Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism

“Buell believes that our relationship to the planet and anthropocentrism has lead to the destruction of it.”

Johnathon Bate spearheaded the ecocritism movement in the UK with poetry which discussed the “ecological embeddedness and shared vulnerability with the non-human world” This was a guidance towards what might have been thinking about “environmental sensibility”

Deep ecology challenges the western anthropocentrism thought that the “natural world is merely a source for humanity and that presuppose that human needs and demands override other considerations”. This assesses that we need to first rethink the hierarchy that assumes the superiority of humans in the ecological hierarchy.

The reading discusses the limitation of social ecology where there are naive acknowledgement of the social injustices of our current social systems. They explain however that it is important not to misread this thinking as it leads to an interest and critique of further ecocriticism theory.

The reading explains that feminist ecology has discussed the issues which surround the biological essentialism which surrounds woman as closer to nature. On one side ecofeminists have adopted this label to celebrated the relationship that they have to nature through both identity and institutionalised identity. For other groups however it is uncritical to “move privilege from one gender to another to address the inequalities of culture/nature and male/female” (Val Plumwood). Donna Harraway also expands on this opinion explaining that it is nessicary to disrupt the hiearchies which are typical of western post-enlightenment thought as these are the very orders which have been “systemic to the logics and practices of domination of woman, people of colour, nature, workers and animals”. (Harraway, 117). This is further explained by the importance of feminist and ecocritism theory in breaking down the binary division. () Caroline Merchant

“Post colonial criticism has also long understood the integral connection between ideological constructions of ‘nature’ and the oppression and exploitation of colonised peoples and their environments:” This explains that the conquest of imperialist thought where the neo-liberal era has furthered and strengthened the impact of the environment on lower economic areas. This “persistent assault of resources” further environmental and social damage “by the worlds’s poor in ever-developing forms. An example of this is the popularity of almond milk where the forests of “” are assaulted in order to protect the neo-liberals of consumption of milk where cows are harmed. This explains the disparities between the environmentalism of the rich and that of the poor.

In discussing the dismantling of human at the top of hierarchy in the ecological system, Cary Wolfe contends that, “in general academic discourse remains locked within an unexamined framework of speciesism”.

Marland, Pippa. “Ecocriticism.” Literature Compass, vol. 10, no. 11, pp. 846–68. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/lic3.12105.