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Literature and Environment

Lawrence Buell,1 Ursula K. Heise,3
ANNUAL
REVIEWS Further and Karen Thornber2
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1
Annual Reviews content online, Department of English, 2 Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University,
including: Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138; email: lbuell@[Link], thornber@[Link]
• Other articles in this volume 3
Department of English, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305;
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Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 2011. 36:417–40 Keywords

First published online as a Review in Advance on ecocriticism, place, ecofeminism, environmental (in)justice,
August 1, 2011
(post)colonialism, indigeneity, animal studies
The Annual Review of Environment and Resources
is online at [Link] Abstract
This article’s doi: Since prehistory, literature and the arts have been drawn to portrayals
10.1146/annurev-environ-111109-144855
of physical environments and human-environment interactions. The
Copyright  c 2011 by Annual Reviews. modern environmentalist movement as it emerged first in the late-
All rights reserved
nineteenth century and, in its more recent incarnation, in the 1960s,
1543-5938/11/1121-0417$20.00 gave rise to a rich array of fictional and nonfictional writings concerned
with humans’ changing relationship to the natural world. Only since
the early 1990s, however, has the long-standing interest of literature
studies in these matters generated the initiative most commonly known
as “ecocriticism,” an eclectic and loosely coordinated movement whose
contributions thus far have been most visible within its home discipline
of literature but whose interests and alliances extend across various art
forms and media. In such areas as the study of narrative and image,
ecocriticism converges with its sister disciplines in the humanities: en-
vironmental anthropology, environmental history, and environmental
philosophy. In the first two sections, we begin with a brief overview of
the nature, significance, and evolution of literature-environment stud-
ies. We then summarize in more detail six specific centers of interest:
(a) the imagination of place and place-attachment, (b) the enlistment
and critique of models of scientific inquiry in the study of literature and
the arts, (c) the examination of the significance of gender difference and
environmental representation, (d ) the cross-pollination of ecocritical
and postcolonial scholarship as ecocriticism has extended its horizons
beyond its original focus on Anglo-American imagination, (e) ecocriti-
cism’s evolving interest in indigenous art and thought, and ( f ) ecocri-
ticism’s no less keen and complex attentiveness to artistic representation
and the ethics of relations between humans and animals.

417
 EG36CH17-Buell ARI 19 September 2011 8:9

regimes of policy implementation is the

Contents impetus of creative imagination, vision, will,
and belief. Even though, as the poet W.H.
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Auden famously wrote, “poetry makes nothing
ECOCRITICISM’S
happen” in and of itself, the outside-the-box
DEVELOPMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
thought experiments of literature and other
IMAGINATION OF PLACE:
media can offer unique resources for activating
FROM LOCAL TO GLOBAL . . . . 420
concern and creative thinking about the
LITERATURE, SCIENCE,
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planet’s environmental future. By themselves,

ENVIRONMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
creative depictions of environmental harm are
GENDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
unlikely to free societies from lifestyles that de-
(POST)COLONIALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
pend on radically transforming ecosystems. But
INDIGENEITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
reflecting on works of imagination may prompt
IMAGINING NONHUMANS:
intensified concern about the consequences of
ECOCRITICISM AND
such choices and possible alternatives to them.
ANIMAL STUDIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430
CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
ECOCRITICISM’S
DEVELOPMENT
Ecocriticism has grown exponentially from its
INTRODUCTION inception in the early 1990s as an organized
Literature and environment studies— initiative (1, 2). The Association for the Study
commonly called “ecocriticism” or “envi- of Literature and Environment (ASLE, es-
ronmental criticism” in analogy to the more tablished in 1992) ([Link] has
general term literary criticism—comprise become a worldwide movement with chapters
an eclectic, pluriform, and cross-disciplinary throughout Europe, East and South Asia,
initiative that aims to explore the environ- and Australia-New Zealand, though scholars
mental dimensions of literature and other from the Anglophone world, especially the
creative media in a spirit of environmental United States and the United Kingdom, still
Ecocriticism: the concern not limited to any one method or predominate. Since Aristotle, literary criticism
omnibus term most commitment. Ecocriticism begins from the had taken a certain interest in “setting,” but not
commonly used to conviction that the arts of imagination and until the late twentieth century did it seriously
refer to the study thereof—by virtue of their grasp engage environmental history and the environ-
environmentally
of the power of word, story, and image to mental and social sciences. The first significant
oriented study of
literature and (less reinforce, enliven, and direct environmental ecocritical study, Joseph Meeker’s The Comedy
commonly) other concern—can contribute significantly to the of Survival, and the term ecocriticism date
expressive media, understanding of environmental problems: the from the 1970s (3, 4). Meeker’s diagnosis of
including the critical multiple forms of ecodegradation that afflict archetypal comic plots as reflecting strategies of
premises informing
planet Earth today. In this, ecocriticism con- adaptation in the interest of survival (3) antici-
such study
curs with other branches of the environmental pates later interest in the pertinence of scientific
Pastoral: in common
humanities—ethics, history, religious studies, models for environmental-literary inquiry. In-
usage, referring to the
lifestyle of shepherds anthropology, humanistic geography—in fluential studies by Leo Marx (5) and Raymond
or other nomadic holding that environmental phenomena must Williams (6) of pastoral traditions in American
peoples. In literary and be comprehended, and that today’s burgeoning and British literatures in their ecohistorical
art criticism, stylized array of environmental concerns must be contexts spotlighted literature as crucial to
representation of
addressed qualitatively as well as quantitatively. understanding the environmental transforma-
rusticity in contrast to
town and metropolis At least as fundamental to their remediation tions of urbanization and techno-modernity,
as scientific breakthroughs and strengthened influencing later work on environmental

418 Buell · ·
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 EG36CH17-Buell ARI 19 September 2011 8:9

philosophy and politics of genre, place, region, to transnational and/or global (29, 30) and
and nation. This partly explains ecocriticism’s the cross-pollination of literature-environment
early concentration on the pastoral imagination studies both with postcolonial literary studies
Environmental
(7, 8), on Anglo-American Romanticism (ca. and with studies of ethnic minority literatures justice: movements to
1780–1860) (by no coincidence also the start (e.g., 31–34) in addition to Native American, address the unequal
of the Industrial Revolution) (8–11), on lyric which has been of strong interest from the distribution of
poetry in the tradition of William Wordsworth start. These later developments are by no means environmental benefits
and hazards across
(1770–1850) and his Anglo-American succes- the only initiatives that have taken literature-
population groups,
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sors (12–14), and on literary nature writing environment studies far beyond its original especially by race
from Thoreau to the present (8, 12, 14–16). base in modern Anglophone writing. Today’s and/or class
Literature and environment studies have literature-environment scholarship considers
evolved significantly over time, as the most cited all eras of Western history (e.g., 35–38) and is
ecocritical collections show (17–19). First-wave increasingly influenced by criticism on and/or
scholarship of the 1990s tended to equate envi- from the non-Anglophone world, particularly
ronment with nature; to focus on literary ren- Hispanic, German, Chinese, and Japanese.
ditions of the natural world in poetry, fiction, A number of other concerns have persisted
and nonfiction as means of evoking and pro- amid these changes, however. Literature-
moting contact with it; to value nature preser- environment studies have always sought at
vation and human attachment to place at a least in principle to encompass not only such
local-communitarian or bioregional level; and specific genres as nature writing and nature
to affirm an ecocentric or biocentric ethics, of- poetry, but also all expressive media, including
ten intensified by some conception of an in- visual, musical, and cinematic as well as more
nate bond—whether biological, psychological, purely instrumental forms of expression such as
or spiritual—conjoining the individual human scholarly articles and the conventions of legisla-
being and the natural world. The phenomeno- tive documents, reports from nongovernmental
logical philosophy of Naess (inventor of “deep organizations, and the like. Since Killingsworth
ecology”)1 (20), Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, and & Palmer published Ecospeak in 1990 (39),
(at first especially) Heidegger influenced some providing a comparative rhetorical analysis of
of the strongest ecocritical work in this area scholarly conventions across the disciplines
(21–23). By contrast, second-wave scholarship from the sciences to the humanities, one of the
(Reference 1, pp. 1–28) of the past decade has liveliest fields within ecocriticism has been en-
shown greater interest in literatures pertaining vironmental rhetoric studies (e.g., 40–43). The
to the metropolis and industrialization (24–26); possibilities of enlisting scientific models—e.g.,
has tended to reject the validity of the nature- from evolutionary biology, ecology, and infor-
culture distinction, sometimes to the point of mation sciences—has provoked lively ongoing
following Bruno Latour’s stigmatization of na- interest and debate. Differences in environ-
ture as hopelessly vague and antiquated (27, 28); mental perception and imagination between
and has favored a sociocentric rather than bio- men and women and between “natives” and
centric and/or individual-experience-oriented settlers have been scrutinized from the start.
ethics and aesthetics, placing particular em- Another ongoing theme has been literary and
phasis on environmental justice concerns (19). other aesthetic imagination of cross-species
Related developments include the reconcep- relations—in literature for children as well as
tion of place-attachment from local-focused for adults (44). Across these various subfields of
research, ecocriticism has sought to investigate
how particular templates of storytelling and
1
Deep ecology is an egalitarian vision of organisms as knots image-making shape humans’ real-life interac-
in the biospherical net or field of intrinsic relations, often
extended to refer to relations between the human self and tions with the natural world in ways that are
the biosphere. historically and culturally distinctive.

