Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism (Nature, Culture and Literature 3)

NATURE IN LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

Nature, Culture and Literature 03

General Editors: Hubert van den Berg (University of Groningen) Axel Goodbody (University of Bath) Marcel Wissenburg (University of Nijmegen)

Advisory Board: Jonathan Bate (University of Warwick) Hartmut Böhme (Humboldt University, Berlin) Heinrich Detering (University of Kiel) Andrew Dobson (Keele University) Marius de Geus (Leiden University) Terry Gifford (University of Leeds) Demetri Kantarelis (Assumption College, Worcester MA) Richard Kerridge (Bath Spa University College) Michiel Korthals (Wageningen University) Svend Erik Larsen (University of Aarhus) Patrick Murphy (University of Central Florida) Kate Rigby (Monash University) Avner de-Shalit (Hebrew University Jerusalem) Piers Stephens (Michigan State University) Nina Witoszek (University of Oslo)

NATURE IN LITERARY AND CULTURAL STUDIES

TRANSATLANTIC CONVERSATIONS ON ECOCRITICISM

Edited by

Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006

Cover Design: Erick de Jong The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-10: 90-420-2096-2 ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2096-2 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2006 Printed in the Netherlands

Contents Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer Nature in literary and cultural studies: defining the subject of ecocriticism – an introduction

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THEORIZING THE NATURE OF ECOCRITICISM Louise Westling Literature, the environment, and the question of the posthuman

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Hubert Zapf The state of ecocriticism and the function of literature as cultural ecology

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Christa Grewe-Volpp Nature “out there” and as “a social player”: some basic consequences for a literary ecocritical analysis

71

Simone Birgitt Hartmann Feminist and postcolonial perspectives on ecocriticism in a Canadian context: toward a ‘situated’ literary theory and practice of ecofeminism and environmental justi

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Sylvia Mayer Literary studies, ecofeminism and environmentalist knowledge production in the humanities

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LOCATING NATURE IN LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND EVERDAY CULTURE

Beatrix Busse (Historical) ecolinguistics and literary analysis

131

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Hannes Bergthaller “Trees are what everyone needs:” The Lorax, anthropocentrism, and the problem of mimesis

155

Ursula K. Heise Afterglow: Chernobyl and the everyday

177

Christine Gerhardt “Syllabled to us for names”: Native American echoes in Walt Whitman’s green poetics

209

Tonia L. Payne “We are dirt: we are earth”: Ursula Le Guin and the problem of extraterrestrialism

229

Christian Krug Virtual tourism: the consumption of natural and digital environments

249

Andrew A. Liston Gertrud Leutenegger’s metanoic narrative Kontinent

275

NATURE, LITERATURE AND THE SPACE OF THE NATIONAL Irena Ragaišien÷ Nature/place, memory, and identity in the poetry of Lithuanian émigré Danut÷ Paškevičiūt÷

291

Colin Riordan German literature, nature and modernity before 1914

313

Caroline Delph Nature and nationalism in the writings of Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860)

331

Simon Meacher It was shown in the way they stepped in the woods: nature in Hermann Löns and Edward Thomas

355

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Katharine Griffiths The aesthetic appreciation of nature as a reaction to dictatorship: disjunction and dissidence in the Inner Emigration 373 Axel Goodbody From egocentrism to ecocentrism: nature and morality in German writing in the 1980s 393

ETHICS OF NATURE Patrick D. Murphy Grounding anotherness and answerability through allonational ecoliterature formations

417

Thomas Claviez Ecology as moral stand(s): environmental ethics, Western moral philosophy, and the problem of the Other

435

Timo Maran Where do your borders lie? Reflections on the semiotical ethics of nature

455

Notes on contributors

477

Index

485

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Nature in literary and cultural studies: defining the subject of ecocriticism – an introduction Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer Over the last one and a half decades, ecocriticism has evolved from a regional movement of Western American literature scholars interested in drawing attention to the cultural value of nature writing and environmental literature into a growing international and interdisciplinary community of scholars who agree that the current environmental crisis is the troubling material expression of modern culture’s philosophical assumptions, epistemological convictions, aesthetic principles, and ethical imperatives. A rather loosely defined and fiercely contested term during its inception in the early 1990s – was it the mere application of ecological concepts to literary and cultural studies, a blueprint for political environmentalism, or something else entirely? – ecocriticism entered the new century on equal terms with such established methodologies as structuralism, new historicism, feminism, psychoanalytic criticism and postcolonial theory. At least this is what Peter Barry suggests with the inclusion of ecocriticism in the second, revised edition of his Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (2002). Barry defines ecocriticism as a critical enterprise rooted in environmentalist revisions of U.S.American nature writing and 19th-century Transcendentalism (with a particular focus on Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller), and of the British tradition of late 18th-century Romanticism (most prominently represented by Wordsworth). While we, the editors of this volume, endorse the representation of ecocriticism as a theoretical and methodological force that focuses on real and imagined boundaries between nature and culture without denying nature’s physical existence, we disagree with Barry’s charac-

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terization of ecocriticism as a project that “turn[s] away from the ‘social constructivism’ and ‘linguistic determinism’ of dominant literary theories” (Barry 2002: 264). Rather, with this volume we hope to push ecocriticism’s theoretical and conceptual limits towards a more rigorous investigation of nature, not as a concept that reinforces but one that challenges established cultural, political and ethical normativities. In other words: We strongly support the further development of ecocriticism as a methodology that re-examines the history of ideologically, aesthetically, and ethically motivated conceptualisations of nature, of the function of its constructions and metaphorisations in literary and other cultural practices, and of the potential effects these discursive, imaginative constructions have on our bodies as well as our natural and cultural environments. In doing so, we hope to continue a transatlantic conversation that has been underway since the closing decade of the 20th century, mostly among U.S.-American and British ecocritics who work in the fields of American and British studies. We also wish to expand this conversation by providing space for new voices (from Germany, Estonia, and Lithuania) and subject areas (literatures in German, ecologically oriented linguistics). The vitality of the ongoing ecocritical exchange manifests itself in an increasing number of publications by an ever-growing number of scholars on all continents. Ecocritical books and essays have begun to fill libraries, so that, at this point in time, any attempt at listing the most important names and titles would inadvertently result in involuntary omissions and accidental oversights. This caveat notwithstanding, we would like to briefly discuss three earlier essay collections, all of which continue the work of Glotfelty and Fromm’s pivotal Ecocriticism Reader (1996) and which represent current developments in a particularly poignant manner: Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells’ Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature (1998), Laurence Coupe’s The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism (2000), and Karla Armbruster and Kathleen Wallace’s Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism (2001).1 Important precursors of the present volume, these collections 1

Of course, ecocriticism’s conceptual and methodological evolution extends far beyond the boundaries of these three anthologies. In the bibliography at the end of this

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are united in their effort to expand the scope of ecocriticism beyond its initial task of opening “the literary canon to a fuller sampling of nature writing and the literature of place” (Kern 2000: 9). The smallest common denominator among these volumes is a shared interest in bringing nature (and the natural environment) back to public attention through the critical examination of its function in the discourses of literature, popular culture, and philosophy. Spurred by a growing sense of ecological crisis (a crisis most notably symbolized in the late 1980s and 1990s by the Chernobyl disaster, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the potential hazards of the so-called mad cow disease, and at the beginning of the 21st century by the devastating effects of so-called ‘natural catastrophes’ such as tsunamis, hurricanes, and wild fires as well as new epidemics like SARS and Bird Flue), Cheryll Glotfelty’s rather broad definition of ecocriticism as “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (Glotfelty and Fromm: 1996, xvii) soon proved in need of conceptual refinement. Echoing Lawrence Buell’s observation that “the environmental crisis involves a crisis of the imagination” (Buell 1995: 2), Richard Kerridge characterized ecocriticism as a project that “seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis” (Kerridge and Sammells 1998: 5). By implication, this definition challenges dominant modernist assumptions about literature and art as aesthetically and ethically autonomous entities. And such a position entails a critical reassessment of the functional relationship between cultural ‘texts’ and their material referents, i.e., a re-evaluation of mimesis and representation as core categories of literary and cultural criticism. Laurence Coupe takes the discussion to yet another level, stating that “green studies is much more than a revival of mimesis: it is a new kind of pragmatics” (Coupe 2000: 4). For Coupe, ecocriticism’s ultimate objective should be to encourage resistance rather than conservation – “resistance to planetary pollution and degradation” (ibid.), a politically charged demand that presupposes changes in established patterns of thought and behaviour brought about by an introduction, we include additional publications that we think are of great value to the project of ecocriticism. The selection is, however, restricted to publications in English.

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(eco-)critical inspection of culture’s discursive relationship to nature. For as Coupe also insists, “green studies does not challenge the notion that human beings make sense of the world through language, but rather the self-serving inference that nature is nothing more than a linguistic construct” (3). If the forms and functions of literary and cultural representation in an era of environmental crisis provide the major conceptual nodes in Kerridge and Sammells’ Writing the Environment and Coupe’s Green Studies Reader, Armbruster and Wallace challenge another of ecocriticism’s early shortcomings: the limitation of its critical scope to nature writing and the literature of wilderness. They are concerned that by focusing on “the study of one genre – the personal narratives of the Anglo-American nature writing tradition – or to one physical landscape – the ostensibly untrammelled American wilderness”, ecocritics risk “seriously misrepresenting the significance of multiple natural and built environments to writers with other ethnic, national, or racial affiliations” (Armbruster and Wallace 2001: 7). For Armbruster and Wallace, the inclusion of urban, ethnic, and national perspectives in an ecological approach to literary and cultural studies is necessary in order to avoid ecoriticism’s theoretical and conceptual self-marginalisation in the larger space of the humanities, while at the same time, it allows ecocritics to reveal the historical and ideological (mis-)appropriations of nature as a justification for systems of cultural and social oppression. The ideas and concepts emerging from these collections provide crucial stepping stones for developing ecocriticism into an efficacious, competitive, and innovative methodology in literary and cultural studies. And yet, as Louise Westling observes in her contribution to the present volume, the field is still undertheorized (see p. 26). In other words, our critical trade still lacks the precision instruments that would allow us to produce reliable theories on the historically, politically, and socially mutable relationship between culture and nature, or more accurately, between various cultures and their respective notions of nature. While we do not claim to supply the definitive remedy for this problem, as editors of the present volume we seek to further the discussion about the theoretical foundations of ecocriticism by asking a set of related questions: How and to what effect is nature conceptualized in various cultural, critical, and

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disciplinary contexts? How and to what effect are concepts of the natural and the human related to each other? What is the relationship between nature, language, art, and literature? And last but not least: What are the conditions and presuppositions under which nature can be re-established as a subject of literary and cultural criticism? The individual essays in the present collection approach these questions from various directions. They represent extended versions of a selection of papers given at a conference held at the University of Münster (Germany) in March 2004.2 The conference was organized to “position ecocriticism”, i.e., to evaluate ecocriticism’s theoretical and practical productivity and locate it within the changing landscape of international literary and cultural studies. This collection is divided into four thematic sections: (1) “Theorising the Nature of Ecocriticsm” offers proposals for rethinking both the cultural function and the subject of literary studies from an ecological perspective, which includes a re-evaluation of nature’s double-character as material phenomenon and aesthetically charged category; (2) “Locating Nature in Language, Literature, and Everyday Culture” examines specific literary and cultural texts, asking how and to what effect they represent nature and the environment in a time and age of postindustrialism, environmental crises and virtual realities; (3) focusing on literary traditions of Germany and Lithuania, “Nature, Literature, and the Space of the National” offers analyses of the politically and ideologically ambiguous, at times controversial relation of the natural and the national; and (4) the essays in “The Ethics of Nature” discuss the philosophical, political, and semiotic prerequisites for charting a postmodern, post-colonial ethics of nature. Addressing questions as diverse as literary representation and mimesis, the function of literary culture, pragmatics, narratology, and semiotics, all contributors are united in an effort to investigate the epistemological, poetological, linguistic, and ethical complexities involved in any discussion of ‘nature’. While nature may continue to exist even after the demise of human culture, it will not be the same nature that existed before the appearance of humans on the evolutio2 The papers were originally given in English. A selection of the papers given in German was published as Natur-Kultur-Text: Beiträge zu Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft. Eds. Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2005).

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nary stage. Similarly, the ways we perceive, interact with and ultimately change nature cannot be detached from who we are in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, nationality, and geographical location. Unlike Edward Abbey, the editors of this collection do not think it is possible to enter the ‘wild’ space of nature and “evade for a while the clamour and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus”.3 On every hike into the world of nature – whether we actually, physically move through the landscape, or stay at home on the couch and watch a wilderness programme on TV or read a scholarly article in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment – we carry minds full of cultural values, norms, and attitudes that inform the ways in which we see, know, represent, inhabit, and, ultimately, reconstruct nature. At the beginning of the 21st century it no longer makes sense to think of nature and culture in oppositional terms. Rather, we should start to conceive of the pair as hybridized entities, as Dana Phillips has recently suggested. Purism, whether cloaked in the celebratory fashions of naturalism or culturalism, always runs the risk of ideological intolerance. We agree with Jonathan Bate’s remark in his “Foreword” to the Green Studies Reader, that the “relationship between nature and culture is the key intellectual problem of the twenty-first century. A clear and critical thinking of the problem will be crucial to humankind’s future in the age of biotechnology” (Coupe 2000: xvii). In the concluding sections of this introduction, we would like to draw attention to three scholars whose work we consider as being of particular value for ecocriticsm’s further theoretical development: Gregory Bateson, Kate Soper, and Gernot Böhme. The author of Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), Bateson is certainly the most widely recognized of these three critics; Soper is best known for her What Is Nature? (1995), a book most often cited by European environmental philosophers and ecofeminists, while Böhme’s numerous books and essays on the philosophy and aesthetics of nature (some of which are written in collaboration with his brother Hartmut, professor of literary and cultural studies in Berlin), are only available to a Germanspeaking audience. Inspired by different cultural, historical, and 3

See Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (New York: Ballentine Books, 1968; emphasis in the original), 6.

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political contexts, the works of Bateson, Soper, and Böhme can contribute in significant ways to the theoretical advancement of the ecocritical project. First published 1972, Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind is a synthesis of political, cultural, and theoretical concerns as they emerged in the transatlantic world of the 1950s and 1960s. Influenced by the environmental, anti-war, and civil rights movements of the 1960s and inspired by the interdisciplinary approaches of systems theory, Bateson’s major concern in Steps was the re-articulation of the relationship between mind and matter and, based on that, a re-definition of mind itself. The concept of ecology provided the framework for this project. Coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, ecology was a term that drew epistemological attention to the relationship between biological bodies or organisms and their animate and inanimate environments. The definition of ecology as “the science of communities”4 in the early 20th century made it possible later in the century to metaphorize the term and apply it to sociological and cultural investigations of the relationship between individuals, communities and their (natural and built) environments. At the risk of stultifying the term’s theoretical edge, Bateson defined ecology as “the study of the interaction and survival of ideas and programs […] in circuits” (Bateson 2000: 491). Yet at the same time, ecology’s conceptual expansion into the realm of metaphor opened the door for a re-definition of mind as a principle that is “immanent” (493) to all structures and objects, be they natural or cultural. Paraphrasing Bateson’s work in the “Foreword” to The University of Chicago Press’ republication of Steps in 2000, his daughter Catherine Bateson observed that for her father “the ecology of mind is an ecology of pattern, information, and ideas that happen to be embodied in things— material forms” (x). More than simply the secularized version of an autonomous, metaphysical power that regulates all human affairs, Bateson’s “mind” becomes a synonym for a cybernetic system, one in which individual body, society, and ecosystem interact and communicate with each other for the purpose of survival. 4

According to Donald Worster, this definition was provided by Victor Shelford in 1919, at the time working as an ecologist at the University of Illinois (see Worster 1998: 204).

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While Bateson was not explicitly concerned with a methodological reform of literary and cultural studies, his concept of an ecology of mind, which emphasizes communicative relationships within and among highly complex bio-social systems, allows us to frame the ecocritical project as one that investigates aesthetic representations, discursive performances, and cultural functions of nature in historically, racially, and socially diverse communities and societies. One of the major theoretical inspirations for reconceptualising nature comes from British environmental philosopher Kate Soper. In What Is Nature? (1995), she outlines the major philosophical routes pursued by modern discourses of nature and marks the intellectual and ideological traps set in a politically contested, conceptual territory. Echoing Wittgenstein, Soper describes the philosopher’s task as one that is investigative rather than prescriptive. She points out that “it may be a mistaken approach to the meaning of terms to attempt to specify how they should be employed as opposed to exploring the way in which they are actually used” (Soper 1995: 20; emphasis in the original). For her, there can be “no adequate attempt […] to explore ‘what nature is’ that is not centrally concerned with what it has been said to be” (21; emphasis in the original). Surveying the major trends in philosophical conceptualizations and ideological appropriations of nature in the tradition of modern European thinking, she diagnoses two principal philosophical paradigms. From a cosmological, Neoplatonist perspective, nature is “conceived […] as the totality of being” (22), a definition that appears to be valuable to contemporary ecological debates because it locates humanity within rather than in opposition to nature. Soper sees a parallel between “the idea of plenitude, diversity and organic interconnection informing the idea of [the Great] Chain [of Being]” (25) with current debates about eco-systemic interdependency and the necessity to maintain bio-diversity. While she recognizes a valuable, proto-ecological tradition within Western philosophical thinking, Soper at the same time is fully aware of “the hierarchical ranking of species that is the organizing principle of the Great Chain” (ibid.). Consequently, any political claim to the cosmological paradigm involves the critical reformulation of its conceptual core. The second paradigm that Soper subjects to a critical revision concerns conceptualizations of ‘human nature’. During the Enlighten-

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ment, nature was defined as that which is chaotic, unruly, and unpredictable and, therefore, in need of being contained, improved, and corrected by civilization. This stance drew major opposition in the Romantic age when nature, now perceived as “an essentially innocent and benevolent power” and the source of ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’ was engaged as an ethically and aesthetically normative measure of human conduct. Soper cautions against the dangers and pitfalls inherent in either of these two modern approaches to nature. While the Enlightenment idea of human emancipation from nature enabled the development of inalienable human rights such as freedom and individual self-realization, it also privileges “mind over body, the rational over the affective” (31). The Romantic concept of liberating (human) nature from the constrictive power of culture and civilization is marked by a similar ambivalence: on the one hand, it inspired the emancipatory social and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s as well as the environmental movement; on the other hand it was and continues to be “a component of all forms of racism, tribalism and nationalism” (32), ideologies that call upon nature to castigate ‘deviations’ from social, sexual, and racial norms. For Soper, nature is more than “what takes place without the voluntary and intentional agency of man,” a definition she found in John Stuart Mill’s 1874 essay on “Nature”. In addition to being that which exists outside the reach of the human will, it is also a functionally multivalent, historically complex, and ideologically paradoxical concept. Soper points out that “the use of ‘nature’ as if it referred to an independent and permanent order of reality embodies a kind of error, or failure to register the history of the legitimating function it has played in human culture” (34). The implied definition of nature as both material reality and ideologically charged concept, as representable object and discursive function is crucial for the further development of ecocriticism’s theoretical foundations. Soper’s philosophical approach recommends itself to the ecocritical project because it acknowledges nature as an entity independent of human culture, and, at the same time, keeps in focus “the impact on the environment of the different historical modes of ‘human’ interaction with it” (19). Gernot Böhme’s work is solidly anchored in the tradition of German aesthetic philosophy. More specifically, in his outline of an “ecological aesthetics of nature”, Böhme builds upon some of the

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major tenets of Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic theory.5 While Kant’s critique of judgement still relied on the concept of beauty as an intrinsic value of nature, for Hegel beauty in nature was merely an imperfect expression (or, as we would say today, simulation) of beauty in art. Adorno laments the expulsion of nature from aesthetic theory, liberates the philosophy of the aesthetic from its Hegelian constriction to a philosophy of art, and, as Böhme points out, reestablishes the aesthetic as a direct mode of experiencing and knowing nature. Based on the insight that current environmental problems resulted in a growing realisation of the natural (or organic) conditions of human existence, Böhme calls for a reformulation of aesthetic theory, not as a conversation about works of art that serves the exclusive purpose of evaluation, but as an ontologized mode of aesthetic perception (Wahrnehmung), a concept which he defines as “the sensual existence in environments” (“das sinnliche Befinden in Umgebungen”, 1989: 10). The English landscape garden serves as the paradigmatic embodiment of an ecological aesthetics of nature. Described by Kant as a concrete form of landscape painting, landscape gardening – like painting – produces more or less idealized images of nature. However, where the painter uses paint, the gardener uses plants and other materials to create his or her portrait of nature. Thus, for the gardener it becomes necessary to decide if and to what degree growth should be curtailed or integrated into the design. Both painter and gardener create atmospheres which, in one way or another, appeal to their audiences; yet only the gardener’s work attends to the entire spectrum of the human senses: one can see the landscape, hear wind and water, smell the flower, touch the bark of the tree, and taste the berry (which, in some places, may require the violation of park regulations). In contrast, the painter’s work can only be looked at, seen. Its appeal is merely visual. Entering an English landscape garden (or any other, similar landscape type), the human individual will be confronted with 5

While some of Böhme’s philosophical pieces on ethics are available in English as Ethics in Context: The Art of Dealing with Serious Questions (2001), his studies in aesthetic philosophy are only accessible in German. In addition to Für eine ökologische Naturästhetik (1989) and Atmosphären (1995), Böhme’s Natürlich Natur: Über Natur im Zeitalter der technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1992) provides new, ecological approaches to a philosophy of nature.

