Group One Reading Handout

Garrard

Garrard’s “Positions” chapter of Ecocriticism lays out the various approaches, philosophies, and rhetoric of different groups towards the environment and the human effect on nature. For most of the positions, with the exception of Cornucopia, he explores the benefits and the failings of the various schools of thought, being both critical and complimentary.

Garrard defines the ‘cornucopian’ position as one that denies the negative effect of man on nature, not just that it isn’t necessary to put a stop to it but that scarcity itself is a function of economy rather than ecology. The position is set against environmentalist principles in that it sees no problem with the destruction nature and therefore seeks no solution. This way of thinking is very difficult to argue against because even the somewhat apocalyptic environmental slogan “Mommy what were forests like?” does not disturb these kinds of people because trees are only useful as a commodity and when they are gone will be replaced by a different commodity. Garrard points out the somewhat obvious point that this position is supported by those with a stake in industrial society and that Americans (and developed countries as a group) are able to accept the pollution of the Earth because much of industry has been relocated to undeveloped regions. Capitalism is seen as the instrument of innovation that will provide the answers to the idea of scarcity. The logic is tight and near impenetrable because as Garrard points out, “...cornucopians take little or no account of the non-human environment except insofar as it impacts upon human wealth or welfare.” (18)

Environmentalism is the most widespread position partly due to the fact that it is a broad definition related to some amount of care for the environment. Garrard asserts that most who consider themselves to be environmentalists do not wish for or actively create radical social change and are instead content to recycle and/or enjoy nature away from their home rather than live in an environment with less human impact. This criticism is very similar to Cronin’s assertion that environmentalists can separate the effects of their way of life on the world because of the wilderness they choose to preserve, that somehow the existence of pristine sublime landscapes makes up for the thousands of square miles of suburban sprawl. Garrard characterizes environmentalism as a lukewarm philosophy that is mostly helpful but contains a dangerous amount of complacency.

Deep Ecology is portrayed as a more radical idealism that seeks to undo damage rather than to just slow it down or prevent its spread to certain areas. Some of the ecocentric ideas are quite literally anti-human, such as the necessity for population control which makes deep ecology an alienating position for most people in the mainstream. It is unfortunate that the public at large sees this kind of thinking as radical to the point of being impossible to synthesize into the western notion of civilization and mainstream thought as deep ecology has great potential value to the earth and humanity itself. This is because deep ecology sets itself against the western philosophical tenant of “the dualistic separation of humans from nature” that is responsible for the environmental crisis. Population control does make logical sense but the very words are so inflammatory that the actual reasoning behind it is unlikely to ever be considered in an objective way. Deep ecology thinking is at the heart of many environmentalist groups and Garrard makes mention of Friends of the Earth, Earth First! and Sea Shepherd in particular.

Ecofeminism claims that men are responsible for the exploitation and destruction of nature, using logic and reason rather than emotion and the exaltation of nature, as ecology minded women do. Radical ecofeminism contains tenants that are inflammatory to its mainstream members, such as the idea that biological factors contribute to females' connection to nature rather than gender being entirely constructed by society. Ecofeminism has the obvious potential to alienate men by separating them from ecological thinking, as well as from women, rather than presenting a critique of gender roles as other types of feminism provide.

Social Ecology and Eco-Marxism also take an approach that sees additional causes to the environmental crisis beyond anthropocentric attitudes toward civilization, with a focus on the political nature of ecological issues. Eco-Marxists and social ecologists believe that "environmental problems cannot be clearly divorced from things more usually defined as social problems such as poor housing or lack of clean water." Poverty is connected to pollution and ecological disruption and Eco-Marxism asserts that the exploitation of the lower classes is connected to the exploitation of nature and sees the solution as a socialist oriented revolution. Social ecologists see power relations as the primary problem in man's relation to nature and prefer the ideal of a "decentralized society of non-hierarchical affiliations avowedly derived from an anarchistic political tradition" and makes reference to communal living. The value of these similar philosophies is that they identify the logical problems that cause environmental problems rather than merely the structures and institutions of a flawed system.

Martin Heidegger represents a complicated ecological critique of society's need to define things that often results in confusing an issue rather than simply letting what is, be. Garrard mentions that Heidegger tends to alienate readers with his notoriously difficult rhetoric and "anti-rational" thinking and of course the fact that he was an enthusiastic Nazi during World War II. However Garrard seems to think that his politics should be set apart from his ecological opinions that hold, in his mind, an intrinsic value worth adapting to the environmentalist school of thought.