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Turning to matters of aesthetic form, of the reason for this is intradisciplinary (to re-
throughout both major phases of its de- dress the historic neglect of setting relative to
velopment, literature-environment studies plot, character, image, and symbol in literary
have made significant contributions to the works). More significantly, however, ecocrit-
understanding of a number of genres—e.g., icism’s attention to place reflects its recogni-
to environmental nonfiction or nature writ- tion of the interconnectedness between human
ing; to poetic form and method (45–46); to life/history and physical environments to which
drama/theater (47); and to “narrative scholar- works of imagination (in all media, including
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ship” (48), an experimental prose that blends literature) bear witness—hence the claim by
autobiographical memoir with formal analysis, one of ecocriticism’s earliest spokespersons that
as in Ian Marshall’s fusion of mountaineering its distinctive addition to the commonly stud-
literature analysis and memoir (49) and Joni ied triad of race, class, and gender was place as
Adamson’s study of the art and politics of a critical category (Reference 17, pp. xv–xxxii).
Native American literature interspersed with Literature-environment studies obviously
reflections about her experience as a non-native have no monopoly on place theory, an inter-
critic, teacher, and activist (50). A notable fea- est shared across the humanities as well as
ture of ASLE conferences as well as its flagship social and applied sciences. Ecocritical think-
journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Liter- ing broadly accords with humanistic geogra-
ature and Environment has been the copresence phers who conceive place-sense as a fusion
of contributions by both scholars and environ- of personal allegiance, social construction, and
mental writers and other creative artists. physiographic matrix, while often differing in
This partiality for critical/creative com- practice as to the relative emphasis on place-
pounds is linked to a common, though di- attachment at the level of imagined individ-
minishing, complaint by academic critics both ual experience versus at the level of the social
within and outside the field of its alleged resis- collective. Ecocritical partiality for “narrative
tance to “theory.” The complaint is valid insofar scholarship” (see previous section) is partly ex-
as ecocriticism initially often set itself against plicable as a way of striking a balance between
poststructuralist/deconstructionist “demystifi- these two claims.
cations” of word-worlds as linguistic and/or First-wave ecocriticism attached special
ideological constructs rather than as the “real- value to the aesthetics and ethics of place-
istic” evocations that early ecocritics often took attachment at a local or regional scale, as
them to be. But after the initial phase of resis- modeled in the bioregional thinking of such
tance to theory, the conceptual achievements of environmental writer-critics as Wendell Berry
literature-environment studies have been no- and Gary Snyder, whose essayistic writings
table not only within the arenas discussed be- were more influential as catalysts for ecocriti-
low, but also for their lively ongoing debates cism than were their fictive works (e.g., 53–56).
over the very issue of “ecomimesis,” i.e., envi- Bioregionalism holds that the planetary future
ronmental art’s pretensions to portray or evoke hinges on strengthened allegiance to the
the palpable world as against its function as ecological unit, often defined in terms of a
rhetorical or political artifact (e.g., References “watershed” or drainage basin, as against the
1, pp. 29–61; 8, pp. 83–114; 15; 27; 51, pp. 135– jurisdictional unit—an allegiance that entails
84; 52, pp. 85–112). commitment to bioregion as personal habitat,
interdependent human community, and sus-
tainable physical environment, all (properly) in
IMAGINATION OF PLACE: cognizance of the interdependences between
FROM LOCAL TO GLOBAL one’s particular ecosystem and the wider
The concept of place has always been of central world (57). Some of the most distinctive work
interest to literature-environment studies. Part of first-wave environmental studies focused,

420 Buell · ·
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 EG36CH17-Buell ARI 19 September 2011 8:9

accordingly, on Wordsworth as laureate and and nomadism—began to exert pressure on a

denizen of the English Lake Country (9), on perspective mostly focused on the local and the
Thoreau’s attachment to Walden Woods and regional. Finally, public discussion of global
its natural history (8, 58), on the intimacy of environmental problems such as biodiversity
the late Romantic poet John Clare’s tie to loss and climate change made obvious the need
the vanishing traditional landscape of early for ecocritical discourse to develop new ways
nineteenth-century Northamptonshire (23), of addressing global interconnectedness and
on Robert Frost’s achievement as the poet of less obvious the idea that local place or region
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upcountry New England at its turn-of-the- was the only or best way to do this.
twentieth-century moment of postagricultural Environmental justice ecocriticism, which
reforestation (59), on John Muir’s sense sought to show the structural links between
of wilderness as home as grounded in his social and environmental problems, fell short
Scots-diasporic boyhood in rural Wisconsin of making the shift to a genuinely global
(60), and on the sensitively local knowledge perspective as long as it focused on the envi-
and place-attachment of Thomas Hardy’s ronmental rights of U.S. minorities alone and
Wessex novels (61). These and similar studies pitted a minoritarian sense of place against that
delivered a powerful, calibrated analysis of of the white Anglo mainstream, still relying on
literature’s capacity to memorialize and trans- the same trope of rootedness (e.g., 63). But it
mit what place-sense means—especially at a broadened this perspective when it began to
comparatively local as well as rural level. include fights for environmental resources and
That achievement, however significant, also health elsewhere in the world, even though it
came to be seen as insufficient. Although biore- continued to highlight the primacy of the local
gionalism in principle, as Snyder cautions, “is (64). A different strategy for opening up the lo-
not just a rural program” but is “as much for the cal to the global was to reconceptualize place as
restoration of urban neighborhood life and the a node in a global network by highlighting that
greening of cities” (Reference 55, p. 43), first- “[t]here is no such thing as a local environmen-
wave literature-environment studies tended tal problem” because all such problems form
in practice to focus on exurban environments. part of a network of global processes and issues
This explains in part the shift that began around (Reference 65, p. 7). From this perspective, the
the start of this century toward greater prior- observation of local phenomena such as bird
itization of landscapes that are metropolitan migrations or manifestations of climate change
and/or bear distinct marks of industrial trans- became a point of departure for understanding
formation (24–26, 62). More fundamentally, and emotionally relating to global ecological
however, the prioritization of the region as the processes. Similarly, perceptions and experi-
preferred ecological and cultural unit in early ences of environmental risk shared across bor-
ecocritical place theory came under question. ders emerged as conceptual hinges connecting
Environmentalism had defined itself from the local to transnational forms of inhabitation (66).
beginning as a global as well as local mode of Intersections between ecocriticism and
thought through its appeal to the “Blue Planet” postcolonial studies that began to be explored
image of Earth from outer space and its slogan in the early 2000s marked a further stage in
“Think globally, act locally.” Increased interest the integration of discourses about the local
on the part of literary scholars in globalization and the global. In the encounter between these
processes and the forms of identity they help to two areas of study, it became clear that eco-
generate—variously approached through such critical frameworks had most often been na-
labels as transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, tional or even nationalist, whereas postcolonial-
borderlands cultures, diaspora, hybridity, mes- ist approaches tended to focus on transnational
tizaje (mixtures of indigenous and European and cosmopolitan webs of connection. Addi-
ethnicities and cultures in Latin America), tionally, whereas ecocritics had emphasized ties