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a staged, dramatized, ‘civilized’ version of nature, but one in which nature will always remain one of the lead actors: plants that grow and change their forms and colours with the seasons are part of the design. While the gardens of the French Baroque exemplify the degradation of nature to the status of mere raw material and its concomitant subjugation under the rules of mathematical beauty (i.e., of lines, squares, angles, and perfect circles), the creation of beauty in an English landscape garden involves what Böhme, drawing on Ernst Bloch, calls “technologies of alliance”, i.e., the co-operative interaction between nature and culture.6 Like Bateson’s ecology of mind, Böhme’s ecological aesthetics of nature seeks to overcome existing conceptual rifts between nature and culture. Unlike Bateson, for whom the theoretical reintegration of mind into nature is essential to the project of ecological reformation, Böhme focuses on the body as the fulcrum in re-articulations of the nature-culture relationship. Endowed with sensual consciousness (Sinnbewußtsein), the body becomes the medium through which nature, or rather, the idea of nature, can be reintegrated into concepts of the human self.7 Although approaching their goal from different directions, Bateson and Böhme are united with Soper in their endeavour to treat what Bateson called the pathologies of epistemology, a terminology he employed to refer to the disruption of communicative feedback loops between mind and matter, nature and culture. As an ecologically inspired approach to literary and cultural studies, ecocriticism can participate in such a project, one that needs to be, as are the essays in this volume, a transatlantic, transnational endeavour. 6 “Die Natur ist hier [im Landschaftsgarten] nicht bloß Material für menschlichen Gestaltungswillen. Die Selbsttätigkeit der Natur wird geachtet und trägt zum Zustandekommen des Werkes bei. Man ist geneigt, mit Ernst Bloch die Landschaftsgärtnerei eine Allianztechnik zu nennen” (Böhme 1989: 87). 7 Demanding a careful analysis and critique of existing aesthetic theories, Böhme writes: “Die Beziehung von neuer Naturphilosophie und Naturästhetik liegt tiefer. Es geht im Grunde um das ‘Sichbefinden des Menschen in Umwelten’. Die durch den Menschen veränderte natürliche Umwelt wird für ihn nur deshalb zum Problem, weil er das Destruktive dieser Veränderungen nun am eigenen Leib zu spüren bekommt. Das bringt ihm, dem Menschen, zu Bewußtsein, daß er selbst als leiblich sinnliches Wesen existiert, und zwingt ihn, diese seine eigene Natürlichkeit wieder in sein Selbstbewußtsein zu integrieren” (1995: 9).

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Selected Bibliography Adamson, Joni, Mei Mei Evans and Rachel Stein (eds). 2002. The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy. Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press. Alaimo, Stacy. 2000. Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Armbruster Karla & Kathleen R. Wallace (eds). 2001. Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlottesville, Va: University of Virginia Press. Barry, Peter. 2002. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 2nd revised edition. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press. Bate, Jonathan. 1991. Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition. London and New York: Routledge. Bateson, Gregory. 2000. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. 1972. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Böhme, Gernot. 1989. Für eine ökologische Naturästhetik. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. —. 1992. Natürlich Natur: Über Natur im Zeitalter der technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. —. 1995. Atmosphäre. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Buell, Lawrence. 1995. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. —. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. —. 2005. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. Campbell, SueEllen. 1996. “The Land and Language of Desire: Where Deep Ecology and Post-Structuralism Meet.” The Ecocriticism Reader, 124-136. Coupe, Lawrence (ed.). 2000. The Green Studies Reader. London: Routledge. Cronon, William (ed.). 1996. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York and London: W.W. Norton. Evernden, Neil. 1992. The Social Creation of Nature. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Gaard, Greta and Patrick D. Murphy (eds). 1998. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Glotfelty, Cheryl and Harold Fromm (eds). 1996. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens, Ga.: The University of Georgia Press. Goodbody, Axel (ed.). 2002. The Culture of German Environmentalism: Anxieties, Visions, Realities. New York: Berghahn Books. Kerridge, Richard and Neil Sammells (eds). 1998. Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature. London: Zed Books. Kern, Robert. 2000. “Ecocriticism – What Is It Good For?” ISLE 7.1 (Winter): 9-32.

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Krebs, Angelika. Ethics of Nature. A Map. 1999. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter. Kroeber, Karl. 1994. Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind. New York: Columbia University Press. Love, Glen. “Ecocriticism and Science: Toward Consilience”. New Literary History 30.3 (1999): 561-76. Mayer, Sylvia (ed.). 2003. Restoring the Connection to the Natural World: Essays on the African American Environmental Imagination. Münster/Berlin: Lit Verlag. Mazel, David. 2000. American Literary Environmentalism. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press. Merchant, Carolyn. 1980. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. San Francsico: Harper & Row. Phillips, Dana. The Truth of Ecology: Nature, Culture and Literature in America. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Plumwood, Val. 2002. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. London and New York: Routledge. Riordan, Colin. 1997. Green Thought in German Culture. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Rueckert, William. “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism.” 1978. The Ecocriticism Reader, 103-123. Soper, Kate. 1995. What Is Nature? Culture, Politics, and the Non-Human. Oxford: Blackwell. Stein, Rachel. 1997. Shifting the Ground: American Women Wirters’ Revision of Nature, Gender, and Race. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia. Tallmadge, Richard and Henry Harrington (eds). 2000. Reading Under the Sign of Nature. New Essays in Ecocriticism. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Warren, Karen J. (ed.). 1997. Ecofeminism: Woman, Culture, Nature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Westling, Louise H. 1996. The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape, Gender, and American Fiction. Athens: The University of Georgia Press. White, Daniel R. Postmodern Ecology: Communication, Evolution, and Play. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998. Worster, Donald. 1998. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Second edition. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press.

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THEORIZING THE NATURE OF ECOCRITICISM

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Literature, the environment, and the question of the posthuman Louise Westling Abstract: Recent theoretical emphasis on ‘the posthuman’ radically destabilises humanist pretensions to superiority over other forms of life and the illusion of human separation from the rest of nature which have haunted ecocriticism since its origins a little over a decade ago, and Western thought since Plato. After a brief history of ecocriticism, this essay describes twentieth-century philosophy’s efforts to break down humanist dualisms, in parallel with the discoveries of physics that show the relativism and interrelationship of observer and phenomena observed. John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are presented as the two modern philosophers whose work embraces the implications of evolutionary biology and quantum physics, to turn towards genuinely ecological perspectives upon the human place in the world. Their work prepared the way for posthumanist theorists like Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Donna Haraway, and Cary Wolfe, who now begin to explore the deep ecological relationships between homo sapiens and the larger community of earth’s life. Merleau-Ponty defines language and literature as growing out of what we humans see as “silence” in the world around us, but which is actually a landscape overrun with words. Virginia Woolf’s final novel, Between the Acts, is discussed as an example of literary performance of this ecological vision of literature’s chiasmic participation in the communal conversation, or singing, of the planet’s web of life.

A growing impetus in postmodern theory focused on ‘the posthuman’ shows promise in helping us to move beyond the problem of anthropocentrism, or human-centered elitism, that has haunted ecocriticism since its beginnings in the U.S. fifteen years ago, as indeed it has haunted Western philosophy for most of its history. We cannot see the world from outside our own situation, of course, but perhaps, as Cary Wolfe has recently suggested, we now know that the “‘human’ […] is not now, and never was, itself” (xiii). That is, anthropos has never been the stable entity that our culture has assumed for the past several hundred years. Since Darwin and

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Einstein philosophers and critical theorists have been working to dismantle the Renaissance and Enlightenment humanist presumptions about homo sapiens that have led to our conceptual estrangement from the matrix of earth’s life. Some have made especially bold efforts to question or erase the boundaries that humanism set up between our kind and the other animals; their work prepared the way for the posthuman theorists who now begin to explore the deep ecological relationships between the cultures of homo sapiens and the larger community of life on the planet. That lineage, and its significance for ecocriticism, is what I want to sketch out here. First, a brief reminder of ecocriticism’s own lineage may provide useful context. Then I will introduce “the posthuman” movement, and try to demonstrate its relationship to earlier work in phenomenology and modernist fiction, particularly in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts. 1. Ecocriticism Ecocriticism developed out of more traditional scholarship about literary treatments of the natural world, such as studies of European pastoral and of the American nature writing genre practiced by authors from Jefferson and Bartram to Thoreau and Muir. It is not surprising that ecocriticism first emerged in the United States, because Americans have been obsessed with the landscapes of the ‘New World’ since European exploration of the continent began. Writers of the young American republic grounded their claims for cultural uniqueness on presumptions of unmediated access to Nature, as in Emerson’s famous essay of that name. Critical studies of these tendencies, such as Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land, Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden, and Annette Kolodny’s The Lay of the Land, were proto-ecocritical works which inspired more recent scholars to shape specifically environmentalist approaches to literature. In 1978, William Rueckert introduced the term “ecocriticism” in an article that appeared in the Iowa Review called “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism.” A decade later, in 1989, Glen A. Love called for “an ecological literary criticism” in his presidential address to the Western American Literature Association, published the following year in Western American Literature. Glen Love inspired a group of young scholars

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who met in 1992 and founded the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment to promote “the exchange of ideas and information pertaining to literature [and interdisciplinary environmental research] that considers the relationship between human beings and the natural world” (Glotfelty 1996: xviii). In only a decade this organization has grown to 1,000 members from 20 countries, with affiliated branches in Japan, Australia, the UK, Korea, and now Central Europe. The movement which it represents has developed rapidly in sophistication from a predominantly celebratory attention to nature writing, to a wide variety of more critical approaches to every kind of literature from around the globe. Familiar traditions of writing about place and setting are now being reexamined from environmental perspectives – for example Medieval European narratives of pilgrimage, Old Irish poetry of place – dinshenshas –, the European pastoral, Chinese and Japanese traditions of nature poetry, narratives of exploration from the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Theoretically, ecocritics are reevaluating the Kantian Sublime and other Romantic concepts of Nature in European and American nineteenth-century literature. Rigorous attention to twentieth-century theoretical approaches such as pragmatism, phenomenology, and various modes of poststructuralism informs vigorous debates about the relations of humans to the other animals, calling into question long traditions of human exceptionalism. Efforts to link ecocriticism with the sciences are also proving fruitful, with intellectual historians exploring interrelations between nineteenth-century natural science and writers like Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Hardy. Studies of Darwin’s influence upon nature writers and poets proliferate, and scholars of Modernism have also discussed the impact of Darwin as well as general relativity theory and quantum mechanics upon poets and novelists of the early decades of the twentieth century. More recently, ecocritics in the U.S. have devoted increased attention to the genre of ‘environmental justice literature’ in which Latino writers of the Southwest and Native Americans from many regions are especially prominent. Simon Ortiz, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, Linda Hogan, Rudolfo Anaya, and Ana Castillo are just a few whose work can be placed in this category. Because it is a new critical movement, ecocriticism is still working to define itself

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precisely, and many serious problems have yet to be resolved. The field is undertheorized, it is marked especially in the U.S. by a virile privilege in unconscious collusion with imperial and industrial forces, it often relies upon a naive realism and an unconscious Cartesian separation of the human ‘Me’ from the exoticized ‘Not me’ of a static and reified nature, and it has yet to seriously engage the technologized urban environments where most of its practitioners live. But increasingly, these problems are being addressed.1 At the heart of these problems is the need for a radical reevaluation of the concept of the human and the meaning of literary culture, in its relation to the so-called ‘natural’ world of which it is a part. Jean François Lyotard asks the key questions in The Inhuman (1988): “what if human beings, in humanism’s sense, were in the process of, constrained into, becoming inhuman (that’s the first part)? And (the second part), what if what is ‘proper’ to humankind were to be inhabited by the inhuman (2; emphasis added)?” What is “proper” to humankind has been assumed ever since Pico della Mirandola’s 1487 manifesto, On the Dignity of Man, to be our species’ radical selfshaping ability to either descend into vegetative or brutish material states, or ascend into a disembodied spiritual realm higher than that of the angels (7-11). The refinement of such presumptions, most notably in Déscartes’ systematic theory of human Mind outside a mechanistic, material Nature has shaped a powerful Humanist definition of people as superior beings whose language and self-reflective consciousness place them above and at an abyssal remove from all other animals and the natural world. Although the critique of such Humanism has been a central project of twentieth-century philosophers such as Dewey, Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, it has not yet succeeded. Husserl and Heidegger, in particular, never moved beyond a human bias. Derrida points this out very carefully as early as 1983, in his “Geschlecht II: Heidegger’s Hand” (173-4), and around the same time, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari were destabilizing the boundaries between humans and other animals in A Thousand Plateaus (1980 original French publication). American theorists and poets such as Paul Shepard, Donna Haraway, and Gary Snyder were 1

For a lengthier review of the present state of ecocriticism, see Michael Cohen’s “Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique.” in Environmental History.

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working in different idioms towards similar ends from the 1970s. Leading American proponents of the new Posthumanist movement N. Katherine Hayles and Cary Wolfe are much influenced by Derrida, but their work is merging into a current of American discussion that now includes phenomenologists (Lingus), ethologists, animal trainers (Herne), and primatologists (Jolly, De Waal, Smuts) as well as cultural theorists. Cary Wolfe’s new anthology, Zoontologies, (2003) brings a representative sample of this work together. 2. Posthumanism Two main tendencies can be identified in the new posthuman discourse: (1) Techno or Cyborg Posthumanism, and (2) Animot Posthumanism (to borrow a term from Derrida). (1) Techno-posthumanism is perhaps the best-known manifestation of the new movement. One of its earliest formulations was Donna Haraway’s controversial cyborg manifeso of 1985, and as we have seen, Lyotard raised his questions about the destabilisation of the human a few years later. A flurry of new books naming the Posthuman as a phenomenon began to appear in 1999, with N. Katherine Hayles’s How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, as perhaps the best known.2 These studies suggest a cyborg vision of the posthuman, opening the prospect of escape from bodily limitations and environmental constraints through computerised virtual reality, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and biotic mechanisation. But a redefinition of our species as beings fused with the technologies and media experiences we have designed as tools seems only further elaboration of the Cartesian mechanistic definition of humans as transcendent minds manipulating a realm of material otherness. Such a posthuman 2

See also Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution (2002); Chris Hables Gray, Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age (2001); Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston, Posthuman Bodies (1995); Akira Mizuta Lippitt, Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife (2000); R. L.Rutsky, High Techne: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman (1999); Vivian Sobchack, Meta Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change (2000); and Catherine Waldby, The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine (2000).

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vision does nothing to address the dilemmas posed by a threatened environment, but instead implies that we can escape involvement in the rhythms of growth and decay in the biosphere. The techno posthuman does not seem to offer much to ecocriticism. (2) The other approach to the question of the posthuman leads in a very different direction, and it is here that I think ecocriticism can find promising new theoretical possibilities, for it helps to define the human place within the ecosystem by interrogating or erasing the boundary that has been assumed to set our species apart from the rest of the living community. Jacques Derrida has been carefully exploring questions about this boundary for at least twenty years – ever since “Geschlecht II” in 1983 – and particularly the question of our relation to other animals. In a 2002 essay, “The Animal that therefore I Am (More to Follow)” [L’Animal que donc je suis (à suivre)], he insists that it is ridiculous even to speak of “the animal” as if there were any such monolithic presence. Instead there are millions of other beings whom we must begin to take seriously. He thinks back to his Renaissance predecessor Montaigne in this enterprise, and he begins as Montaigne does in the “Apology for Raymond Sebond” with a question about his relationship with his cat. Montaigne’s purpose was to ridicule the pretensions of human superiority over the other animals, and he prefaced his characteristic catalogues of examples from classical and modern authors by wondering whether, “When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me? […] This defect that hinders communication between them and us, why is it not just as much ours as theirs?” (2002: 331). Derrida updates Montaigne’s questioning of his cat’s (and by extension all animals’) intelligence and agency by contemplating his own shame before his little cat’s gaze upon his naked body (372-4). This playfully Freudian scene strips away the layers of protection and privilege beneath which we have hidden our bodily animal selves, and Derrida is careful to insist upon his cat as a real, rather than a figural being. “It doesn’t silently enter the room as an allegory for all the cats on the earth” (2002: 374), or for some composite of all animal Others. The gaze of this particular cat is one instance of “the gaze called animal [that] offers to my sight the abyssal limit of the human: the inhuman or the ahuman,” a bordercrossing from which vantage point a person can announce herself to herself, or himself to himself (2002:

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381). Thinking back through the history of European culture, Derrida identifies the philosophical tradition which jealously guards the boundaries of the human (383) and locates part of its grounding in the Biblical Genesis story in which Elohim subjugated all living creatures to the husbandry of Adam and granted their naming to him (2002: 384-5). Western philosophy has continued to assume this superior role, down to Heidegger’s description of man as the shepherd of Being in contrast to animals existing without Dasein, language, or a sense of time. “Isn’t that history,” Derrida asks, “the one that man tells himself, the history of the philosophical animal, of the animal for the manphilosopher”(2002: 391)? Derrida opens wide the question of the human relation to animals, arguing that we must “worry all these concepts, more than just problematise them” (2002: 393). We must explore the question, he asserts, understanding that beyond the edge of the so-called human, beyond it but by no means on a single opposing side, rather than ‘the Animal’ or ‘Animal Life,’ there is already a heterogeneous multiplicity of the living, […] a multiplicity of organizations of relations between living and dead, relations of organization or lack of organization among realms that are more and more difficult to dissociate by means of the figures of the organic and inorganic, of life and/or death (399).

Hence he proposes the word animot in order to capture some of that bewildering range of beings and states, punning on the French plural for ‘animal’ (animaux) and also calling attention to the limitations of words in human languages for naming the many Others with whom we share the world (405-9). Having dissolved the presumptions of philosophical tradition, he comes at the end of the essay to ask the following questions: The animal in general, what is it? What does that mean? Who is it? To what does that ‘it’ correspond? To whom? Who responds to whom? Who responds in and to the common, general and singular name of what they thus blithely call the ‘animal’? Who is it that responds? The reference made by this what or who regarding me in the name of the animal, what is said in the name of the animal when one appeals to the name of the animal, that is what needs to be exposed, in all its nudity, in the nudity or destitution of whoever, opening the page of an autobiography, says, ‘here I am.’ ‘But as for me, who am I (following)? (418)

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Derrida takes us a long way from the semi-divine agent of Humanism here, but we have to go beyond this point, to ask how our full ecological participation in the world might be understood.3 3. Phenomenology Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed such a perspective half a century ago, following the lead of Edmund Husserl who identified the impossibility of Humanist dualism in his Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl’s disciples Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty both spent their lives trying to erase those dualisms of mind/body and human/nature, but as we saw above, Heidegger never succeeded in moving beyond them. He did turn back to ordinary lived experience as the place where Being comes into presence, but he still insisted that our species exists in the unique realm of language, Dasein, where we are separated by an abyss from any other living thing. For Heidegger, humans are the shepherds of Being who can spare and save the Earth with our dwelling (1977b: 220-1; 1977c: 310-7; 1977a: 326-9). Not only are we the only creatures with language, but even the human body is set apart from the animal realm (1968: 16; cf. Derrida 1987: 168-76 and Lippit 2000: 5566). He could not bear to think of what he considered the appalling bodily kinship we share with the other animals, claiming that, “The human body is something essentially other than an animal organism” (1977b: 204). One of the most famous examples of his notion of the abyss separating humans from animals is the claim that primates do not have hands. “The hand is infinitely different from all grasping organs – paws, claws, or fangs – different by an abyss of essence,” Heidegger claims in What Is Called Thinking? “Only a being who can speak, that is, think, can have hands and can be handy in achieving works of handicraft” (1968: 16). Derrida, in his essay “Geschlecht

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Other recent studies considering human/animal relationships are Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal (2004); Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton, Animal Philosophy: Readings in Continental Thought (2004); Alfonso Lingus, “Animal Body, Inhuman Face;” Floyd Merrell, Sensing Corporeally: Toward a Posthuman Understanding (2003); and Peter H. Steeves, Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology, and Animal Life, (1999).

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II”of 1983, shows the arrogance and scientific ignorance of this blatantly Humanist claim. Like most of those who, as philosophers or persons of good sense, speak of animality, Heidegger takes no account of a certain ‘zoological knowledge’ that accumulates, is differentiated, and becomes more refined concerning what is brought together under this so general and confused word animality. […] This nonknowing raised to a tranquil knowing, then exhibited as essential proposition about the essence of an ape’s prehensile organs, an ape that would have no hand, this is not only, in its form, a kind of empirico-dogmatic ∀Β∀> 8,(≅:,<≅< misled or misleading in the middle of a discourse keeping itself to the height of the most demanding thought, beyond philosophy and science. In its very content, this proposition marks the text’s essential scene, marks it with a humanism that wanted certainly to be nonmetaphysical – Heidegger underscores this in the following paragraph – but with a humanism that, between a human Geschlecht one wants to withdraw from the biologistic determination (for the reasons I just stated) and an animality one encloses in its organico-biologic programs, inscribes not some differences but an absolute oppositional limit. (173-4)

In contrast to Heidegger’s recoiling from human animality, John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty accepted Darwinian evolution and explored its philosophical implications for the interrelation of human artistic activity with the environment or ‘situation’ in which we live. Dewey’s refusal of traditional dualisms is radical indeed, for he embraced the ontological implications of both Darwinian theory and Einstein’s famous formula E=MC2. For Dewey the long biological history that humans share with all other life means that we continue to be fully interrelated with and immersed within that living community. Einstein’s demonstration that energy and mass are two different states of the same cosmic stuff suggests for Dewey a profound unity of mind and body. Thus in Experience and Nature, he describes mind and matter as simply “different characteristics of natural events, in which matter expresses their sequential order, and mind the order of their meaning in their logical connections and dependencies” (Dewey 1929: 74). He claims that aesthetic and moral traits reach down into nature and “testify to something that belongs to nature as truly as does the mechanical structure attributed to it in physical science” (2). In Art as Experience, Dewey explains that human art grows out of the interaction of organism and environment that is apparent in all living things.

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Experience is the result, the sign, and the reward of that interaction of organism and environment which, when it is carried to the full, is a transformation of interaction into participation and communication […]. Form, as it is present in the fine arts, is the art of making clear what is involved in the organization of space and time prefigured in every course of a developing life experience […]. Art is thus prefigured in the very processes of living (1980: 22-4).

