The Real Work: Negotiating the Anthro-Ecocentric Divide

Beginning with Gary Snyder’s premise suggested by “I came back to myself,/To the real work, to/What is to be done” this article offers readings of environmentally based literature as a way of suggesting that a return to “one’s self” is also a return to a consideration of one’s place in the ecosystem. Included are readings by Snyder himself, Leslie Marmon Silko, Barry Lopez and N. Scott Momaday. Placing Snyder’s own use and interpretations of Eastern Philosophies and Native American cultures alongside Native American writings, I suggest that contemporary “nature writing” represents not necessarily a shift from an anthropocentric to a biocentric or ecocentric perspective but rather a resurfacing of an ecocentric stream that has been neglected in North American writing in favor of more anthropocentric trends

Naming the unknown, witnessing the unseen: Mediterranean ecocriticism and modes of representing migrant others

In continuity with the theoretical explorations of Mediterranean Ecocriticism, this essay deals with modes of representation of "migrant others." Often de-personified and reduced to statistical data, these “invisible” migrants are in fact parts of a larger ecology, where the fates of humans and nonhumans are interlaced, prompting deep ethical questions. Such invisibility is challenged by the many artists, writers, filmmakers, and thinkers that bring the migrant question to the center stage of their work, suggesting that the only response to the dehumanization of migrants is the humanization of nonhumans caught in the same predicaments of borders and violence. The essay includes an analysis of Jason deCaires Taylor's submarine artworks and of the documentary Asmat, "Names," by director Dagmawi Yimer.En continuidad con las exploraciones teóricas de la ecocrítica mediterránea, este ensayo explora los modos de representación de los “otros migrantes”. A menudo despersonalizados y reducidos a datos estadísticos, estos migrantes “invisibles” forman de hecho parte de una ecología más amplia, en la que se entrelazan los destinos de seres humanos y no humanos, planteando profundas cuestiones éticas. Esa invisibilidad es cuestionada por numerosos artistas, escritores, cineastas y pensadores que presentan la cuestión de los migrantes en el centro de su trabajo, sugiriendo que la única respuesta a la deshumanización de los migrantes es la humanización de los seres no humanos atrapados en los mismos problemas generados por la violencia y las fronteras. El ensayo incluye un análisis de las obras de arte submarino de Jason deCaires Taylor y del documental Asmat, “Nombres”, del director Dagmawi Yimer

Sense of Support

“An original work by Pasquale Verdicchio