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to place, postcolonialists had foregrounded dis- mark of literature-environment studies com-

placements. Further differentiating these stud- pared with other types of humanistic inquiry.
ies, ecocritics had valued purity in ecosystems They envision theoretical biology and the cog-
and places over the moments of hybridization nitive sciences as, ideally, the foundation for
and border-crossing that most interested post- cultural research. Joseph Carroll and Glen
colonial scholars (67, 68). The relationship be- Love, for example, in the spirit of E.O. Wilson’s
tween local and global frameworks had also “consilience,” aim to make evolutionary the-
been envisioned quite differently: Ecocritics ory the basis for literary and cultural re-
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usually projected harmonious, widening circles search. Culture, they argue, is based on the
of concern and involvement from the local to “adapted mind,” “a biologically constrained set
the global and sometimes the cosmic, whereas of cognitive and motivational characteristics”
postcolonial scholars tended to stress tensions (References 69, p. vii; 70), and cultural phenom-
and disruptions between local and global frame- ena should, therefore, be explained in terms of
works of experience (68). Exploring such con- what they accomplish for human adaptation and
flicts and convergences between the study of survival. This approach has yielded some inter-
colonial domination and ecological degrada- esting theories about what may have triggered
tion produced a more fluid perspective on the the emergence of, for instance, storytelling (71–
sense of the local as one, but not the only 73). However, this approach has found little res-
possible gateway to environmental awareness onance in ecocriticism, not only because many
and ethics. By contrast, transnational and “eco- scholars in the humanities shy away from theo-
cosmopolitan” perspectives conceiving all at- retical paradigms that hearken back to the de-
tachments to place, region, nation, or world as terminisms of sociobiology, but also because
outcomes of particular cultural practices came the adaptationist approach, with its concept of
to be seen as an increasingly powerful approach human nature as a “universal, species-typical ar-
to understanding both cultural and ecological ray of behavioral and cognitive characteristics”
forms of planetary connectedness (29). (Reference 69, p. vii), provides few grounds for
the historically and culturally specific analyses
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, typically practiced by those within literary stud-
ENVIRONMENT ies. Furthermore, adaptationism’s emphasis on
Ecocriticism’s relationship to the natural sci- human anatomy and physiology, which has not
ences has always been extraordinarily ambiva- changed substantially over the past few thou-
lent. Ecocritics, like environmentalists more sand years, is ill-suited to explain the enormous
generally, rely on the insights of biologists, variability of cultures over the same time period.
ecologists, and chemists as the basis for their For most ecocritics, ecology has played a
claims about the state of nature, and research more indirect role. Considered more synthetic
findings from the natural sciences provide much than other sciences, ecology, especially in
of the social legitimation for efforts on behalf of ecocriticism’s first phase of development,
conservation. But some ecocritics also see sci- was often understood to provide an account
ence and technology as root causes of ecological of the natural functioning of ecosystems as
crisis, both in reducing nature to a mere object stable, harmonious, and homeostatic if not
to be studied and manipulated by a detached disrupted by humans. Societies that understand
observer, and in amplifying people’s ability to and adapt themselves to this state of nature,
inflict damage on nature. Consequently, eco- it was thought, are or become freer, fairer,
critical analyses have argued for a range of dis- and more sustainable. Literary works that
crepant perspectives regarding the role of the portrayed such harmonious interrelations
natural sciences in cultural inquiry. between individuals, social communities, and
Some ecocritics see the connection of their their natural surroundings, such as the poetry
work to scientific research as the distinctive of A.R. Ammons, Wendell Berry, Robinson

422 Buell · ·
Heise Thornber
 EG36CH17-Buell ARI 19 September 2011 8:9

Jeffers, W.S. Merwin, and Gary Snyder as well Gubaryev, Christa Wolf, Cherrı́e Moraga,
as a great deal of Native American literature Richard Powers, Todd Haynes, Suzanne
(12, 74, 75) were singled out for praise in that Antonetta, and Ruth Ozeki integrate scientific
they seemed to present models of sustainable facts, figures, and documents into their stories,
living. Such perceptions of ecology as well as plays, and films about environmental contam-
of the literary texts that allegedly exemplified ination and its consequences for humans and
them came under attack in the early 2000s for the natural world. Ecocritics have investigated
misconstruing, in the critics’ view, both the this rhetoric of toxic and radioactive pollution
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dynamic evolution of ecosystems over time in great detail, as it raises complex questions
and the aesthetic texture of literary works about what makes an environmental crisis
that makes them something other than realist come to seem “real” to the reader (26, 82, 83),
documentations of nature (51, 76). A similar what cultural assumptions about risk inform
questioning of ecology as the science of natural such accounts (29), and what conceptions of
harmony had already taken place earlier in the human body and its porous boundaries with
environmental history (77, 78), making it more the environment these accounts articulate (52).
difficult in both disciplines to establish simple Many other fields of scientific inquiry, such
lines of connection from ecological science as botany (especially in its connection with agri-
to cultural values and particular forms of culture and gardening), ornithology, genetics,
storytelling. Such connections were also com- and conservation biology are addressed, often
plicated by a somewhat different critique that in minute detail, in environmentally oriented
targeted not only humanist misunderstandings verbal and visual works. Indeed, partly because
of science but also the implicit values inform- of this interest in blending scientific findings
ing some types of scientific inquiry. Feminist with aesthetic textures, environmentalism has
and queer theorists (see the Gender section, found particularly rich expression in the genres
below), for example, targeted heteronormative of nonfiction prose and, in film, the nature doc-
assumptions in certain kinds of scientific expla- umentary, genres that have not been as promi-
nations of animal behavior (79, 80), and others nent in the other fields of cultural production
highlighted the value judgments underlying that emerged from the new social movements of
such apparently neutral terms as biodiversity the 1960s and 1970s. Compared with the nov-
(81). In ecocriticism, the prominence of science els, poems, plays, and feature films that have
diminished considerably as a consequence of made the feminist, gay, civil rights, and anti-
these critiques that suggested ecological science colonial movements such towering presences
could not in any simple manner be translated in literature and the arts, the hallmark of en-
into social models and cultural values. vironmentalism has been a kind of prose and
That large-scale integrations of the natural film that sits at the intersection of narrative and
sciences and literary studies have remained science, blending the endeavor to convey a sci-
unsuccessful, however, does not mean that the entific perspective on environmental crisis with
two fields have failed to engage with each other the impulse to tell large- and small-scale sto-
in more limited and specific ways. The dialogue ries about humans’ interaction with nature. An-
between science and storytelling is particularly nie Dillard’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Pilgrim at
obvious in the representation of such issues Tinker Creek (1974), for example, blends de-
as chemical contamination and radioactive tailed observations of the natural world with the
fallout. Scientists and science writers from author’s reflections on the human meanings of
Rachel Carson to Sandra Steingraber have life and death, whereas Ishimure Michiko’s Ku-
mobilized narrative as a way of making the gai jōdo (Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow, 1969) com-
impact of environmental toxins intelligible. bines personal narrative with legal and medical
Conversely, writers and filmmakers such as documents in the attempt to portray the suffer-
Ishimure Michiko, Don DeLillo, Vladimir ing of victims of Minamata disease, an epidemic

