1. CFPs
1. The Ecology of Utopia: Ecological Concerns and Utopianism in American Culture
CLEU (Cultures and Literatures of the United States) Research Group, Department of English Philology, University of A Coruna, Spain
Organized by the CLEU research group of the University of A Coruna in northwestern Spain, this international conference, scheduled for September 23-25, 2010, aims to provide a forum for the exploration of the relationships between the ecological and the utopian in American letters and American culture at large. Combining politics and poetics, the conference intends to look at the convergence of both terms in different cultural and literary manifestations so as to bring out and debate the utopian element within the ecological and/or the ecocritical, as well as the presence of the ecological within contemporary utopian proposals, real or fictional. How does utopian discourse manifest itself within ecology-oriented writings? Is it a necessary or disruptive presence? As a literary genre, does it encounter difficulties in its formalization of an ecological perspective? Must ecologically-concerned texts, cultural and scientific assertions employ the modes and strategies of utopian discourse? Is the textual arena of the literary a privileged site for this encounter or are other textual and cultural forms more suitable to the articulation of the inherent political concerns of utopian and ecological projects? These and related issues form the main theme of our conference. Papers (20 minute presentation) should address but are not limited to the following topics:
- Interrelationships between utopia and ecology, theoretical and practical.
- Utopia discourses, ecological / ecocritical textualities.
- The poetics and politics of the utopian / ecological text.
- Genre fiction and ecological utopianism.
- Utopian communities and ecological concerns.
- Literary ecology / literary utopianism.
- Ecocritical theory and utopian politics.
-Dystopian manifestations in American culture.
- Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic cultural forms.
Abstracts (250 words) should be sent by May 1, 2010, and the full paper by July 25, 2010. Conference information will be available via the appropriate link on the CLEU web-page: http://www.udc.es/grupos/cleu/
Organizing committee:
Director: José Liste Noya (contact email: jliste@udc.es)
Secretaries: Verónica F. Peebles and Cristina Gómez Fernández
2. Tamkang University, Taipei County, Taiwan. December 16-18, 2010
CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline for submission of abstracts: March 9, 2010
Response to submissions: April 15, 2010
Contributions are invited for Tamkang University's Fifth International Conference on Ecological Discourse. We invite papers that address Asian interests and contexts in terms of diversely contested approaches to "modernity" and "nature." Papers that are cross-disciplinary in purpose and scope are especially welcome. Such papers would intersect with a broad range of Asian environmental issues and concerns not limited only to texts treated by scholars working in the arts and humanities, but also ecocritical projects and initiatives that intersect with biology, chemistry, economics, government policy, industry and technology, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. The conference aims to be representative of the many arguments emerging in ecocritical discourse, including debates within specialized fields of study as well as larger issues engendered by the crisis of human-caused climate change affecting various places in Asia. In addressing issues of modernity and nature in Asia, what can we gain by reassessing the conceptual tools-in the arts, literature and philosophy-that have been abandoned during centuries of colonialism and modernization? Are there places and communities in Asia that provide new models for development that could release the earth from the expanding hegemony of global capital?
TOPICS
We welcome proposals which reconsider modernity and nature in ecocriticism from an Asian-centered perspective. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
‧ecocritical readings of Asian art, literature and film
‧literature, philosophy and religion and Asian ecologies
‧ecofeminism in Asia
‧ecology (Asian ecosystems, invasive species/native species, toxicity, etc.)
‧the impact of global warming in Asia
‧economic and demographic studies addressing climate change, food, and species loss in Asia
‧animal trafficking and animal rights in Asia
‧bio/ecocentric public policy and political action in Asia
‧ecocomposition and writing ecologies
‧environmental justice/social justice/ecomarxism in Asia
‧space, place, and globalisation
‧biosemiotics
‧ecotourism and ecopornography in Asia
‧posthumanist readings of Asian art, literature and film including the applications of cyborg theory.
