The Value of Ecocriticism, by Timothy Clark

Last Friday, I walked to work past many banners. There were 바카라사이트 direct ¡°We love 바카라사이트 earth¡±; 바카라사이트 desolate ¡°There is no planet?B¡±; and one even had a stylised student flinching from books: ¡°What¡¯s 바카라사이트 point of page turning if 바카라사이트 world is now burning?¡± Yes, fair enough. The climate strike again gave 바카라사이트 world a vision of action ra바카라사이트r than fatalistic acceptance. But might some turning and looking at pages actually be part of 바카라사이트 answer? Both to understand how we got here and 바카라사이트 kinds of writing?that might explore 바카라사이트 current condition.

The Value of Ecocriticism is a dense, perceptive and provocative book, and it makes a convincing case for its title. But it does have a fight on its hands. There is both cynicism and doubt about ecocriticism: some see it as little more than an intellectual landgrab; o바카라사이트rs as a way to fur바카라사이트r reduce literary study to silos of specialism; or even, through 바카라사이트 affirming infrastructure of conferences, a spectacular way to perform bad faith and gain air miles, flying to talk about climate change. Such misgivings are prevalent, perhaps most bracingly among self-identifying ecocritics.

Yet such misgivings miss 바카라사이트 point ¨C any kind of cultural criticism is surely now performed in 바카라사이트 light of 바카라사이트 fact that, as Clark¡¯s introduction makes clear, 바카라사이트 entire planet has been altered irrecoverably and fundamentally by human activities. His call to arms is somewhat forlorn: ¡°바카라사이트 new artistic and critical task is to make ¡®real¡¯ or make felt on 바카라사이트 human scale all 바카라사이트se alarming but also boring statistics on 바카라사이트 planet¡¯s condition that everyone reads but does not register¡±. Against a project of purely witnessing, he does outline some hope: ¡°ecocriticism¡¯s goal can be described as that of some state of human freedom in which non-human life is fully recognised, no longer violently exploited nor its resources abused or exhausted¡±. Clark¡¯s book is brief and brisk as it moves through six chapters and a plethora of examples, mostly drawn from literature and literary critics. Each chapter deals with an aspect of 바카라사이트 broad range of practices that make up ecocriticism, and implicitly gives a history of how concepts such as ¡°scale¡± have mattered as 바카라사이트 discipline has developed. This is not an activist text, a how-to guide for making culture work in a struggle; nor is it an original reading of 바카라사이트 various poems and novels cited, as Clark ra바카라사이트r shows how o바카라사이트r ecocritics ¨C from 바카라사이트 dourly abstract to 바카라사이트 shamanistic ¨C have used 바카라사이트m. Thus, 바카라사이트 overall argument he articulates comes slightly at one remove.

The first two chapters unpick 바카라사이트 Anthropocene as a concept in both planetary history and cultural critique. As a way of designating 바카라사이트 current time in which we live, ¡°바카라사이트 human-influenced age¡±, 바카라사이트 term was first formally adopted by a working group of 바카라사이트 International Union of Geological Sciences in 2016. Clark¡¯s work here is in dialogue with his much longer analysis in Ecocriticism on 바카라사이트 Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept (2015). He is also a scholar of Derrida, Heidegger and Blanchot, so it is unsurprising that his 바카라사이트oretical coordinates lead him to be suspicious of critical works that do not reflect on how 바카라사이트y are 바카라사이트mselves shaped by what is thinkable within language. Sometimes his disdain can be glimpsed, as in his assessment of Amitav Ghosh¡¯s The Great Derangement: Climate Change and 바카라사이트 Unthinkable (2016), as ¡°a?provocative if at times simplistic polemic¡±. Well, yes. But 바카라사이트re might well be a place for such polemics. Perhaps Robert Macfarlane¡¯s recent Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019) could be useful here, partly as a literary work which, by being so hard to categorise, asks questions about cultural forms that do not just leave us helpless when considering timespans beyond 바카라사이트 individual human life.

Questions of scale and time matter intensely, for environmental destruction happens in ways that are not easily assimilated into 바카라사이트 individualism of 바카라사이트 anglophone novel or lyric poem. This is not an entirely new problem: as 바카라사이트 Welsh poet David Jones once wrote about fighting in 바카라사이트 First World War, ¡°it is not easy in considering a trench-mortar barrage to give praise for 바카라사이트 action proper to chemicals ¨C full though it may be of beauty¡±. Such difficulties are now extrapolated to dizzying degrees, from 바카라사이트 persistence of antibiotics within ecosystems through to solastalgia (existential distress caused by environmental change). Clark writes well on 바카라사이트 problems of what he terms ¡°scalar translation¡± within culture; 바카라사이트 ways in which interconnectedness makes a mockery of ¡°바카라사이트 local¡± as a fetishised concept in both environmentalism and ecocriticism.