Thoreau

In Thoreau’s piece “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” Thoreau thrusts the reader into the classical trope of ecological literature. Thoreau embodies the idea of the retreat from the city to the countryside, and as the work progresses one can see how in his personal life he was an environmentalist and how he inspired so many deep ecologists. Thoreau describes his activities in the wilderness as though he “made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it”(Thoreau, 8). Again, Thoreau is symbolizing a deep appreciation for the natural world which other writers such as Hogan, Sanders and Momaday conveyed in their writings. Many deep-ecologists and environmentalists seek to mythologize Thoreau and his stay in the wilderness, while as Solnit points out that the reality is that he was really more invested in society than the romanticizing of his isolation would have you believe. Thoreau had an appreciation for the wilderness but also spent the majority of his life in the city. Thoreau had an appreciation for both of these things and ideally lived a life in which a man harmoniously lived in both of them. Thoreau saw going into the wilderness as a solution to many of the social problems and the social injustices of the world. This, ties into Cronin’s ideas of preserving sublime wilderness while also preserving suburban sprawl where the like destroys much more. The truth is, is that there must be a balance between the two. This balance sets the bar for which many aspects of social ecology.

Cronin

Cronin’s piece, “Uncommon Ground,” is about the wilderness versus the western world. Preserving a grandiose landscape does not validate wastefulness in other areas. Nature is a distant element in the western world and we, as those a part of western civilization, have lost our reality to the wilderness by economizing it. Therefore, nature is a term that is separate from its original meaning of a natural environment. It has evolved into a cultural construction that cannot be tamed or resurrected. Furthermore, the wilderness, or frontier, and the sublime converge as they “remake [the] wilderness in their own image, freighting it with moral values and cultural symbols (Cronin, 72).” However, their parallels recreate an environment that divides into the natural and the deconstruction. The frontier still serves as a foundation for nature and its inhabitants. It has its beauty of wilderness landscape and traces back to its religious roots to the Old Testament where everything was perfect and enchanting. No human could destroy or interrupt the order of the wilderness. However, as the wilderness is described today as being in disarray and chaos, human contact deconstructed the perfection and peacefulness of the wilderness, thus creating a contaminated environment.

“The immeasurable height/Of woods decaying, never to be decayed,/The stationary blasts of waterfalls,/And in the narrow rent at every turn/Winds thwarting winds, bewildered and forlorn,/The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky,/The rocks that muttered close upon the ears,/Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side/As if a voice were in them, the sick sight/And giddy prospect of the raving stream,/The unfettered clouds and region of the Heavens,/Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light/Were all like workings of one mind, the features/Of the same face, blossoms upon one tree;/Characters of the great Apocalypse,/The types and symbols of Eternity,/Of first, and last, and midst, and without end” (William Wordsworth, “The Prelude,”536).

The focus of the quote is on the beauty God has bestowed upon the landscape which is good. The presence of God implies hope. However, this representation is criticized by his understanding and belief of the wilderness as he sees it as unclean.

As we live today, Cronin argues that the urbanization of the world has left the wilderness in ruins. He argues that our audacity to refer to the wilderness as home is aloof. As humans, we take no responsibility for our lifestyles as we continue to harm the reproduction of the wilderness. As with Cronin’s trope of environmentalism, Thoreau’s too mentions his personal life about life in the wilderness and how it differs from the city. Also, Solnit’s social-ecological and eco-Marxism buttresses the idea that humans should not give up their modern lifestyles because capitalism and environmentalism can coexist. Lastly, Silko’s piece as a form of resistance between feminine (nature) and masculinity (destruction) coincide with Cronin’s argument about the frontier’s demise. However, with nature was triumphant.

Solnit

Rebecca Solnit’s piece “The Thoreau Problem” is directly related to the tropes of social ecology as well as eco-Marxism. The main points that Solnit is making in this piece is the direct relationship between ecology, society and culture. Solnit is making the case that these things do relate to each other, and because of that we must not try and confine the people who we now see as the pioneers who defined what we now know as deep-ecology as hypocritical because they lived their lives in more than one set way. This can be seen in Solnit’s writing, described as: “This compartmentalizing of Thoreau is a microcosm of a larger partition in American thought, a fence built in the belief that places in the imagination can be contained. Those who deny that nature and culture, landscape and politics, the city and the country are inextricably interfused have undermined the connections for all of us”. This interfusion of aspects serves as a catalyst to the idea that ecology has just as much to do with society and culture as it does the preservation of what we now deem as nostalgic and sublime beauty. The linking of these things means that an aspect of this discourse cannot be one sided; that one cannot have one without the other. That a difference of opinion can coexist, and can live harmoniously together:

“Conventional environmental writing has often maintained a strict silence on or even an animosity toward the city, despite its importance as a lower-impact place for the majority to live, its intricate relations to the rural, and the direct routes between the two. Imagining the woods or any untrammeled landscape as an unsocial place, an outside, also depends on erasing those who dwelt and sometimes still dwell there, the original Americans—and one more thing that can be said in favor of Thoreau is that he spent a lot of time imaginatively repopulating with Indians the woods around Concord, and even prepared quantities of notes for a never-attempted history of Native America”.

