The Trumpeter - Journal of Ecosophy (Athabasca University)
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The Case for Emancipatory Ecospirituality: What is It? And Why Should We Care?
No full textScientific consensus on the environmental emergency has prompted recognition that business as usual is not only materially catastrophic but ethically, socially, and politically unfair. Working from different axiological perspectives, scholars in the environmental humanities have framed the crisis as an opportunity for paradigmatic and radical change, encouraging a new “Great Transformation” or “Great Transition”. Such appeals tend to focus on systemic change at economic and political levels. Nevertheless, the ecological crises as a revolutionary opportunity demands an integral metamorphosis of Western capitalist cultures, including the ontological and ethical dimensions embedded in perception, desires, and affects, and grounded in elementary subjective practices. In this light, ecospirituality is integral to transformative ecology. Confronted with the ecological crisis, this calls for us to set to work on the widely discussed issue of the relations between spirituality and politics
Dunlap, "Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind"
No full textLouise Dunlap's book "Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind" is a heartfelt exploration of the historical harm caused by colonization, with a focus on Dunlap's Californian roots. Through a blend of personal experiences and broader themes such as climate change, resource wars, and genocide, Dunlap offers insight into the trauma caused by colonization and suggests self-healing strategies for descendants. The book is split into ten chapters, each of which explores a different aspect of the issue
The Great Forgetting
No full textWhy did the modern world enter into a “great forgetting” about the more-than-human world so many indigenous peoples took for granted? Second, how can this previous knowledge be reacquired without rejecting the very real accomplishments of the modern mentality? Many deep ecological writers have done extraordinary work on this second question. I will focus on the first, and use its analysis to add some insights regarding the second.
Central to the argument I will make is how language both empowers us and to some degree separates us from direct experience of the other-than-human world. Western languages are particularly prone to reinforcing this separation. Equally central will be a discussion of how media of communication rooted in language further distances us from direct encounter. Also important will be work in contemporary biology and ecology exploring how deeply interconnected all life forms are. The traditional Western idea of individuals, be they plants and animals or human beings, are ultimately irreducibly distinct from their environment has been shown to be mistaken. Individuals have been shown to be made up of simpler individuals who, in relationship with one another, enable emergent qualities to arise at ever greater levels of complexity. Further, while genuinely individual, they cannot be understood without reference to relationships outside what are normally considered individual boundaries.
By seeking the foundations of morality and other values in theology, reason, or will, many moderns are blinded to the fact values supporting morality and beauty exist immanently within the natural world. There is no need to import them from elsewhere. By way of conclusion, I reverse direction and describe one method available to the reader how a ‘remembering’ can come about experientially. This remembering will reconnect with an indigenous and sometimes shamanic perception of the world as alive and connected
Ecophilosophy as a Way of Life
No full textThe contemporary figure of the ecophilosopher perhaps holds the seeds of something that transcends philosophy in its current strictly academic, professionalized, indeed corporatized mode. This is a "something" that could, on the one hand, tie philosophy back to its own ancient, life-giving, but now lost, root in the Graeco-Roman world, and on the other hand, open it up to people searching outside the academy for a shared and reflective way of life that is authentically Earth-aligned. By means of a detailed comparison of ecophilosophy with the ancient schools of Stoicism and Epicureanism, understood not merely as intellectual discourses but as "ways of life" (Pierre Hadot), I argue that the figure of the ecophilosopher potentially offers to thoughtful people everywhere a radical pathway through the illusions of our current period of decline-and-fall towards a more adaptive life grounded in "direct, unmediated contact with the real.
Three Poems
No full textBiographical note: James Owens's newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Channel, Arc, Dalhousie Review, Queen's Quarterly, and The Honest Ulsterman. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario
