"Cultivating an ability to imagine": Ryan Walsh's "Reckonings" and the poetics of toxicity

For nearly two decades since Lawrence Buell defined and anatomized “toxic discourse” in “Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond” (2001), the storying of toxic experience has received fruitful theoretical and literary attention. Throughout the world, citizens have come to terms with the reality that we live on a poisoned planet and the poisons in our environment are also in ourselves—the poisons our industrial activities spew into the air, water, soil, and food are almost imperceptibly (“slowly,” as Rob Nixon would put it) absorbed into all of our bodies (through the process Stacy Alaimo described as “transcorporeality”). Biologist and literary activist Sandra Steingraber stated in “Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment” (1997) that we must “cultivat[e] an ability to imagine” in order to appreciate the meaning of our post-industrial lives. In this essay, I focus on Ryan Walsh’s new collection of poetry, “Reckonings” (2019), and on Pramod K. Nayar’s recent ecocritical study, “Bhopal’s Ecological Gothic: Disaster, Precarity, and the Biopolitical Uncanny” (2017), in order to propose and define an evolving “poetics of toxicity.”Durante las casi dos décadas desde que Lawrence Buell definió y diseccionó el “discurso tóxico” en “Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond” (2001), la narración de la experiencia tóxica ha recibido una fructífera atención teórica y literaria. En todo el mundo los ciudadanos han llegado a un acuerdo con el hecho de que vivimos en un planeta envenenado y de que los venenos en nuestro entorno también están dentro de nosotros—los venenos que nuestras actividades industriales arrojan al aire, agua, suelo y comida están siendo absorbidos (por medio del proceso que Stacy Alaimo describió como “transcorporalidad”) casi imperceptiblemente (“lentamente”, como diría Rob Nixon). La bióloga y activista literaria Sandra Steingraber expuso en “Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment” (1997) que debemos “cultivar la habilidad para imaginar” para apreciar el significado de nuestras vidas post-industriales. En este ensayo me centro en la nueva colección de poesía de Ryan Walsh, “Reckonings” (2019), y en el reciente estudio ecocrítico de Pramod K. Nayar “Bhopal’s Ecological Gothic: Disaster, Precarity, and the Biopolitical Uncanny” (2017), con el fin de proponer y definir un “poética de la toxicidad” en evolución

The Third Wave of Ecocriticism: North American Reflections on the Current Phase of the Discipline

Keywords: third wave ecocriticism, first wave ecocriticism, second wave  ecocriticism, comparative, transnational, eco-cosmopolitanism, material ecofeminism, green queer theory, animality, commitment'Third Wave Ecocriticism' has become accepted as the label for a new form of critical writing which transcends national and ethnic boundaries and compares human experience across cultures. This focus distinguishes it equally from first wave ecocriticism in the 1980s (which dealt mainly with nature writing, wilderness and women's special affinity with nature), and the second wave, which began in the mid 1990s (and turned its attention to other literary genres and media, environmental justice, and urban ecology). Critics adopting the transcultural approach are exploring tensions between the global and the local, new varieties of ecofeminism, conceptions of animality, and ways of integrating literature in environmental activism.  Palabras clave: tercera oleada de la ecocritica, primera oleada de la ecocritica, segunda oleada de la ecocritica “La Tercera oleada de la ecocrítica” se ha aceptado como etiqueta para una nueva forma de escritura crítica que trasciende las barreras nacionales y étnicas y que compara la experiencia humana de diferentes culturas. Este enfoque también la distingue de la primera oleada ecocrítica de los años 80, que se centraba sobre todo en la escritura de la naturaleza, sobre la tierra salvaje y en la afinidad de las mujeres con la naturaleza; y de la segunda oleada, que comenzó a mediados de los 90 y dirigió su atención hacia otros géneros literarios y los medios de comunicación, la justicia medioambiental y la ecología urbana. Los críticos que adoptan el enfoque transcultural exploran las tensiones entre lo global y lo local, las nuevas variedades del ecofeminismo, las nociones de animalidad y las formas de integrar la literatura en el activismo medioambiental. 

Review of \u3ci\u3eA Thousand Deer: Four Generations of Hunting and the Hill Country\u3c/i\u3e By Rick Bass.

