Ecocriticism as a Contribution to Consilient Knowledge

Key words: consilience, ecology, re-enchantment, niches, Weber, Darwinism  Rather than seeking to expose anthropocentrism, insisting on mutually reinforcing parallels between the discrimination of nature and mechanisms of gender, race and class, or pursuing a goal of anti-Enlightenment re-enchantment, ecocritics must engage in a programme of bridge-building between literary criticism and the empirically grounded sciences. Contextualisation of works in terms of environmental history, and a philosophy of biology critically examining its key concepts are currently among the most promising construction programmes of this kind. The time has come for ecocriticism to cease to be a romantic discourse of value or a priestly pursuit, and become a principled, professional, empirico-philosophical critique.   Palabras clave: consiliencia, ecología, encantamiento, nichos, Wever, darwinismo En lugar de empeñarse en exponer el ecocentrismo, con insistencia en paralelismos entre la discriminación de la naturaleza y mecanismos de género, raza y clase que se refuerzan de manera mutua o de salir a la caza de un objetivo de encantamiento anti Ilustración, los ecocríticos deben dedicarse a tender puentes entre la crítica literaria y las ciencias empíricas. La contextualización de obras en términos de historia medioambiental y una filosofía de la biología que examina de forma crítica sus conceptos clave se encuentran actualmente entre las iniciativas constructivas más prometedoras de su clase. Ha llegado la hora de que la ecocrítica deje de ser un discurso romántico de valor o una aspiración sacerdotal y se convierta en una crítica de principios, profesional y empirico-filosofica

Climate Change Scepticism

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Climate Change Scepticism is the first ecocritical study to examine the cultures and rhetoric of climate scepticism in the UK, Germany, the USA and France. Collaboratively written by leading scholars from Europe and North America, the book considers climate skeptical-texts as literature, teasing out differences and challenging stereotypes as a way of overcoming partisan political paralysis on the most important cultural debate of our time

Climate Change Scepticism

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Climate Change Scepticism is the first ecocritical study to examine the cultures and rhetoric of climate scepticism in the UK, Germany, the USA and France. Collaboratively written by leading scholars from Europe and North America, the book considers climate skeptical-texts as literature, teasing out differences and challenging stereotypes as a way of overcoming partisan political paralysis on the most important cultural debate of our time

The Species at Risk Act (2002) and transboundary species listings along the US-Canada border

This paper is a collaborative interdisciplinary examination of the scientific, political, and cultural determinants of the conservation status of mammal species that occur in both Canada and the USA. We read Canada’s Species at Risk Act as a document of bio-cultural nationalism circumscribed by the weak federalism and Crown–Indigenous relations of the nation’s constitution. We also provide a numerical comparison of at-risk species listings either side of the US–Canada border and examples of provincial/state listings in comparison with those at a federal level. We find 17 mammal species listed as at-risk in Canada as distinct from the USA, and only 6 transboundary species that have comparable levels of protection in both countries, and we consider several explanations for this asymmetry. We evaluate the concept of ‘jurisdictional rarity’, in which species are endangered only because a geopolitical boundary isolates a small population. The paper begins and ends with reflections on interdisciplinary collaboration, and our findings highlight the importance of considering and explicitly acknowledging political influences on science and conservation-decision making, including in the context of at-risk-species protection

Environmentalism, performance and applications: uncertainties and emancipations

This introductory article for a themed edition on environmentalism provides a particular context for those articles that follow, each of which engages with different aspects of environmentalism and performance in community-related settings. Responding to the proposition that there is a lacuna in the field of applied drama and environmentalism (Bottoms, 2010), we suggest that the more significant lack is that of ecocriticism. As the articles in this journal testify, there are many examples of applied theatre practice; what is required is sustained and rigorous critical engagement. It is to the gap of ecocriticism that we address this issue, signalling what we hope is the emergence of a critical field. One response to the multiple challenges of climate change is to more transparently locate the human animal within the environment, as one agent amongst many. Here, we seek to transparently locate the critic, intertwining the personal – ourselves, human actants – with global environmental concerns. This tactic mirrors much contemporary writing on climate change and its education, privileging personal engagement – a shift we interrogate as much as we perform. The key trope we anchor is that of uncertainty: the uncertainties that accompany stepping into a new research environment; the uncertainties arising from multiple relations (human and non-human); the uncertainties of scientific fact; the uncertainties of forecasting the future; and the uncertainties of outcomes – including those of performance practices. Having analysed a particular turn in environmental education (towards social learning) and the failure to successfully combine ‘art and reality’ in recent UK mainstream theatre events, such uncertainties lead to our suggestion for an ‘emancipated’ environmentalism. In support of this proposal, we offer up a reflection on a key weekend of performance practice that brought us to attend to the small – but not insignificant – and to consider first hand the complex relationships between environmental ‘grand narratives’ and personal experiential encounters. Locating ourselves within the field and mapping out some of the many conceptual challenges attached to it serves to introduce the territories which the following journal articles expand upon

John Clare and place

This chapter tackles issues of place in the self-presentation and critical reception of John Clare, and pursues it across a number of axes. The argument centres on the placing of Clare both socio-economically and ‘naturally’, and limitations exerted upon perceptions of his work. Interrogating criticism this chapter finds a pervasive awkwardness especially in relation to issues of class and labour. It assesses the contemporary ‘placing’ of Clare, and seemingly unavoidable insensitivities to labour and poverty in the history industry, place-naming, and polemical ecocriticism. It assesses the ways Clare represents place – in poverty, in buildings, in nature – and, drawing on Michel de Certeau, considers the tactics Clare uses to negotiate his place. It pursues trajectories to ‘un-place’ Clare: the flight of fame in Clare’s response to Byron; and the flight of an early poem in songbooks and beyond, across the nineteenth century

Ecocriticism/ Garrard

203 hal.; 24 cm

Ecocriticism/ Garrard

203 hal.; 24 cm