The conference is organized by the English Department at Tamkang University with the support of the Chemistry Department and the recently formed Association of the Study of Literature and Environment of Taiwan (ASLE-Taiwan).
ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS
Proposals for individual papers and proposals for panels are both invited. Presenters are asked to prepare 20-minute (3,000-word) papers. Please submit your abstract in English or Mandarin (approx. 200 words). Send submissions in Mandarin or English to the organizing committee: miracle@mail.tku.edu.tw.
Proposals in languages other than English will be considered if we can group these together in one or more panels.
ACCOMMODATION
The historical town of Danshui is one of the Taiwan's most famous tourist destinations, known for its winding brick roads and sunsets at the mouth of the Danshui River. Accommodations will be reserved for guests at Tamkang University's Hwei-wen Hall guesthouse, a one-minute walk from dozens of coffee shops, restaurants and grocery stores, and local markets selling fresh produce, and a fifteen-minute walk to the Danshui MRT to downtown Taipei. The campus is just forty minutes by taxi from the international airport.
OTHER
Costs of registration and accommodation: these will be announced in April 2010. (Funding is currently being sought for bursaries to provide for some of these costs.)
Excursions: two optional, one-day excursions.
3. What Happens Now: 21st Century Writing in English - the first decade
International Conference, 8-11 July 2010, University of Lincoln, UK
CALL FOR PAPERS-EXTENDED DEADLINE:
1st FEBRUARY 2010
Please email 200-300 word proposals for papers and brief biographical note to the conference organisers Dr Siân Adiseshiah sadiseshiah@lincoln.ac.uk and Dr Rupert Hildyard rhildyard@lincoln.ac.uk Deadline for proposals: February 1st 2010
Conference website: http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/conferences/index.htm
Confirmed speakers: Carol Ann Duffy, Will Self, Tim Crouch (who will also be performing My Arm), Iain Sinclair, John Burnside, Don Paterson, Daljit Nagra, Julia Barclay from Apocryphal Theatre, Professor Rachel Falconer, and Dr Lynette Goddard
This international conference will provide a forum in which to discuss, reflect on, and review creative literary and dramatic work in English, published since the year 2000.
The principal aim of the conference is to contribute to the process by which the significant and innovative writers and dramatists of the new millennium are discovered and discussed, and to begin to identify new patterns, clusters, trends and paradigms in contemporary prose, poetry and drama as well as the continuation or re-emergence of older modes and characteristics.
A major focus is likely to be on writing produced in Britain and Ireland, but the global/national/local context of writing is expected to be a key theme and papers on writing in English beyond Britain and Ireland are warmly invited. The conference will also discuss contemporary theory and criticism, as well as the teaching of 21st century writing.
Another distinctive feature of the conference will be the participation of contemporary writers and dramatists as guest speakers and readers of their own work, and one of its main events will be a round table discussion of 21st century writing in Britain by writers, publishers, critics, academics and theorists.
We welcome papers discussing the full range of literary and dramatic expression produced from the mainstream to the margins, including:
utopian and dystopian writing, life writing, children's literature, historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy, travel writing, graphic novels, romantic fiction, crime writing, verbatim drama, musical theatre, post-dramatic theatre, technologically mediated performance, electronically mediated text, performance poetry, and poetic dialogue.
