Ecocriticism

Abstract

In the last 20 years, ecocriticism has developed from its early incarnation as the relatively under‐theorised preserve of nature writing enthusiasts to its current vibrant state as a sophisticated array of ‘earth‐centred’ approaches to cultural criticism that mobilise and reframe theories drawn from a range of disciplines including ecology, philosophy, sociology and biology. Ecocriticism's diversity also extends to engaging with a variety of literary forms as well as, increasingly, film, TV, digital environments and music, and to an interest in representations of the urban. At its heart is the conviction both that we are living in a time of ecological crisis that requires us to reassess with some urgency our modes of being in the world and that our cultural perceptions of ‘nature’ and the ‘human’, and the relationship between the two, have to a large degree been responsible for these damaging modes of being. Its role is to interrogate and critique these perceptions, even within environmentalism itself, with some ecocritics also committed to exploring alternative ways of conceptualising our relationship with the non‐human world. This paper briefly traces the history of ecocriticism, discussing its initial development in the USA and Britain, outlining the two strands of social ecology and deep ecology that underpin its ongoing formulation, and tracing the ‘waves’ of its development. It then focuses on contemporary and emergent theorisations, in particular the global inflection of current post‐colonial ecocriticism and the environmental justice movement, which introduces the new paradigm of eco‐cosmopolitics, and the recent formulation of ecocritical post‐humanism. This emphasises the imbrication of the human in earth's matrix, drawing on the insights of ecofeminism, phenomenology and biosemiotics, and has its most recent incarnation in the currently emerging field of material ecocriticism, which, in its engagement with the complex entanglement of the human and the non‐human, the social and the scientific, hints at a more dissonant paradigm.

Does environmental archaeology need an ethical promise?

“…Eco-historicism or environmental history (Wood 2008) as well as eco-criticism or the environmental study of literature (Buell 2011;Marland 2013;Hiltner 2015) together make up the field of environmental humanities (Bergthaller et al 2014). Writings in this genre -going back to founding contributions such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) Rigby (2009) has presented a strong argument for environmental ethical engagement from the humanities specifically in relation to disasters (Rigby 2015).…”

Resistance through the Language of Palestinian Poets

“…The term is essentially called (Adab Al-Muqawmah) that is coined by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani (Hassan & Omar, 2011). Cudjoe (1980) defined resistance as "any act or complex of acts designed to rid a people of their oppressors" (p. 19). According to Slemon (1995), literary resistance "can be seen as a form of contractual understanding between the text and the reader, one that is embedded in an experiential dimension and buttressed by a political and cultural aesthetic at work in culture" (p. 7).…”

“…The first approach was through the use of stylistic analysis, according to Short (1996), stylistic analysis "is a linguistic approach to the study of literary texts" (p. 334). Ecocriticism theory is a newly developed critical approach that examines the incorporation of environmental elements in literary texts usually to show social justices (Marland, 2013). Thus, as explained by Ahmed and Hashim (2015), the movement is a "new way for expressing human resistance via nature" (p. 14).…”

Environmental Renaissance Studies

“…For a succinct account of the waves of ecocriticism, see Marland. For problems with the wave model, including those noted by Buell, see Garrard 2–3.…”