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 EG36CH17-Buell ARI 19 September 2011 8:9

of mercury poisoning caused by toxic waste dis- and temporary for the moment, these endings
posal in Japan between the 1950s and the 1970s. suggest, but ultimately necessary for an altered
German novelist Christa Wolf, writing in what relationship between humans and their envi-
Ecofeminism:
ecologically conscious was then East Germany, blends science and ronments in an increasingly globalized world.
feminist critical storytelling even more seamlessly in Störfall:
practice centering on Nachrichten eines Tages (Accident: A Day’s News,
claims of distinction or 1987), a novel that contrasts the description of GENDER
difference of
the protagonist’s brother’s brain surgery with Although commonly identified with the radical
environmental
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perception, the emerging news about the nuclear reactor political movements of the 1970s and 1980s,
imagination, value, explosion at Chernobyl. This double plot al- ecofeminism (environmental feminism) has
and behavior lows Wolf to juxtapose different perceptions of a much longer history, perhaps even ex-
according to gender advanced technology, different experiences of tending back to prehistoric goddess worship
risk, and different perspectives on the role of (References 84; 85, p. 281). The term ecofem-
science in mediating contemporary humans’ re- inism was coined by the French feminist
lationship to their own bodies and a world in- Françoise d’Eaubonne in 1974 to represent
visibly but irremediably contaminated. Wolf ’s women’s potential to instigate an ecological
literary engagement with science and the en- revolution entailing new relations between
vironment was taken so seriously that it led women and men and between people and
to public, controversial, and politically charged nature in the name of ensuring human survival
discussions about the novel among scientists, (Reference 86, p. 84). Ecofeminist discourse
intellectuals, and artists in print and at the East generally argues that the exploitation of nature
German Academy of Arts between 1988 and and that of women are intimately linked,
1990. with some ecofeminists claiming “a parallel
In a somewhat different twist, writers in men’s thinking between their ‘right’ to
from the developing world often juxtapose exploit nature, on the one hand, and the
scientific investigation of the natural world use they make of women, on the other”
with indigenous forms of knowledge. In (References 87, p. 26; 90, p. 75). Ecofeminism
Cuban-Puertorican novelist Mayra Montero’s also argues that the battle for ecological survival
Tú, la oscuridad (In the Palm of Darkness, 1995) is intrinsically intertwined with the struggles
and Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry for women’s liberation and other forms of social
Tide (2004), for example, Western scientists justice (References 88, p. 75; 89, pp. 177–78).
visit Haiti and the Sundarbans archipelago on Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy further
the Bay of Bengal, respectively, to study en- characterize ecofeminism as “based not only
dangered species. Both scientists contract local on the recognition of connections between the
guides who are illiterate but intimately familiar exploitation of nature and the oppression of
with local topography, flora, and fauna through women across patriarchal societies” but also
lifelong inhabitation and experience. Deep-felt “on the recognition that these two forms of
bonds develop between the scientists and their domination are bound up with class exploita-
local informants because of their shared love tion, racism, colonialism, and neocolonialism”
for the natural world and in spite of persistent (Reference 90, pp. 2–3). Women’s conventional
cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic gaps. association with the natural world, claimed to
Neither Western science nor indigenous be ubiquitous (91), is exalted by some ecofem-
knowledge emerges as the privileged mode in inists who seek to promote a mirror-opposite
these portrayals, but their combination, even of patriarchal constructions. These ecofem-
though the forces of nature, in both texts, end inists argue for acknowledging a “women’s
up severing the friendship through the death spirituality” grounded in female biology and
of one or both protagonists. The fusion of acculturation, one that takes account of the
different epistemologies may be precarious “holistic proclivities of women” (References 2,

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p. 24; 92). As Catriona Sandilands has observed, Bodily Natures (52), for instance, examines how
those who promote what she slightingly calls movements across human bodies and nonhu-
“motherhood environmentalism” understand man nature alter our senses of subjectivity,
women—as bearers of children and guardians ethics, and scientific knowledge. Intersecting
of “family sanctity”—as having a heightened with ecofeminism is queer environmentalism,
awareness of ecological destruction (Refer- or queer ecology, which interrogates the many
ence 79, p. xi). It is women, they believe, who relationships between sex and nature in hu-
will “green” society and improve the environ- man society, including the heteronormativity
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ment, primarily from the private sphere. of much environmental discourse. It aims
Such forms of radical ecofeminist essen- to help develop both a sexual politics that
tialism have been critiqued from economic, demonstrates a clearer understanding of the
philosophical, and sociological perspectives. biosocial constitution of the natural world
Appeals have been made for more sophisticated and an environmental politics that takes into
examinations of relationships between gender consideration how sexual relations influence
and the nonhuman, as these involve etiologies, nature and our perceptions of it (Reference 80).
progression, and remediation of environmental Grounded in ecological feminist thought,
degradation. Some critics, including Sandi- ecofeminist literary criticism can be broadly un-
lands, have argued that embracing flexible derstood as politically engaged discourse that
understandings of gender and other identities analyzes conceptual connections between the
will make feminism a more democratic enter- manipulation of women and the nonhuman.
prise (Reference 79, p. xx). Carolyn Merchant Such work has examined how narrative fiction
proposes a compromise of sorts with the “ethics has written nature as a feminist space, allowing
of earthcare,” an ethics that “neither genders writers to transform “what is into what could
nature as female nor privileges women as care- be” (Reference 93, p. 22). It has also explored
takers, yet nonetheless emerges from women’s the differences between men’s and women’s de-
experiences and connections to the earth and pictions of nature as well as how creative texts
from cultural constructions of nature as unpre- intertwine discourse on women and the envi-
dictable and chaotic” (Reference 86, p. xii). For ronment with discussion of diverse forms of
her part, Stacy Alaimo argues that the effort to social injustice. Such scholarship has provided
purge feminism of all “essentialism” is one of numerous insights into the multiple paradigms
feminist theory’s most notable attempts to es- and fantasies concerning the nonhuman—
cape nature. She stresses that banishing nature particularly relationships between women and
from culture “risks the return of the repressed nature—embraced by writers and literary char-
and forecloses the possibilities for subversive acters of both genders. For instance, Lorina N.
feminist rearticulations of the term” (Reference Quartarone has examined how the Aeneid both
93, pp. 4–6). Many believe the link between the reinforces and complicates dualisms, draw-
subordination of women and the destruction ing and then erasing clear lines between
of ecosystems stems not from an essentialist nature/culture, female/male, and body/mind,
identification of women with the nonhuman as well as connections between female/
but instead from women’s social position, nature (Reference 95). Annette Kolodny’s
perceiving a material connection between the readings of men’s and women’s writings on
externalization and exploitation of women and Western landscapes reveal men as respon-
the abuse of natural resources (Reference 94). sible for massively exploiting and altering
Some of the most exciting current research the continent and women as concerned with
in ecofeminism focuses on the body, as scholars “locating a home and a familial human commu-
critique masculine assumptions that bodies nity within a cultivated garden.” These fantasies
are immune to environmental impacts by may seem relatively tame, but when examined
acknowledging their permeability. Alaimo’s in their contemporary milieu, they “emerge

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 EG36CH17-Buell ARI 19 September 2011 8:9

as saving and even liberating” (Reference 96, looking more closely at the nuances and am-
pp. xii–xiii). biguities of discourse on environmental degra-
Scholars drawing on ecofeminist thought dation writ large.
have enhanced our understanding of creative
articulations of environmental abuse. Insuffi-
cient attention has been given, however, to (POST)COLONIALISM
the ways literature degenders ecodegradation, The increased attention to non-Western
either by depicting women as complicit in dam- literatures is one of the most exciting new
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aging ecosystems or by portraying ecological developments in environmental criticism.