We invite contributions identifying and exploring
distinctive and innovative texts and writers published since 2000;
key themes, trends and issues of the new millennium;
and any other issue of relevance to 21st century writing in English, including but not limited by the following:
What happens now
- Post-millennialism
- Terror and catastrophe
- Environmental endgame
- Globalization and consumerization
- Bankrupt capitalism
- The end of Western hegemony
Genre and Form
- Mainstream and postmodernism, popular and avant-garde
- New genres/forms
- Mixing genres/forms
- Re-emergence of older forms
- New technologies and form
- Adaptation
Contexts of Literature
- Individuals, communities, and institutions in a consumerized world
- Planetary diasporas
- Questions of Place: global/national/local
- Post-millennial conceptions of time
- Sky-gods of masculinity: Football, Sky Sports and the Champions League
- It's good to text: screen culture and the digitisation of social life
- Relating to nature
- Post-human identities
Politics and identity
- Political impotence, political agency
- Scapegoating again: racism and nationalism
- Magic tricks: the disappearance of class, the return of religion
- Global injustice and postmillennial subalternity
- Bioscience, Butlerism and the politics of reproduction
- Misogyny and the pornography of consumer culture
- Nature's politics
Literary and Cultural Theory
- Recent theorists (Georgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, David Abram)
- Recent theories (Hybrid/Diaspora/Gender/transgender/Trauma and testimonial criticisms/Ecocriticism/Cybercriticism)
- Contemporary applications of older theoretical frameworks (Marxist, feminist, postmodernist, humanist, historicist, Lacanian, phenomenological)
Teaching 21st Century Writing
- Pedagogical problems and opportunities
- Professionalization of creative writing
- Sources and resources
- Students as consumers
4. Under Western Skies: Climate, Culture and Change in Western North America
http://www.skies.mtroyal.ca/
Mount Royal University
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
October 13 - 16, 2010
This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural gathering welcomes presentations on the environmental challenges now faced by diverse populations, human and nonhuman, in the Western lands of Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
Academics and other stakeholders from the wider community are invited to participate in this urgent and compelling dialogue. The conference invites academics from the humanities, social and natural sciences, as well as activists, businesses, artists, and others to speak across the boundaries that conventionally divide them.
Since both the geographical and critical terrains at issue are considerable, a wide array of topics and time periods is welcome. The shared concern will be the interaction between humans and the natural environment in the context of Western history, geography, climate change, and commercial/sustainable development of lands and resources.
Possible directions may include, but are not restricted to, the following:
--sustainable economic development
--indigenous ways of knowing
--urbanization/suburban sprawl in the "New West"
--literary or filmic representations of natural, urban, or industrial environments
--popular culture and the mass media
--government action/inaction on the environment
--ecofeminism
--environmental racism and justice
--ecological or ecocritical examinations of particular Western environs and climes
--specific issues such as the Kyoto Protocol or oil sands development
--the borderlands of Canada / United States / Mexico
--environmental education in K-12, postsecondary, and community contexts
--historical perspectives
--environmental activism
--environmental law and policy
A selection of papers will be put forward for a book publication or special journal issue.
Proposals should run no more than 250 words in length and be attached to an email as a .doc or .docx file. Direct these to Dr. Robert Boschman at rboschman@mtroyal.ca or to Dr. Mario Trono at mtrono@mtroyal.ca.
The conference website is www.skies.mtroyal.ca .
Closing Date: January 15, 2010
2. Reports on conferences
1. The conference Literature,Culture, Environment: Positioning 'Ecocriticism' was held at the University of Münster in March 2004. The idea had been originally floated at a meeting of interested persons convened by Hannes Bergthaller in Bonn in Spring 2003, after discussions at the ASLE (UK) conference in Bretton Hall the previous Autumn. Conference organisers were Sylvia Mayer (Münster), Catrin Gersdorf (Leipzig) and Colin Riordan (Newcastle). Keynote lectures were delivered by Hubert Zapf (Augsburg), who spoke on the notion of literature as cultural ecology, by Louise Westling (Eugene, Oregon) on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and the question of posthumanism, and by Axel Goodbdy (Bath), who sketched out an ecocritical framework for the reading of contemporary German literature. On the last evening of the conference, Gaby Schwab and Simon Ortiz read from their current collaborative project, "The Ecologies of Traumatic Histories: Land, Loss, History, Time."
About half the approximately 70 delegates at the conference were German or German-speaking (i.e. Austrian or Swiss), and many of them work in American Studies. The largest other single group was of people from the UK working in German Studies. There were also papers from the US, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy and Estonia, in a range of disciplines. The European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment was formally founded at the conference.