With this broader viewpoint and being able to live in and enjoy both society, and nature, Solnit argues that Thoreau was truly fighting for social equality and justice. By trying to take the knowledge that he had gained through the city, and the wisdom that he had gained through the country and combining them both, there was great possibility for genius and revolutionary thought; these new thoughts with which many people did not seem to take easily to the idea of. Only now can we see the magnitude of good in his ideas. If “black slavery spoiled his country walks”, it spoiled the walks of enslaved people even more. Thus the unresisting walk to jail. “Eastward, I go only by force; but westward I go free,” Thoreau wrote. His thoughts on the matter might be summed up this way: You head for the hills to enjoy the best of what the world is at this moment; you head for confrontation, for resistance, for picket lines to protect it, to liberate it. Thus it is that the road to paradise often runs through prison, thus it is that Thoreau went to jail to enjoy a better country, and thus it is that one of his greatest students, Martin Luther King Jr., found himself in jail and eventually in the way of a bullet on what got called the long road to freedom, whose goal he spoke of as the mountaintop”.

Crumb

R. Crumb’s illustrations are known for bringing truth into the light through comedy, metaphor, and, though later in his career, shocking visual art. In A Short History of America, 12 drawn panels depict a landscape that goes from completely natural, through industrial development, all the way up to contemporary urban/suburban sprawl. The first panel shows only flora and fauna, then insert a train track, followed closely by a modest house and plow, soon after there’s power lines, then a neighborhood, street names and mail boxes, through to business development, automobiles, and more power lines. The final panel is clearly developed with convenience stores, gas stations, and public transportation. Crumb is exhibiting a type of social-ecology, as he clearly does believes that social issues cannot be separated from environmental problems. Crumb could also be interpreted as an eco-Marxist because he is unveiling superficial class structures through signage, familiar brand names, and clear-and-present infrastructure. Is Crumb just experiencing wilderness nostalgia? Was the world a better place when deer were the only inhabitants in any given field? Have we experienced progress or regress? It depends on who you ask. Thoreau, who Crumb’s 12-panel piece could be closely connected to, would say the first panel’s pastoral motif is more representative of The Good Life. Solnit’s work could also work well with Crumb’s A Short History of America, due to Solnit’s close relationship with social ecology and eco-Marxism.

McKibben

McKibben’s The End of Nature is a biting look at one author’s relationship with the wilderness. It is clear from the very first sentences that McKibben does not view his fellow humans as brothers and sisters, but metaphorically as “stumps” or “trash”. He is a scathing social ecologist who sees human activity as one in the same as environmental activity. Since the earth has been warming, McKibben has been analyzing the effects on climate of not only our behaviors, but our minds as well. To McKibben, soon “the world outdoors will mean much the same thing as the world indoors, the hill the same thing as the house” (McKibben, 719). He has an utter distaste for humans and what they have done to the environment. The End of Nature can also be considered a deep-ecology piece, seeing as it is rigid in its criticism of man’s carbon impact. He continues to explain swimming [living] in a lake [the earth] with and without the presence of boats [industry]. Without the boat, he and his wife swim with only their senses of self. With the boat, swimmers plan and plot the simplest and most human responses to swimming. McKibben finds himself wondering where the boat is, and what shall he do should he be forced to interface with it. “It’s that the motorboat gets into your mind. You’re forced to think, not feel-to think human society and of people” (McKibben 720). McKibben can be connected to Jewette, Williams, and Silko, all for the same reason: these readings are all showing deep resistance to development, city-life, and sometimes even progress itself.

