Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1215/22011919-10216228
D. O’Key
This essay argues that the concept of extinction, polysemous if not overdetermined, is becoming an emergent keyword of contemporary public life as it faces the climate crisis. To make this argument the essay critically considers the ways in which extinction is currently being made public—within and by the environmental humanities but also in the wider public sphere of political and cultural contestation. The essay begins by problematizing the concept of extinction itself, positing that it makes sense to think of the Sixth Extinction as the first historical extinction event—that is, as a social articulation of an organic process in which the causes and impacts are at once natural and social. Then the essay discusses the different extinction imaginaries that have operated across modernity, before finally turning to the writings of the Extinction Studies Working Group, whose conception of extinction as a process rather than event, and whose arguments that mass extinction presents an ethical call to responsibility, have become a template for how extinction is thought about within the field of the environmental humanities. The essay ends by posing some companionly criticisms of the extinction studies project.
{"title":"Extinction in Public","authors":"D. O’Key","doi":"10.1215/22011919-10216228","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10216228","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay argues that the concept of extinction, polysemous if not overdetermined, is becoming an emergent keyword of contemporary public life as it faces the climate crisis. To make this argument the essay critically considers the ways in which extinction is currently being made public—within and by the environmental humanities but also in the wider public sphere of political and cultural contestation. The essay begins by problematizing the concept of extinction itself, positing that it makes sense to think of the Sixth Extinction as the first historical extinction event—that is, as a social articulation of an organic process in which the causes and impacts are at once natural and social. Then the essay discusses the different extinction imaginaries that have operated across modernity, before finally turning to the writings of the Extinction Studies Working Group, whose conception of extinction as a process rather than event, and whose arguments that mass extinction presents an ethical call to responsibility, have become a template for how extinction is thought about within the field of the environmental humanities. The essay ends by posing some companionly criticisms of the extinction studies project.","PeriodicalId":46497,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44124376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1215/22011919-10216184
E. Leane, Charne Lavery, M. Nash
This article examines the role of pandemics and viruses in cultural perceptions of Antarctica over the past century. In the popular imagination, Antarctica has often been framed as a place of purity, refuge, and isolation. In a series of fiction and screen texts from the nineteenth century to the present, viruses feature prominently. The texts fall into two categories: narratives in which Antarctica is the sole source of safety in a pandemic-ravaged world and those in which a virus (or another form of contagion) is discovered within the continent itself and needs to be contained. Viruses in these texts are not only literal but also metaphorical, taking the form of any kind of threatening infection, and as such are linked to texts in which Antarctic purity is discursively connected to racial and gendered exclusivity. Based on this comparison, the article argues that ideas of containment and contagion can have political connotations in an Antarctic context, to the extent that they are applied to particular groups of people in order to position them as “alien” to the Antarctic environment. The authors show that the recent media construction of Antarctica during COVID-19 needs to be understood against this disturbing aspect of the Antarctic imaginary, and also that narratives of Antarctic purity are imaginatively linked to both geopolitical exclusions and the melting of Antarctic ice.
{"title":"“The Only Almost Germ-Free Continent Left”","authors":"E. Leane, Charne Lavery, M. Nash","doi":"10.1215/22011919-10216184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10216184","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the role of pandemics and viruses in cultural perceptions of Antarctica over the past century. In the popular imagination, Antarctica has often been framed as a place of purity, refuge, and isolation. In a series of fiction and screen texts from the nineteenth century to the present, viruses feature prominently. The texts fall into two categories: narratives in which Antarctica is the sole source of safety in a pandemic-ravaged world and those in which a virus (or another form of contagion) is discovered within the continent itself and needs to be contained. Viruses in these texts are not only literal but also metaphorical, taking the form of any kind of threatening infection, and as such are linked to texts in which Antarctic purity is discursively connected to racial and gendered exclusivity. Based on this comparison, the article argues that ideas of containment and contagion can have political connotations in an Antarctic context, to the extent that they are applied to particular groups of people in order to position them as “alien” to the Antarctic environment. The authors show that the recent media construction of Antarctica during COVID-19 needs to be understood against this disturbing aspect of the Antarctic imaginary, and also that narratives of Antarctic purity are imaginatively linked to both geopolitical exclusions and the melting of Antarctic ice.","PeriodicalId":46497,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47307050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1215/22011919-10216162
J. Zwier, B. de Boer
In coming to grips with the advent of the Anthropocene, contemporary philosophers have recently pushed beyond its many physical implications (e.g., global warming, reduced biodiversity) and social significance (e.g., climate justice, economics, migration) to interpret the Anthropocene metaphysically. According to such interpretations, the Anthropocene imposes nothing less than a wholly new understanding of the world. This raises the question regarding the character of such an imposition. To develop this question, this article discusses three metaphysical interpretations of the Anthropocene: Clive Hamilton’s, Timothy Morton’s, and Bruno Latour’s. Among many voices today, these authors are specifically relevant because they predominantly correlate the imposition of a new, nonmodern world with the scientific object “Earth” as it is developed in Earth system science. The purpose here is to elucidate the ways in which this correlation is made, and to inquire after the role of science—a modern activity par excellence—in the advent of the world of the Anthropocene. The critical question is how this role could be legitimated in the proclaimed absence of a modern framework ensuring science’s status as a beacon of certainty and truth.