2. Report on the 2004 ASLE-UK biannual conference at University College Chichester, West Sussex, July 16-18, by Terry Gifford
From the pagan's fire-circles at the Bronze Age barrows on the ridge of the South Downs we could look down and see that Chichester was sitting on the first solid ground at the end of a finger of water from a hand-shaped estuary. Conference members from North America, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Europe were on a field-trip to Europe's largest remaining yew forest, guided by the warden from English Nature responsible for its management. Should the pagans be banned? Should the deer be controlled? Should this sacred place be managed for people or for nature? Should this be an ecocentric or anthropocentric management? Aren't humans the problem? Is nature a cultural project? Why did some of us sneak off to find the green man in a low roof boss of Chichester cathedral? And what are the cultural meanings of a garden shed that we were each apparently carrying with us? This was a conference of conversations in which a question from a poet/employee of English Nature could be given the space to spawn further questions. And Shedman (www.shedman.net) interviewed us in his shed about the sheds in our lives for a video report at the end of the conference.
The theme of this conference was 'Cross-Fertilisations: Literature, Science, and Nature' and sharpening our thinking about this was the challenge of Dana Phillips' recent bookThe Truth of Ecology, together with Michael P. Cohen's critique of American ecocriticism in Environmental History No 9 January 2004, pp.1-36. One of the key questions to which discussion returned was that of which version of science (evolutionary sociobiology or complexity theory?) and which metaphors for ecology (web or soup? Systems theory or chaos theory?) are most convincing, or indeed, most useful, to our work in the humanities. Joseph Carroll, as the opening plenary speaker, made the case for a genetically evolved human nature, whilst papers by Wendy Wheeler (London Metropolitan University) and Karl Zuelke (College of Mount St. Joseph, Ohio) argued for a more complex systems theory.
Another issue resurfacing throughout the conference concerned the tension between the individual and the social modes of engagement with the environmental crisis. Is individual nature writing enough? Why is a 'green' mode of living not considered 'normal' now? In our focus on literature are we missing the opportunity to engage and critique more influential media? Are our representations of apocalypse undermined by paradoxes we fail to confront? The final plenary from Greg Garrard, Chair of ASLE UK, in which the latter question was addressed led to an interesting discussion of further questions: Is it helpful to suggest that nature is culture? Does it make sense to argue that culture is nature? Should we distinguish between positive and negative technologies, or their applications? Are 'harmony' and 'sustainability' concepts that we want to jettison? 'Are we neglecting the spiritual basis of our concerns and our connectedness?' asked a lone voice towards the end of the conference.
Many of these questions were touched upon indirectly in poetry readings from two Scottish poets, John Burnside and David Craig, Chris Agee from Ireland and Chichester's own Vicky Feaver. The editor of the journalPlanet: The Welsh Internationalist, John Barnie, began his reflections on changing environments and culture with a photograph taken from space at night showing light pollution in Europe, which prompted John Parham to point out that our discussions had been neglecting a huge dark area of nature, the sea. Professor in Fine Art at Chichester, Shirley Chubb, gave us an insight into her exhibition that engages with Darwin's process of walking and thinking between his garden path and his study. Indeed, the imagination with which Hugh Dunkerley had constructed this conference ensured that we used all of our faculties in our appreciation of the issues the conference raised. It really did feel that ecocriticism had emerged from its necessarily narrow beginnings to robustly debate the issues now opening before it in a manner that could converse beyond the dogmatisms of literary and cultural theory of the last two decades. In no small part this was due to the friendly, open and enquiring spirit that Hugh Dunkerley had managed to sustain at this conference. Towards the end of the conference Hugh had allowed me to present, not a paper, but a series of questions for Michael Cohen which we opened up to the audience. This created a space in which we could all address many of the questions that had been circling in our heads. My reflections on these, informed by a subsequent correspondence with Cohen, will be presented as a paper at a later EASLCE conference. By the end we seemed to be able to ask the fundamental question of all: What is ecocriticism for?