4. Merleau-Ponty’s ecological ontology and modern science But it is Merleau-Ponty who came closest to what we would now call an environmental turn in philosophy. Although he was not able to explain the specific terms by which humans participate in full community with the other animals, he prepared the way for an ecological sense of human immersion in it (Abram 1988: 112-3). At the end of his life he called for an “organic history,” arguing that “all the particular analyses concerning Nature, life, the human body, and language will make us progressively enter into the Lebenswelt, or Lifeworld (Husserl’s term) and the ‘wild being’ of the natural world” (1973: 167). He was sure that such scientific work would disclose such a thoroughly integrated dynamism of living things that the human/animal intertwining and the many kinds of sentience of nonhuman beings seem undeniable conclusions. For Merleau-Ponty, the very ways our bodies work suggest the synergy of all life. Now why would this generality, which constitutes the unity of my body, not open it to other bodies? The handshake too is reversible; I can feel myself touched as well and at the same time as touching, […]. Why would not the synergy exist among different organisms, if it is possible within each? Their landscapes interweave, their actions and their passions fit together exactly: this is possible as soon as we no longer make belongingness to one same ‘consciousness’ the primordial definition of sensibility […]. (1973: 142)

Merleau-Ponty believed that humans are enmeshed in the wild realm of ‘the actual world’ as flesh of its flesh. We have grown historically within it over a long evolution to our present form as an animal species, and individually each of our personal bodies grew within it from the fusion of egg and sperm at conception. As he asks in one of his last lectures at the College de France, ‘Where [in evolutionary terms] does the human with consciousness truly appear? We do not

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see him any more than we see the moment when consciousness appears in ontogenesis […].’ (2003: 267) There is no break (Fr. rupture) from the rest of the living community, as the very development of the modern individual from embryo to adult makes clear, especially in the earliest stages of the fetus. And synchronically we breathe and move within it, transfusing air and food, exchanging energies, atoms, and molecules. Such a definition of the world and the human place within it is profoundly congruent with the findings of twentieth-century physics and biology, the philosophical consequences of which Merleau-Ponty explicitly sought to explain in his final two years of lectures at the Collége de France in 1959 and 1960 (2003). Much work in physics and the biological sciences since his death has confirmed his view of the complex intertwinings of life forms and energies in a remarkably ecological vision that makes traditional humanism impossible to entertain any longer. Early in the twentieth century the work of Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg in general relativity theory and quantum mechanics demolished the idea of nature as a comprehensible machine. These physicists demonstrated the relativism and situatedness of knowledge, the dynamism, reciprocity, and indeterminism of physical entities and forces in a profound way that has not yet penetrated the popular imagination, or even the working assumptions of some scientists. Similar new perspectives have emerged in biology and earth science. In the 1970s, James Lovelock suggested that the earth is a huge, self-regulating system whose living community preserves the necessary conditions for its own flourishing. Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis sought to explain the relative stability of earth’s temperature in spite of many fluctuations in the sun’s heat, and the maintenance of the highly unstable mixture of gases in earth’s atmosphere which could not persist without some regulatory agency or activity. Although the particular terms of Lovelock’s theory are still being vigorously debated, by now his general description of the earth as a self-regulating community of living creatures is an accepted premise for work in many scientific fields. Some biologists such as the American E.O. Wilson, and British Neo-Darwinian Richard Dawkins continue to assert a mechanistic, Cartesian picture of life which can be boiled down to the atomic level or the selfish replication of individual genes, but an increasing number have moved away from such

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reductionist thinking to more ecologically-oriented perspectives. The work of Stephen Rose, Richard Lewontin, and Lynn Margulis acknowledges the enormous complexity of living communities and creatures that confront the scientist with indeterminacies similar to those of contemporary physics. Rose emphasises the organism’s active participation in its survival and the dynamic interpenetration of organism and environment. He believes that “it is in the nature of living systems to be radically indeterminate, to continually construct their – our – own futures, albeit in circumstances not of our own choosing” (7). Margulis’s studies of anaerobic bacteria have led her to describe earth as a “symbiotic planet” in which major evolutionary changes arose as much from symbiosis of different bacterial organisms as from competition for survival. Thus colonies of microbes evolved separately, and then formed the symbiotic systems out of the individual cells of living things that developed over vast reaches of time, whether of algae or of our bodies (19-53). This kind of science is gradually shaping an environmentally responsible world view that represents one of the great paradigm shifts of intellectual history. Within it, humans are still a remarkable species with undeniable power to change life on Earth, but we are only one of many kindred species whose basic identities are not even totally distinct from one another. Such a “Posthumanist” vision can be extremely disquieting, but it can also be exhilarating. We are no longer alone as transcendent Minds locked in decaying bodies on an Earth where we don’t belong, and separate from the myriad creatures around us. Now we can see ourselves as vibrant bodies pulsing in harmony with our whole environment. This is what the new science is telling us. As human animals we live in symbiosis with thousands of species of anaerobic bacteria. Six hundred species in our mouths neutralize the toxins all plants produce to ward off their enemies. Four hundred species colonize our intestines, and without them we could not digest and absorb the food we eat (Lingus 2003: 166). Tiny creatures live all over our bodies, eating dead skin and performing many other kinds of housekeeping functions, as for example the microscopic lobster-like insects that infest our eyelashes and continually clean away the lubricants that would otherwise glue our eyes shut. As we move and breathe, we actively exchange nutrients and waste, energy and even atoms, with the air and things around us

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and the millions of creatures within us. Each person is a bipedal, mobile, and self-conscious community of living agents sharing an inner sea bound by the semipermeable extended surface organ of skin and given firm shape by bones. Armies of friendly microbes swim through our inner seas, scouting for and devouring invaders, cleaning the pipes, carrying freight. The “human” DNA that shapes and marks each of our unique selves is far less a proportion of the DNA in our body mass than that of our microbe friends. Even within our individual cells, the mitochondria that make our energy have their own, different DNA than that in our “human” chromosomes (Margulis 1998: 22). Conscious thought – the much-vaunted mind that has dominated philosophical tradition for two and a half thousand years – is only a tiny winking of self-reflective light in this symbiotic community of our body. Only a small part of that self-consciousness is focused in the deliberate kind of attention we call “reason” or “logic.” The individual human agent is not the queen of her fate or the master navigator of his life’s course. As philosopher Alfonso Lingus puts it, our bodies are like “coral reefs […] continually stirred by monsoon climates of moist air, blood, and biles. Movements do not get launched by an agent against masses of intertia; we move in an environment of air currents, rustling trees, and animate bodies” (2003: 167). Our fellow creatures turn out to have many of the intellectual and technical abilities we once assumed to be uniquely human, though the degree is still much debated. Animals have languages, not like ours, but still recognizable ways to communicate by sound and gesture (Montaigne 1965: 331-2; Wade 2003; Kirby 2003). Animals make and use tools, as we see in chimpanzee use of twigs to fish for ants, baboons’ and chimpanzee’ use of stones as hammers or crows’ use of twigs as tools, and many animals building dwellings or even gardens of clever design. Companion species like dogs and horses clearly communicate with us in complex reciprocal conversations as we live together and cooperate for food and work. Barbara Smuts testifies to similar communication in her relationships with troops of wild baboons (1999: 109-13), and she relates a remarkable story about an encounter with a young gorilla that surpasses ordinary interchanges even with pets. As she sat in the jungle near a group of mothers and

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babies who were eating and playing, her eyes met what she describes as the warm gaze of an adolescent female. I continued to look at her, silently sending friendliness her way. Unexpectedly, she stood and moved closer. Stopping right in front of me, with her face at eye level, she leaned forward and pushed her large, flat, wrinkled nose against mine. I know that she was right up against me, because I distinctly remember how her warm, sweet breath fogged up my glasses, blinding me. I felt no fear and continued to focus on the enormous affection and respect I felt for her. Perhaps she sensed my attitude, because in the next moment I felt her impossibly long ape arms wrap around me, and for precious seconds, she held me in her embrace. Then she released me, gazed once more into my eyes, and returned to munching on leaves (1999: 114).

Smuts takes us very far from Derrida’s self-absorbed philosophical acrobatics, actually having crossed the boundary of simple visual observation into what can hardly be denied as a meaningful communication of equals across what both Heidegger and Derrrida insist on describing as an abyss. The migrations of birds, butterflies, mammals, and fish all demonstrate remarkable agency and flexibility in managing long journeys that still baffle human observers. Instinct is a pitifully inadequate concept for defining these behaviors. And so, we find ourselves in a sea of living beings and forces that begins to look very much like Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the flesh of the world. Given such an understanding of who we are as a species both historically and in terms of our bodily symbiotic functioning, the humanist claim of our semi-divine distinction from other creatures is absurd. 5. Merleau-Ponty on language, literature, and the voices of silence Particularly relevant for a concern with the place of literature in an ecological perspective, the claims of unique human access to language that have dominated Western philosophy are becoming increasingly untenable. If we accept evolution as our true history, then we know that human language co-evolved with us and all the other life forms who remain our literal kindred. For Merleau-Ponty we are intertwined with this “flesh” of the world – the dynamic community of things and beings around us – in an embrace from which human language emerges and which it shares with many other voices or languages. As

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David Abram explains, Merleau-Ponty thought that “language is born of our carnal participation in a world that already speaks to us at the most immediate level of sensory experience’ and thus ‘language does not belong to humankind but to the sensible world of which we are but a part” (1988: 95). Merleau-Ponty called for a reawakening to the world around us, that requires listening to the other voices that we have forgotten to hear, voices that arise in what we may have formerly assumed to be silences. He asserted that “language lives only from silence; everything we cast to the others has germinated in this great mute land which we never leave” (1973: 126). When we speak from within the conventions of our native language we create “that language-thing which counts as an arm, as action, as offense and as seduction because it brings to the surface all the deep-rooted relations of the lived experience wherein it takes its form, and which is the language of life and of action but also that of literature and of poetry” (1973: 126). Thus literature remains always enveloped by the “silence” around it in the enabling matrix of what is commonly considered a “mute land” but is actually full of voices if we attune ourselves to them. The “deep world of untamed perception” (1973: 118) exists in “a whole series of layers of wild being” around us which is intertwined with our embodied selves and is the source of meaning (1973: 177-8; see also Wolfe 2003: 3). In describing his project in working notes left behind at his death, Merleau-Ponty declared his determination to restore the awareness of the wild Being of the world. He claimed that the whole of philosophy consists in restoring a power to signify, a birth of meaning, or a wild meaning, an expression of experience by experience, which in particular clarifies the special domain of language. And in a sense, as Valéry said, language is everything, since it is the voice of no one, since it is the very voice of the things, the waves, and the forests (1973: 155).

The challenge for us today is to learn how to hear this voice of the things, the waves, and the forests, or as he puts it elsewhere, “the voices of silence” (1973: 126).

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6. Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts and the nonhuman world Guides for learning how to respond to this challenge can be found in narrative and poetic traditions of tribal cultures, in archaic literary traditions such as Old Irish, in modern works of nature writing, in many poetic traditions, and oddly enough, in modern fiction from many countries. One Modernist writer in particular anticipated Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about the chiasmic intertwining of humans within a living community of many voices. Virginia Woolf devoted considerable attention to the non-human world from her first novel to the end of her career. But she most radically displayed the embodied witnessing of what Merleau-Ponty called wild Being in her final novel, Between the Acts, a remarkable text that opens out upon the voices of the ecological community where we dwell with only a limited, provisional, and uncertain understanding. Woolf’s novel boldly insists upon the interrelation of human language and art with the voices of other creatures, the intimate processes of growth and decay around us as well as the huge sweep of geological history, the evolution of life, and the weathers and rhythms that pulsate through the ages as through our individual moments and days. Woolf had been exploring the vitality and agency of the nonhuman world from her earliest novel, The Voyage Out. She wrote Between the Acts as a meditation upon the meaning of the human in the wider living world, against the enormous backdrop of geological history and the smaller perspective of the history of Europe. But there was also a contemporary timeliness to these reflections. The novel takes place on one June day in 1939 when an upper-class family hosts a village pageant on their country estate, while the threat of catastrophic war looms across the English Channel on the continent of Europe. Woolf created an interweaving chiasmic structure of events between the two world wars, between the acts of the pageant and those of the ordinary lives of its players and audience, between the acts of humans and those of other creatures, and between the human affairs of the novel and the forces of geologic times, weathers, seasons, and the alternations of night and day. Animal voices interweave with the human voices in the conversation that opens the novel, and at crucial points in the pageant, non-human forces enter into the performance. Carole Cantrell and I have both written pre-

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viously about the relation of this novel to Merleau-Ponty’s ecological phenomenology, with its claims about the multi-voiced reality of the nonhuman world. But here I would like to take the matter further, by looking specifically at the apparent silences which sustain the singing of this multi-vocal ecological community, and the way Woolf restored human affairs to their embedded place in the wide community of earth’s beings and forces. “It was a summer night,” the novel begins, “and they were talking in the big room with the windows open to the garden, about the cesspool” (Woolf 1992: 5). “They” turn out to include a cow coughing and a bird chuckling, as well as a goose-faced woman and another woman who moves like a swan. The cesspool which seems such a banal subject at this opening moment in medias res, grows in significance as the novel proceeds, to be closely associated with a lily pond full of busy life in plants and animals, where death and decay mingle and transform matter that bubbles up in new forms and creatures. Indeed, the murky liquid and decaying mud of both cesspool and lily pond is the very emblem of creation by the end, source of language and of literary inspiration for the playwright Miss LaTrobe. As she thinks of her next play after the day’s pageant, ideas rise to the surface from murky depths. “Words of one syllable sank down into the mud. She drowsed; she nodded. The mud became fertile” and wonderful words rose above the mud (125). Here, as all through the novel, Woolf means more than a simple metaphorical comparison. She suggests the most profound metonymy, of parts literally growing out of wholes, of fully interpenetrating things and meanings, and of constant metamorphosis. Another kind of language is literally inscribed in the landscapes around the Olivers’ farm. Old Bart Oliver describes the records of human events through the millennia that can still be read in the earth. “From an aeroplane, he said, you could still see, plainly marked, the scars made by the Britons; by the Romans; by the Elizabethan manor house; and by the plough, when they ploughed the hill to grow wheat in the Napoleonic wars” (5). Despite such markings on the land, however, human creations and activities are shown continually through the narrative to be just as uncertain, vulnerable to the forces of Nature, and transitory as those of any other creature. After the opening description of the Olivers’ old

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house and venerable barn, and the carefully-ordered life of their inhabitants, Woolf moves outside the human realm to emphasize its fragility. Here, when humans are not even noticing, a kind of inaudible message is conveyed by a tortoiseshell butterfly that “beat on the lower pane of the window; beat, beat, beat; repeating that if no human being ever came, never, never, never, the books would be mouldy, the fire out and the tortoiseshell butterfly dead on the pane” (13). During the village pageant so carefully scripted by Miss LaTrobe, the wind is constantly blowing the actors’ words away, background music is mangled by the gramophone or its operator, and readers, like the pageant’s audience, must struggle to make sense of the scraps of dialogue and music they can hear. Woolf places all the intensely-felt human events of the Olivers’ world within a cosmic context, moving point of view gently from their garden outward and outward into infinity. Here came the sun – an illimitable rapture of joy, embracing every flower, every leaf. Then in compassion it withdrew, covering its face, as if it forbore to look on human suffering. There was a fecklessness, a lack of symmetry and order in the clouds, as they thinned and thickened. Was it their own law, or no law, they obeyed? Some were wisps of white hair merely. One, high up, very distant, had hardened to golden alabaster; was made of immortal marble. Beyond that was blue, pure blue, black blue; blue that had never filtered down; that had escaped registration. It never fell as sun, shadow, or rain upon the world, but disregarded the little colored ball of earth entirely. (16)

Yet enormous meaning is nevertheless suggested by the rhythmic symmetries between humans and the myriad others who are intertwined within the flesh of the world. In spite of the vastness of space around the human characters and the long sweeps of geological time suggested by old Lucy Swithin’s readings in an Outline of History about London’s prehistory (a primeval swamp where mammoths and rhododendrons flourished in Picadilly), the ‘mute world’ of the non-human community offers certainties in elemental rhythms like the primeval stability of returning seasons, the creative bubbling ooze of the cesspool or the mud in the lily pond, the return of the swallows each year from their southern migrations. Woolf illustrates what Merleau-Ponty would later describe as the pregnant silences in this wild environment which germinate into many

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voices we must learn to hear. Early in the novel, just before an important communal scene in which the family gather for luncheon, several paragraphs focus on the empty dining room where the butler has meticulously set the table and left the room. “The room was empty,” we are told. “Empty, empty, empty; silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence” (24). And yet, this silence sings of a reality beyond human comprehension and sense of time; it holds a mysterious essence at the heart of the house. Later another sheltering space – the barn – is also described as empty and silent from an arrogantly humanist perspective. But Woolf’s narrator reveals this space to be full of small, busy lives. Mice slid in and out of holes or stood upright, nibbling. Swallows were busy with straw in pockets of earth in the rafters. Countless beetles and insects of various sorts burrowed in the dry wood. A stray bitch had made the dark corner where the sacks stood a lying-in ground for her puppies. All these eyes, expanding and narrowing, some adapted to light, others to darkness, looked from different angles and edges. Minute nibblings and rustlings broke the silence. (61-2).

Woolf has carefully structured the novel to teach us to listen to the many voices and sounds like these, of other lives around us. Two later passages assert that flowers and trees speak, and that music can awaken us to their summons and those of starlings, rooks, cows, the views of the landscapes around us. Music wakes us. Music makes us see the hidden, join the broken. Look and listen. See the flowers, how they ray their redness, whiteness, silverness and blue. And the trees with their many-tongued much syllabling, their green and yellow leaves hustle us and shuffle us, and bid us, like the starlings, and the rooks, come together, crowd together, to chatter and make merry while the red cow moves forward and the black cow stands still. (73) […] And the tune repeated itself once more. The view repeated in its own way what the tune was saying. The sun was sinking; the colours were merging; and the view was saying how after toil men rest from their labours; how coolness comes; reason prevails; and having unharnessed the team from the plough, neighbours dig in cottage gardens and lean over cottage gates.

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The phenomenal presence of the human word intermingles with these other voices, as Miss LaTrobe structures her pageant to demonstrate. At one point when the pageant seems to be disastrously flat, the cows in surrounding pastures save it. Then suddenly, as the illusion petered out, the cows took up the burden. One had lost her calf. In the very nick of time she lifted her great moon-eyed head and bellowed. All the great moon-eyed heads laid themselves back. From cow after cow came the same yearning bellow. The whole world was filled with dumb yearning. It was the primeval voice sounding loud in the ear of the present moment. The cows annihilated the gap; bridged the distance; filled the emptiness and continued the emotion. (85)

At another point, La Trobe has deliberately left a gap in her script for “ten minutes of present time,” without speech or action from her cast, which is suddenly filled by a shower of rain. The rain is described as “the other voice speaking, the voice that was no one’s voice” (181). And it anticipates in an uncanny way what Merleau-Ponty would later claim about language as everything, the voice of no one, the very voice of the things, the waves, and the forests. Now, at the beginning of a dangerous new millennium, it is time we began to listen. It is time to recognize how literature can help bring those many voices into presence for a post-humanist future. Scholars working within the posthuman movement can help to reorient our thinking by deconstructing problematic theoretical traditions and making fruitful alliances with work in a variety of scientific fields. But the poets and fiction writers are always far ahead of us, and philosophers like Dewey and Merleau-Ponty, and many other scholars have already prepared the way for the vast reorientation of human culture that a genuinely environmental – or ecological – imagination requires. Linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson have spent more than two decades in illuminating metaphor theory (Metaphors We Live By) and contemporary philosophy (Philosophy in the Flesh) by thinking through the intersections of their disciplines with cognitive neuroscience. Literary scholars are themselves increasingly engaging the findings of scientists in many fields, such as

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eugenics, ethology, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and evolutionary theory. Ecocriticism needs to attend to all of these approaches in order to illuminate the ways literature opens upon the many voices of the world and reveals the human enmeshment within the biosphere. Bibliography Abram, David. 1988. ‘Merleau-Ponty and the Voice of the Earth’ in Environmental Ethics 10 (Summer): 101-120. Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The Open: Man and Animal. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Basho, Matsuo. 1966. The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (tr. Nobuyuki Yuasa). London: Penguin. Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. The Illusion of the End (tr. C. Turner). Cambridge, England: Polity. Cantrell, Carol H. 2000. ‘The Flesh of the World: Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts’ in Coupe, Lawrence (ed.) The Green Studies Reader. London: Routledge: 275281. Cohen, Michael. 2004. ‘Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism Under Critique’ in Environmental History 9 (January): 9-36. Calarco, Matthew and Peter Atterton (eds). 2004. Animal Philosophy: Readings in Continental Thought. London: Continuum. Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (tr. B. Massumi). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Derrida, Jacques. 2002. ‘The Animal that therefore I Am (More to Follow)’ (Tr. David Wills). Critical Inquiry 28 (Winter): 369–418. —. 1987, ‘Geschlecht II: Heidegger’s Hand’ in Sallis, John (ed.) Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago: 161196. De Waal, Franz. 2001. The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist. New York: Basic Books. Dewey, John. 1980. Art as Experience. New York: Perigee. [First edition New York, NY: Minton, Balch & Co 1934.] —. 1929. Experience and Nature. New York: Norton. Ehrenfeld, David. 1978. The Arrogance of Humanism. New York: Oxford. Evernden, Neil. 1992. The Social Creation of Nature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Fukuyama, Francis. 2002. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar Straus. Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds). 1996. The Ecocriticism Reader. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia.

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Gray, Chris Hables. 2001. Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age. New York: Routledge. Halberstam, Judith and Ira Livingston. 1995. Posthuman Bodies. Bloomington: University of Indiana. Haraway, Donna. 1985/1991. ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’ in Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge: 149181. Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ in Krell, David Farrell (ed.) Basic Writings. San Francisco: Harper: 323-339. —. 1977. ‘Letter on Humanism’ in Krell, David Farrell (ed.) Basic Writings. San Francisco: Harper: 193-242. —. 1977. “The Question Concerning Technology.” Krell, David Farrell (ed.) Basic Writings. San Francisco: Harper: 287-317. ––. 1954/1968. What Is Called Thinking? (tr. F.D.Wieck and J. G.Gray). New York: Harper. Husserl, Edmund. 1970. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (tr. D. Carr). Evanston: Northwestern University. Jolly, Allison. 2001. Lucy’s Legacy: Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Kirby, Alex. 2003. ‘Parrot’s Oratory Stuns Scientists.” On line at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3430481.stm. Kolodny, Annette. 1975. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern (tr. C. Porter). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago. ––. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Lewontin, Richard. 2000. The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Lingus, Alfonso. 2003. ‘Animal Body, Inhuman Face’ in Wolfe, Cary (ed.) Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota: 165-182. Lippitt, Akira Mizuta. 2000. Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press. Love, Glen A. 1990. ‘Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Literary Criticism’ in Western American Literature 25: 201-215. Lovelock, James. 1982. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. New York: Oxford. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1991. The Inhuman (tr. G. Bennington and R. Bowlby). Stanford, CA: Stanford University.

