The Trumpeter - Journal of Ecosophy (Athabasca University)
Not a member yet
1267 research outputs found
Sort by
Poeticizing Ecology/Ecologizing Poetry: Reading Elizabeth Bishop’s “Poem” Ecologically
No full textIn “Poeticizing Ecology/Ecologizing Poetry: Reading Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Poem’ Ecologically,” we argue that ecological poetry is a kind of ecopoetry that undergirds “nature poetry” and environmental/activist poetry. Ecological poetry is also best put into conversation with deconstruction. This argument, informed by Timothy Morton’s claim that “deconstruction and ecology should talk to one another,” entails challenging previous arguments about what counts as ecopoetry but also the status of the lyric in general. We synthesize James Longenbach’s position in The Resistance of Poetry with Nick Selby’s argument in “Ecopoetries in America” to examine the relationship between close reading and reading ecologically. Rather than an ethical stance perceived in the content of the poem, to read ecologically requires attention to form and linguistic indeterminacy, not only because deconstruction and ecology are alike, but also because poetry is comprised of language, the usage of which “revels in duplicity and disjunction.” Deconstruction is the best approach to divergent perspectives on nature, or the way a poem offers, in Nick Selby’s view, not a clear purchase or single overarching view, but “a struggle to get nature right.” We contend that to give space to alterity, to allow the otherness not only of nature but also of language itself in its capacity for referentiality is to expand the “marked” space of ecology (in the terms set forth by G. Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form). We support this claim with a reading of Bishop’s “Poem,” which we acknowledge as an atypical choice for what constitutes ecological poetry. A borderline ekphrastic poem, “Poem” allows us to talk not only about the space inherent in nature and language but between text and image, or poem and painting. What we find in our reading of Bishop’s “Poem” is a contingency between the poem and the painting, rather than a classical attempt of one to overpower the other, to speak for the other as the more authoritative sign. We find the uncanny or strange quality of Bishop’s ekphrastic approach to an amateurish painting that she calls “sketch” a way to further substantiate Morton’s claim about the relevance of deconstruction to ecology. Through our reading of the poem we argue that no entity completely coincides with itself because ecological thinking has helped us to see how every entity is shot-through with traces of the other; we ourselves are made up of other lifeforms; life is made up of nonlife. To think ecologically is to think the other within the self (especially including all the nonhuman others), within any entity whatsoever.
Climate Change and Integral Ecology
Get PDFWriting in his encyclical Laudato Si’: Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis asserts that there is a “solid scientific consensus” on the reality of climate change and on its origins in human activities (#23). Unfortunately, much of the detailed scientific understanding that underlies this claim has not been made readily accessible to scholars in fields outside of the sciences. This paper aims to correct that omission by examining the science of climate change in the context of integral ecology. In this light, it will be demonstrated how human activities cause climate change, climate change has devastating effects on human lives and livelihoods, and human actions are necessary in order to mitigate climate change. Mitigating climate change requires societal actions that bring together technological, cultural, sociological, economic, and political considerations. The question is, do we have the wisdom to see that we are the cause of climate change, that climate change is rapidly making our planet unlivable for large numbers of human beings, and that we have to take strong and immediate actions if we are to avoid ever worsening future disasters? Hopefully, attention to integral ecology—to the interplay of human activities with natural ecosystems—can encourage us to do so
Ecological Self from an Aesthetic Point of View
Get PDFThe present article develops an aesthetic signification for the idea of an ecological self proposed by Arne Næss and for its underlying relationship of identification. It is based on a discussion of a model of environmental aesthetics – the mystery model – by Stan Godlovitch. Godlovitch has presented his model as an alternative to the cognitive paradigm developed by Allen Carlson. While showing the value of this acentric aesthetic, I am proposing a different version of this model founded on a phenomenological approach – by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This perspective provides a better understanding of a subject's attitude of insignificance and aesthetic aloofness inherent in an acentric aesthetic experience of nature. It also shows what brings together and separates this experience, first from death, and secondly from mysticism. In so doing, it helps establish the legitimacy of the concept of the ecological self by looking at it in a new way
Rewilding, "the Hoop," and Settler Apocalypse
No full textThis paper presents an ethnographic account of a grassroots network of mostly white-identified nomads who travel in the northwest United States’ Great Basin and Columbia Plateau regions. Living mostly on National Forest land, this movement of “rewilders” appropriates local Indigenous peoples’ traditional ecological knowledge in order to gather and replant wild foods in a seasonal round that they refer to as the “Sacred Hoop.” I discuss the Hoop network in order to explore the environmental ethics of a group that is at once strikingly unique and also an embodiment of the problems of settler colonialism within the broader environmentalist movement. I begin by introducing the group's ecologies and ethics, and subsequently move into an examination of the multiple and sometimes-contradictory lines of apocalyptic narrative logic at work in Hoopster discourse. I assert that the Hoopsters’ conflicting accounts of the Anthropocene, and the temporality of its disasters, are a manifestation of their ongoing work grappling with their own racial positionality. Despite the Hoopsters’ uncompromising critiques of colonialism, capitalism, and environmental exploitation, they struggle to come to terms with their role in ongoing colonialism and the marginalization of Indigenous peoples. In this way, the Hoopsters echo the troubled narratives at work in broader North American environmental thought, which consistently reveres the idea of Indigenous cultures while failing to enter into solidarity relationships with contemporary Indigenous communities and their efforts toward decolonization
The Bipolarity of Modern ‘Man’ in the Anthropocene: Ecomodernist Mania as Case for Unmanning Anthropocene Discourse
Get PDFThis paper examines Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ “Evolve: The Case for Modernization as the Road to Salvation” from the perspective of psychopathology. ”Evolve” articulates an all too common denial about the severe implications of the Anthropocene. This denial, I suggest, derives from modern humanity’s wish to save itself from the threats of ecocide and apocalypse without having to change its modernist ways. Upon considering this understandable inclination towards denial, the paper unveils the resultant manic-depressive opposition between ecomodernism and deep ecology. Modern humanity’s respective manic and depressive reactions to these two poles fosters a manic, escapist denial that promotes modernist expansion and limits our capacity to reform Anthropocene discourse and avoid environmental crisis. The analogy between bipolar disorder and the ecomodernism / deep ecology opposition draws from Darian Leader’s Lacanian psychoanalytic account, as well as his phenomenological-psychiatric influences