The papers from the ASLE UK conference will be offered for an ecocriticism special issue of New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics to be co-edited by Wendy Wheeler and Hugh Dunkerley.
3. From May 27-28th 2005, Tamkang University in Tamsui, Taiwan hosted its Third International Conference on Ecological Discourse, taking as its focus the discourse on natural catastrophe.
The more than 30 presentations were about equally divided between Chinese and English. They offered a wide range of perspectives from different disciplines, with a clear emphasis on literary topics. EASCLE was represented by three of its members. Chairman Axel Goodbody delivered the opening keynote lecture on the motif of nature's revenge in recent German-speaking literature and film, and member of the advisory committee Catrin Gersdorf gave a talk on Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. Both also sat on the roundtable discussing the question of the "naturalness" of natural catastrophe which closed the conference.
The conference provided the welcome opportunity to meet with representatives of ASLE Japan, as well as to establish contacts with two scholars who are currently in the process of setting up a new branch of ASLE in India.
3. New publications
Christine Cusick (ed.), Out of the Earth: Ecocritical Readings of Irish Texts , Cork University Press, 2010.
Within the current climate of both literary and environmental studies, Out of the Earth is an unprecedented integration of Irish Studies and Ecocriticism that is both timely and necessary. The essays offer ecocritical readings of Irish literary and cultural texts of various genres, including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, drama and the visual image. Long before there was a theoretical movement that gave a name to and vocabulary for literary readings of nature, scholars of Irish literature understood the importance of the natural world to an Irish cultural sensibility. An emphasis on place not only pervades Irish writing of the twentieth century, but also is in fact rooted in ancient traditions of Celtic mythology and place-lore.
While critical assessments of Irish place writing are numerous, few of them address such representations of the natural world as politically and culturally informed and scripted texts. Even fewer of them address the ecological implications embedded in these ways of knowing place. This project explores the natural world as a record of and participant in the experiences of a vibrant and changing Ireland. The study is thus aimed toward a readership within multiple disciplines whose specific research agenda is to examine what cultural representations of nonhuman nature reveal about how humans care for and dwell in place.
The editor, Christine Cusick, is in the Division of Humanities, Seton Hill University, USA, and there is an introduction by John Elder. List of contents on: http://www.corkuniversitypress.com
Call for abstracts for a publication: EcoGothic (edited by Andrew Smith and William Hughes)
The Gothic is a form that is in part characterised by its exploration of crisis and trauma. Criticism of the Gothic has typically examined such images in terms of their historical, cultural, or psychological origins. However, whilst the Gothic's representation of gender, class, race, nation, and identity politics has received considerable critical attention, comparatively little critical focus has been paid to how the Gothic formulates images of the environment. A novel such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006), for example, employs a number of Gothic tropes in its account of a post-apocalyptic, post-environmental, catastrophe, whereas more implicit images of environmental influence are to be found in Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan (1894).
The editors invite 300 word abstracts for 6,000 word essays (including notes) which explore conjunctions between the Gothic and eco-critically aware approaches. The editors welcome submissions on any aspect of the Gothic literary culture, including references to film, or the Goth scene, from the eighteenth-century to the present day. It is intended to submit the book proposal to Manchester University Press.