Known typically as a writer from Texas and Montana, or simply as one of the greatest contemporary American environmental writers, Rick Bass can certainly be considered “a writer of the greater Great Plains,” the region stretching from the prairie near the Gulf of Mexico to the Rocky Mountain foothills of the inland Northwest. The twelve essays collected in A Thousand Deer span the twenty-year period from 1991 to 2011, with most of them having appeared in such publications as Texas Monthly or Texas Parks and Wildlife during the past decade. One piece, “The Silent Language,” is published in this book for the first time. Whether focusing on the author’s childhood in Houston, or on his life as a father and husband, writer and hunter, in northwestern Montana, these stories and meditations explore the resonance of place in our memory and imagination. Many of these essays describe what Bass and his family call the “Deer Pasture” (hearkening back to the title of the author’s first book, which came out in 1985), the name itself a joking reference to the pastureless, rocky landscape of the Texas Hill Country, where the family has hunted deer and turkeys for several generations

Countering “the anesthesia of destruction”: Information and Pathos in the Work of J.M.G. Le Clézio, Barry Lopez, and Vandana Shiva

This article studies a type of numbness, a dulling of sensitivity that occurs when the human mind receives particular kinds of information concerning accidents, tragic events or large-scale calamities. It particularly explores the causes and the social and environmental results of this numbness. The latter has been called “the anesthesia of destruction” by Indian social and environmental activist Vandana Shiva, referring to the human tendency to turn off our feelings and become anesthetized by information about destruction. The research into this reaction, or lack of reaction, matters a great deal since how the information about these issues is presented to us, whether we are talking about human suffering or what is happening in the natural world, has everything to do with how we think and act in the world. The article uses Shiva’s descriptor of the feeling of indifference and numbness, “the anesthesia of destruction”, to examine stories in The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts by J.M.G. Le Cle?zio and Light Action in the Caribbean: Stories by Barry Lopez. These are literary examples from authors deeply involved in the effort to use fiction as a way of making readers think more seriously about social responsibility and the psychology of engagement

Empiricism, Information Management, and Environmental Humanities

We live in an era of too much information and too little caring. Following up on the work of Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data (2015), I will turn my attention in this paper to various “imaginaries” (trans-scalarity, vulnerability, and, in particular, singularity) as a way of suggesting how ecocriticism can overcome intrinsic human insensitivity to information about large, slow, distant phenomena. This paper will emphasize ecocriticism as a field deeply associated with information management and communicatio

Public Impact-Focused Research Survey Results

The Association of Public and Land Grant Universities (APLU) Council on Research (COR) led an initiative to define, identify, and develop a recommended path forward for public impact research (PIR). A survey was conducted of APLU institution in order to: To characterize the extent of public impact research (PIR) occurring at APLU institutions. To understand how institutions (or leaders within institutions) think about, define, and communicate about this type of work. To provide perspectives about the challenges, opportunities, and rewards that may be associated with this type of scholarship. Responses were received from a diverse set of seventy public and land grant universities (APLU total membership was 239 universities at the time of this survey). Research expenditures at responding institutions ranged from $5 million to over$1 billion in FY 2017, and respondents included Hispanic-serving institutions, historically black universities, IEP-designated universities, and were received from 26 US states and one Canadian province. This document contains the complete set of de-identified responses to the survey. The intent is to make this broadly available and accessible to individuals or groups who may want to further analyze or use these results

From Cancer to Diarrhea: The Moving Target of Public Concern about Environmental Health Risks

Public concern about the environment can be unpredictable because it is influenced by numerous factors. Environmental health issues often emerge as important because the public is worried about their health especially when it comes to cancer. Public fear of cancer from environmental exposures is reinforced by many of the US regulations that set pollutant limits based on reducing the risk of cancers rather than other health outcomes. While fear of cancer will never dissipate, recent foodborne outbreaks are contributing to raising public awareness of the health effects from microbes. This paper adds to the dialogue about the challenges of enhancing public understanding of environmental health issues. Internal factors, such as worry, that contribute to public outrage are sometimes more important than external factors such as the media. In addition, relying on the media to inform the public about imminent public health risks may be an ineffective approach to enhancing understanding. In the end, scientists and risk communicators are forced to compete with politicians who are often very effective at manipulating public understanding of risk

Developing Risk Management as a Competitive Capability

At the level of the firm, three major parameters are found to influence the ability of SMEs to develop risk management competencies; these are enterprise risk management, internal control, and risk culture