{"title":"Earth Becomes World?","authors":"J. Zwier, B. de Boer","doi":"10.1215/22011919-10216162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10216162","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In coming to grips with the advent of the Anthropocene, contemporary philosophers have recently pushed beyond its many physical implications (e.g., global warming, reduced biodiversity) and social significance (e.g., climate justice, economics, migration) to interpret the Anthropocene metaphysically. According to such interpretations, the Anthropocene imposes nothing less than a wholly new understanding of the world. This raises the question regarding the character of such an imposition. To develop this question, this article discusses three metaphysical interpretations of the Anthropocene: Clive Hamilton’s, Timothy Morton’s, and Bruno Latour’s. Among many voices today, these authors are specifically relevant because they predominantly correlate the imposition of a new, nonmodern world with the scientific object “Earth” as it is developed in Earth system science. The purpose here is to elucidate the ways in which this correlation is made, and to inquire after the role of science—a modern activity par excellence—in the advent of the world of the Anthropocene. The critical question is how this role could be legitimated in the proclaimed absence of a modern framework ensuring science’s status as a beacon of certainty and truth.","PeriodicalId":46497,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44418899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1215/22011919-10216195
A. Rademacher, M. Cadenasso, S. Pickett
This essay considers ecology in its singular and plural forms. It asks whether and how the knowledge forms generated by practitioners of the singular science of ecology might weave more fully into a robust plural analytic that is grounded in the acknowledgment of multiple ways of knowing, experiencing, and attributing meaning to consequential connections between the human and the more-than-human world. Although Western science, with singular ecology as one of its many descendants, leaves an undeniable imprint, the essay aims to ask whether the contemporary, lived life of ecological science as postpositivist practice might be working in ways that, while imperfect, may be more legible and shared with scholars in the environmental humanities than is usually noted. It describes the knowledge base of the singular science of ecology, which in contemporary theory and practice consists of collections of disparate, complementary, or contradictory models—ecologies—in the plural, thus holding generality and infinite particularity in constant dialogue. The authors, two natural scientists and one social scientist, aim to provoke fresh discussions about the ways ecological analytics circulate in contemporary research and scholarly practice. The authors’ goal is to further the essential work of more direct and clear conversation, translation, and mutual learning between scholars in the environmental humanities and biophysical ecology. They hold this to be essential as transdisciplinary initiatives endeavor to study, and better understand, how social and environmental change coproduce one another.
{"title":"Ecologies, One and All","authors":"A. Rademacher, M. Cadenasso, S. Pickett","doi":"10.1215/22011919-10216195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10216195","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay considers ecology in its singular and plural forms. It asks whether and how the knowledge forms generated by practitioners of the singular science of ecology might weave more fully into a robust plural analytic that is grounded in the acknowledgment of multiple ways of knowing, experiencing, and attributing meaning to consequential connections between the human and the more-than-human world. Although Western science, with singular ecology as one of its many descendants, leaves an undeniable imprint, the essay aims to ask whether the contemporary, lived life of ecological science as postpositivist practice might be working in ways that, while imperfect, may be more legible and shared with scholars in the environmental humanities than is usually noted. It describes the knowledge base of the singular science of ecology, which in contemporary theory and practice consists of collections of disparate, complementary, or contradictory models—ecologies—in the plural, thus holding generality and infinite particularity in constant dialogue. The authors, two natural scientists and one social scientist, aim to provoke fresh discussions about the ways ecological analytics circulate in contemporary research and scholarly practice. The authors’ goal is to further the essential work of more direct and clear conversation, translation, and mutual learning between scholars in the environmental humanities and biophysical ecology. They hold this to be essential as transdisciplinary initiatives endeavor to study, and better understand, how social and environmental change coproduce one another.","PeriodicalId":46497,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43415896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1215/22011919-9962849
S. O’Donnell
This article uses a queer ecocritical methodology to analyze constructions of the environment and subjectivity in American spiritual warfare demonologies (discourses about the reality and activity of demons) published in 2008–18. There has been a surge in critical research on evangelical climate skepticism, the ecological thought of far-right movements, and the growing influence of Christian nationalism and charismatic evangelicalism on the US political landscape. Spiritual warfare, which constructs reality as a battle between divine and demonic forces, is a key part of this landscape. This article shows how spiritual warfare demonology operates as a tool for the construction of entwined social, political, and environmental ecologies, combining notions of deviant nature and deviant culture. Such ecologies both reinforce and destabilize biopolitical hierarchies that enshrine a normative (white, settler, cisheteropatriarchal) model of the human over both other (racialized, queered) humans and the nonhuman world. Critically rereading spiritual warfare demonologies through queer ecology, the article shows that such texts frame the fights against climate change and for queer and racialized subjects as prongs of a demonic assault on the futurity of white Christian America. Such texts reveal spiritual warfare demonology to rest on an ecological ultimatum: that nature will be normative or it will not be at all.