Deadline for 300 word abstracts: December 4th 2009. It is envisaged that 6,000 word essays will be required by December 2010. Please send abstracts electronically to:
Prof William Hughes Prof Andrew Smith
Professor of Gothic Studies Professor of English Studies
School of English and Creative Studies HASS Division of English
Bath Spa University University of Glamorgan
Newton Park Campus Pontypridd
Newton St Loe CF37 1DL
Bath BA2 9BN Wales
UK UK
w.hughes@bathspa.ac.uk asmith5@glam.ac.uk
'Earthographies: Ecocriticism and Culture'
will be appearing in April 2008 as Issue No. 64 of the journal New Formations. (See the New Formations website at
http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/newformations/contents.html). Contents:
Wendy Wheeler and Introduction
Hugh Dunkerley
Terry Gifford Recent Critiques of Ecocriticism
John Parham The Poverty of Ecocritical Theory: E.P. Thompson and the British Perspective
Dana Phillips Ecocriticism, Ecopoetics, and a Creed Outworn
Patrick Curry Nature Post-Nature
Noel Keough Sustaining Authentic Human Experience in Community
Jonathan Coope The Ecological Blind Spot in Postmodernism
William Gray On the Road: Robert Louis Stevenson's Views on Nature
Adrian Ivakhiv Stirring the Geopolitical Unconscious: Towards a Jamesonian Ecocriticism
Cary Wolfe Learning from Temple Grandin, or, Animal Studies, Disability Studies, and Who Comes After the Subject
Ron Broglio Heidegger's Shepherd of Being and Nietzsche's Satyr
Wendy Wheeler Postscript on Biosemiotics: Reading Beyond Words - and Ecocriticism
4. TV Appearance
The launching of Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow in the spring of 2004 and the success of German novelist Frank Schätzing's Der Schwarm prompted the Bayerische Rundfunk, one of Germany's regional public TV stations, to host a talk show under the title "Kommt übermorgen die Eiszeit?" (Will another Ice Age start tomorrow?). The invited guests were Schätzing, Prof. Wolfgang Seiler, a climatologist from Karlsruhe, Sabine Bock, the head of Green City e.V., an environmental organization based in Munich, Michael Althen, movie critic forFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , and Catrin Gersdorf, EASCLE member and American studies scholar. Although disagreeing on the degree to which literature and film should obey the scientific 'truth' about the state of our global environment, and in spite of diverging opinions about the aesthetic quality of eco-apocalyptic scenarios such as Emmerich's, the discussants agreed that literature and film serve an important function for keeping environmental issues on the public agenda.
5. Book Reviews
1. Terry Gifford, Review of two books in the Credo Series, edited by Scott Slovic
Rick Bass, Brown Dog of the Yaak: Essays on Art and Activism, Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1999, ISBN 1-57131-224-2
Pattiann Rogers,The Dream of The Marsh Wren: Writing as Reciprocal Creation, Minneapolis: Milkweed, 1999, ISBN 1-57131-225-0
Each book in this series consists of an essay by an American nature writer that intended to be read as a 'credo', a profile by Scott Slovic and a full bibliography of the author's work and the criticism of that work. Details of the series are on the publisher's website: www.milkweed.org
I've looked at two books in the series and the essays are very different. Rick Bass develops a four-part meditation on the tensions between art and activism for his role as both a writer and activist on behalf of the Yaak Valley in Montana where he has made his home. This essay explores the issues raised so brilliantly in Bass's brief, but ground-breaking, postmodern narrative, Fiber (University of Georgia Press, 1998). Whilst acting as a case-study of a writer and activist (Who would be the European equivalent?), this essay raises questions that European narrative/nature writers/journalists have hardly begun to consider, such are our cultural compartments in European publishing (somebody prove me wrong). One of many practical ideas in this book is the following little scheme that sounds like something we could adapt as a creative research project in a European context:
In the spring of 1997, the Orion Society [publishers of the glossy and engaged magazine Orion] brought nature writers from all around the country to give a week of public readings and discussions on behalf of the Yaak's roadless lands. The community was thus exposed to some of the people whose writings may help shape public policy for the federal lands around which they live. And the writers - Terry Tempest Williams, Richard Nelson, Robert Michael Pye and Janisse Ray - were exposed to the human communities that lived next to and within these lands and issues about which those writers were writing. (79)
Bass is struggling in his current work to break out of the mould of American nature writing by finding new forms, new mixes of discourse that challenge readers, new kinds of post-pastoral: 'Damn artists - always trying to pretty a place up, and trying to summon some basic plan of order from a far more complex assemblage of order that already exists, but which is simply not yet visible' (114).
Pattiann Rogers provides a commentary linking her poems that is, in effect, an introduction to her selected poems, full texts included. Her work is interesting in its combination of science and sensuality, her human family and her sense of kinship with the biotic community, her marshalling the detail of the material in an often playful engagement with a larger mystery. The central notion of this essay is one worth consideration as another research project: testing Gary Snyder's suggestion that there is 'No Nature', to what extent is the imagination, and its expression in poetry, say, created by that which it is creating? Imagine the marsh wren making himself/created by the marsh, inside the marsh/ of his own creation, unaware of his being/ inside this dream of mine where I imagine/ he dreams ...'(4). Perhaps this is one answer to the issue raised by ASLE EU's 'Nature as a Cultural Project': how have we historically constructed, say in gender and class terms, a nature from which much of society (the European Left certainly) now seem to be alienated, but which has actually constructed us and our literature? And is our literary imagination in post-industrial Europe in any sense formed by the unprecedented levels of ecological waste and destruction that we create? The struggles of these two American writers, in prose and in poetry, raise a lot of questions might provide interesting answers in a European context.
2. Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism (New Critical Idiom Series), London: Routledge 2004
Besprechung von Jenny Elster
Aufgabengebiete
Wie Garrard in seiner Einführung zu der kulturkritischen Forschungsrichtung Ecocriticism offenbart, hat sich diese traditionell mit Literatur und ursprünglich vornehmlich mit Texten der Romantik beschäftigt. Da jedoch der Bezug zur Gegenwart immer wichtiger geworden ist, und die Richtung somit zu einer wahrhaften Kulturkritik geworden ist, werden heute auch kulturelle Erscheinungen wie Naturfilme, Werbespots, Fotografie etc. mitbehandelt. Diese neue Ausrichtung und diese querdenkenden Ansätze geben den Ecocritics die Möglichkeit in der brennend aktuellen Umwelt-Diskussion mitzureden.
Welche Standpunkte im Umweltdenken vorherrschen und welche Schwerpunkte im Ecocriticism gesetzt werden können, stellt Garrard im zweiten Kapitel, Positions, dar. Interessanterweise fängt er seine Präsentation mit einer Interessengruppe an, die mit Umweltschutz nichts zu tun haben möchte. Die Gegenseite zählt in einer Diskussion natürlich dazu.
Die Beziehung Natur - Kultur stellt ein immens großes Forschungsgebiet dar. So groß wie die Aufgabe ist, dürfte es eine Vielzahl von möglichen Herangehensweisen geben.
Methode
Garrard hat in Ecocriticism eine semantische Methode gewählt. Er hat sechs Wörter, die für unsere Auffassung von und unser Verhalten gegenüber der Natur eine zentrale Rolle spielen, analysiert. Er hat sie auf ursprüngliche Bedeutung, Bedeutungswandel und heutige Verwendung geprüft.
Die Weltbilder von heute zu entdecken scheint eine wichtige Aufgabe des Ecocriticisms zu sein und die semantische Methode birgt sicherlich viele Möglichkeiten. Mit Wörtern wird oft unbedacht umgegangen, und sie auf ihre eigentliche Bedeutung zu prüfen, ist deshalb eine Enthüllungsarbeit, die unter anderem dazu dient Klarheit in die Kommunikation zu bringen und Wissen über das eigene Weltbild zu erweitern. Garrard nennt die von ihm analysierten Wörter 'Tropen', da sie bildhafte Vorstellungen sind.