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Margulis, Lynn. 1998. Symbiotic Planet. New York: Basic Books. Marx, Leo. 1964. The Machine in the Garden:Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford University. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2003. Nature (tr. R. Vallier). Evanston: Northwestern University. ––. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge Kegan Paul. ––. 1973. The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University. Merrell, Floyd. 2003. Sensing Corporeally: Toward a Posthuman Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto. Montaigne, Michel de. 1965. ‘The Apology for Raymond Sebond’ in The Complete Essays of Montaigne (tr. D. Frame). Stanford: Stanford University: 318-457. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. 1956. Oration on the Dignity of Man (tr. A. R. Caponigri). South Bend, Indiana: Regnery/Gateway. Rose, Stephen. 1997. Lifelines. London: Penguin. Rueckert, William. 1978. ‘Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism’ in Iowa Review 9: 71-86. Sandars, N. K. (ed.) 1972. The Epic of Gilgamesh. London: Penguin. Shepard, Paul. 1967. Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature. New York: Knopf. ––. 1996. The Others: How Animals Made us Human. Washington, D.C.: Island. Smith, Henry Nash. 1950. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. New York: Vintage. Smuts, Barbara. 1999. ‘Reflections’ in J. M. Coetzee. The Lives of Animals. Princeton: Princeton University Press: 107-120. Snyder, Gary. 1990. The Practice of the Wild. New York: Northpoint. Sobchack, Vivian. 2000. Meta Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press. Steeves, H. Peter. 1999. Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology, and Animal Life. Albany: State University of New York. Wade, Nicholas. 2003. ‘Early Voices: The Leap to Language’ On line at: www.nytimes.com/2003/07/15/science/15LANG.html. Waldby, Catherine. 2000. The Visible Human Project: Informatic Bodies and Posthuman Medicine. London: Routledge. Westling, Louise. 1999. ‘Virginia Woolf and the Flesh of the World’ in New Literary History 30 (Fall): 855-875. ‘Why Ants Make Great Gardners’. 2003. On line at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ science/nature/3499842.stm Wilson, Edward O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Life. New York: Knopf. Wolfe, Cary (ed.). 2003. Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Woolf, Virginia. 1941/1992. Between the Acts. London: Penguin. ––. 1915/1948. The Voyage Out. New York: Harcourt, 1948.

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The state of ecocriticism and the function of literature as cultural ecology Hubert Zapf Abstract: It is the thesis of this paper that the function and productivity of imaginative literature, which has evolved as a special form of textuality in the course of cultural evolution, can be newly illuminated by considering it as a specifically powerful form of symbolically staging and exploring the interrelationship between cultural and natural processes and energies. In this view, literature functions like an ecological force within the larger system of cultural discourses. On the basis of analogies that can be drawn between ecological and aesthetic processes, literature appears both as a sensorium for the deficits and imbalances of the larger culture, and as the site of a constant renewal of cultural creativity. This functional profile will be further differentiated in the form of a triadic model combining the subfunctions of ‘culturalcritical metadiscourse’, ‘imaginative counterdiscourse’, and ‘reintegrative interdiscourse.’ Literature reconnects, in always changing historical-cultural contexts, the civilizatory system with precivilizatory life processes, the cultural memory with the biophilic memory of the human species. It thereby gains not only a special, irreplaceable status as a distinct form of cultural textuality, but an indispensable relevance for the continuing evolutionary potential of the culture as a whole.

The emergence of an ecological paradigm in literary and cultural studies can be seen as a hopeful sign that the currently dominant economic form of globalization, which is based on what could be called a ‘free market fundamentalism’ (see Gras 2003) will not remain unchallenged in its monopolistic claims to the shaping of the future of humankind. Indeed, the dynamic development of ecocriticism within humanities departments all over the world suggests that the dialogue between literature, culture, and ecology, as it is documented in the present volume, promises not only to contribute to an interdisciplinary enrichment of the disciplines involved, but also to provide longer-term innovational perspectives that transcend the one-dimensionality of the homo oeconomicus, and that way help to reassert the much-disputed

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relevance of literary and cultural studies within contemporary society and the public consciousness. This innovative potential, however, can only be fully realised if some basic premises are observed. One of them is that an ecologically inspired reorientation of literary and cultural studies should not define itself in opposition to recent critical theory, as was the case in some, especially earlier versions of ecocriticism, but must position itself in conscious, if by no means uncritical, dialogue with the main assumptions, concerns, and approaches of theory which have established themselves as a necessary and irreplaceable dimension of the discipline in the later 20th century. The legitimate critique of the selfsufficient abstractions of some theoretical approaches should not lead to a negation of theory as such, with which ecocriticism would place itself outside the recent history and current state of reflection of its own discipline in the false expectation that the quasi-mystical authority of ‘nature’ could open up an unmediated access to ‘reality’ from which an unquestionable basis for knowledge could be (re-) gained. On the other hand, the ecocritical turn in literary and cultural studies also necessitates a reconsideration of the relationship of culture and literature to a – however defined – dimension of ‘nature’, which had been virtually banned from the characteristic approaches of cultural studies and critical theory in the past decades. To reflect on culture’s relationship to nature was considered politically questionable and epistemologically naive in the pansemiotic universe of poststructuralism in which every apparent reference to nature was deciphered as a linguistic-cultural construct that served only to hide the sociopolitical interests and ideologies from which it originated. Yet while it is true that in the course of history, nature has been frequently misused as an ideological instrument and a vehicle of power and manipulation – e.g. for the justification of supposedly ‘natural’ hierarchies of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and so forth –, this makes it all the more necessary to explore, in appropriately informed and complex ways, the significance and possible meanings of the concept of ‘nature’ within the spheres of culture. The postulate of interdisciplinarity, which was associated with cultural studies from their very beginnings, and which at least in theory opened them up, beyond the scope of humanistic disciplines, to the natural sciences as well, was confronted

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with a double asymmetry. While the natural sciences tended to regard everything ‘cultural’ as naturally determined, the cultural sciences declared everything ‘natural’ a cultural construct. Against this institutionalized mutual blindness, it would be the task of ecologically inspired literary and cultural studies specifically to focus on the interaction and interrelatedness of culture and nature without neglecting the inescapable linguistic and discursive mediatedness of that interrelationship. For this interdisciplinary dialogue, such approaches within contemporary ecology itself promise to be of particular relevance which have moved beyond former one-sided, biological-deterministic views of the nature-culture relationship towards the recognition of the difference and relatively independent dynamics of cultural and intellectual phenomena, and as a result have begun to transcend the objectivist premises of traditional ecology towards a more comprehensive, transdisciplinary form of ‘cultural ecology’. 1. Aspects and perspectives of ecocriticism and literary ecology As far as I can see, ecocriticism as an emerging interdisciplinary paradigm within literary studies has developed especially in the following directions: (1) A content-oriented, sociopolitical form of ecocriticism in which literary and nonliterary texts are examined from criteria such as their attention to natural phenomena, their degree of environmental awareness, their recognition of diversity, their attitude to nonhuman forms of life, or their awareness of the interconnectedness between local and global ecological issues. In addition to the categories of race, class, and gender, the category of ‘nature’ (with related categories like place, landscape, earth, environment, bioregion, biosphere) has been established as a category of textual and cultural study, and has been applied to texts from different periods and genres. Literature is considered here as a potential medium of consciousness change and an increased ecological sensibility which, however indirectly, can help to contribute to a change of political and social practice. Methodologically, the combination of this new focus on the culture/nature relationship with established categories of cultural analysis, rather than the positing of oppositional, essentialist truth claims, has proved to be productive. Thus, the linking of ecological issues with questions and

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perspectives of gender studies has led to the emergence of ecofeminism as an important, and already in itself highly diversified, branch of ecocriticism; and the bringing together of issues of race and class with environmental issues has opened up new areas of research and cultural-political practice such as ‘environmental justice’. (2) In a cultural-anthropological direction, ecocriticism has diagnosed and explored the deep-rooted self-alienation of human beings within the civilizatory project of modernity which, in its anthropocentric illusion of autonomy, has tried to cut itself off from and erase its roots in the natural world. Whereas in premodern, preindustrial societies, human life was embedded in concrete forms of interaction and exchange with natural life cycles – a situation described by Jan Romein as the ‘Common Human Pattern’ (see Zijderveld 1970: 71ff.) – modern society has become abstract in the sense of increasing differentiation, specialization, division of labour, and the loss of concretely experientiable, ‘holistic’ ties with natural and social life. This loss has been turned into a virtue by the postmodern celebration of fragmented selves and multiple worlds, but nevertheless often involves deeper problems of isolation, rootlessness, and emotional displacement. Such symptoms give particular urgency to the question of a renewed relationship of modern individualistic selves to shared communities, and to the question of how they can reconnect in meaningful ways to more elemental, ‘biophilic’ needs on which the full self-realization of human beings seems to depend.1 The social community on the one hand, and the biophilic life energies on the other, are two important ecocritical counterpoles to the extreme individualism and anthropocentrism of a one-sided, overeconomized civilization. (3) On an ethical level, ecocriticism strives for the revision of an anthropocentric cultural value system, which not only involves the recognition of the dignity and independent value of nonhuman nature, but turns it in some respects into a source of cultural values. The ‘intelligent imitation of nature’ becomes a procedure through which not only scientific, technological or aesthetic processes can be 1

The term ‘biophilia’ designates an inborn affinity between human and nonhuman forms of life which seems to correspond to deep-rooted anthropological needs. See Kellert/Wilson 1993.

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inspired, but which can also extend and enrich our ethical orientations. This applies, for instance, to observations such as that in the evolution of life, competition and the struggle for survival, but also and even more importantly, contact, cooperation, and coevolution have been the driving force; that living systems and ecosystems can only ensure their self-preservation if they are also open for constant change; and that individual phenomena of life develop in their uniqueness and diversity precisely by being part of complex webs of relationships. Some ecofeminists have especially emphasized this ethical aspect and the concomitant imagery of the web of life, of the Gaia hypothesis of the earth as an interrelated organism, and of respect and an attitude of “biophilic mutuality”(Ruether 1992) towards all living beings as a basis for a new, planetary ecological ethics which must become an integral part of the civilizatory value system. (4) In an epistemological perspective, ecocriticism is part of a larger postclassical paradigm shift from causal and linear to complex, nonlinear forms of knowledge. With the acceptance of evolution as a basic axiom, processual interactions rather than isolated properties of individual phenomena are emphasized. Linear models of historical progress are as inadequate as causal models of explanation for natural processes, because the historical process is shaped by its own mixture of contingencies and feedback loops, and the productivity of culture remains dependent on elemental cycles of energy and their cyclicalreproductive dynamics. Such considerations open up possibilities of dialogue with contemporary forms of complex thinking such as postclassical physics, cybernetics, systems theory, or chaos theory, a dialogue which has become another promising branch of ecocriticism. (5) A fifth direction of ecocriticism, which is of specific importance to literary studies, is concerned with the potential implications and perspectives of the aesthetic and imaginative dimension of literature for an ecologically redefined model of humanity and of human culture. The question here is what function the fictional mode of literary communication, which is characterized not by direct imitation but by the defamiliarization and symbolic transformation of ‘reality’ and ‘nature’, can have within the larger system of cultural institutions and discourses. This question is increasingly raised in recent positions of literary ecology, and it is in the context of such considerations that I would like to position the

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approach which I will sketch in the following pages, the concept of ‘literature as cultural ecology.’ 2. Literature as cultural ecology What can it mean to refer to literature as the medium of a cultural ecology? Generally speaking, it means first of all that imaginative literature, as a special form of cultural textuality, can be described in some of its characteristic themes and approaches to human and nonhuman reality with the help of categories from the discourse of ecology. This is, on one level, not much more than a generalized version of an assumption which underlies the practice of a considerable part of contemporary ecocriticism, namely the assumption that literature, in its long history, has already symbolically addressed some of those issues which in more recent times have been explicitly addressed by ecology as a scientific and cultural-theoretical discipline. In the same way in which, in Sigmund Freud’s view, psychoanalysis was a modern scientific version of the knowledge of the unconscious and of the human drives which had already been part of the literary imagination of humankind since ancient tragedy, the literary works of the past appear, to a number of ecocritics, as anticipating the ecological knowledge of modern times. To an extent, this assumption seems to be quite persuasive. Literature has always been the medium of a ‘cultural ecology’ in the sense that it has staged and explored, in ever new scenarios, the relationship of prevailing cultural systems to the needs and manifestations of human and nonhuman ‚nature’. Early examples are the mythological tales of premodern cultures in which human beings interpreted themselves in close proximity and exchange with their environment. More specific cases are genres like pastoral, georgic, eclogue, bucolic or idyll, in which literature, from its very beginnings, has contrasted alienating structures of civilization with alternative forms of life embedded in concrete forms of a culture/nature exchange. Within the classical tradition, one of the most powerful influences on the evolution of literature until the very present has probably been Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which represents human existence as part of a larger web of life characterized by multiformity, constant change, and mutual correspondences between human and natural phenomena, and

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thus not only posits the interrelatedness between culture and nature as a defining condition of human life, but establishes its symbolic exploration as a central domain of the literary imagination. Since the era of romanticism, of course, that is to say since the first sustained response of literature to the era of beginning modernization, this affinity of literary and ecological concerns has become more and more explicit, and has led, in the 20th century, to the emergence of various forms of environmental literature, of nature writing, of ecologically inspired art, poetry, and fiction. Yet the function of literature as cultural ecology, as it is conceived here, goes beyond such affinities of content. It is not adequately grasped as a mere illustration of extraliterary issues and forms of knowledge. Thus it is remarkable and indeed impressive when Karl Kroeber compares English romantic poems with modern biological concepts of the human mind and finds correspondences that make romanticism appear, to a surprising degree, as an anticipation of modern ecobiology. But taken as the sole aspect from which literature is related to ecology, this approach in effect reduces the texts to forms of a protoecological knowledge which inevitably becomes obsolete with the advance of ecology as a science – and this is indeed what Kroeber seems to imply (see Kroeber 1994). Such a view, however, is insufficient since it neglects the semi-autonomous dynamics into which the process of aesthetic transformation in literature draws the systems of knowledge, discourses, and signs which are the cultural material of texts. The thesis put forward in this paper thus relates not only to a thematic level but to the specific structures and functions of literary textuality as it has evolved in relation to and competition with other forms of textuality in the course of cultural evolution. It suggests that imaginative literature, in comparison with other textual genres and types of discourse, can be described in its functional profile in such a way that it acts like an ecological principle or an ecological energy within the larger system of cultural discourses. This function varies, of course, according to period, genre, author, and the historical conditions of production and reception. It has gained heightened significance with the process of modernization since the 18th century, with which the tension between linear, progress-oriented economic, technological and scientific developments and the nonlinear holistic

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world models of literary art has become one of the characteristic shaping forces of literary evolution. This function basically manifests itself in a two-fold way. On the one hand, literature appears as a sensorium and imaginative sounding board for hidden problems, deficits, and imbalances of the larger culture, as a form of textuality which critically balances and symbolically articulates what is marginalized, neglected, repressed or excluded by dominant historical power structures, systems of discourse, and forms of life, but what is nevertheless of vital importance to an adequately complex account of humanity’s existence within the fundamental culture-nature-relationship.2 On the other hand, by breaking up closed circuits of dogmatic world views and exclusionary truth-claims in favour of plural perspectives, multiple meanings and dynamic interrelationships, literature becomes the site of a constant, creative renewal of language, perception, communication, and imagination. As a metadiscursive form of textuality, it restructures the material of language and of the prevailing cultural sign systems in such a way that its forms of self-ganization resemble the processes in which, in an ecological view, life organizes itself. ‘Liveliness’ as a criterion of literary texts, compared with the scientific, ideological, pragmatic, political, or economic functionality of other text types, here gains a new meaning and context. To Nietzsche already, art had the power to revitalize dionysian life energies paralyzed by apollonian order and socratic rationality, and was therefore a medium of civilizatory critique as well as of civilizatory self-renewal. The work of art was both ergon and energeia, an exemplary expression and aesthetic intensification of the processes of becoming and vanishing, of productivity and meta2

There are certain affinities here with Jean Francois Lyotard’s concept of the “secluded” as the subject of an ecological discourse which articulates what remains otherwise unarticulated within dominant cultural discourses, and which is at the same time linked with the specific function and potential of literature: “I mean simply that for me, ‘ecology’ means the discourse of the secluded, of the thing that has not become public, that has not become communicational, that has not become systemic, and that can never become any of these things. This presupposes that there is a relation of language with the logos, which is not centered in optimal performance and which is not obsessed by it, but which is preoccupied, in the full sense of ‘preoccupied’, with listening to and seeking for what is secluded, oikeion. This discourse is called ‘literature’, ‘art’, or ‘writing’ in general.” See Lyotard 2000.

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morphosis, of composition and decomposition which are the shaping forces of life itself. A more recent, more explicitly ecopoetic formulation of this view, which builds on Heidegger’s idea of poetic language as an expression of man’s ‘dwelling’ on the earth, is Jonathan Bate’s when he calls the poet a ‘keystone figure’ in the cultural ecosystem who maintains and restores its inner diversity and living interrelationships (see Bate 2000, esp. 205-42). In yet another but still comparable way, Gary Snyder states that literary art symbolically brings the cultural ecosystem into a state of highest variety, complexity and vitality by dissolving “blocks of inner energies” and focussing on the “leaffall of day-to-day-consciousness”, the “recycling of neglected inner potential”. It is thus “an especially efficient system for recycling the richest thoughts and feelings of a community. Every time we read or discuss a poem, we are recycling its energy back into our cultural environment. That is how the process of survival and modification functions in the realm of art” (qtd. in Bate 2000: 246). An interesting clue to the way in which the affinity between literary and ecological processes which becomes visible here can be more specifically conceived has been given by Gregory Bateson, one of the leading proponents of cultural ecology. He suggests a similarity between the processes of life as they are characterized by selforganization, feedback relations, and infinite structural analogies, and the basic poetic form of speech, the metaphor. His own ecological thinking, he states, follows a metaphorical rather than a classicallogical principle, and in this respect, his mind functions like the mind of a poet, focussing not on the generalizing logic of the subject but on the analogies which can be constructed between different spheres and phenomena of life on the basis of shared predicates. Relational, metaphorical thinking, rather than syllogistic reasoning, corresponds to the principles on which the biological world is built and on which an ecology of the mind can orient itself. An example of a traditional, subject-centered syllogism is “All men die/ Socrates is a man/ Socrates dies”, which Bateson replaces by what he calls “[a]ffirming the consequent”, or “syllogism in grass”: “Grass dies/ Men die/ Men are grass”. According to Bateson, this meta-phorical procedure, which relates areas separated in traditional categories of thought to each other on the basis of common predicates, is closer to the processes of life, which are characterized by structural similarities and shared pro-

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perties, than the abstract classifications and exclusionary boundarylines of logical-conceptual thought (see Bateson 1991: 237-42). Bateson’s “syllogism in grass” raises immediate associations in students of Anglo-American literature. To cite a well-known example: William Wordsworth’s programmatic poetological poem, “The Daffodils”, has a comparable structure, for in it, metaphorical analogies are drawn not only between different natural phenomena like daffodils, waves, and stars, but also between these and the interior world of the poetic self, who from the memory of his intensive experience of nature derives therapeutic power and poetic inspiration by identifying himself with the dancing daffodils. “Men are daffodils”, or more precisely, “poets are dancing daffodils”, is Wordsworth’s version of Bateson’s formula, which underlies the language, the rhythm, and the poetic meaning of the text. Even more obvious is the parallel to Bateson in Walt Whitman’s collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, in which the title already establishes the central analogy between man and grass that is explored in ever new variants in the texts, and thereby becomes a main source of their poetic energy and creativity. Grass alternately becomes an expression of the inner state of the poet, a hieroglyph of the creation, a sign of democracy, a symbol of the cycle of death and rebirth, an analogue to poetic polyphony (“O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues”). It is the basis for always new metamorphoses of the self and the world in which the poet, too, includes himself, and which he passes on as his testimony to his readers: “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love/ If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles”. “Men are Grass” – Bateson’s ecological syllogism is transformed by Whitman into a poetic process, which at the same time extends and expands the metaphor into a source of constant metamorphosis. Several times so far, the term ‘energy’ has been mentioned. As the cultural ecologist Peter Finke maintains, descriptions of cultural processes do indeed require the concept of energy. Unlike logical space, according to Finke, ecological space “is characterized by webs of complex energetic relationships, and the unceasing processes by which it is shaped are feedback processes: something acts upon something else, and the result of this process, together with additional factors, in turn acts back upon the source” (Finke 1998: 130, my

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translation). This energy, it is true, is originally derived from physical sources (most fundamentally, the all-sustaining energy of the sun), but is transformed in the cultural process into various forms of social, psychic, or creative energy. How these forms of cultural energy can be more specifically described seems to be still quite unclear and open to further research. But it is a factor which must be included in any adequate account of cultural, and therefore also of literary, phenomena. Literature, indeed, appears as a textual medium in which the sources of cultural energy can be activated and expressed in particularly intensive and productive ways. This seems to be connected with specific properties of the aesthetic as it has emerged in a long process of cultural evolution, and has grown, with its historical emancipation from the authority of politics, religion, philosophy, and science, into a significant factor in the shaping of the ambivalent dynamics of modernization. How can this evolutionary function of literature as an ecological energy field within culture be more concretely understood? Let us briefly return for this purpose to the example of Whitman, where the concept of energy, quite explicitly, plays a crucial poetological role. At the beginning of his Song of Myself, he describes the source from which his poetry is to spring as “nature without check with original energy.” In this phrase, he names an original creative power which has its roots in life itself, and which is to be translated, through procedures of metaphorization, metamorphosis, and the pluralization of linguistic signs, images, and meanings, into poetry. Poetry in this view, then, is characterized by its purpose and ability, as it were, to stage in always new imaginative scenarios the symbolic transformation of primary, natural, into secondary, psychic and cultural energy, while at the same time maintaining the awareness of and feedback relationship to those primary sources of energy. In the interplay between these poles, an important source of literary creativity seems to be located which is closely connected with its cultural function, and which, as a paradoxical, pre- or transdiscursive mode of discourse, distinguishes it from other forms of textuality. At the end of the Song of Myself, where the individuality of the speaker merges with and dissolves into the metamorphotic cycle of nature, and where the productivity of the poetic process simultaneously explodes into cascades of ever new images, the poetic self is transformed, in one of its most striking incarnations, into a spotted hawk,

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into the voice of precivilizatory nature: “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”. Whitman here radicalizes a poetological tradition which has always transgressed the boundaries of its own medium by searching for a language before language, a pre-discursive knowledge before discursive knowledge. The song of the nightingale in Keats, the blowing of the west wind in Shelley, the voice of the sea in Kate Chopin, the primal scream “Howl” in Allen Ginsberg or the spiral movement of the eagle’s flight in Simon Ortiz’ “Eagle Poem” are taken as inspirational sources for their texts, which from this very regression gain their poetic productivity, differentiation, and ‘modern’ innovational power. Whitman presents his Song of Myself as a “barbaric yawp”, an expression of the living primordial language of precivilizatory nature itself, which transcends the limitations of cultural sign systems, but nevertheless remains dependent on them in the manifold act of poetic self-articulation that the poem performs. The cultural-ecological energy which in Wordsworth expresses itself in a romantic-pastoral, in Whitman in a radical-visionary way, can be traced, as has been said above, to basic aspects of literature and the aesthetic as it has developed in its historical evolution as a distinct form of cultural textuality. Indeed, the affinity between aesthetic and ecological processes is already implied in the very act of aesthetic representation, whose fundamental ‘generative signature’ (Iser) consists in interrelating and breaking down the boundaries between idea and matter, the abstract and the concrete, the intellect and sensory experience.3 The overcoming of the mind-body-dichotomy is thus an inherent part of the aesthetic mode. The “First Law of Ecology”, as Barry Commoner calls it, namely that “everything is related to everything else,” is an insight which is actualised in literary texts as their central principle of composition and communication (see Commone 1971). In staging constant feedback relationships between conceptual, moral, 3

Iser uses the term ‘generative signature’ for the different, historically changing paradigms of the aesthetic, whose most influential versions have been marked by Kant, Hegel, Adorno, and, more recently, cybernetic-functional approaches (see Iser 2003). I am referring here to a more general ‘generative signature’ of the aesthetic as a cultural form which is constituted by symbolic feedback relationships between abstract and concrete, conceptual and sensory, systemic-discursive and processualprediscursive modes of textuality, and as such shows a relatively high degree of constancy and validity across different historical models.