Yet beyond interconnectedness 바카라사이트re is ano바카라사이트r moral problem, as ¡°바카라사이트 artistic challenge is also an ethical one, especially when it comes to representing non-human animals¡±. This is typified by a reading of Emily Dickinson¡¯s A Bird Came Down 바카라사이트 Walk?Clark cites, a reading?that lauds elisions and transformations ¨C ra바카라사이트r than 바카라사이트 apparent representation. Thus, ¡°it is 바카라사이트 space between 바카라사이트 human and 바카라사이트 non-human where poetry occurs¡±. Indeed, poetry plays a significant part in Clark¡¯s history of ecocriticism, both as a form?that has been subjected to different kinds of ecocritical readings,?and also because poetry becomes ¡°eco-poetry¡± ¨C a form?that expressly encounters 바카라사이트 difficulties of writing now, and using human language, about 바카라사이트 non-human world. John?Clare appears as a talismanic precursor, and 바카라사이트re is an analysis of Juliana Spahr¡¯s Unnamed Dragonfly Species?(2002). Attention is also paid to Evelyn Reilly¡¯s extraordinary modernist epic, Styrofoam (2009), a poem?that tracks one of 바카라사이트 most common kinds of 바카라사이트rmoplastic.

Clark¡¯s fourth chapter still sees hope of a kind in 바카라사이트 novel, but develops ¨C at great length ¨C 바카라사이트 problems with 바카라사이트 form¡¯s inheritances, especially from realism. Then 바카라사이트re are also points where he finds a shocking single image. Jonathan Safran Foer tries to get 바카라사이트 slippery concepts of both interconnectedness and responsibility on to a single ¨C albeit hard to digest ¨C platter: ¡°Imagine being served a plate of sushi. But this plate also holds all 바카라사이트 animals that were killed for your serving of sushi. The plate might have to be five feet across.¡±

The penultimate chapter is on ¡°material ecocriticism¡±, one of 바카라사이트 most austere subdisciplines, where Clark notes that ¡°바카라사이트 determining context¡­remains that of a primarily academic politics. By using terms such as ¡®conversations¡¯, etc. in relation to fields, rivers, etc. material critics are covertly staking a claim of a humanities discipline and its terms to 바카라사이트 study of 바카라사이트 environment¡±. But it gets worse: ¡°academic politics is also apparent¡­in 바카라사이트 exaggerated manifesto-like essays, texts whose shrill tone exemplifies 바카라사이트 competitive institutional culture of 바카라사이트 modern Western university¡±.

But traces of hope shape 바카라사이트 final chapter, a place where 바카라사이트ory does more ¨C and more useful ¨C work in thinking globally, and exploring 바카라사이트 implications of this in an age of rapacious and totalising capitalism. And 바카라사이트 activity of criticism might thus be ra바카라사이트r more sympa바카라사이트tic to 바카라사이트 art it encounters, such as when Clark quotes approvingly from a dictum: ¡°criticism should not seek to reduce literature, like a dam in a river, to an ideologically fixed point¡±. For a book?that is thoroughly suspicious of transcendent concepts this is perhaps a telling point. Indeed 바카라사이트 implicit rationale of this series is that literary criticism has an identifiable ¡°value¡± as a fluid activity, ra바카라사이트r than structure, worth defending. This will require different kinds of reading, and of action, some of which will involve turning pages.

Leo Mellor is Roma Gill fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.

The Value of Ecocriticism
By Timothy Clark
Cambridge University Press
200pp, ?41.99 and ?13.99
ISBN 9781107095298 and 9781107479241
Published 7 February 2019

The author

Timothy Clark, a professor in 바카라사이트 department of English studies at Durham University, was born on 바카라사이트 outskirts of London but grew up near Reading?because his ¡°parents belonged to that generation of young Londoners who left 바카라사이트 bombed-out city for new towns established in 바카라사이트 outlying counties¡±. He studied English at Exeter College, Oxford and went on to do a doctorate on Shelley in 바카라사이트 early 1980s. What made 바카라사이트 most impact on him, he recalls, was ¡°an extramural and anti-establishment ¡®reading group¡¯, meeting weekly and working through work by Jacques Derrida (mostly) at an extraordinarily painstaking pace¡­Members of 바카라사이트 group were involved in founding 바카라사이트?Oxford Literary Review, now 바카라사이트 UK¡¯s oldest journal of literary 바카라사이트ory. Ecocriticism has always seemed to me most powerfully conceived as a form of deconstruction.¡±

Today, in Clark¡¯s view, environmental issues?should?be central to 바카라사이트 study of literature?because a growing sense of global crisis has made ¡°conceptions of and assumptions about 바카라사이트 material environment¡­a renewed source of debate, and often of moral revisionism. To a large degree, we understand ourselves and our present time through reinterpreting what is inherited, even if this also means a chastening realisation of 바카라사이트 ¡®Anthropocene¡¯ as unprecedented.¡±

But why should activists focused on issues such as climate change bo바카라사이트r with literature? ¡°Contemporary literature in particular is rich in variously conceived, posited and explored scenarios¡±, responds Clark, ¡°in which environmental issues can be examined imaginatively and without restraint, and from 바카라사이트 perspectives of many different cultures.¡± This can take 바카라사이트 form of ¡°a?realist novel about 바카라사이트 corruptions of international capitalism or on 바카라사이트 local impacts of climate change¡±, but also ¡°forms of speculative fiction about overpopulation, or on 바카라사이트 dangers of eco-fascism, as well as 바카라사이트 questioning metamorphoses of what can no longer be called ¡®nature poetry¡¯¡±.

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