distress, its perpetrators, and its ameliorators as Scholarly interest in how creative texts from
involving human beings in general. At the same Africa, Latin America, and Asia discuss the
time that it features a nursing woman being environmental aspects of (post)colonialism has
literally sucked dry by her children and com- expanded particularly rapidly, quickened by
munity, Kim Hyesun’s poem “Kkŏpjil ŭi no- the increasing interest of environmental and
rae” (“Song of Skin,” 1985) also points to the postcolonial literary critics in one another’s
broader consequences of bearing and nourish- writings. Also important has been the growing
ing offspring. References to landscapes collaps- tendency of literature scholars of all specialties
ing, rivers drying up, and riverbeds cracking to accept both the important position of
apart indicate what can happen when the very non-Western literatures in world literature
people the woman nourishes leave her side and (texts that circulate beyond their culture of
extract not milk from their mother but water origin) and the need to offset conventional
from rivers, trees from forests, and minerals nation-centric approaches by focusing on
from mountains: The poem depicts women’s transnational and global cultural flows.
bodies as enabling environmental degradation. Anticipated by historical scholarship in-
Ch’oe Sŭngja’s “Kyŏul e pada e kat-ŏtda” cluding Alfred W. Crosby’s Ecological Imperi-
(“Went to the Sea in Winter,” 1984) addresses alism (1986) and Richard H. Grove’s Green
the paradoxes of giving birth, a more rapid and Imperialism (1995), the first significant cross-
dramatic emptying of the female body. The pollinations of environmental criticism and
poem depicts a female corpse bearing children imperial discourse studies came with Alan
who scatter around the world, spreading disease Bewell’s Romanticism and Colonial Disease (1999)
and damaging ecosystems. For their part, writ- and Timothy Morton’s The Poetics of Spice
ers such as Ishimure Michiko in Paradise in the (2000) (97–100). Bewell examined British med-
Sea of Sorrow portray both suffering that stems ical and literary responses to “colonial disease,”
from ecological devastation and responsibility understood as the global exchange of diseases
for facilitating and remediating this suffering that accompanied imperial expansion, whereas
as transcending gender; gender divisions exist, Morton explored the significance of spice and
but they frequently are superseded by the hu- the spice trade to Romantic literature. Such
man/nonhuman dichotomy. Others, including studies were followed by two panoramic crit-
Sakaki Nanao in “Haru wa akebono” (“Spring ical manifestoes that triggered an outpouring
Dawn,” 1994), have gone so far as to depict of postcolonial ecocriticism: Graham Huggan’s
“sexless” individuals with “no sign of gender” “‘Greening’ Postcolonialism” (2004) and Rob
as destroying environments. Nixon’s “Environmentalism and Postcolonial-
In these and other ways, creative work by ism” (2005) (67, 101). Discussing creative work
both men and women has proposed under- by the Indian writer Arundhati Roy, South
standings of gender that disrupt and at times African J.M. Coetzee, and Canadian Barbara
overturn ecofeminist discourse. This literature Gowdy, Huggan’s article argued that postcolo-
demonstrates the importance not only of es- nial criticism rectifies the relative culture blind-
chewing essentialist approaches, but also of ness to which ecocriticism often falls prey,

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whereas ecocriticism amends the anthropocen- and environmental degradation likewise incor-
trism of much postcolonial thought. Nixon’s porates writing from several continents across
essay calls for bringing environmentalism into the global south. Some postcolonial ecocritical
closer dialogue with postcolonialism by relax- monographs focus on individual regions,
ing tensions between postcolonial preoccupa- such as George Handley’s New World Poetics
tion with displacement and ecocritical preoc- (2007), which examines how writers from the
cupation with an ethics of place, further urging Americas—the American poet Walt Whitman,
scholars to examine comparatively works from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and the Saint
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around the world on such shared environmental Lucian writer Derek Walcott—“discover and
issues as land rights, nuclear testing, pollution, exploit the ideological flexibility of inherited
and oil. human cultural patterns brought to bear in our
Recent ecocriticism scrutinizes more inten- relationship to nature, specifically, the Judeo-
sively the relationships between imperialism Christian myth of Adam in the Garden and its
and ecological distress within the literatures historic use to enable and justify environmental
not only of Europe and Anglo North America, exploitation” (Reference 30, p. 4). Ecocritical
but also of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. studies focusing on Caribbean literature
This increased attention to non-Western have also analyzed creative depictions of the
literature’s engagement with both local eco- complicated relationships among ecological
logical concerns and global environmental devastation and (post)colonial trauma, myths
issues, including toxification, climate change, of Edenic and natural origins, and cultural
and environmental injustice, has focused on creolization (105, 106). Such scholarship has
a wide array of creative landscapes on every offered new perspectives on human/nonhuman
continent. Significant general studies on dynamics in this and other parts of the world,
postcolonial ecocriticism include An Ecological revealing the challenges facing any number of
and Postcolonial Study of Literature by Robert rapidly globalizing societies. English-language
P. Marzec (2007), Postcolonial Ecocriticism by Indian literature has also been read eco-
Graham Huggan & Helen Tiffin (2010), and critically, most notably in Upamanyu Pablo
“Wilderness into Civilized Shapes” by Laura Mukherjee’s Postcolonial Environments (2010)
Wright (2010) (102–104). Marzec examines (107). Mukherjee focuses on contemporary
how creative texts by Anglophone writers as English-language Indian fiction that discusses
diverse as Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, E.M. the subcontinent’s environmental crises,
Forster, D.H. Lawrence, and Salman Rushdie including writings by Arundhati Roy, Amitav
grapple with the ramifications of the enclosure Ghosh, Indra Sinha, and Ruchir Joshi.
movement, which brought about an initially Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2004) has
British but ultimately worldwide top-down been particularly popular with postcolonial ec-
restructuring of people’s relationships with the ocritics: Mukherjee (107) discusses the novel at
land that greatly impacted ecosystems on mul- length, the collection by Volkmann et al. (108)
tiple continents. Casting their net even more includes several essays on Ghosh, and Hug-
broadly, Huggan & Tiffin (103) first survey gan & Tiffin (103) address it briefly. Set in the
panoramically the intersection of postcolonial Sundarbans (in the Bay of Bengal), The Hun-
and environmental matters in texts from India, gry Tide highlights the potentially catastrophic
Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands, cost to people of prioritizing animals and the
then they concentrate especially on how post- many ambiguities of human-nonhuman inter-
colonial creative works have problematized actions. As Kanai (a Delhi businessman) com-
interactions between people and nonhuman ments to Piya (an American marine biologist of
animals. Wright’s study of how literary artists Indian descent), “These killings [of people by
from Africa, India, and Western nations rep- tigers] are never reported, never written about
resent the relationship between colonization in the papers. And the reason is just that these

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people are too poor to matter. We all know it, criticism. Other scholarship, including
but we choose not to see it. Isn’t that a horror Lawrence Buell’s The Future of Environmental
too—that we can feel the suffering of an animal, Criticism (1) and Ursula K. Heise’s Sense of Place
Indigeneity:
aboriginality or but not of human beings. . . .It was people like and Sense of Planet (29), interweaves discussions
native-ness in you. . .who made a push to protect the wildlife of literatures from multiple cultures, regardless
recognition of here, without regard for the human costs. And of their (post)colonial status. In the coming
analogies/affinities I’m complicit because people like me—Indians years, ecocriticism will need to diversify itself
between the historical
of my class, that is—have chosen to hide these further by paying more heed to the literatures
situations and cultural
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practices among costs, basically in order to curry favor with their of societies that are neither Western nor former
“native” or “first Western patrons.” Huggan & Tiffin (103) ob- Western colonies. Most notable among these
people” worldwide serve that such conflicts have been discussed are the literatures of East Asia, as discussed
by both environmentalist and postcolonial crit- in Karen Thornber’s Ecoambiguity (2011)
ics who are “alert to the dilemmas involved in (109). Thornber spotlights East Asian creative
conserving endangered ecosystems and animals portrayals of the relationship between damaged
when the livelihoods of local (subaltern) peoples ecosystems and discrepancies among human
are simultaneously put at risk” (p. 185). attitudes, behaviors, and information vis-à-vis
As postcolonial scholars become more famil- the natural world. To date, ecocritical journals
iar with ecocriticism, they are likely to explore in Japan, Korea, and other non-Western
in even greater depth the ecological subtexts of nations have focused largely on Western-
fiction such as the South African writer Zakes language literatures, but this trend is slowly
Mda’s The Heart of Redness (2000). This novel changing as the abundant East Asian and other
probes the afterlives of the nineteenth-century non-Western-language texts on environmental
Xhosa cattle killing and the high environmental degradation are beginning to be acknowledged.
costs of late-twentieth-century tourism in im-
poverished rural areas. Although residents of
Qolorha (South Africa) have very different vi- INDIGENEITY
sions of their region’s future—some call for a From its inception, ecocriticism has had a keen,
casino and water park and others are strongly if not always profound, interest in indigenous
opposed to such ventures for fear of obliterat- art and imagination, particularly that of North
ing local ecosystems—they eventually agree to America. Two of the 25 contributions to The
promote tourism that “will not destroy indige- Ecocriticism Reader (1996) (17) were by Native
nous forests, that will not bring hordes of people American writer-critics, and the volume’s “top
who will pollute the rivers and drive away the fifteen” recommended additional readings
birds.” But just as they had wrongly believed include poet-ecocritic Gary Snyder’s The
that killing their cattle would lead to the return Practice of the Wild (1990) (55), a bioregional
of their ancestors and the departure of Euro- manifesto that deems Native American cultural
pean imperialists, the villagers now appear to memory and expression crucial to the forging
underestimate the impact of this “holiday place” of a latter-day “natural contract” between
on the environment: The final pages of Heart humans and nonhumans necessary to stop the
of Redness reveal that what began as a backpack- runaway destruction of Earth’s resources.
ers’ hostel has become a thriving holiday camp. This keen interest in indigeneity arose
Tourists are awed by the landscape, particularly from the most fundamental world-historical
the wild fig trees and the weaverbirds that call concern that also gave rise to ecocriticism:
them home. Word has spread, demand for ac- disenchantment with the negative environ-
cess is unrelenting, and construction shows no mental consequences of industrial modernity.
signs of ceasing (cf. Reference 108, p. 159). It is, therefore, unsurprising that ecocritics and
Postcolonial ecocriticism has contributed other environmental humanists in disciplines
significantly to the worlding of environmental ranging from anthropology to religious studies