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and ideological abstractions on the one hand, and concrete human interactions, emotions, and sensory experiences on the other, literature is especially capable of representing the complex energetic processes that also characterize the ecological space (see Finke 2002). The logic of conceptual thinking, with its tendency to generalization and classification, to inclusion and exclusion, in short: to the hierarchization and separation between spheres of consciousness and reality, is transformed in the aesthetic mode into a dynamic energy field of language and signs characterized by constant boundary-crossing, dehierarchization, interrelating separated spheres, and opening abstract conceptual systems towards the multiformity of concrete life processes. This applies to the microlevel of linguistic signs, which through the defamiliarization of their conventional use become ‘fluid’ and subject to a process of transformation, condensation, and pluralization of meanings. And it also applies to the macrolevel of prevailing cultural concepts, ideologemes, and systems of interpretation, which the text exposes in their limitations by confronting them with the simulation of concretely imagined human characters, interactions, and processes of experience. Literary works of art in this view are two things at the same time: they are laboratories of human self-exploration, in which, as it were, basic assumptions of prevailing systems of interpretation are ‘tested’ in the medium of simulated life processes; and they are imaginative biotopes in which the dimensions and energies of life neglected by these systems find the symbolic space to develop and express themselves. As a form of cultural textuality that specifically stages the tension between regimes of discursive civilizatory power and prediscursive life processes, literature is therefore both discourse and a ‘nonplace’(Foucault) of discourse. It constitutes itself in a ‘counter’- or ‘in-between’-space of discourses as a paradoxal form of textuality which constantly transgresses and shifts the boundaries of what can be known, said, and thought within a culture by opening them towards their excluded other, which remains unknowable, unsayable, and unthinkable within its rules of discourse.

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3. Triadic functional model: literature as cultural-critical metadiscourse, imaginative counterdiscourse, and reintegrative interdiscourse In the following, I propose a functional model of literature as cultural ecology which builds on the foregoing observations. On the most general level, this model can be described as a combination of three major, often interrelated functions and procedures. The first of these functions consists in the representation of typical deficits, blind spots, imbalances, deformations, and contradictions within dominant systems of civilizatory power. On this level, the dynamics of the texts follows a cultural-critical impulse which characteristically presents these systems as structures of severe external or internal constraint, as often traumatizing forms of negating difference and multiplicity, and which lead to chronic states of self-alienation, failed communication, and paralyzed vitality. They are associated with overpowering demands and conformist pressures on the individual, and are frequently expressed in the imagery of death-in-life, waste land, paralyzation, stasis, blindness, uniformity, vicious cycles, and psychic or physical imprisonment. The deep-rooted civilizatory selfalienation which these images suggest is often seen to result from dominant conceptions of human reality based on dogmatized hierarchical oppositions, such as mind vs. body, intellect vs. emotion, order vs. chaos, culture vs. nature, thus frustrating fundamental communicational and ‘biophilic’ needs of human beings (see Kellert/Wilson 1993). This function can be described as the function of a culturalcritical metadiscourse. Within the limited space of this article, I can only briefly refer to a few examples from American literature: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in which the puritan system of early America is presented, from the opening scene of the novel, in the image of a prisonhouse of culture, whose conformist pressures not only contradict the official self-image of a ‘New World’, but paralyze vital energies and cause severe symptoms of crisis in all main characters; Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick in which the expansive politico-economic system of mid-nineteenth century America is personified, in its anthropocentric will to power over nature, in Captain Ahab, whose mission of annihilating Moby-Dick turns the whale ship itself, as a symbol of the tech-

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nological supremacy of modern man over the nonhuman world, into a prison which, at the end, is pulled with its crew into the abyss; Toni Morrison’s Beloved, in which the system of 19th century slavery appears as a prisonhouse and source of collective traumatization of the black population of America, a system represented by the figure of ‘Schoolteacher’, and thus not interpreted as an aberration from but an institutionalized manifestation of modern ‘civilization’ itself. The second function can be described as a counterdiscursive staging and semiotic empowering of that which is marginalized, neglected or repressed in the dominant cultural reality system. In its alternative worlds, literature articulates what remains unavailable in the established categories of cultural self-interpretation, but what appears as indispensable for an adequately complex account of the lives of humans and their place in the world. In this process, literature not only actualizes the repressed and lifts it into consciousness, but invests it with special imaginative energy. It activates the culturally excluded as a source of its own creativity by transforming it, in ever new forms, from its amorphous semiotic alterity onto the level of language and cultural communication. That way, the culturally excluded is foregrounded and charged with special aesthetic energy. It is associated both with the pluralization of semiotic possibilities and with a mythopoetic potential that builds up a kind of ‘magical’ counterforce to the cultural reality system. It is typically expressed in images of nature, the body, the unconscious, dreams, flux, change, contact, openness, vision, magic, multiformity, biophilic intensity. This function can be called the function of an imaginative counterdiscourse. Thus in The Scarlet Letter, the letter A, which initially seems to designate only one meaning, namely ‘adulteress’, gradually changes from a negative signifier of cultural exclusion into an imaginative counterforce to the fundamentalist dogmatism from which it originated. In the process of the novel, it loses all determinacy and instead becomes the medium of always new, changing meanings (e.g., able, angel, apocalypse, America or art), which, in the openness of their constant semiosis, transgress the exclusionary force of the cultural power regime, and are simultaneously associated with a dimension of elemental vitality, eros, and creativity. This is signified, from the very beginning, in the wild rose bush that grows at the door

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of the cultural prisonhouse and becomes a leitmotif for the presence of the imaginative counterdiscourse in the text. – In Moby-Dick, the white whale becomes the incarnation of an imaginative counterdiscourse which represents the extrahuman, precivilizatory world that resists Ahab’s civilizatory will to power over the creation. The whale, as the demonized other of Ahab’s anthropocentric ideology, is presented, in a series of mythopoetic scenes and images, as an alter ego of the human actors, which, however, like Hawthorne’s scarlet letter, remains inaccessible to any final interpretation and instead becomes the source of a potentially infinite semiosis that resists and transcends all forms of discursive appropriation. – In Morrison’s Beloved, the imaginative counterdiscourse is personified in the ghost of Beloved, the murdered child who returns into the present as an incarnation of the repressed past. She makes possible the confrontation and overcoming of the trauma of slavery in the polyphonic story-telling which her reappearance initiates, and in which Morrison combines postmodern forms of plural stream-of-consciousness narration with premodern traditions of African-American magic and folklore. This counterdiscursive revision of a traumatizing past becomes especially visible in a central symbol of the text, the deep scar on the back of the protagonist Sethe, which is the brutal mark of the violence of slavery but has assumed, in the course of time, the shape of a tree. The semiosis of this mark from the bodily trace of her suffering to the sign of a regenerative cycle of life is a process which characterizes the novel as a whole, and which shapes the various ramifications of its texture (see Bonnet 1997). The third functional aspect or dimension of literature as the medium of cultural ecology can be described as the reintegration of the excluded with the cultural reality system, through which literature contributes to the constant renewal of the cultural center from its margins. This reintegration does not mean any superficial harmonization of conflicts, but rather, by the very act of reconnecting the culturally separated, sets off conflictory processes and borderline states of crisis and turbulence. The alternative worlds of fiction derive their special cognitive and affective intensity from the interaction of that which is kept apart by convention and cultural practice – the different spheres of a society characterized by institutional and economic specialization and differentiation, social roles and private self, publicity and inti-

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macy, intellect and passion, the conscious and the unconscious, and, pervading them all, the basic ecological dimensions of culture and nature. It is particularly the process or moment of bringing together the culturally separated spheres or discourses which, even if it results in failure and catastrophe on the level of action, on a symbolic level often appears as a process or moment of regeneration and the regaining of creativity. In this way, the initial systemic death-in-life-situation is broken up in processes of personal and interpersonal experience, and a reaffirmation of the damaged energies of life is at least implied. Characteristic images here are the web, the network, communication, dialogue, metamorphosis, descent into/return from the underworld, rebirth, regeneration. This function, in which literature relates the culturally excluded in new ways to the cultural reality system, can be called, with a term borrowed from Jürgen Link, the function of a reintegrative interdiscourse (see Link 1992). In The Scarlet Letter, this bringing together of culturally separated spheres is already inscribed into the basic conception of the novel in that the spiritual representative of the puritan community from which Hester Prynne has been excommunicated is revealed to be the father of the illegitimate child which was the reason for her punishment. The moments in the texts in which this long repressed tension rises to the surface of action and consciousness, and in which the separated poles are brought to direct interaction, are clearly marked as moments of revitalization and symbolic rebirth, even though they lead to the tragic catastrophe in the end. Thus when Dimmesdale meets Hester again in the forest after seven years of separation, he says: “I seem to have flung myself, sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened - down upon these forest leaves, and to have risen up all anew” (Hawthorne 1986: 219). And when he returns home from this encounter to his study, he is all at once able to write the text of his greatest sermon, of which only an uninspired draft had existed before, and which he now finishes throughout the whole night as if in trancelike productivity: “There he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written space behind him” (240). This is a key passage in the novel, a parable of literary creativity, which renews itself at the very moment in which the culturally separated spheres of religion and eros, self and other, culture and nature are symbolically reconnected.

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Similarly in Moby-Dick, while Captain Ahab’s monomaniacal pursuit of the whale moves towards its tragic conclusion, the internal interrelatedness of the antagonists man and whale, culture and nature is increasingly raised into consciousness by the narrative perspective. Here, too, the two poles are directly brought together at the end, and the spectacular external catastrophe nevertheless contains the potential of a deeper cultural self-renewal. On the one hand, the book ends in death and annihilation, and the indissoluble interdependence between man and nature, which Ahab had negated, is ironically underlined by the fact that he and his ship are entangled with the white whale as they are pulled down into the depths of the ocean. On the other hand, this scene becomes a scene of rebirth for Ishmael, who is drawn towards the vortex of the sinking ship, but survives through Queequeg’s coffin, which miraculously emerges from the center of the whirl. The whole process of the novel has moved towards this vortex, as it were, which thus configurates both the abyss into which the civilizatory project of absolute supremacy over nature threatens to plunge, and the ‘cyclical’ forces of regeneration which the symbolic restoration of the broken relationship between humanity and elemental nature sets free. This is at the same time the condition for the literary creativity of the novel itself, because only through this borderline experience and Ishmael’s ‘return from the underworld’, the narration of the events becomes possible which the novel, in its combination of modern-experimental and archaic-mythopoetic forms of the imagination, performs. – In Beloved, too, the imaginative counterdiscourse, which revolves around the figure of the returned dead daughter, only gains its regenerative potential by being related back to the real cultural world. Sethe, the mother who in her guilt and self-sacrificing love towards Beloved totally isolates herself from the external world, must be readmitted into the black community from which she has been excluded, before the ghost of Beloved, together with that of the white slaveholder, can be exorcized and a new beginning for human relationships can be imagined. Obviously, these three procedures of literature as cultural ecology do not always occur in the sequence or schematized form as they have just been presented but are frequently interwoven, overlap, compete with, condition, and modify each other. But they seem to me to be

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three major ways in which the function of literature as an ecological force within its larger cultural system can be described. Literature here fulfils a function which cannot be fulfilled in the same way by other forms of discourse, but which is nevertheless of vital importance to the richness, diversity, and continuing evolutionary potential of the culture as a whole. The special generative and innovational power of literature, as has been seen, is always also a power of recycling and regeneration. Literature binds back, in ever new ways, the discourses of civilizatory rationality to the living memory of those elemental creative energies which are stored in the history of the literary imagination. Successful works of literature are therefore, in a radical sense, new and old, modern and archaic, historical and transhistorical at the same time. Literature keeps alive its productivity by relating, in ever new forms, the cultural memory to the biophilic memory of the human species. Bibliography Armbruster, Karla and Kathleen R. Wallace (eds). 2001. Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlottesville and London: UP of Virginia. Bate, Jonathan. 2000. The Song of the Earth. London: Picador. Bateson, Gregory. 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. London: Paladin. —. 1991. A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Harper and Collins. Bonnet, Michele. 1997. “‘To Take the Sin Out of Slicing Trees…’: The Law of the Tree in Beloved” in African- American Review (31): 41-53. Buell, Lawrence. 1995. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Capra, Fritjof. 1996. The Web of Life. New York: Doubleday. Commoner, Barry. 1996. The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology. New York: Knopf. Coupe, Laurence (ed.). 2002. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. London and New York: Routledge. Dürr, Hans-Peter. 1995. Die Zukunft ist ein unbetretener Pfad: Bedeutung und Gestaltung eines ökologischen Lebensstils. Freiburg: Herder. Finke, Peter. 2002. ‘Kulturökologie’ in Nünning, Ansgar and Vera Nünning (eds). Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften: Theoretische Grundlagen – Ansätze Perspektiven. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler: 248-79.

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—. 1998. ‘Die äußere und die innere Landschaft: Über psychische Energie und kulturelle Kreativität’ in Schiltsky, M.-P. (ed.) Piet Trantel auf dem E1. Hameln: Selbstverlag der Künstlergruppe Arche: 107-31. Glaeser, Bernhard and P. Teherani-Krönner. 1992. Humanökologie und Kulturökologie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds). 1995. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. Goodbody, Axel (ed.). 1998. Literatur und Ökologie. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi. Gras, Vernon W. 2003. ‘Why the Humanities Need a New Paradigm which Ecology Can Provide’ in Anglistik: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Anglistenverbandes 14 (2): 45-61. Grewe-Volpp, Christa. 2004. Natural Spaces Mapped by Human Minds: Ökokritische und ökofeministische Analysen zeitgenössischer amerikanischer Romane. Tübingen: Narr. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. 1986. The Scarlet Letter and Selected Tales. Harmondsworth: Penguin. [First edition New York: Nelson 1850.] Hayward, Tim. 1994. Ecological Thought: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press. Howarth, W. (ed.). Ecocriticism. Special Issue of New Literary History. 30.3.1999. Hutcheon, Linda. 1993. ‘Eruptions of the Postmodern: The Postcolonial and the Ecological’ in Essays on Canadian Writing 1993-94: 146-63 Iser, Wolfgang. 1991. Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre: Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. —. 2003. ‘Von der Gegenwärtigkeit des Ästhetischen’ in Geppert, Hans Vilmar and Hubert Zapf (eds) Theorien der Literatur: Grundlagen und Perspektiven. Bd. I. Tübingen: Francke: 9-28. Kellert, Stephen and Edward O. Wilson. 1993. The Biophilia Hypothesis. Washington, D.C. and Covelo, CA: Island Press. Kroeber, Karl. 1994. Ecological Literary Criticism. Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind. New York: Columbia University Press. Link, Jürgen. 1992. ‘Literaturanalyse als Interdiskursanalyse.’ in Fohrmann, Jürgen and Harro Müller (eds). Diskurstheorien und Literaturwissenschaft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp: 284-307. Lyotard, Jean Francois. 2000. ‘Ecology as Discourse of the Secluded’, in Coupe (2000): 135-8. Mayer, Sylvia. 2004. Naturethik und Neuengland-Regionalliteratur: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rose Terry Cooke, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Heidelberg: Winter. Næss, Arne. 1989. Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nennen, Heinz Ulrich. 1991. Ökologie im Diskurs: Zu Grundfragen der Anthropologie und Ökologie und zur Ethik der Wissenschaften. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Paulson, William. 1988. The Noise of Culture: Literary Texts in a World of Transformation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

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Rueckert, William. 1995. ‘Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism’ in Glotfelty and Fromm (1995): 105-11. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1992. Gaia & God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Westling, Louise. 1998. The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape, Gender, and American Fiction. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press. Zapf, Hubert. 2002. Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie: Zur kulturellen Funktion imaginativer Texte an Beispielen des amerikanischen Romans. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Zijderveld, Anton C. 1970. The Abstract Society: A Cultural Theory of Our Time. New York: Doubleday.

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Nature “out there” and as “a social player”: some basic consequences for a literary ecocritical analysis Christa Grewe-Volpp Abstract: The following essay argues for a mediating position in ecocriticism between proponents of a naïve realism who insist on a re-evaluation of the “actual,” prediscursive universe and proponents of poststructuralism who understand nature as a text. Such a mediating position can be derived from the theories of Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles, both of whom try to maintain a difficult balance between constructivism and objectivism. The second part of the essay develops four basic consequences for an ecocritical literary analysis based on the conception of nature both as a physical-material entity and as a cultural construction. They are to be understood as a kind of blueprint for an ecocritical reading of cultural representations.

1. Introduction A basic assumption of ecocriticism, as articulated by Cheryl Glotfelty, is its focus on the “interconnections between the material world and human culture, specifically the cultural artifacts language and literature” (in Love 1992: 196). If we take the term “interconnections” seriously, Glotfelty’s statement has significant consequences: on the one hand, it leads to a revaluation of the physical environment, often referred to by ecocritics as “the bedrock of natural fact” (“From the Editors” 1999: 505) or as “nature out there”; on the other hand, it entails the relinquishment of human dominance of nature, a critique of anthropocentrism. In other words: it leads from an egocentered to an ecocentered perspective, or, as Robert Kern aptly observes: What ecocriticism calls for, then, is a fundamental shift from one context of reading to another – more specifically, a movement from the human to the environmental, or at least from the exclusively human to the biocentric or ecocentric, which is to say a humanism (since we cannot evade our human status or identity) informed by an awareness of the ‘more-than-human’. (Kern 2000: 18)

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What, then, is an ecocritical perspective of the “more-than-human?” And how can it be applied to an ecocritical literary analysis? In the following essay I will try to answer these questions by identifying and discussing controversial conceptions of nature as an extratextual phenomenon “out there” on the one hand and as a mere text on the other. I will argue for a mediating position that understands nature as both a physical-material entity as well as a “social player” actively involved in the dynamics of cultural constructions. Finally, I will point out some basic consequences of this mediating position for an ecocritical literary analysis. Although my criteria are to be understood as a kind of blueprint for a literary critique applicable to literature and culture in general, my own focus remains within an US-American context. 2. Nature as a factual reality as opposed to nature as mere text An ecocentered perspective implies a representation or a reading of nature as a factual reality, which requires a sound knowledge of the natural environment. Ursula K. Heise is only one of several ecocritics who argues for an interdisciplinary approach with a strong emphasis on the natural sciences: “Due to its epistemological power as well as its pervasive cultural influence in the West and, increasingly, in other parts of the world, the scientific description of nature, I would argue, should be one of the cornerstones of ecocriticism” (1997: 6). Among ecocritics special attention is being paid to the scientific discourse of ecology because it studies living organisms as an interdependent whole. However, the application of ecological insights to the social realm or to literary criteria is not without problems. These insights have been (mis)used for moral and philosophical lessons to support ideas of holism, unity, or balance, based on the notion of a “climax community” articulated by the ecologist Frederic Clements at the beginning of the 20th century: “The Clementsian landscape is a balance of nature, a steady-state condition maintained so long as every species remains in place. Everything is cooperatively and interdependently linked; if one element is disturbed, the whole will be changed” (Barbour 1995: 235). But since the 1950s the unpredictability within ecosystems has been stressed so that terms such as “predictability, uniformity, cooperation, stability, and certainty” have become much less

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useful than “individualism, competition, a blur of continuous change, and probability” (Barbour 1995: 238). Despite their claim for objectivity and their reliance on facts, scientific discourse in general and ecological discourse in particular are themselves socially and historically constructed. Their application to the cultural realm must always take the specific situatedness of their insights into consideration. The revaluation of the material world has revealed a split among literary ecocritics. Some argue for a conventional, sometimes even naïve literary realism, whereas others support poststructuralist conceptions of nature as a text. The advocates of the first group refer to themselves as “compoststructuralists” to emphasize their aversion to theory and their “earthiness” (Winkler 1996: A8). Glen Love, for example, agrees with Joseph Carroll, who laments that poststructuralism has emptied out “the rich world of experience within reality,” that “in its place we have been given a thin and hectic play of selfreflexive linguistic functions” (Joseph Carroll in Love 1999: 565). Jay Parini has observed “a dismissal of theory’s more solipsistic tendencies,” and a “reengagement with realism, with the actual universe of rocks, trees, and rivers that lie behind the wilderness of signs” (Parini 1995: 52). To reconcile the “compoststructuralists” with the poststructuralists, other ecocritics try to show the differences as well as the similarities between the two positions to come to a more differentiated conclusion: both, they say, question traditional authorities, patriarchal, logocentric and technocratic structures; both opt for a debunking of traditional hierarchies and a revaluation of the marginal; both reject notions of absolute objectivity because perceptions are always subjective or situated.1 While all ecocritics deplore the anthropocentric privileging of the human species, poststructuralists argue against ethnocentric and imperialist mecha-nisms of suppression in Western culture. The differences result most of all from their respective assessments of the natural world, as SueEllen Campbell summarizes: “Like the idealist, the poststructuralist thinks the world into being; like the realist, the ecologist insists that ‘out there’ is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours” (Campbell 1996: 130). While poststructuralists, for example, reject all “natural” explanations of human or 1

See for example Dominic Head 1998; Michael Branch 1994; SueEllen Campbell 1996; John Cooley 1994; Kate Soper 1999.

