradigm.
Advocated by Gyatri Spivak in Death of a Discipline (2003) and Paul
Gilroy in After Empire (2004), this shift from a postcolonial to a
planetary
literature
imaginary
in
an
re-imagines
era
of
the
expanding
way
we
global
conceptualize
capitalism,
world
widening
environmental degradation and rapid communications technology.
The
plane for such imagining for Spivak is not the globe, but the planet.
In this paper I offer a practical reading that applies some of the
ideas at stake in this paradigm shift and the questions those ideas
raise for our understandings of Anglophone poetry. Using the frame of
a
paradigm
shift
from
postcolonial
to
planetary
criticism,
and
focusing specifically on the ecocritical strain of planetarity, I’ll
look at five poems from the Caribbean, Ireland and South Africa that
orient their readers around changing meanings of landscape either
national or planetary.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 64
Stephen Wood (Liverpool John Moores)
tree-and-stars@blueyonder.co.uk
The Ecological Poetics of Pat Barker
This paper will constitute a green re-reading of the work of Pat
Barker. I re-evaluate the transgression of hierarchical boundaries
between self and other, nature and culture, body and context which
has always been seen as part of the obvious feminist direction of her
work, as a developing, unified ecological poetics.
I intend to show how seriously Barker’s writing takes nature: as a
term that is always in question, as ecological discourse, and as a
presence worthy of attention and respect, which according to Kate
Soper,
exists
independently
of
our
cultural
constructions,
even
though it is always necessarily experienced in a mediated form.
The paper will be structured as follows. I will start by drawing
together what I consider certain key ecological reference points in
Barker’s work, then, making reference to the work of Val Plumwood, I
will reflect on how representations of nature in Barker’s fiction
constitute a protest against the logic of dualism. I will go on to
outline how Barker’s ecological poetics integrate with her literary
themes, for example, the representation of trauma and recovery, and
the ongoing critique of masculinities.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 65
Richard Kerridge (Bath Spa)
r.kerridge@bathspa.ac.uk
Slow Food, Slow Reading
Slow Food is the international movement of resistance to Fast Food
and everything Fast Food entails. Broadened out, the principles of
Slow
Food
include
craft
rather
than
industrial
production,
deep
knowledge of the whole chain of production rather than oblivious
consumption
at
the
tip,
ecological
holism
rather
than
compartmentalisation, and a merging of creative making and creative
appreciation
rather
than
a
rigid
consumption or work and leisure.
literature and reading?
right
response
investigate
to
several
a
separation
of
production
and
How can all this be applied to
In any case, is advocating 'slowness' the
crisis
aspects
of such
of
urgency?
these
My
questions,
paper
will
focusing
on
Modernist literary form as a means of slowing down reading, on close
reading
techniques
in
the
classroom,
on
implications
for
interdisciplinarity, and on slowness as exclusive connoisseurship.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 66
Axel Goodbody (Bath)
mlsahg@bath.ac.uk
The Problem with Postmodern Apocalypse: Kitsch and Profundity in the
Novels of Christoph Ransmayr
Ransmayr is one of Austria’s most successful contemporary writers –
translated
into
26
languages,
and
awarded
the
European
Union's
Aristeion Prize together with Salman Rushdie for his third novel, The
Dog King in 1995. His trademark bleak landscapes and scenarios of
heroic
but
doomed
individuals
and
societies
pitted
against
the
elements have fascinated an international reading public for the past
twenty years. His narratives (The Terrors of Ice and Darkness, 1984,
and The Last World, 1988) can be read both as political allegories
and as commentaries on our relationship with the natural environment.
Ransmayr’s most recent book, The Flying Mountain (2006) is an as yet
untranslated verse epic on the attempt of two brothers to climb an
uncharted peak in the Himalayas. Critics have been divided over its
qualities, describing it variously as mythical and sublime, and as
bordering on kitsch. Ransmayr’s postmodern apocalypses differ from
the
activist
apocalyptic
scenarios
of
environmentally
committed
writers. I will ask in this paper to what extent they represent a
particular
category
of
apocalyptic
writing
in
Germany, a
country
which has revealed a propensity for apocalyptic thinking in political
fantasies on the Left and the Right, and in literary visions of the
future, throughout the twentieth century. I will seek to evaluate
them
by
exploring
intertextual
references
and
the
legacy
of
Romanticism, and by locating them in the broader field of apocalyptic
writing, using concepts and perspectives derived from Frederick Buell
and Greg Garrard.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 67
Gwilym Thear (Cardiff)
ThearGT@cardiff.ac.uk
What
Comes
After:
Contemporary
Apocalyptic
Narrative
and
Environmentalism.
Apocalyptic narratives have been integral to environmental thought
since at least the days of Rachel Carson and today the apocalypse
remains as central a trope in discussions about climate change as it
was in Silent Spring. That the apocalypse is both a uniquely powerful
and
highly
problematic
form
has
been
widely
recognised
–
while
powerful in its ability to command attention, problems such as the
widespread expectation of disconfirmation mean that the means and
effects of such rhetoric’s reception are anything but predictable.
This paper will argue however that there is a more urgent problem
inherent
in
deploying
the
use
of
apocalyptic
rhetoric:
that
apocalyptic narratives in contemporary popular culture are not the
traditional scenarios of closure and extinction but narratives of
change and survival. Far from fulfilling the soterial role of the
biblical jeremiad and inspiring a change in world-view and behaviour,
it will argue that contemporary apocalyptic narratives frequently
assert a passive assurance of survival and can, in fact, be more
appealing than appalling. Drawing upon the work of Kermode, Derrida
and Ricoeur, as well as cosmology, narrative psychology and theories
of temporality, this paper will attempt to delineate the contours of
the
apocalyptic
narrative
in
contemporary
culture
and,
through
looking both at audience responses to apocalyptic drama and public
attitudes
to
climate
change,
consider
some
of
the
serious
implications it has for environmental activism.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 68
Astrid Bracke (Leiden)
astridbracke@mac.com
Images of Post-Apocalyptic Nature in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
As
Lawrence
Buell
writes
in
The
Environmental
Imagination,
“apocalypse is the single most powerful master metaphor that the
contemporary environmental imagination has at its disposal” (285).
However,
little
sustained
attention
has
been
paid
to
the
master
metaphors employed to describe post-apocalyptic nature. The proposed
paper
aims
to
approach
these
images
from
the
point
of
view
of
cultural memory, through a discussion of David Mitchell’s 2004 novel
Cloud Atlas.
This work consists of six different narratives that are
loosely connected and move from nineteenth-century imperialism to a
post-apocalyptic, post-industrial future.
Cultural memory refers to the shared past that a society preserves
and from which it derives its identity, values, concept of history
and
myths
(see
Jan
Assmann,
“Collective
Memory
and
Cultural
Identity”). As will be argued in the proposed paper, the images that
we use to describe nature are also rooted in our cultural memory.
Cloud Atlas serves as an apt example of the intersections between
ecocriticism and cultural memory, as it employs images which are
clearly rooted in our cultural memory. An example of this are the
nature descriptions in the sixth part of the novel
– “Sloosha’s
Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After” – which draw on for example nature as
either a wilderness or a paradise. Strikingly, the novel also refers
back to itself through the use of images which echo images employed
in the earlier narratives. The proposed paper, then, will examine not
only post-apocalyptic nature but also the relations between cultural
memory and ecocriticism.
ASLE08 Edinburgh 69