{"title":"Damned Ecologies","authors":"S. O’Donnell","doi":"10.1215/22011919-9962849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9962849","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article uses a queer ecocritical methodology to analyze constructions of the environment and subjectivity in American spiritual warfare demonologies (discourses about the reality and activity of demons) published in 2008–18. There has been a surge in critical research on evangelical climate skepticism, the ecological thought of far-right movements, and the growing influence of Christian nationalism and charismatic evangelicalism on the US political landscape. Spiritual warfare, which constructs reality as a battle between divine and demonic forces, is a key part of this landscape. This article shows how spiritual warfare demonology operates as a tool for the construction of entwined social, political, and environmental ecologies, combining notions of deviant nature and deviant culture. Such ecologies both reinforce and destabilize biopolitical hierarchies that enshrine a normative (white, settler, cisheteropatriarchal) model of the human over both other (racialized, queered) humans and the nonhuman world. Critically rereading spiritual warfare demonologies through queer ecology, the article shows that such texts frame the fights against climate change and for queer and racialized subjects as prongs of a demonic assault on the futurity of white Christian America. Such texts reveal spiritual warfare demonology to rest on an ecological ultimatum: that nature will be normative or it will not be at all.","PeriodicalId":46497,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48898465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1215/22011919-9962860
Ben Perkins
{"title":"Slow Violence and the Politics of Representation of Ecocide","authors":"Ben Perkins","doi":"10.1215/22011919-9962860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9962860","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46497,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Humanities","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44823322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1215/22011919-9962937
Ina Linge
Dance orients the performer's body toward both environment and pleasure, yet the intersection of environmental and sexual attunement in dance practice remains an underexplored area of research. This article considers how environmental and sexual readings of dance practice can be brought together by proposing a queer ecological approach to modernist dance. Drawing on research in dance studies, feminist and queer science studies, and sexology studies, the article examines the work of Loïe Fuller, an early pioneer of modernist dance, to show how Fuller's work engages with themes of both sex and nature and consequently introduces environmentally attuned thinking to early twentieth century sexual knowledge production. By examining the parallels and divergences between Magnus Hirschfeld's early twentieth-century sexological writing about "transvestitism" and Loïe Fuller's modernist dance, via the copycat dancer Henry Cyril Paget, I show that both dance and sexology rethought the relationship between sex and nature by grappling, to different extents, with a queer vision of nature, where nature loses its explanatory force and moral authority. This reveals the importance of nature and the nonhuman in the production of modern concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality and the important role that dance can play in illuminating the intersection of sex and nature.
{"title":"Queer Ecology in Loïe Fuller's Modernist Dance and Magnus Hirschfeld's <i>Die Transvestiten</i>.","authors":"Ina Linge","doi":"10.1215/22011919-9962937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9962937","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Dance orients the performer's body toward both environment and pleasure, yet the intersection of environmental and sexual attunement in dance practice remains an underexplored area of research. This article considers how environmental and sexual readings of dance practice can be brought together by proposing a queer ecological approach to modernist dance. Drawing on research in dance studies, feminist and queer science studies, and sexology studies, the article examines the work of Loïe Fuller, an early pioneer of modernist dance, to show how Fuller's work engages with themes of both sex and nature and consequently introduces environmentally attuned thinking to early twentieth century sexual knowledge production. By examining the parallels and divergences between Magnus Hirschfeld's early twentieth-century sexological writing about \"transvestitism\" and Loïe Fuller's modernist dance, via the copycat dancer Henry Cyril Paget, I show that both dance and sexology rethought the relationship between sex and nature by grappling, to different extents, with a queer vision of nature, where nature loses its explanatory force and moral authority. This reveals the importance of nature and the nonhuman in the production of modern concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality and the important role that dance can play in illuminating the intersection of sex and nature.</p>","PeriodicalId":46497,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Humanities","volume":"14 3","pages":"618-640"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7613976/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9750491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：