Bei dem Begriff Pollution angefangen macht Garrard deutlich, wie ein Wort neue Bedeutungen erlangen kann. Interessanterweise geht die Entwicklung dieses Wortes in eine zum Normalfall entgegengesetzte Richtung, und zwar von einer moralischen Bedeutung zu einer materiellen, wobei allerdings die moralische Konnotation nicht geringfügig erhalten bleibt. Anfänglich als seelische Verunreinigung gesehen, wird Pollution im Zeitalter der schädlichen industriellen Emissionen zur Weltbedrohung und zum Schlagwort.
Schlagwörter scheinen die Eigenschaft zu besitzen, schnell ihre Einsatzgebiete zu erweitern und in verwandte Sphären überzugreifen. So wird zum Beispiel auch Verkehrslärm heute gern als eine Art Kontaminierung gesehen.
Auch Wörter selbst können kontaminiert werden, in Verruf kommen und unbrauchbar werden. In seinem Wilderness-Kapitel weist Garrard darauf hin, dass eben dieses Wort oft von an der Umwelt uninteressierten Autoherstellern benutzt wird, um ihre Produkte zu verkaufen. Dieses Beispiel macht deutlich wie wichtig es ist, die Bedeutungswandel im Auge zu behalten.
Ideengeschichte
Das Erforschen von Weltbildern bedarf aber nicht nur der Semantik, sondern eben so sehr das Erforschen der Geschichte der Ideen. In dem Kapitel zu der Vorstellung einer nahe bevorstehenden Apocalypse zum Beispiel präsentiert Garrard die Vorgeschichte des Apokalypse-Gedanken. Eine interessante Erkenntnis stellt die Tatsache dar, dass obwohl große Teile der westlichen Welt heute als areligiös zu bezeichnen wäre, sich nicht viel an der Furcht vor einem baldigen Ende der Welt geändert zu haben scheint.
Garrard spricht mehrmals das Thema Christentum, als Verursacher unseres Verhaltens der Natur gegenüber, an. Die Berechtigung der Menschen, sich die Erde untertan zu machen, sei in der Bibel niedergelegt. Im 17. Jahrhundert habe Descartes mit seinem extremen Dualismus zwischen Geist und Materie die Zweiteilung vollzogen und somit den Boden für die Wissenschaft geebnet. Das alte Testament sowie die Schriften René Descartes wären somit die Hauptverursacher der heutigen umweltschädlichen Weltauffassung. Ich bezweifle nicht, dass Garrard damit Recht hat. Die beiden Postulate stellen aber offensichtlich große Vereinfachungen dar.
Die Wahrheiten der Ökologie
In seinem Buch weist Garrard mehrmals darauf hin, dass Ecocriticism im Unterschied zu anderen Methoden/Ausrichtungen der Literaturanalyse als Partner einer faktenorientierten Naturwissenschaft in ihrem Wahrheitsbezug und -anspruch einzigartig ist. Dieser Umstand macht die Richtung meines Erachtens sehr interessant, wobei ich allerdings vorsichtiger mit dem Wahrheitsbegriff umgehen würde als Garrard es tut. Bei Naturwissenschaftlern geht es um empirisch nachweisbare Fakten. Thesen erweisen sich als wahr oder unwahr. Das Wort Wahrheit - oder truth - hingegen kann unendlich Vieles bedeuten. Zudem erhebt so gut wie jeder auf die Wahrheit Anspruch, so dass nur wer sich auf ewig hinziehende Diskussionen über letzte Dinge einlassen möchte, das Wort benutzen sollte.
Schließlich: Für sehr interessant halte ich die Entwicklung der Ökologie selbst, wie sie in Ecocriticism dargestellt wird. An der Vorstellung von einer vermeintlichen immanenten Harmonie der Natur wird gerüttelt, was für unser Naturverständnis erhebliche Folgen haben müsste. Die Tatsache einer sich nicht selbst regulierenden Natur und nach keinem Gleichgewicht strebender Ökosysteme dürfte meines Erachtens vieles in Frage stellen. Die Ecocritics könnten in dieser „post-modernen" Diskussion eine wichtige Rolle spielen.