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social phenomena, ecocritics emphasize human affinity with (other) animals. The essential difference is between a notion of nature as a social construction on the one hand, and as a prediscursive entity, independent of human culture on the other. 3. A mediating position: Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles To close or at least to narrow the gap between these two conceptions a mediating position is necessary which does not deny that there is an ontological difference between, to quote Kate Soper, “the ideas we have of nature and that which the ideas are about” (1995: 151). It is a position that takes into consideration human embeddedness in the physical-material world as well as humans’ difference from nonhuman nature, a position that heeds human interdependence in ecosystems and at the same time does not ignore the culturally and socially constructed complex of human life. Such a position is necessary because of a dilemma that Kate Soper has aptly pointed out, namely that “just as a simplistic endorsement of ‘nature’ can seem insensitive to the emancipatory concerns motivating its rejection, so an exclusive emphasis on ‘discourse’ and signification can very readily appear evasive of ecological realities and irrelevant to the task of addressing them” (1999: 59). Because if no extradiscursive realities are accepted, no “natural” bodies, no instincts, then only cultural processes have meaning, while nature as the Other, silent and static, needs no further exploration. This can lead to a disregard of ecological problems and of human embeddedness. But if, on the other hand, nature as a cultural construction is negated, if nature is regarded as free of human influence, often in nostalgic images of pristine naturalness, then the political and social implications of the construction are overlooked. Human behavior then tends to be explained in terms of a simplistic biological determinism (Soper 1999: passim). One mediating position to solve this dilemma can be found in the writings of Donna Haraway, one of the most prominent American postmodern theoreticians. For Haraway nature is neither a physical place “out there” nor a mere cultural construction to be deciphered in mathematical or biomedical codes. It is not an Other that can be instrumentalized – as resource, as mother, as slave or as a place for human recreation. The term nature is for her a construction, co-

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constructed by humans (their notions, ideas, projections, discourses, etc.) and by the nonhuman itself: If the world exists for us as ‘nature,’ this designates a kind of relationship, an achievement among many actors, not all of them human, not all of them organic, not all of them technological. In its scientific embodiments as well as in other forms, nature is made, but not entirely by humans; it is a co-construction among humans and non-humans. (1992: 297)

The non-humans are organic and technological subjects who in her optimistic myth of the cyborg cannot be separated from each other. Cyborgs are hybrids consisting of machines and organisms, or of humans, animals, and machines, creatures of social reality as well as of fiction. A cyborg identity is “multiple, without clear boundaries, frayed, insubstantial” (1992: 219). It forms the basis of her conception of nature, which resists any notion of certainty. For Haraway, strict demarcations of what is human, natural or technological have become blurred. To define nature as both an active agent and a construction she refers to the well-known image of the trickster who is unpredictable, beyond human control, who “suggests our situation when we give up mastery but keep searching for fidelity, knowing all the while we will be hoodwinked” (1991: 1199). Nature to her is no longer an object that can be analyzed, categorized, and finally known. It is neither pristine or pure, to be protected from human interference, nor an entity we can holistically merge with. Nature must always be constructed anew in concrete historical and cultural encounters of humans with the physical environment, encounters which at the same time reconstruct humans. This strong emphasis on co-construction exposes all reductions of phenomena to their “naturalness” as illusionary: the physical-material environment, race, class, or gender. It also calls for responsibility in “reinventing” nature, in constructing new myths which give adequate expression to nature as a cultural construction as well as an autonomous, active entity, i.e. as a constructor in its own right. Another mediating position is articulated by N. Katherine Hayles, who, like Haraway, explores the interaction between humans and nature in order to redefine it. She situates herself between radical constructivism and scientific objectivism, a position she calls “constrained constructivism” (1995a: 53). It implies that our conceptions

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of nature must not be arbitrary, but comply with our experience of reality: Constrained constructivism points to the interplay between representation and constraints. Neither cut free from reality nor existing independent of human perception, the world as constrained constructivism sees it is the result of complex and active engagements between the unmediated flux and human beings. (1995a: 53)

“Unmediated flux” is her term for nature “out there” which exists on its own, but for humans or other living beings who get in touch with it it is “a stream of potential experiences that will happen differently for differently situated observers” (1995b: 413). These different experiences depend on the particular embodiment of the perceiver which determines the kind of interaction with the world as “unmediated flux.” Hayles refers to the Chilean neurobiologist Humberto Maturana, who has demonstrated how each species constructs its world according to its physical nature. Because of their respective biological, historical and social conditions such as “sensory equipment, neural processing system, previous experience, present context, and horizon of expectation” (1995a: 49), humans, too, have a very specific perception of the world which they cannot know as such. World is to Hayles the result of the interaction between perceiving organisms and the “unmediated flux,” which becomes world only when it is processed by an observer. In other words: “What counts as reality for us resides neither in the world by itself nor in the observer by herself but in the interactions between the beholder and the world” (1995b: 425). Haraway as well as Hayles both try to maintain a difficult balance between constructivism and objectivism which Haraway calls “coconstruction” and Hayles “riding the cusp” (Haraway 1992: 297 and Hayles 1995b: 418), a balance which recognizes historical, social and cultural achievements, but which at the same time foregrounds the autonomy of an extrahuman reality as well as its capacity to act. Both their conceptions of nature emphasize the interdependence of nonhuman reality or nature on the one hand and the human or culture on the other. In their models of “co-construction” or “interactivity” both categories, nature and culture, cannot be clearly separated. They are dependent on each other in a complex, dynamic system which keeps constructing itself in ever changing historical or social situations

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involving human as well as nonhuman actors. Such a position is able to overcome reductionist thinking in ecocriticism as well as in radical poststructuralism. Only an ecocritical discourse that does not insist exclusively on the physical-material, biological basis of all phenomena, that does not exclusively postulate human embeddedness in ecosystems, but takes into account that nature is always also the result of social and cultural processes, only that ecocritical discourse can try to solve environmental problems practically and initiate a change of mind. It can also critically deal with arguments about a “natural” gender or a “natural” race, analyze their biological and cultural elements as well as their reciprocal dynamics, and point out how they interact with each other. 4. Consequences for an ecocritical literary analysis An ecocritical reading of literary texts not only exposes ecologically incorrect attitudes towards nature or detrimental behavior towards it, although such forms of policing may also be an understandable part of it considering today’s urgent environmental problems. Ecocriticism after all does have a didactic, activist side to it, as Michael P. Cohen has observed: “By definition, ecological literary criticism must be engaged. It wants to know, but also wants to do” (1999: 1092). In order to become a tool for a literary analysis, however, ecocriticism must go beyond criteria of “right” or “wrong,” of advocating a green politics or of articulating normative philosophies. It must instead study the complex interconnections of nature and culture, their modes of representation, their ideological functions in order to identify the specific conditions of the contemporary environmental crisis as a crisis of the mind, of “attitudes, feelings, images, narratives” (Buell 2001: 1). An understanding of the natural environment as both a physical-material entity as well as a cultural construction and of culture as embedded in the physical-material world has some basic consequences for a literary ecocriticism. Four such consequences appear as reasonable conclusions to my arguments so far.

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One: Nature is an autonomous force, an active agent. In order to represent an extratextual reality, the “unmediated flux,” nature “out there” in literary texts, writers – and readers – must be aware of an enduring paradox: namely that such representations can only be efforts to approach nonhuman reality with human means: perception, reflection, imagination, articulation. Knowing they cannot really know the extratextual on its own terms, authors will have to develop respect for that which exists “out there” and try to portray it in its difference and – as Carolyn Merchant puts it – as “a free autonomous actor” (1996: 221). This does not necessarily mean that nature is personified, but that it is an active force capable of subverting cultural and social achievements. Such a portrayal of nature has several functions: one, it highlights that culture and society are embedded in the material world. The world is no longer just a system of signs, but also a prelinguistic, prelogical, active entity which forms the basis of and acts upon the signs. Second, it debunks the notion of human dominance. Nature as a trickster cannot be contained and manipulated forever, it will reemerge in surprising and often unpleasant ways, as for example in the polluted food chain or in natural catastrophes such as land slides or the Dust Bowl, both the result of human actions. Land slides are often the after-effect of deforestation worldwide, whereas the Dust Bowl refers to a specific time and place in the United States. Due to overgrazing and poor land management a large section of the topsoil of the Great Plains was literally blown away during dust storms in the early 1930s after an extended period of a severe drought. Nature in each case responded and responds to human interference. As an autonomous actor it can no longer be depicted as a mere setting, but becomes a protagonist capable of articulation, or, as Haraway puts it: “Nature may be speechless, without language, in the human sense; but nature is highly articulate. […] To articulate is to signify” (1992: 324). The land, for example, or, more generally, a place, subtly or explicitly influences the psyche and the actual behavior of individual protagonists. Climate, wilderness conditions, technologically altered landscapes, topographies and many other environmental elements – never as pristine nature, never as mere text – function as a powerful force that human beings have to – and do – react to.

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Some writers represent this force by giving nature a “voice” which, rightly understood, has nothing to do with anthropomorphizing the nonhuman world. It does not mean projecting human feelings into a realm other than human, but is instead a paradoxical effort to realize and to appreciate nature’s own laws, to at least come close to its fundamental difference. Such efforts often articulate nature’s otherness or its distinctness, and they respectfully acknowledge its agency and its autonomy. At the same time, they work against notions of human exceptionality and superiority. Humans are an integral and equal part of a complex net of relationships. A “voice” can also be detected in nonverbal communication, in body language, changes in the land or climate, or in the behavioral patterns of animals. It is important that they cannot be fully analyzed on human terms, that some mystery will likely remain, that nature “out there” will probably remain a trickster never to be totally grasped, or, as Peter Fritzell has argued: The mind’s road to The Muskrat or The Phoebe, if one is truly given to it, is just as difficult as the mind’s road to God; and for the best American nature writers the roads have been essentially one, evoking the same fundamental awareness of the limitations of human language and conception. (1990: 16)

Point of view, perspective, or the choice of protagonists are often used to express these limitations in literary texts. In the genre nature writing, for example, human protagonists are marginalized. Instead of humans at the center of a plot, we find a scientific description of natural phenomena in which ecological concepts of interdependence play an important role. One must always keep in mind, however, that even objective descriptions are the result of scientific hypotheses offered by humans. This is at least as true for texts that do not relinquish an anthropocentric position. In these texts human involvement with the natural world is of course also of interest: how is the relationship between humans and the nonhuman depicted? What does it mean if nature “out there” is not recognized as an autonomous force, as a protagonist in its own right, if its influence on the human and on culture is ignored?

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Two: Nature is a cultural construction. Conceptions of nature are not only based on physical-material conditions, but on human expectations as well as on cultural socialization. As nature writer Barry Lopez argues, our idea of a geographical region is shaped by at least three aspects: “what one knows, what one imagines, and how one is disposed” (1987: 271). Human desire can act as one of several factors that influence the mental and real appropriation of a region, and it can err: And desire causes imagination to misconstrue what it finds. The desire for wealth, for revivification, for triumph, as much or more than scientific measurement and description, or the imperatives of economic expansion, resolves the geography of a newfound landscape. (Lopez 1987: 256)

Conceptions of nature therefore reveal individual as well as collective mechanisms of perception which comprise many different ways of approaching the nonhuman world. They are expressive of specific ideologies which are socially as well as environmentally productive. To represent nature not as an object, but as an autonomous force is a choice based on cultural as well as individual notions. It takes into consideration scientific research and the ecological understanding of the relevance of an interdependent net of living organisms. At the same time, however, it implies a willingness to disregard traditional conceptions of human separateness and superiority. The decision to depict nature as an active agent or as a passive object reflects ideas about the self, about a community, and – in a larger context – even about a nation. Metaphors of nature in particular reveal specific patterns of perception and their ideological connotations. Ecofeminists, for example, have done important work in pointing out the misogynist implications in the representation of nature as female, as “virgin land” or “mother nature.” They have questioned the ideological function of motherhood in patriarchal Western societies that is too often connected with notions of an always caring and nurturing femininity. Nature understood as “mother” has been regarded as a cornucopia to be exploited or even depleted. Annette Kolodny has argued that seeing the land as “virgin territory” or, as Isaac McCaslin in Faulkner’s story “The Bear,” as “his mistress and his wife” (Faulkner 1942: 326), for

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example, is a male projection revealing physical, erotic, spiritual, and emotional needs resulting either in aggressive violence or feelings of guilt, projections that do not say much about the land itself nor do they do justice to women in patriarchal societies (1984: 153). It makes a difference whether a swamp functions as a site of moral devastation or as an ecological biotope, whether a forest is the home of Satan as in Puritanism or of the sublime as in American Transcendentalism. Representations such as these reveal not only knowledge of natural phenomena or the lack of such a knowledge, but ideological standpoints which reflect and influence how we deal with our natural environment. Metaphors, according to Barry Lopez, are the “fundamental tools of the imagination” (1987: 250), and a matter of choice. Some suppport imperialist, misogynist, or racist ideas and behavior, whereas others evoke respect and care. Metaphors of nature are thus never neutral or innocent, but they reflect ideas which in turn produce social and cultural action. Three: An ecocritical understanding of nature as an autonomous force as well as a cultural construction resists implications of an hierarchical dualism. Dualist notions of separatism, a basic conception of Western philosophy since antiquity, lose their impact when an interdependent system of natural and cultural phenomena is based on principles of reciprocity, “interactivity” and “interrelationship.” As culture is understood to be embedded in nature and as nature is always culturally inscribed, culture can no longer deem itself superior to nature. It must instead respect the implications and consequences of its embeddedness. Human beings on the other hand can no longer retreat into an idyllic pastoralism, because such an enclave is already culturally “infected.” Ideas of a pure paradise are an illusion. At the same time ideas of purity in race and gender are also illusionary. They ignore social, cultural, and economic circumstances. Race and gender just as nature or the land belong to the realm of physical materiality as well as to the realm of culture. In ecocritically sensitive texts, hierarchical dualism which implies strict separation, exclusion and dominance of the Other will therefore most likely be replaced by, as Lawrence Buell writes, “a myth of mutual constructionism: of

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physical environment (both natural and human-built) shaping in some measure the cultures that in some measure continually refashion it” (2001: 6). Four: In American literature, ecocritical conceptions of nature function as alternatives to the dominant myth of “nature’s nation.” In this myth nature is equally idealized and exploited, revered and suppressed. It has produced the prototypical American hero in his conquest of the continent. Donald Pease has identified the central images of the myth of “nature’s nation” and emphasized their relevance in the American metanarrative: Those images interconnect an exceptional national subject (American Adam) with a representative national scene (Virgin Land) and an exemplary national motive (errand into the wilderness). The composite result of the interaction of these images was the mythological entity – Nature’s Nation – whose citizens believed, by way of the supreme fiction called natural law, that the ruling assumptions of their national compact (Liberty, Equality, Social Justice) could be understood as indistinguishable from the sovereign power creative of nature. (Pease 1994: 4)

The dark side of this myth, according to Pease, is that it excluded “women, blacks, ‘foreigners’, the homeless” (1994: 4), people understood to be of a different nature. It was a monological story ignoring geographical, economic and ethnic conditions and the social complexities involved with these. An ecocritical consciousness alert to the ideological function of natural representations as well as of hierarchical dualisms inherent in these representations questions historical notions of the heroic settlement of the American continent. These notions imply either a desire for dominance in the concept of Manifest Destiny, or a feeling of “imperialist nostalgia,” a term coined by Renato Rosaldo, as Louise Westling points out, “to define a widespread tactic used by colonial powers to cover up their domination and ‘transform the responsible colonial agent into an innocent bystander’” (Westling 1996: 5). One of many examples is Natty Bumppo in Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels. As a pathfinder he has unwittingly opened the West to American settlers and is thus responsible for the very destruction of nature which he laments and flees from. Historical notions of an heroic settlement also ignore regional differences with

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their geographic, economic, and ethnic particularities and the social complexities involved in them. An ecocritical consciousness, on the other hand, realizes a project articulated by Annette Kolodny in 1992, a project which goes beyond European colonial beginnings of settlement and which recognizes specific regional conditions at specific historical points of time: To effect this project will require that we let go our grand obsessions with narrowly geographic or strictly chronological frameworks and instead recognize “frontier” as a locus of first cultural contact, circumscribed by a particular physical terrain in the process of change because of the forms that contact takes, all of it inscribed by the collisions and interpenetrations of language. My paradigm would thus have us interrogating language – especially as hybridized style, trope, story, or structure – for the complex intersections of human encounters and human encounters with the physical environment. It would enjoin us to see the ways in which the collision of languages encodes the physical terrain as just as much a player in the drama of contact as the human participants, with the landscape variously enabling, thwarting, or even evoking human actions and desires. (1992: 3)

Kolodny’s inclusion of different cultures and their “collision” as well as of the physical terrain as a “player” corresponds to ecocritical notions of the nonhuman as an autonomous actor. It also takes into consideration diverse groups of people that Pease has termed “of ‘a different nature’.” They are all seen as situated and interacting in a dynamic web of relations instead of operating as separate entities, some of which are superior to others, with detrimental effects for both humans and the nonhuman world. Ecocriticism which regards nature as an autonomous, active entity “out there” as well as a “social player” can be an important analytical tool in the interpretation of literary texts that represent the relationship of humans to their natural environment. In the context of contemporary environmental problems, an ecocritical discourse with its emphasis on interdependence demonstrates how closely humans and culture are connected with nature. As opposed to organicist, often romantic models of human harmony or even oneness with nature, however, many ecocritics today point out the dangers of this “oneness” due to pollution and toxicity. At the same time, they insist on the specifics of cultural difference which act against notions of an undifferentiated merging: feminist, ethnic, racial and other criteria

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resist universalizing tendencies and the loss of particularity. They also resist idealizing notions of “nature’s nation” by revealing its dark side and exposing its distorting aspects. A literary ecocritical analysis which takes all these criteria into consideration will not only be able to define ecocritically sensitive texts by well-known nature writers such as Thoreau, Dillard, or Abbey, to name just a few. It will also reveal new aspects of texts that are not necessarily “green,” but that deal nevertheless with the relationship between humans and nonhumans, between the material world “out there,” the “unmediated flux,” and its cultural construction. It will even be applicable to texts in which the natural environment is more or less ignored by pointing out the consequences of this neglect. Last but not least the criteria for an ecocritical literary analysis developed in this essay can easily be transferred to the interpretation of other cultural phenomena, such as art, film, popular culture, etc. They can even help articulate new perspectives in environmental and social politics, only of course as part of a truly interdisciplinary project comprising literary studies, science, philosophy, religion and other disciplines of intellectual and spiritual inquiry. Ecocritics can initiate change, as Lawrence Buell believes: Admittedly nothing is more shocking for many humanists than to find their ideas taken seriously. But it might just happen in this case. That self-identified ecocritics tend to be folk who seriously entertain that possibility is one reason why the best ecocritical work is so strange, timely, and intriguing. (1999: 710)

The best ecocritical work represents – just like ecosystems themselves – the dynamics of many diverse and competing elements, none of which must assert itself as a monoculture. Only then can it remain an active, open, relational process. Bibliography Barbour, Michael. 1995. ‘Ecological Fragmentation in the Fifties’ in Cronon, William (ed.) Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York: Norton: 23355. Branch, Michael. 1994. ‘Ecocriticism: The Nature of Nature in Literary Studies’ in Weber Studies 11(1): 41-5.

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Buell, Lawrence. 2001. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP. —. 1999. ‘The Ecocritical Insurgency’ in New Literary History 30(3): 699-712. Campbell, Sue Ellen. 1996. ‘The Land and Language of Desire: Where Deep Ecology and Post-Structuralism Meet’ in Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: U of Georgia P: 124-36. Cohen, Michael. 1999. ‘Forum on Literatures of the Environment’ in PMLA 114(5): 1092. Cooley, John. 1994. Earthly Words: Essays on Contemporary American Nature and Environmental Writers. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Cooper, James Fenimore. 1827/1985. The Prairie. Albany: State University of New York Press. Faulkner, William. 1942. Go Down, Moses. New York: Modern Library. Fritzell, Peter. 1990. Nature Writing and America: Essays upon a Cultural Type. Ames: Iowa UP. ‘From the Editors’. 1999. in New Literary History 33(3): 505-7. Haraway, Donna. 1992. ‘The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others’ in Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (eds) Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge: 295-337. —. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Hayles, N. Katherine. 1995a. ‘Searching for Common Ground’ in Soulé, Michael E. and Gary Lease (eds) Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction. Washington: Island Press: 47-63. —. 1995b. ‘Simulated Nature and Natural Simulations: Rethinking the Relation between the Beholder and the World’ in Cronon, William (ed.) Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York: Norton: 409-545. Head, Dominic. 1998. ‘The (im)possibility of ecocriticism’ in Kerridge, Richard and Neil Sammells (eds) Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature. London and New York: Zed Books. Heise, Ursula K. 1997. ‘Science and Ecocriticism’ in American Book Review 18(5): 4, 6. Kern, Robert. 2000. ‘Ecocriticism – What Is It Good For?’ in ISLE 7(1): 9-32. Kolodny, Annette. 1992. ‘Letting Go Our Grand Obsessions: Notes Toward a New Literary History of the American Frontiers’ in American Literature 64: 1-18. —. 1984. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P. Lopez, Barry. 1987. Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape. Toronto: Bantam Books. Love, Glen. 1992. ‘Et in Arcadia Ego: Pastoral Theory Meets Ecocriticism’ in Western American Literature 27: 195-207. —. 1999. ‘Ecocriticism and Science: Toward Concilience?’ in New Literary History 30(3): 561-76.

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Parini, Jay. 1995. ‘The Greening of Humanities’ in The New York Times Magazine (29 October 1995). Pease, Donald E. (ed.). 1994. National Identities and Post-Americanist Narratives. Durham and London: Duke UP. Soper, Kate. 1999. ‘Nature as Cultural Other: Ecology, Sexuality and the Generisation of Nature’ in Riechl, Wolfgang (ed.) Narratives of Nature: Perspectives of Cultural Construction. Essen: Blaue Eule: 57-75. —. 1995. What Is Nature? Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Westling, Louise. 1996. The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape, Gender, and American Fiction. Athens: U of Georgia P. Winkler, Karen. 1996. ‘Inventing a New Field: The Study of Literature About the Environment’ in The Chronicle of Higher Education (9 August 1996).

Feminist and postcolonial perspectives on ecocriticism in a Canadian context: toward a ‘situated’ literary theory and practice of ecofeminism and environmental justice Simone Birgitt Hartmann Abstract: This essay provides a basic introduction to ecological literary and cultural criticism and situates ecocriticism within the contexts of (1) Canadian literary history, and of (2) feminism and postcolonialism. It surveys the possible intersections of these discourses; outlines the respective developments of ecofeminist and environmental justice criticism; and illustrates its argument with two ecocritical readings of contemporary Canadian fiction, the first of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing as an ecofeminist literary text, and the second of Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water as a Native narrative of environmental justice. Given its aim to develop a ‘situated’ or contextualised literary theory and practice of ecofeminism and environmental justice, the analytical and interpretive approach advocated in this article follows current efforts to incorporate feminist, postcolonial and multicultural perspectives into ecocritically informed studies on literature, culture and the natural environment.

1. Introduction: positioning ecocriticism Ecological literary and cultural criticism is a relatively recent and still expanding field of research. In her introduction to the groundbreaking anthology The Ecocriticism Reader, Cheryll Glotfelty traces the origins of ecologically informed theory and practice back to individual literary and cultural scholars in the 1970s and continues to outline the gradual collaboration of projects in the mid-1980s until their final consolidation as a recognisable critical school in the 1990s.1 Despite the 1

See Glotfelty (1996: xv-xviii). For a divergent view that suggests a much longer history or tradition of ecocriticism in the United States and locates “a kind of protoecocriticism” in the latter half of the 19th century see Mazel (2001).

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(organisational and thematic) formation of ecocriticism as an academic movement and critical discourse, environmental literary and cultural studies represent a heterogeneous field in the sense that they are in general more issue-driven than methodologically-focused (cf. Buell 1999: 700). Rather than being based on (or restricted by) a unitary theoretical approach or method, ecocriticism designates a descriptive term comprising a “broad scope of inquiry” (Glotfelty 1996: xix), and while lacking homogeneity/uniformity on the one hand, this openness avoids the normative or prescriptive character of a binding system on the other. Glotfelty defines ecocriticism very inclusively as “the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” and further observes that “most ecocritical work shares a common motivation: the troubling awareness that we have reached the age of environmental limits” (1996: xviii, xx). In general terms, ecological literary criticism reflects a recognition that the local and global impacts as well as ecological and social implica-tions resulting from the contamination and exploitation of our natural environment require a critical reevaluation of society’s (destructive) attitudes towards nature. Accordingly, (eco)literary critic Lawrence Buell more specifically defines ecocriticism with an activist stance as the “study of the relation between literature and environment con-ducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis” (1995: 430) and implies the capability of literary texts and theory to advocate an environmental consciousness by addressing and possibly influencing human behaviour towards nonhuman nature. The urgency of environmental issues and the imaginative potential of literature notwithstanding, Robert Kern asserts that “ecocriticism […] becomes reductive when it simply targets the environmentally incorrect, or when it aims to evaluate texts solely on the basis of their adherence to ecologically-sanctioned standards of behavior”, and alternatively proposes that all texts are at least potentially environmental (and therefore susceptible to ecocriticism or ecologically informed reading) in the sense that all texts are literally and/or imaginatively situated in a place, and in the sense that their authors, consciously or not, inscribe within them a certain relation to their place. […] Texts, in this outlook, are environmental but not necessarily environmentalist 2 (2000: 10-2; his emphasis). 2

See also Buell’s own reconsideration of his “activist stipulation” (2001: 267).

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In keeping with the interdependency of text and environmental context, the ecocritical stance taken in this essay proceeds from the premise that social, political, economic and ecological conditions are closely intertwined and should be framed by discourses and readings that conceptualise and analyse them interrelatedly. Despite their potential methodological and thematic plurality, ecocritical theory and ecoliterary practice have initially been preoccupied with the study of the Anglo-American nature writing tradition. Ecocriticism has thereby limited its area of research (until quite lately at least) not only to a particular genre of writing and to a specific concept of nature as wilderness but also, in terms of nationality, to narratives written predominantly by white, middle class, male writers – running the risk of neglecting “the significance of multiple natural and built environments to writers with other ethnic, national, or racial affiliations” (Armbruster and Wallace 2001: 7) and gendered identities. However, considering that “ecocriticism is still emerging and will continue to grow and diversify for the forseeable future” (ibid.: 1), it is necessary “to broaden the scope of [ecocritical] inquiry beyond the generic conventions of nature writing […] to account for […] interrelated social and environmental issues” (Adamson 2001: 26), as well as to give voice to those thus far excluded, disregarded or disadvantaged standpoints and “situated knowledges” (Haraway 1991). Following Kern’s assertion that “all texts are literally and/or imaginatively situated in a place”, this essay will establish feminist and postcolonial perspectives on ecocriticism in a specifically Canadian literary and cultural context. Far from attempting to formulate a final, let alone normative approach to environmental criticism, this study instead aims to devise and examine a ‘situated’ or contextualised literary theory and practice of ecofeminism and environmental justice informed by basic principles of the respective social movements, which have their origins in political activism and philosophical discourse. Whereas ecofeminist and environmental justice philosophy and politics are relatively well developed, corresponding literary theory and practice are not, or rather not yet (cf. Carr 2000: 18). The succeeding discussion will therefore identify principles of ecofeminism and environmental justice that can provide an appropriate theoretical background for ecoliterary analyses. Finally, ecocritical readings of

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Margaret Atwood’s novel Surfacing as an ecofeminist text and of Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water as a Native narrative of environmental justice will illustrate how the two discourses generate important insights into interrelationships between social and ecological issues and their impact on individual and collective identities pertaining to gender, race/ethnicity and nationality. 2. Ecological literary and cultural criticism within the context of the Canadian environmental imagination Given Buell’s reasoning that “human beings are inescapably biohistorical creatures who construct themselves, at least partially, through encounter with physical environments they cannot not inhabit, any artifact of imagination may be expected to bear traces of that” (1999: 699), the prevalent image of nature in Canadian literature and culture hardly seems surprising. In the Canadian (postcolonial) context, identity issues almost inevitably become closely related to perceptions and conceptions of the natural physical environment, which have always played a prominent role in the Canadian literary and cultural imagination, dating back to its earliest beginnings in Canada’s native oral literatures as well as to the establishment of a settler culture. Due to the alienating experience of ‘old culture meeting new environment’ arising from nature’s “unassimilability to the structures – social and linguistic – of colonial culture” (O’Brien 1998: 34), European settlers perceived the immensity of the Canadian landscape as a physical and psychological challenge, and this notion of nature as a threatening force came to be reflected in literary representations of the land. It is against this background that writer and critic Margaret Atwood identified “Survival, la Survivance” as the characteristic symbol for Canada (1996: 32) and that literary critic Northrop Frye developed his fear-of-nature myth of a “garrison mentality” in Canadian literature and culture (1971: 225). In light of the growing relevance of environmental concerns, however, the traditional Canadian image of nature as a hostile force that threatens human culture seems to give way to a more balanced perception of human civilisation as posing an equally or even more destructive power towards the natural world (cf. Atwood 1996: 60). Many Canadian writers have begun to react to the sense of threat, not from,

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but to, the physical environment and scholars show an increasing interest in situating Canadian literature in an ecological context (cf. Bentley 1998: 11). This development is taking place within the larger project of redefining the role and function of literary and cultural studies with respect to the environment, a move which has successfully been initiated by ecocritical scholarship. The dominant ideology in the history of western civilisation has conceptualised society as separate from and superior to the physical environment and ecocriticism attempts to reconceptualise this valuehierarchical dualism of culture versus nature. Ecologically informed criticism highlights interrelationships between the two realms, ultimately leading to an understanding of natural environments and human cultures as constantly influencing and constructing each other (cf. Armbruster and Wallace 2001: 4). Therefore, an ecological approach to literary and cultural studies faces the paradox that ‘nature’ is both a cultural/discursive construction and a grounding/prediscursive ‘reality’ (Branch 1992: 50; Mazel 2000: xii, xiv). Ecocritics, in other words, are challenged to “recognize […] that there is no reference to that which is independent of discourse except in discourse, but dissent from any position which appeals to this truth as a basis for denying the extra-discursive reality of nature” (Soper 1995: 8). An integrative reconceptualisation of the nature/culture paradigm has to pay further attention to ideological functions of ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’ and to “the ways in which relations to the non-human world are always historically mediated, and indeed ‘constructed’, through specific conceptions of human identity and difference” (ibid.: 4). Within the framework of ecofeminism and environmental justice, this can be achieved by (re)defining ‘nature’ as a historically dynamic and culturally specific concept with different meanings for various social groups (or even individual actors dependent on perceptual and experiential realities). While western ideology has valorised human culture as opposed to the inferior realm of the nonhuman other, colonial and patriarchal discourses of nature have simultaneously characterised some groups of people as being more like or even identical with nature and thus less than human (cf. Di Chiro 1995: 311). Power relations are thereby institutionalised and ‘naturalised’, resulting in a set of interrelated and mutually reinforcing dualisms that form a conceptual system with an interlocking structure of oppression. Binary oppositions such

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as civilised/primitive, male/female and culture/nature correspond directly to and naturalise race, gender and nature oppressions respectively (Plumwood 1993: 42-3). In regard to the specific characteristics of Canadian literature and culture, Canadian ecocritic Susie O’Brien argues that [s]een in a postcolonial critical context, nature could never be read as natural [and] neither is it simply translatable into language, or ‘text.’ Rather, it is always framed within multiple discourses of unequal power. Nature, that is, is subject not only to representation, but to an ongoing contest over representation (1998: 35).

Linda Hutcheon’s remark that “the very use of the word ‘postcolonial’ cannot help but be a complex issue in a Canadian context” (1989: 160), additionally alludes to the historical basis and contemporary dimension of Canada’s postcolonial situation. Canadian postcolonialism not only involves the emancipation of a settler colony from its British mother country but also reflects the clash between (English and French) settler cultures and Canada’s indigenous population; familiar aspects of Anglo- versus Franco-Canadian animosity; the often doubled postcolonial focus of immigrant Canadians arriving from other postcolonial nations; and (last but not least) Canadian sensitivity to American imperialism. This complexity of issues demonstrates that postcolonial critique in general must be committed to and founded upon cultural distinctions between as well as within postcolonial societies. O’Brien concludes her analysis of ecocriticism in the Canadian literary and cultural context with the optimistic outlook that “a Canadian ecocriticism will not abandon the insights of postcolonialism but will rather deploy them to gain a clearer understanding of the way human cultures have shaped, as they are in turn shaped by, the non-human world” (1998: 36). With this reciprocal relationship in mind, the theoretical analysis of ecofeminism and environmental justice conducted in the next section of this essay will outline the convergence of social and ecological concerns; it will further demonstrate that within the diverse field of ecocriticism, theories of ecofeminism and environmental justice operate as appropriate discourses for analysing how ideological constructions of gender, race/ethnicity and nature are historically and systemically linked with institutionalised practices such as gender

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domination, racial discrimination, and environmental exploitation (cf. Sze 2002: 166, 173). 3. Ecofeminism, environmental justice and literary criticism With its roots in the early 1970s, ecological feminism has combined the agendas of the two newly emerging feminist and environmental movements, and by drawing on both theory and practice, ecofeminism has established itself firmly within philosophical discourse and sociopolitical activism. The common critique of ecofeminists proceeds on the assumption that there are connections between the oppression of women in patriarchal society and the exploitation of nonhuman nature in the western anthropocentric worldview. Within ecofeminist thought, the domination and degradation of the nonhuman environment is regarded as a feminist issue while, conversely, sexism and various other forms of social oppression and discrimination are seen as inseparable from the environmental debate. Most ecofeminist theories are furthermore founded upon the recognition that sexism and naturism (i.e. the domination of nonhuman nature) are interconnected with other mutually reinforcing systems of oppression such as racism, classism, speciesism, (neo)colonialism and imperialism, forming a complex “matrix of oppressions” (Y. King 1990: 109; cf. Mellor 1997: 13, 70) or “oppressive conceptual framework” (Warren 1990) characterised by value-hierarchical dualisms and a logic of domination. Hence, ecological feminism basically aims to eliminate sexism and naturism but ultimately constitutes a movement that calls for an end to all forms of oppression. Although they agree on the interlocking structure of the domination of women and nature, ecofeminists are far from representing a monolithic, homogenous ideology or unitary mindset. The diversity of ecofeminist theory and practice can be summarised by identifying two constitutive directions: The spiritual-essentialist position within ecofeminism tends to stress (and celebrate) an elemental connection between women and ‘nature’, whereas the social-constructivist position accounts for this connection by emphasising its historical and contextual basis (Mellor 1997: 6). Ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood terms the first version “feminism of uncritical reversal” (1993: 30-4) since it does not redefine or reconstruct the oppositional and hierar-

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chical structure of the male/female and culture/nature dualisms per se, but simply reverses it by valorising the previously inferior categories (women/nature) and subordinating the formerly superior ones (men/ culture). As a result, essentialist discourse not only runs the risk of uncritically perpetuating the very framework of domination and subordination it seeks to dismantle by remaining trapped in patriarchal ideology but also faces the danger of neglecting differences among women by assuming a universal female ‘nature’.3 A “critical ecological feminism” (Plumwood 1993: 34-40), however, challenges the system of value-hierarchical dualisms by assessing its cultural construction and works towards a more egalitarian worldview in respect of gender as well as human/nonhuman relationships. The conclusion of critical ecofeminism “that both women and men are part of both nature and culture” serves as a critical counterbalance to its strategy of “an active, deliberate and reflective positioning of [women] with nature against a destructive and dualising form of culture” (ibid.: 35, 39; her emphasis).4 With the development of ecocriticism, ecofeminist theories and principles have gradually found their way into literary studies and, in the meantime, ecofeminism has become an approved and growing branch of ecocritical research. Ecofeminist literary criticism is a hybrid combination that incorporates ecological and feminist literary criticism and philosophical viewpoints, thereby providing a theoretical vantage point which enables literary and cultural critics to investigate how nature is portrayed in literature and the ways embodiments of nature are metaphorically and conceptually linked with representations of gender, race, class and sexuality (cf. Legler 1997: 227). In the introduction to their collection of essays entitled Ecofeminist Literary Criticism, Greta Gaard and Patrick Murphy propose to “relate eco3

While, on the one hand, the essentialist position within ecofeminist thought leans toward biological determinism or universalism, the constructivist perspective on the other hand denies the possibility of seeing the body as entirely socially/discursively/performatively produced and therefore distances itself from radical social constructionism or poststructuralist accounts. 4 A similar approach is articulated by Y. King (1989: 23) who rejects the view that women are ‘essentially’ closer to or aligned with nature, but suggests that they can make the conscious choice to use the woman/nature connection as a vantage point for creating an alternative culture and politics that opposes the patriarchal, anti-ecological worldview.

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feminist principles and interpretation to existing literary study by building on feminist attention to the concept of the ‘other’” (1998: 5). Literary studies engaged in analysing notions of alterity have traditionally focused on cultural differences regarding gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and/or nationality, and accordingly, ‘the other’ is a well-established object of investigation in feminist and postcolonial theory and practice. The advent of ecocriticism extended this scope of inquiry insofar as ecocritical analyses call attention to the social construction of nature as ‘the other’ to human culture and to correlative ideas of supposedly ‘natural’ identities. In order then to gain an adequate ecological perspective, the concept of “the ‘other’ must be rethought through grounding it in physical being” (ibid.). This argument implies a reorientation towards the socio-biological and environmental context of human existence as expressed in the ecofeminist awareness of “human embodiment (as reflecting biological existence) and embeddedness (within the surrounding ecosystem)” (Mellor 1997: 68). An important aspect of such grounding is its rejection of the idea of absolute difference in favour of a relational model on the basis of heterarchy rather than hierarchy which recognises the ‘other’ as different but of equal ontological status and at the same time draws attention to interrelationships between self and other (Gaard and Murphy 1998: 56).5 Consequently, established conceptions of ‘otherness’ are complemented by Murphy’s notion of ‘anotherness’ meaning “being another for others”, which acknowledges the ecological processes of interanimation and enables an ecofeminist dialogics by working toward “a theory of volitional interdependence among human and nonhuman alike” (Murphy 1995: 23; his emphasis).6 Following the motif of alterity introduced to ecofeminist literary criticism by Gaard and Murphy, I would like to argue for the application of a corresponding approach to the project of developing a literary theory and practice of environmental justice by building on postcolonial attention to the concept of the ‘other’. Although giving some consideration to the relevance of ‘place’, postcolonial theory and 5

For a more detailed analysis see also Murphy’s thought-inspiring publication Literature, Nature, and Other (1995). 6 In the course of his argument, Murphy explains the term ‘interanimation’ more precisely as “the ways in which humans and other entities develop, change, and learn through mutually influencing each other day to day, age by age” (1995: 23).

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criticism have principally been preoccupied with issues of cultural, political and economic imperialism. The platial understanding in postcolonial studies has mainly limited itself to socio-cultural facets of ‘place’ (highlighting its linguistic constructedness) and leaving out questions about its extra-discursive reality posed by ecocritical reconsiderations that challenge the assumption that human thought and action can be understood in isolation from the nonhuman environment.7 One of the few publications dealing with the intersection between postcolonialism and ecological criticism (in a specifically Canadian context), articulates the previous neglect and future necessity of pursuing a dialogue between the two discourses since “the problems to which postcolonialism and ecocriticism address themselves are increasingly intertwined, demanding a complementary approach” (O’Brien 2001: 150). The alliance of ecological and postcolonial criticism advocated by O’Brien could productively be derived from recent theories and principles of environmental justice and ecological racism. Just as ecofeminism is based on the premise of the dual oppression of women and nature, focusing its analysis on “the gendered character of nature/culture dualism“ (Plumwood 1993: 11), so do environmental justice and racism identify a conceptual link between “the domination, pollution and threatened destruction of the planet and the oppression of human beings“ which can, for example, be located in “the oppressive dualism by which both ‘nature’ and ‘native’ are subordinated” (Coupe 2000: xi). Whereas environmental racism could succinctly be defined as “the siting of polluting plants or waste dumps in or near areas of racial, ethnic or other minority groups” (Shelton 1999: 25), environmental justice is generally the more widely used term and “encompasses both the racial and the class aspects of the political economy at work in communities that face toxic assault” (Cole and Foster 2001: 15), occasionally extending this definition to gender issues in

7

See, for example, O’Brien (1998: 35) where she argues that “postcolonial criticism has yet to address adequately the relationships between human and nonhuman worlds”. For a more detailed discussion concerning the differences (and potential similarities) between postcolonialism and ecocriticism see O’Brien (2001).

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environmental decision making.8 Within the framework of environmental justice activism that emerged in the mid-1980s as a grassroots ‘multicultural environmentalism’, the meaning of ‘social justice’ widens into “the larger question of justice, of the rights of our fellowcreatures, of forests and rivers, and ultimately of the biosphere itself” since “it is impossible to separate defence of people from defence of the planet, human rights from ecological survival, justice from sustain-ability” (Coupe 2000: 4-5). The holistic vision expressed in this statement draws attention not only to the exploitative and destructive attitude of human society towards nonhuman nature but also to the unjust living conditions of certain social groups that (in their living and working environments) are more affected by environmental pollution and degradation than others. This phenomenon is prevalent among ethnic and racial minorities and low-income populations, and considering the contemporary living conditions of Native North American nations, Robert D. Bullard explains that Native lands have become prime targets for the disposal of wastes. Within the logic of socio-political and economic (neo)colonialism and in the historic context of ecological imperialism (cf. Crosby 1986), this process could be regarded as a form of “garbage imperialism” (Bullard 1993: 32; 1994: 17). The racist practice of exclusionary zoning and unequal protection therefore turns Native reservations into national or “environmental sacrifice zones” (Bullard 1993: 26),9 whose consequences of social and ecological vulnerabilities have created a conceptual connection between (neo)colonial racism and environmental degradation. In a recent publication, Julie Sze suggests that “[e]nvironmental justice is a political movement concerned with public policy issues of environmental racism, as well as a cultural movement interested in issues of ideology and representation” (2002: 163). She thus reasons that “methods, such as narrative analysis of cultural texts, offer an alternative strategy to analyzing the roots of environmental racism” 8

Di Chiro provides an insightful discussion of the convergence of environmental interests with issues of social justice and points out that with “[t]he vast majority of activists [being] low-income women and predominantly women of color” (1996: 300), the gender, race, and class composition and the distinct socio-ecological agenda distinguish the environmental justice movement from mainstream environmentalism. 9 Mellor notes that the concept of ‘national sacrifice zones’ “obscures the fact that it is Native American nations that have been sacrificed” (1997: 23).

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(2002: 165) and outlines the potential arising from the interface of socio-political discourse and literary practice: Literature offers a new way of looking at environmental justice, through visual images and metaphors […] This new way of looking references the “real” problems of communities struggling against environmental racism, and is simultaneously liberated from providing a strictly documentary account of the contemporary world. It allows for a more flexible representation of environmental justice, one with a global view and historical roots (2002: 163).