Sanders

Scott Russell Sanders’ story entitled “After the Flood” is deeply rooted in Pastoral ecology. The main trope of this piece is nostalgia, and how it is in direct relation to social ecology and the actions that people take (again tying into the idea that society and culture are interwoven with ecology). His piece about being back in the area which he grew up and the feelings which he has about it can greatly be related to themes brought up in Hogan’s work. Sanders also makes one of the most moving cases on how great of an effect people have on ecology, especially in terms of one’s homeland:

“The word nostalgia was coined in 1688 as a medical term, to provide an equivalent for the German word meaning homesickness. We commonly treat homesickness as an ailment of childhood, like mumps or chickenpox, and we treat nostalgia as an affliction of age. On our lips, nostalgia usually means a sentimental regard for the trinkets and fashions of an earlier time, for an idealized past, for a vanished youth. We speak of a nostalgia for the movies of the 1930s, say, or the haircuts of the 1950s. It is a shallow use of the word. The two Greek roots of nostalgia literally mean return pain. The pain comes not from returning home but from a longing to return. Perhaps it is inevitable that a nation of immigrants–who shoved aside the native tribes of this continent, who enslaved and transported Africans, who still celebrate motion as if humans were dust motes–that such a nation should lose the deeper meaning of this word. A footloose people, we find it difficult to honor the lifelong, bone-deep attachment to place. We are slow to acknowledge the pain in yearning for one’s native ground, the deep anguish in not being able, ever, to return”.

This longing to return to a time which was simpler and to a meaningful closeness to place is lost by the inevitable progress by which the comforts that society gives us, also takes away the space, the Eden, which used to be our own. I believe this feeling that Sanders is describing serves as the caveat in which deep-ecology is rooted, and the importance of just how much we must remember and revere the places and the landscapes that we have come from.

Williams

Terry Tempest Williams’ piece combines elements of ecofeminism and social ecology along with a general tone of environmentalism. It is much more than coincidence that the primary sufferers of cancer from the nuclear testing are women and that the price they pay is losing their breasts, a disfigurement of their femininity at the hands of the male run army who are literally nuking the desert in the back yards of their Mormon community. The short story melts into the dream world several times, a device that shows the absurdity of a government nuking its own land and infecting law abiding citizens with cancer and death. This absurdity reaches a fever pitch when several courts, including the Supreme Court, refused to let the government take responsibility not because the army had done no wrong but because the government is sovereign and therefore the government is immune from doing such wrongs. Environmentalism aside this sort of behavior is ludicrous, the sort of thing a brat of a child would imagine and the fact that America acted like a nuclear bomb dropping Veruca Salt and endangered the lives of docile, patriotic citizens is despicable and shocking but unfortunately not really that surprising after reflection. Yet looking at this through a social ecologist lens it is clear that the government is without a powerful conscience and has little respect for human life, let alone the lives of owls or lichens. As far as human poisoning of the world goes you would be hard pressed to find a better example than the intentional creation of a nuclear explosion and fallout, the very image of a mushroom cloud contains within it the instant consumption of life accompanied by a lasting infection of the very earth for decades, perhaps even centuries. The male use of science and technology to conquer even the atom to destroy on such a monumental level ends up taking away the female’s ability to provide breast milk for a child. As in Jewett’s piece there is a clear feeling of the rape of the feminized natural world and the female characters that inhabit it.

Silko

Leslie Marmon Silko’s piece, “Storyteller,” is a rebellion between the Eskimo culture and the American culture creates an eco-feminist and pastoral trope. In the social ecological circumstance, the protagonist is in a fight against assimilation as she rebels against the foreign culture in which she is submerged. From an eco-feminist perspective, she uses her “natural” superiority against the “old man” by resisting him which supersedes his masculinity. Her resistance and rebellion towards the western culture set the tone for pastoral trope and reflects her identity because she unfolds the murder of her parents by the community’s trusted storekeeper.

“I will not change the story, not even to escape this place and go home. I intended that he die. The story must be told as it is” (Silko, 31).

Silko uses nature to kill. Also, as a storyteller, she is inclined to tell the truth and relate her stories to the community. Her stories’ significance reflects and disturbs the eco-feminist perspective by way of essentialism versus constructionism. The storekeeper is represented by the patriarchal culture as a respected man in charge, and the woman is constructed by her performance in the feminine role. But, by taking charge in a murder, the woman dominates the masculine force. She is connected to Williams’ piece, Refuge, where women are associated with activism and focused on women’s suffering. She is also connected to Jewett’s “A White Heron” as the two protagonists, women, are unappreciated and demoralized by men. They are represented by nature, yet they are abused and mishandled.

Jewette

Ecofeminism proposes that females are more in contact with nature, their menstrual cycle in tune with the lunar rhythms and the feminized landscape that is in constant danger of male intrusion and exploitation.