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should look with interest at the cultures of self-consciously promote ecological sanity”
premodern peoples as offering alternative (Reference 113, p. 18).
or supplementary recourses for reimagining Within ecocriticism’s broad interest in
Earth’s environmental future. The engagement works of indigenous environmental imagina-
of eco-literary criticism with indigeneity or na- tion, several specific concerns stand out. One is
tiveness, however, has generally been a one-way attentiveness to native artists’ storytelling prac-
affair, with enthusiasm often outrunning exper- tices and underlying mythographies, recorded
tise and few Native scholars self-identifying as by such ethnographers as Keith Basso (114) and
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ecocritics, despite such scattered exceptions as by such nature writers as Barry Lopez (115),
Lakota scholar Thomas Gannon, whose Sky- who sympathetically reconstruct the dynamics
lark Meets Meadowlark sensitively distinguishes of long-term collective attachment to specific
British Romantic personification of birds locales. Ecocritics have been attracted to
from the greater receptivity within the Native indigenous place-based stories and myths both
American tradition to the idea of interspecies for their own sake and for their potential adapt-
communication (110). In the movement’s early ability as models for contemporary artistic and
years especially, as Greg Garrard notes, “many life practices, e.g., for their insights into the
ecocritics” tended to cling rather uncritically to challenges of sustaining or restoring ecocultural
“the assumption of indigenous environmental identity notwithstanding the traumas of cul-
virtue” (Reference 2, p. 120) as a corrective to tural change, displacement, and discrimination
runaway modernization, thus laying themselves (50, 116). A second and related major concern
open to the charge of perpetuating the myth pertains to the nondualistic recognition within
of the “ecological Indian” (a term coined by “native” peoples’ collective imagination of
anthropologist Shepard Krech III) (112). nonhuman entities as fellow beings, whether at
However, ecocritics who have studied a sensory or a spiritual level or both (55, 110)
indigenous literature most searchingly have and for their cultivation of sensory awareness
been, at least partly, immunized against such as an indispensable part of the human makeup
oversimplification given their grasp of indige- (117). A third concern increasing in impor-
nous cultures as sophisticated, complex, and tance regards the way ecocritics have looked to
evolving. For instance, while invoking indige- indigenous art and thought for its testaments to
nous cultural practice as an essential basis for multiple forms of environmental injustice and
the renewal of respect and reverence for the resistance, e.g., land grabs, exploitative labor
intertwining of culture and wild nature con- practices, racist marginalization. Adamson’s
sidered necessary for future planetary survival, American Indian Literature, Environmental Jus-
Snyder (55) suggests that “primary peoples all tice, and Ecocriticism (2001) (50), an admirable
know that their myths are somehow ‘made up.’ work of narrative scholarship combining liter-
They do not take them literally and at the same ary analysis with reflection on her pedagogical
time they hold the stories very dear” (p. 112). work with Native American students, marks
Conversely, indigenous culture-literate eco- the effective inception of this new wave.
critics have been among the most judicious Ecocritical work on the Native American
critics of Krech’s attempted demystification of imagination has tended so far to concentrate
traditional Native American hunting practices on a limited number of major figures from the
by imposing an anachronistic yardstick of con- “Native American Renaissance” of the 1960s
temporary ecological correctness (111–113), onward, particularly N. Scott Momaday, Leslie
as in Annette Kolodny’s analysis of the career Marmon Silko, Linda Hogan, Simon Ortiz, Joy
of an embattled turn-of-the-twentieth century Harjo, Louise Erdrich, and Gerald Vizenor.
Penobscot writer whose history, she shows, Given the desire to avoid the traditional
makes no “claim to ecological sainthood” but settler-culture practice of homogeneous lump-
nonetheless argues “for cultural traditions that ing of disparate native cultures as “Indians,”

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discussion of indigeneity as such in this body coded mythico-topographic allusions, or the

of environmental criticism has tended to take quotient of untranslated, unglossed ecocultural
a backseat to minute reconstruction of the phrases from the home language in this and
ecocultural specificities of the tribal nation many other Europhone texts by indigenous cre-
at issue. Yet, the subject has been at least ative writers). One of the most difficult, yet also
residually present in environmental criticism potentially most rewarding, challenges faced by
from the start, in recognition both of important environmental criticism has been and will con-
characteristic differences between settler and tinue to be the twin tasks of elucidating these
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indigenous cultures and of Native American arcana insofar as they can be elucidated while
writers’ acute consciousness of the composite adjudicating the extent to which the literature
nature of their literary work (interweaving, for in question seems to wish to conceal tribal se-
example, indigenous traditions of oral narrative crets, environmental or otherwise. This veil of
performance with Eurocentric novelistic gen- secrecy may be viewed as countering the bridge
res) as well as their own ethno-racial makeup, to a more expanded ecocultural understanding.
which is also typically hybrid. One among
many well-known examples is Laguna Pueblo
writer Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, a novel IMAGINING NONHUMANS:
that intersperses poetic sequences drawing ECOCRITICISM AND
upon indigenous storytelling and ritual practice ANIMAL STUDIES
that also transfuse the main narrative. Often intertwined with critical discussions of
Transnational scrutiny of the salience and place, the figure of the animal has played an
complexities of indigeneity as a phenomenon important role in its own right in ecocritical
in environmental literature has become more thought. Conservation efforts in Western soci-
pronounced with the expansion of ecocritical eties have typically focused on the protection of
analysis across national borders. Symptomatic habitats and species as two elements that sym-
examples include Alex Hunt’s unpacking of the bolically stand in for the protection of nature at
Chicano eco-mythic substructure of Rodolfo large (121), and “biophilia,” the sense of human
Anaya’s novel Bless Me Ultima (118); Stuart connectedness to nonhuman living beings, has
Christie’s comparative Canadian-U. S. exami- been cast by the biologist E.O. Wilson as one of
nation of the imagination of native sovereignty the most basic human traits (122). Yet the fig-
(119); and Elizabeth DeLoughrey’s searchingly ure of the animal in the environmental imagi-
complex analyses of the multilayered inter- nation is also associated, more than other tropes
weave of Polynesian and Europhone cultural or symbols, with underlying tensions and stark
memories in contemporary works of New contradictions: Animals are evolutionarily con-
Zealand literature (120), especially Samoan nected more closely to humans than other parts
native Albert Wendt’s Kafkaesque novel of the of nature, but they are also often represented as
attempted insurgency of a nearly deracinated being separated from humans by a fundamen-
hybrid urban indigene, Black Rainbow (1987) tal boundary. They invite reflection on humans’
(Reference 120, pp. 196–228). imbrication with ecosystemic networks, but the
In Wendt’s work—and much the same can usual focus on charismatic mammals and birds
be said of other “native” writers—indigeneity also blocks understanding of ecosystems as a
has both an exoteric and an esoteric face, whole. Animals confront us in the contradic-
presenting itself both as a universally shared tory shapes of the barely known and sometimes
condition (e.g., remnant cultures threatened dangerous wild animal, on one hand, and of
with extinction by the invaders) and as particu- the domesticated animal that seems a product
laristic to the point of impenetrability by even a of culture as much as of nature, on the other
superintelligent uninitiate (e.g., Black Rainbow’s hand. Furthermore, the relationship between
flight-and-pursuit plot transfused with fleeting people and animals is sometimes juxtaposed

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with or metaphorically superimposed on social Beyond human-animal encounters, envi-

relations between unequal social groups, at the ronmentally oriented scholars of culture have
service of both progressive and reactionary po- focused on the ways in which the history and
Posthumanism:
litical thought, and advocacy of animal rights is present condition of animals and humans in anthropology,
sometimes at odds with environmental thought have been intertwined. Snyder (55) and Paul philosophy, and
in spite of considerable overlap. Shepard (128) have argued at some length that literary and cultural
Ecocriticism has, for a long time, found a humans are essentially animals and remain studies, the attempt to
question the
rich territory for investigation in the abun- “wild” in some of their basic characteristics,
systematic privileging
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dant literature on animals in both Western whereas Donna Haraway (129, 130) and Gary of the human species
and non-Western traditions, which often in- Nabhan (131) have highlighted some of the above others
clude an important environmental dimension consequences of domestication. Haraway, in
even when their principal focus lies elsewhere. her seminal, if narrowly focused, The Compan-
Large predator species have occupied the lit- ion Species Manifesto and When Species Meet, has
erary imagination most persistently. From the argued that a recognition of how humans are
seafaring and fishing narratives of Herman coconstituted by animals with whom they live—
Melville’s Moby-Dick and Ernest Hemingway’s mostly pet animals, in her discussion—opens
The Old Man and the Sea to the fiction and po- up a posthumanist perspective on humans as
etry of Ernest Thompson Seton, Jack London, one species among others rather than one
Rudyard Kipling, William Faulkner, Robinson with special privileges (129, 130). For some of
Jeffers, Gary Snyder, Julia Leigh, Jiang Rong her argument, Haraway relies on the work of
(Lü Jiamin), and Guo Xuebo, writers have fore- literary scholar Cary Wolfe, who has claimed
grounded encounters with whales, wolves, and even more broadly that the willingness to make
bears in particular as scenes where nature and a fundamental distinction between humans
culture come face to face and masculine as well and animals is constitutive of basic inequalities
as national identities are put to the test in the between humans, given that many forms of
search for some combination of human domi- oppression are at least implicitly based on the
nance over and coexistence with other species assumption that the oppressed are animals
(26, 123, 124). In the Latin American “romance rather than humans (132). As one ecofeminist
de la selva,” which typically seeks to articulate critic has pointed out, environmental writing is
Latin America’s particular place in the story of not exempt from such conceptual conflations:
modernization, encounters with animals tend “For most ‘white’ male writers, dark-skinned
to form part of a complex encounter between people and women are inevitably close to
indigenous traditions, which are associated with animals, associated with matter, body, and
the jungle, and European-derived ones, which ultimately the degradation of undifferentiated
are associated with the city, as the protago- merging with nature” (Reference 133, p. 151).
nist travels from the metropolis to the jungle But Haraway has also been attacked for focus-
and back (125, 126). In much of this literature ing on pet dogs rather than on factory farming,
from the Americas and beyond, affirmations of a much more violent form of contemporary
the absolute Otherness of the animal alternate humans’ connection with animals that raises
with descriptions of temporary human-animal urgent questions not only about animal ethics,
fusions focusing on body or mind. In the works but also about environmental impacts, given
of such Native American writers as Silko and the significant contribution of animal farming
Vizenor, these fusions tend to take on a dif- to pollution and climate change.
ferent meaning, as the focus is not mainly on These issues have given rise to a lively debate
individual immersions into the wild, but on ini- regarding the interrelation of animal domesti-
tiations into a communally lived connectedness cation, dietary habits, and ecosystemic change
with nature and the cultural traditions on which that has been pursued by writers, journalists,
it relies (19, 127). activists, and literary scholars including, for

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example, Carol Adams, Ruth Ozeki, Michael human and animal. In the Western tradition,
Pollan, and Jonathan Safran Foer. But the con- the figure of the speaking animal appears across
troversy over whether omnivorous, vegetarian, a range of high literary genres from ancient
or locavore diets are best suited for sustain- myth to stories of metamorphosis and in animal
ability has also exposed fundamental differences fables from Aesop to Jean de la Fontaine. From
between animal studies scholars and ecocritics. the eighteenth century onward, as Christopher
Both areas of study explore ways in which hu- Manes has shown, nature is increasingly
mans’ detrimental impact on other species may conceived as silent, and the speaking animal
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be diminished. However, whereas animal stud- migrates downward to literature intended for
ies scholars tend to focus on the direct violence children and popular entertainment (Reference
humans perpetrate on species taxonomically 17, pp. 15–29). In the twentieth century, this
closely related to them, mostly mammals and trope became a staple of cartoons and comic
birds, ecocritics highlight the ways in which hu- strips, but modernist literature reintroduced
man societies systemically, even if unintention- the speaking animal into serious literary works
ally, damage habitats and species ranging from [for example in Franz Kafka’s “Ein Bericht
microorganisms and plants to insects and am- für eine Akademie” (“Report to an Academy,”
phibians. Whereas animal studies scholars usu- 1917)] as a way of questioning Enlightenment
ally find any direct violence inflicted on animals ideas about the exceptional ontological status
unacceptable, environmentalists and ecocritics of humans. In addition, science fiction of recent
sometimes accept such violence in the interest decades has populated futuristic worlds with
of ensuring the survival of crucial ecosystems. intelligent and linguistically gifted animals,
Such debates range far beyond literature which are often the product of humans’ genetic
narrowly conceived, yet they often crystallize experimentations. Not only does nature once
around central questions of representation— again speak back to humans in, for example,
most importantly, that of anthropomorphism. Sheri Tepper’s The Family Tree (1997),
In seeking to foster biocentric forms of imag- Dietmar Dath’s Die Abschaffung der Arten (The
ination through verbal art, ecocritics have Decomissioning of Species, 2008) and Laurence
often struggled with the problem of whether Gonzales’s Lucy (2010), but true humanity
the use of human language introduces an and ecologically sustainable ways of life come
anthropocentric slant that even the biocentric to realize themselves through human-animal
contents of a literary work cannot hope to hybrids or humanoid animals.
overcome. Yet, even though literary creations Recent work both on animated films from
remain fundamentally human, works such as Disney’s Bambi to Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke,
the brilliant trilogy about ants by the French which constitute one of the most influential art
novelist Bernard Werber, Les fourmis, Le jour forms in shaping public perceptions of nature
des fourmis, and La révolution des fourmis show and animals in the twentieth century, and on
that the literary imagination can go far toward nature documentaries with their sometimes an-
envisioning how the world presents itself to thropomorphizing tendencies has highlighted
beings relying mostly on smell and touch rather the ambivalent role of anthropomorphic an-
than vision and sound, and thereby to relativize imals: These animals are portrayed not only
the human perspective as one among many. as distortions of a genuinely environmental
Poetic and storytelling traditions around perception, but also as powerful attractors to
the world have tended to focus not so much the realm of the nonhuman (134–136). As the
on animals’ difference as on their similarity to ethologist Frans de Waal has noted, “To endow
humans by featuring animals—and sometimes, animals with human emotions has long been a
plants—that possess the gift of language. Trick- scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk miss-
ster figures such as coyotes or rabbits often ing something fundamental, about both animals
occupy such a position on the border between and us”—an observation that applies to literary