Sarah Orne Jewett’s A White Heron personifies the feminine spirit of the forest in the young loner Sylvia who spends her days in the forest climbing trees and retrieving the cow that provides her and her grandmother milk. There is a strong ecofeminist strain in the story, even going so far as to label the young hunter the “enemy” in his first appearance. While Sylvia chooses to enjoy the forest in a symbiotic and gentle way the hunter kills and packages the birds he loves, a dynamic that shows the opposite ways he (and perhaps men in general) interact with the natural world. The ornithologist brings strong characteristics of western culture into the forest: science, money, and a rifle, all tied together by the masculine desire to conquer. For Sylvia interacting with the forest means climbing the highest tree and being part of the marvelous scene of natural beauty while the unnamed hunter comes to kill and stuff the rare and elusive white heron so he can take it back to his civilization as a sort of trophy. Jewett’s version of ecofeminism is similar to Silko’s, the main character is set in opposition to a man who doesn’t appreciate or understand nature as the woman does. Both stories have a strong sense of the pastoral and virgin land being exploited by men who appreciate only the parts of nature they perceive as valuable in a way that deep ecologists would most likely attribute to the mental separation of humans from nature in western culture.

Hogan

Linda Hogan’s Dwellings is an essay that is comprised of short paragraphs, all dealing with various types of home, within and outside of “nature”. The piece details the behaviors and philosophical meaning behind different types of dwellings, and how their inhabitants (human or animal) interact with nature. Hogan is highly descriptive in her explanations of massive bee hives, owls nests, and native peoples; but perhaps most significantly, Hogan is descriptive of her interactions with the land. Hogan, lacking any real call for social change, could be considered a pastoral environmentalist. Her relationship with pastoralism is clear in her outwardly poetic style in regards to the wilderness, her longing for nostalgia, and her very distant philosophical appreciation of the Zia people. Hogan also is an example of a female nature writer who does not reflect from an eco-feminist perspective, as gender is not a noted feature in Dwellings. Hogan’s writing can be connected to Sanders’ because of its analysis of “home” and its impact on wilderness literature. Dwellings also can be connected to Henry David Thoreau’s writings in the sense that, at one point, Hogan longs for solitude in nature in an attempt to achieve meaning through the landscape, as did Thoreau: “A few years after that, I wanted silence. My daydreams were full of places I longed to be, shelters and solitudes. I wanted a room apart from others, a hidden cabin to rest in” (Hogan, 810).

Momaday

N. Scott Momaday’s A First American Views His Land is a uniquely American perspective on interactions with nature. Momaday, a deep-ecologist thinker, recognizes man as an integral part of natural existence. He considers the tools and trades [abilities] of man to represent the separations between human and non-human. “These things in particular mark his human intelligence and distinguish him as the lord of the universe. And for him, the universe is especially this landscape” (Momaday, 571). Momaday also employs poetry and lyrical writing to do his descriptive bidding. He focuses the rest of the piece on where beauty lies: to Momaday, it lies in the physical world. Momaday’s philosophical pre-pre-pre-predecessor, Plato, also wrote in abundance on beauty residing in the physical world, only Plato asks us to grow beyond shallow appreciation of people, experiences, and in this case, nature. Momaday, however, relies on the presence of physical beauty to carry most of his text. Momaday’s A First American Views his Land is connected to Cronin’s writing by highlighting each piece’s tendency to condemn development of not only grandiose, awesome landscapes, but the humble residences of the past as well. A First American Views His Land also works with Thoreau’s writings, in the sense that both types of literature fall under the classical trope.

Provoking Discussion of Texts

• Through comparative analysis of two or more tropes within ecology (e.g. eco-feminism, Pastoral ecology, classical ecology, deep ecology, etc…) how can a harmonious merging of these classifications make us more highly realize the importance of more than just one aspect of ecology, and understand a reverence necessary for eco-appreciation the way that these authors had?

• What would Thoreau have to say about Cronin’s criticism of the modern idea of wilderness?

• Is moving towards a true deep-ecology frame of thought worth giving up the conveniences and luxuries of modern society and culture, or is there a way to have a deep-societal-ecology through a balance framed in responsibility and respectful actions we take that effect our earth? What would be lost with modern society and culture? What be gained through letting our earth heal?

• Which of these writers would be in most disagreement with another? Why, and over what aspects of importance? Which of these writers would be in the most amount of agreement with another? Why, and how?

• Do you feel that eco-feminism is alienating towards men? What effect would this ecological discourse? What would male writers have to say about eco-feminism? What would be the eco-feminist response to their opinions?

The Flow of Thoreau