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approaches to the animal and increasingly to the relatively swift interest taken by film studies
scientific research (137). in ecocriticism (References 133–136, 139–141)
may suggest that literature-environment stud-
CONCLUSION ies would exert a broad ripple effect across crit-
Ecocriticism started as an organized movement icism of other expressive genres, in the fields
within literature studies in the early 1990s, a of visual art and music this cross-fertilization
scholarly generation later than the first such is still in its very early stages (References 142–
movements within the environmental humani- 144). Also uncertain is whether future ecocriti-
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ties (in history, ethics, and theology). Ecocrit- cal study of expressive media will at some point
icism as a Library of Congress subject head- be explored in a coordinated, collaborative way
ing dates from 2002 (Reference 138, p. 7). Its rather than by different groups of specialists op-
progress has been rapid, such that within two erating more or less autonomously. Regardless
decades it is well on the way to extending itself of whether ecocriticism’s future is to move to-
worldwide from its original Anglo-American ward tighter consensus about questions of pur-
base and now boasts a half-dozen scholarly jour- pose and method or to remain a more loosely
nals in Europe, North America, and Asia in networked congeries of initiatives and provo-
addition to ASLE’s flagship journal, ISLE. Yet cations, the radiant intellectual energies the
ecocriticism remains more in a state of unfold- movement has demonstrated during its start-up
ing than of consolidation. Issues of methodol- phase have not only succeeded in placing “the
ogy and proper future course remain matters of environment” on the table as a pressing priority
debate, as confirmed, for example, by the on- for literature studies per se, but also generated a
going dispute as to the proper relation between number of specific critical approaches that offer
scientific and aesthetic methods of inquiry and the promise of a deeper, more nuanced grasp of
the comparative recency of attention being ac- environmental issues both within and beyond
corded to non-Western literatures. Although the environmental humanities.

SUMMARY POINTS
1. Ecocriticism has developed into an increasingly worldwide movement in two main waves
or stages: the first marked by a commitment to preservationist environmentalism, an
ecocentric environmental ethics, an emphasis on place-attachment at a local or biore-
gional level, a prioritization of the self-nature relation, and forms of literary imagination
that especially reflect these; the second marked by a more sociocentric environmental
ethics attaching special importance to issues of environmental (in)justice, to collective
rather than individual experience as a primary historical force and concern in works of
imagination, and (increasingly) to the claims of a global or planetary level of environmen-
tal belonging. Throughout these shifts, however, a number of concerns have remained
constant.
2. Accompanying and influencing the trajectory just described has been a diversification of
ecocritical interest from its original concentration on Anglo-American romantic litera-
ture to include indigenous and other minority cultures (first in North America and then
elsewhere) and in non-Western (post)colonial and other literatures worldwide.
3. Interest in the possibility of alliances between scientific and humanistic methods of in-
quiry was crucial in catalyzing ecocriticism and has continued to run strong, although it
has also been sharply criticized, especially by those who view institutionalized “science”
as contributing to today’s environmental problems.

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4. Ecocritics initially privileged modes of literary representation that were or could be

understood as more or less realistic reflections of the natural world. Over the past decade,
this privileging of realism has come into question, not only because realist texts make
up only part of the overall literary canon, but also because ecological realities, in their
complexity and invisibility, often challenge the very strategies of writing that have come
to be accepted as realist, especially in the Western tradition, and seem to call for more
experimental modes of representation.
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5. A keen interest in differential experience and perception of environment according to

gender has also been both an ongoing and controversial influence, with central attention
recently shifting somewhat from an ecofeminist focus on representations of women’s
historic/symbolic role as caregivers and/or casualties of patriarchal domination to an
interrogation of heteronormativity in the nonhuman biological world and in the imagi-
nation of humans in relation to it.
6. Ecocriticism shares with critical animal studies an interest in redefining humans’ relation-
ships to other species.2 But whereas animal studies have privileged the social, cognitive,
and emotive abilities of higher animals and humans’ consciously perpetrated violence
against them, ecocritics have tended to focus on systemic and often unintentional damages
to other species, including a wide range of both animals and plants. These two approaches
converge in some cases, but they conflict in those where ecocritics accept violence to in-
dividual animals or species in the interest of maintaining ecosystem functioning.

FUTURE ISSUES
1. As ecocriticism continues to spread worldwide, the need for comparative and coordinated
study of different bodies of literature and scholarship will increase. This must mean fur-
ther exploration both of (post)colonial non-Western literature and literature of societies
neither Western nor ever colonized by Western powers.
2. Ecocriticism, to date, remains disproportionately nation focused, and disproportionately
concentrated on Anglophone literatures. In the future, more emphasis must be placed
on analysis of affinities across cultures and planetary-scale tendencies as well as against
cultural specificity or uniqueness.
3. Ecocriticism will also need to work (even) harder to distribute attention comprehensively
and proportionately across expressive forms, both within literature—continuing to com-
pensate for its initial overemphasis on “realistic” genres—and in other expressive media,
perhaps especially art, music, and other modes of artistic performance.
4. Just as second-wave sociocentric ecocriticism took issue with the first-wave prioritization
of nature protection, so too in the future ecocriticism will need to remain responsive
to the changing face of environmentalism: to confront more seriously than it has to

2
Critical animal studies is an interdisciplinary area of research analyzing and criticizing current conceptual boundaries between
humans and animals and redefining this relationship and its associated ethics in terms first developed by advocates of animal
liberation and by poststructuralist philosophers.

434 Buell · ·
Heise Thornber
 EG36CH17-Buell ARI 19 September 2011 8:9

date the implications of such recently emergent concerns as climate change issues as
well as unforeseen future crises. Ecocriticism’s increased responsiveness in recent years
to changes inside and outside the discipline is a promising model of how this area may
adapt to rapidly changing environmentalist approaches in years to come.
5. As ecocriticism continues to monitor and selectively assimilate breakthroughs across the
whole range of environmental sciences and social sciences, it must be (even) more as-
sertive than heretofore in pressing the case for the importance of the qualitative thinking
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practiced by environmental humanists as indispensable to the understanding and reme-

diation of environmental crises and dilemmas of whatever sort.
6. Although ecocriticism has successfully examined such forms as pastoral and apocalyptic
narratives that address the state of the natural world, it has, to date, less intensively
engaged with literary forms that tend not to engage with the natural world themati-
cally, especially the highly experimental forms that have developed over the course of
the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The question of how an environmentalist
perspective may speak to the issue of aesthetic form and its functions will need to be an-
swered more broadly before ecocriticism can command the attention of literary scholars
not primarily concerned with environmentalism.
7. Ecocriticism has not yet engaged to any significant degree with new spatial and digi-
tal models of analyses that are emerging in other areas of literary and cultural studies.
However, given ecocritics’ interest in place, space, and the relationship between local,
regional, national, and global modes of thought and activism, new modeling and visu-
alization techniques for complex ecological as well as cultural processes stand to play a
significant role in the future development of the field. In its turn, ecocriticism has the
potential to make an important contribution to the new combinations of qualitative and
quantitative methods of analysis that are currently being explored in the humanities.
8. A great deal of ecocritical work has shown the predominance of declensionist narra-
tives in environmentalist thought and literature. It is currently less clear which story
templates environmentalist writing may draw on for a more optimistic, perhaps even
utopian, vision of the environmental future. Ecocriticism should play an important role
not only in analyzing existing environmental literature, but also in imagining the out-
lines of different and more positive and future-oriented ways of thinking and writing for
environmentalism.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The authors are not aware of any affiliation, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that
might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sincere thanks to the Harvard University Center for the Environment and the Harvard Humanities
Center for grant and other support that made it possible for the collaborators to meet at a crucial
time in the planning of the article and to discuss their preliminary thinking with several groups of
colleagues.

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 EG36CH17-Buell ARI 19 September 2011 8:9

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