Given the contemporary environmental crisis we are facing, such a promising outlook seems all the more urgent since it is not limited to local, regional or national considerations, but extends itself to global dimensions and underlines the inseparability of social and ecological justice. Against the background of the preceding theoretical analysis of ecofeminism and environmental justice, the following textual interpretations will investigate how the ‘otherisation’ of women and indigenous people within western ideology serve as vantage points in Atwood’s Surfacing and King’s Truth and Bright Water from which the dominant discourse can be subverted by rethinking the underlying self/other distinction in the direction of Murphy’s notion of volitional interdependence. 4. Reading Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing as an ecofeminist literary text The writing and publication of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972; S in further references) coincided with the emergence of the feminist and ecological movements and obviously reflects the concerns of its time. Since it introduces issues pertaining to feminism and environmentalism, the novel constitutes a representative literary example of ecological feminism and could even be read as a ‘prototypical’ ecofeminist text. Correspondingly, Patrick Murphy designates it as “[p]erhaps one of the first of the current generation of ecofeminist novels” (1995: 26). In his ecofeminist oriented literary analysis, Arno Heller identifies the dominating issue of Surfacing by positing that “the victimization of women in a patriarchal society becomes a metaphor of the violation of nature through civilization” (1996: 314). This summarisation strikingly resembles the common critique of eco-

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feminism, and at the same time, evokes Margaret Atwood’s concept of a ‘Canadian victim complex’ with its four basic victim positions. According to Atwood, these can be applied to either a victimised country, minority group or individual (cf. 1996: 36-39), and her provocative statement about “the change-over from British cultural colony to American cultural colony” (Atwood 1985: 231; cf. Hutcheon 1993/1994: 147) alludes to Canada as a ‘collective victim’. Seen from this angle, the ecofeminist theme of Surfacing, with its association of women’s victimisation with nature’s violation, is located within a specifically Canadian literary and cultural context to which the notion of the nation’s neocolonial or imperial victim position is added. In this regard, the striking parallel between postcolonial and feminist writing as identified in The Empire Writes Back (cf. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 1989: 7, 174-177) deserves critical (re)consideration. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin highlight the importance of feminist perspectives on postcolonial criticism with strategies of feminist and postcolonial theory overlapping and informing each other, pointing out that writers like Atwood and others have drawn “an analogy between the relationships of men and women and those of the imperial power and the colony” (ibid.: 31-32). In the particular ecofeminist Canadian context in which Atwood’s narrative is set, the role of “[n]ature […] can be understood [analogically] in the framework of national politics, of Canada’s conception of its own ‘victimhood’” (O’Brien 1998: 34). Consequently, issues of gender domination and environmental degradation are bound up with aspects of socio-political, economic and cultural imperialism, and the narrative structure of the novel reveals a ‘matrix of oppressions’ in which dichotomies such as self/other, male/ female, US American versus Canadian and Anglo- versus FrancoCanadian are correlated with the nature/culture paradigm. In Surfacing, the unnamed female protagonist and first-person narrator returns to the bioregion of her childhood and youth, a secluded ‘wilderness’ area in north-eastern Canada. But after having lived for several years in an urban cityscape, she feels alienated and her “home ground” becomes “foreign territory” (S: 7). The protagonist’s inner fragmentation, which is expressed as a mind/body split, has its parallel in the growing discrepancy between nature and civilisation. Early in the novel, the environmental destruction that becomes apparent as soon as the narrator enters the northern Canadian landscape is

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described as a “disease […] spreading up from the south” (S: 3) and is therefore associated with the United States. In this respect, Heller rightly remarks that “[t]he equation of a masculine, ‘American’, aggressive technology with the ongoing violence or also murderous indifference towards everything natural is the central leitmotif of the novel”. This rather simplistic worldview undergoes a reevaluation later on in the text, since “the concept ‘American’ takes on a more universal significance” (1996: 314), independent of national identity and gender differences, when the narrator observes that both Americans and Canadians as well as both men and women contribute to the violation of nonhuman nature. The protagonist comes to realise her own “complicity in the anti-ecological, techno-industrial state” (Murphy 1995: 26) and equates her victim position as a woman in a male dominated society (and her situation as a Canadian being victimised by US imperialism) with the victimisation of nonhuman nature by western anthropocentrism. In Survival, her thematic guide to Canadian literature, Atwood explains that Canadians themselves feel threatened and nearly extinct as a nation, and suffer also from life-denying experience as individuals – the culture threatens the “animal” within them – and […] their identification with animals is the expression of a deep-seated cultural fear (1996: 79)

In true Canadian, or rather Atwoodian fashion, the protagonist in Surfacing identifies with the animal victims and their struggle for survival and this process of identification ultimately extends towards the environment as an exploited entity in a more general sense. Withdrawing from civilisation and turning to the bush wilderness surrounding her, the narrator literally immerses herself in the natural elements and merges with the nonhuman ‘other’ through a metamorphosis into a virtually pre-cultural or natural state, thus gradually dissolving the boundaries between herself and nonhuman nature: “I lean against a tree, I am a tree leaning [...] I am not an animal or a tree, I am the thing in which the trees and animals move and grow, I am a place” (S: 193). This regressive process involves discarding her civilised existence or cultural identity and exploring her ‘wild nature’, which helps the protagonist to reconnect to her ‘home ground’ and to discover her ecological identity as “natural woman, state of nature” (S: 202). Through this development, she finally regains her sense of

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‘embodiment and embeddedness’ and becomes conscious of herself as being part of a living whole, thereby achieving a state of ‘volitional interdependence’ (to refer back to ecofeminist terminology here). On the one hand, the protagonist’s spiritual regression reinforces and valorises the woman/nature association as opposed to male culture and consequently displays features of the spiritual-essentialist branch of ecofeminism. On the other hand, however, her new level of selfawareness also represents the social-constructivist direction by detecting how notions of ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’ are conceptually linked with gender and nationality and by deconstructing assumed gender-specific and national differences with regard to exploitative attitudes towards the environment. Moreover, the successive transgression between the boundaries of self/other and human/nonhuman challenges the system of value-hierarchical dualisms and imagines a model of interdependence between nature and human culture. Hence, her conclusion that both women and men are part of both nature and culture resembles a ‘critical ecofeminist’ standpoint and serves as a counterbalance to the protagonist’s “active, deliberate and reflective positioning of [herself] with nature” (Plumwood 1993: 39). This volitional relationship evokes Gayatri Spivak’s “strategic use of positivist essentialism” (1987: 205; her emphasis) and functions as a form of ‘mimicry’ or ‘mimesis’ of the prevalent woman/nature imagery within phallo(go)centric discourse, offering the protagonist a subversive ‘tool’ to undermine patriarchal logic by exposing its ambivalent and contradictory attempts to either ‘naturalise’ or ‘overcivilise’ women.10 In Surfacing, then, the female protagonist employs the woman/ nature connection as an ‘emancipatory strategy’11 in her attempt to break away from repressive androcentric norms that result in and justify the oppression of women and the exploitation of the environment. Finally, in the end of the novel, she recognises the need to resist appropriation and victimisation (by patriarchal culture) and to adopt a more self-determined position: “This above all, to refuse to be a 10

Since the protagonist ultimately refuses to partake in the ‘symbolic order’ of patriarchal and capitalist language in her quest to merge with the non-human/natural elements surrounding her, her use of ‘mimesis’ (Irigaray) or ‘mimicry’ (Bhabha) significantly takes place within the ‘semiotic’ (Kristeva) as a kind of mediating ground between nature and culture. 11 Murphy (1995: 20) uses the term in reference to Yaeger (1988).

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victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing. I have to recant, give up the old belief that I am powerless […] withdrawing is no longer possible […] I re-enter my own time” (S: 203). In her assertion “to refuse to be a victim”, the narrator in Surfacing evokes Margaret Atwood’s description of rank three in her model of ‘basic victim positions’ outlined in Survival: “To acknowledge the fact that you are a victim but to refuse to accept the assumption that the role is inevitable” (1996: 37). Within the context of ecofeminist theory, the protagonist’s newly established sense of identity as a cultural as well as a natural being allows her to return to human civilisation with a heightened socio-ecological awareness of human-nature interrelationships and the potentially liberating insight that “human alienation from nonhuman nature and male alienation from female nature are intertwined and must be mutually transformed” (Murphy 2000: 33). 5. Reading Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water as a native narrative of environmental justice In Truth and Bright Water (1999; TBW in further references), Thomas King provides an ecocritical-postcolonial perspective that is thematically different from Atwood’s ecological (or more specifically ecofeminist) vision, but which nevertheless exhibits some striking parallels with reference to Canada’s neocolonial situation as a consequence of American imperialism. Furthermore, the narrative uncovers the interconnectedness of various forms of domination or subordination and thus raises issues that can be interpreted in relation to the concept of environmental racism or within the more general framework of recent theories of environmental justice. In this novel, images of the natural environment are bound up with ideas of ethnic/indigenous and national identity and difference, and in the Native context of Truth and Bright Water, the experience of physical displacement and spiritual alienation from the natural environment along with processes of cultural dispossession and appropriation play a decisive role. Given the complexity of the term ‘postcolonial’ in Canadian literature and culture as outlined earlier on, Linda Hutcheon stresses the different degrees and kinds of colonisation endured by various sociocultural groups and claims that in the face of the near destruction of indigenous cultures, only members of the First Nations population can

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rightly be regarded as representing “the resisting, post-colonial voice of Canada” (1989: 156). Native writer Thomas King, however, rejects the Eurocentric notion of ‘postcolonial’ (as a form of cultural neoimperialism) altogether, replacing it with an alter/native model that (in his view) more accurately describes Native North American literature.12 Within this scheme, Truth and Bright Water could be identified as ‘associational’ literature that typically concentrates on an indigenous community and “on the daily activities and intricacies of Native life” (cf. 1990b: 14). The novel’s protagonist is a teenage boy (named Tecumseh) who is living on the American side of the border communities of Truth, a small town in Montana, and Bright Water, an adjacent Indian reserve in Alberta, Canada. The division between the two sister towns is as much political and cultural as it is natural since they are separated by a river that runs between the two countries and literally “splits the land in two” (TBW: 1). The Native characters, however, constantly move back and forth across the border, and by exposing the arbitrariness of national boundaries they challenge traditional western conceptions of ‘nations’ and the resultant determination of borderlines. Truth and Bright Water depicts actual political realities insofar as the forty-ninth parallel indeed not only divides the bioregion of northern Montana and southern Alberta but also disunites the tribal affiliation of the Blackfoot/Blackfeet who once inhabited the area, hence proving that “imposed borders sometimes cut across biotic areas and ethnic zones alike” (Snyder 1990: 37). The border as a marker of difference in this sense questions national as well as racial otherness since [d]efinitions of nationhood and national identity are especially problematic for Native North Americans whose tribal identities have been radically altered by the processes of forced relocation, loss of control over natural resources (e.g. water), and assimilation into the dominant culture (Andrews 2002: 97).

12

See King (1990b) where he argues that the set of terms ‘pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial’ implies a sort of continuum which does not hold true for a discussion of Native literature. The alternative terms he subsequently introduces are: ‘tribal, interfusional, polemical, and associational’. In view of King’s rejection of the Eurocentric notion of ‘postcolonial’ as a form of cultural neo-imperialism, Native literature could be seen as that of ‘the native writing back’ to the metropolitan, i.e. Anglo-Canadian centre.

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King’s novel embraces an alter/native concept of identity by maintaining a connection to the land which is not based on national identity but rather on indigenous (and bioregional) belonging to a certain place and illustrates that environmental justice is as much a national as an international issue. It is important to note that “[s]ome Native American activists and others consider the first environmental justice struggles on the North American continent to have taken place 500 years ago with the initial invasion by Europeans” (Cole and Foster 2001: 20),13 leading to an enduring strife for self-determination especially in regard to land use decisions. From a contemporary point of view, the survival of Native communities and issues of (political and cultural) sovereignty and control over natural resources are still closely intertwined. In Truth and Bright Water, the colonial past is symbolised by an old church located on the American side of the border and which, in the prologue of the novel, is compared to “a ship leaned at the keel, sparkling in the light, pitching over the horizon in search of a new world” (TBW: 2), thereby evoking the Europeans’ voyages of discovery and enterprises of colonisation. At the same time, the current ecological crisis becomes apparent early on in the novel when incidents of environmental degradation are mentioned that focus on a landfill project or garbage dump as well as on the disposal of ‘bio-hazardous waste’, creating a kind of ‘toxic discourse’ that permeates Truth and Bright Water.14 In the context of environmental racism and justice, the illegal disposal of waste on the Native reserve illustrates the attitude of ‘garbage imperialism’ (referred to earlier on) and transforms Bright Water’s surroundings into an ‘ecological sacrifice zone’. Although the narrative thus establishes a correlation of both nature and Natives as victims, it nevertheless resists the strategy of essentialist nativism or any form of undialectic essentialism. Since the protagonist’s father is involved in the illegal undertaking of toxic waste disposal, King’s novel avoids falling victim to the myth of the ‘Ecological Indian’ wherein Natives 13

See also the preamble of the “Principles of Environmental Justice”, reprinted in Di Chiro (1996: 307). 14 The term ‘bio-hazardous waste’ (TBW: 82) adds a toxic and illegal dimension to the more general theme of waste disposal that is prevalent in the novel. The term ‘toxic discourse’ here refers to the detailed discussion of the topic in Buell (1998); see also his corresponding chapter in Buell (2001).

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are noble, in this case noble “ecologists and conservationists who have never wasted and have always led harmonious lives in balance with nature” (Krech 1999: 213). In its rejection of the stereotype of ‘naturedwelling noble’ as ‘essential ecologist’ or ‘natural Native’ and its conflicting portrayal of an ecologically corrupt Native, Truth and Bright Water functions as a ‘narrative of resistment’ that “refuses to take part in the narratives of the dominant culture” (Peters 1999: 77), ultimately subverting the colonial discourse by dismantling its inherent contradictions of essentially determined affinity/natural identity versus discursively constructed imagery/conceptual affiliation: For every story about Indians being at the receiving end of environmental racism or taking actions usually associated with conservation or environmentalism is a conflicting story about them exploiting resources or endangering lands […]. In Indian Country as in the larger society, conservation is often sacrificed for economic security (Krech 1999: 227).15

In Truth and Bright Water, the correlation of nature and culture with Native Canadian and US-American or victim and victimiser respectively becomes a complex issue. Significantly, the toxic waste disposed of on the Native Canadian reserve has its origins on the American side of the border, and in this respect, the novel depicts the dubious practice of ‘waste trade’. In addition, the narrative introduces a provocative comparison between ecocide and genocide when the topic of species extinction and animal victims is repeatedly associated with the extermination or victimisation of Native North Americans. This allusion resurfaces when the protagonist’s cousin metaphorically labels garbage as “‘[t]he new buffalo’” (TBW: 153), and consequently hints at the ‘oppressive conceptual framework’ that links contemporary garbage imperialism to historical ecological imperialism. Finally, similar to the protagonist’s identification with animal victims in Surfacing, towards the end of Truth and Bright Water, one of the other Native characters maintains that “‘[e]verybody’s related,’ […]. ‘[t]he trouble with this world is that you wouldn’t know it from the way we behave’” (TBW: 202). In the introduction to his anthology of contem15

In the novel, the protagonist’s father displays his alienation from both Native culture and natural environment when he comments that his “’[o]nly reason to go to Bright Water is business’” (TBW: 85).

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porary Canadian Native fiction entitled All My Relations, Thomas King presents the cultural background for this statement: […] the relationships that Native people see go further, the web of kinship extending to the animals, to the birds, to the fish, to the plants, to all the animate and inanimate forms that can be seen or imagined. [The phrase] “all my relations” is an encouragement for us to accept the responsibilities we have within this universal family by living our lives in a harmonious and moral manner (1990a: ix).

The reciprocity described clearly reflects one of the basic assumptions of environmental justice – perceiving of human communities and natural environments as “conjoined and […] as being mutually constitutive” (Di Chiro 1995: 318), and locates elements of ‘indigenous difference’ in an ecological identity of volitional interdependence as expressed by “the sense of the individual as inseparable from tribe and bonded to place in a relationship in which nature is not ‘other’ but part of a continuum with the human” (Buell 1995: 19). 6. Conclusion Informed by principles of ecofeminism and environmental justice, the ecocritical interpretations presented in this essay have illustrated how culturally constructed images of sexual, racial/ethnic and national identity and difference often correlate with conceptions of nature and ‘the natural’. The readings of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing as an ecofeminist literary text and of Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water as a Native narrative of environmental justice provided feminist and postcolonial perspectives on ecocriticism that allow for alternative concepts of gender relations, ethnic and national affiliations as well as the relationship between humanity and nonhuman nature as “one founded on relational anotherness rather than alienational otherness” (Murphy 1995: 46). Within the ecocritical framework of ecofeminism and environmental justice, a productive reassessment of the construction of ‘self’ and ‘other’ points toward an ‘ecological agency’ which would evade both the illusion of an environmentally independent autonomy and the misconception of biological determinism in favour of the notion of ‘volitional interdependence’ (cf. Murphy 1995: 151). It would construct an embodied and embedded identity that is

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(experientially and perceptually) ‘situated’ in the sense of referring to species-specific, i.e. anthropomorphically determined, socio-culturally conditioned and historically positioned agents who always occupy spatial particularities. The ‘identitarian’ approach advocated in this essay then, could be imagined as a ‘socio-ecological identity’ that incorporates not only aspects relating to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, class, age etc., but also an environmental consciousness acknowledging the interanimation of human self and natural ‘other’. If environmental literature and corresponding ecological literary criticism possess the potential to influence and possibly reconsider or redefine our cultural conceptions of the environment and of our role within natural systems (cf. Branch 1992: 43), then recent efforts to expand the boundaries of ecocriticism in the direction of a more encompassing plurality of perspectives and voices could gain valuable insights from a literary theory and practice of ecofeminism and environmental justice. Borrowing from Karla Armbruster’s evaluation of an informed ecofeminist literary criticism in my concluding remarks, I would like to propose that a critical and integrative literary theory and practice of ecofeminism and environmental justice potentially offer alternative models of human identity and human relationships with nonhuman nature that can disrupt and challenge dominant ideologies, both through literary interpretations and through the politicized perceptions and actions that texts and interpretations can inspire (2000: 202).

In order for ecofeminism and environmental justice to broaden the scope and diversify the methodology of literary criticism on the one hand, while contributing to the movements’ agendas for political change on the other, I would in conclusion argue that instead of developing a binding, uniform position or method, ecoliterary theory and practice should remain open, diverse and multivocal and incorporate corresponding principles of socio-political activism, concepts of established literary theory and criticism, as well as the literary texts themselves. Bibliography Adamson, Joni. 2001. American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism: The Middle Place. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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Andrews, Jennifer. 2002. ‘Reading Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water: Border-Crossing Humour’ in English Studies in Canada 28(1): 91-116. Armbruster, Karla. 2000. ‘A Poststructuralist Approach to Ecofeminist Criticism’ in Coupe (2000): 198-203. Armbruster, Karla and Kathleen R. Wallace (eds). 2001. ‘Introduction: Why Go Beyond Nature Writing, and Where To?’ in Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia: 1-25. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 1989. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London and New York: Routledge. Atwood, Margaret. 1985. ‘Canadian-American Relations: Surviving The Eighties’ in The Literary Criterion 20(1): 227-46. —. 1972/1999. Surfacing. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. —. 1972/1996. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. Bentley, D.M.R. (ed.). 1998. ‘Preface: The Absence of Neoconservatism and Ecocriticism in Canadian Literary Studies’ in Much with Nature: Ecocritical Essays on Canadian Writing. Special issue of Canadian Poetry 42: 5-15. Branch, Michael. 1992. ‘Ecocriticism: The Nature of Nature in Literary Theory and Practice’ in Weber Studies 11(1): 41-55. Buell, Lawrence. 1999. ‘The Ecocritical Insurgency’ in New Literary History 33(3): 699-712. —. 1995. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. —. 1998. ‘Toxic Discourse’ in Critical Inquiry 24: 639-65. —. 2001. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Bullard, Robert D. 1993. ‘Anatomy of Environmental Racism’ in Hofrichter, Richard (ed.) Toxic Struggles: The Theory and Practice of Environmental Justice. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers: 25-35. —. 1994. ‘Environmental Justice for All’ in Bullard, Robert D. (ed.) Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books: 3-22. Carr, Glynis (ed.). 2000. New Essays in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Cole, Luke W. and Sheila R. Foster. 2001. From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement. New York and London: New York University Press. Coupe, Laurence (ed.). 2000. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. London and New York: Routledge. Crosby, Alfred W. 1986. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Di Chiro, Giovanna. 1995. ‘Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environment and Social Justice’ in Cronon, William (ed.) Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. New York: Norton: 298-320. Frye, Northrop. 1971. ‘Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada’ repr. in The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Toronto: Anansi: 213-51. Gaard, Greta and Patrick D. Murphy (eds). 1998. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Glotfelty, Cheryll. 1996. ‘Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis’ in Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press: xv-xxxvii. Haraway, Donna J. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books: 183-201. Heller, Arno. 1996. ‘Margaret Atwood’s Ecological Vision’ in Zach, Wolfgang and Ken L. Goodwin (eds) Nationalism vs. Internationalism: (Inter)National Dimensions of Literatures in English. Tübingen: Stauffenburg: 313-8. Hutcheon, Linda. 1989. ‘‘Circling the Downspout of Empire’: Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism’ in ARIEL 20(4): 149-75. —. 1993/1994. ‘Eruptions of Postmodernity: The Postcolonial and the Ecological’ in Essays on Canadian Writing 51-52: 146-63. Kern, Robert. 2000. ‘Ecocriticism – What Is It Good For?’ in ISLE 7(1): 9-32. King, Thomas (ed.). 1990a. All My Relations: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Native Fiction. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. —. 1990b. ‘Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial’ in World Literature Written in English 30(2): 10-6. —. 1999/2000. Truth and Bright Water. New York: Grove Press. King, Ynestra. 1990. ‘Healing the Wounds: Feminism, Ecology, and the Nature/Culture Dualism’ in Diamond, Irene and Gloria Feman Orenstein (eds). Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books: 106-21. —. 1989. ‘The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology’ in Plant, Judith (ed.) Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers: 18-28. Krech, Shepard III. 1999. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York and London: Norton. Legler, Gretchen T. 1997. ‘Ecofeminist Literary Criticism’ in Warren, Karen J. (ed.) Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press: 227-38. Mazel, David. 2000. American Literary Environmentalism. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. — (ed.). 2001. A Century of Early Ecocriticism. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. Mellor, Mary. 1997. Feminism and Ecology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Murphy, Patrick D. 2000. Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia. —. 1995. Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques. Albany: State University of New York Press. O’Brien, Susie. 2001. ‘Articulating a World of Difference: Ecocriticism, Postcolonialism and Globalization’ in Canadian Literature 170/171: 140-58. —. 1998. ‘Nature’s Nation, National Natures? Reading Ecocriticism in a Canadian Context’ in Bentley (1998): 17-41. Peters, Darrell Jesse. 1999. ‘Beyond the Frame: Tom King’s Narratives of Resistment’ in SAIL 11(2): 66-78. Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge. Shelton, Dinah. 1999. ‘Environmental Justice in the Postmodern World’ in Bosselmann, Klaus und Benjamin J. Richardson (eds) Environmental Justice and Market Mechanisms: Key Challenges for Environmental Law and Policy. The Hague, London and Boston: Kluwer Law International: 21-9. Snyder, Gary. 1990. The Practice of the Wild. San Francisco: North Point Press. Soper, Kate. 1995. What is Nature?: Culture, Politics and the non-Human. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1987/1988. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York and London: Routledge. Sze, Julie. 2002. ‘From Environmental Justice Literature to the Literature of Environmental Justice’ in Adamson, Joni, Mei Mei Evans and Rachel Stein (eds) The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy. Tucson: University of Arizona Press: 163-80. Warren, Karen J. 1990. ‘The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism’ in Environmental Ethics 12: 125-46. Yaeger, Patricia. 1988. Honey-Mad Women: Emancipatory Strategies in Women’s Writing. New York: Columbia University Press.

Literary studies, ecofeminism and environmentalist knowledge production in the humanities Sylvia Mayer Abstract: Based on the premise that the current environmental crisis is, in fact, a cultural crisis the essay delineates why and how the field of literary studies – conceived as a part of cultural studies – can and must contribute to environmentalist efforts. It opens with observations on the conceptualising and world-shaping power of language and texts, then introduces premises and key categories of the scholarly discipline of ecofeminism, and, finally, in two brief, exemplary analyses of Margaret Atwood’s novels Surfacing and Oryx and Crake, demonstrates in which way an ecofeminist literary and cultural criticism can provide environmentally relevant knowledge.

In an essay published in 1999, cultural historians Jill Ker Conway, Kenneth Keniston, and Leo Marx recognize a “prevailing assumption both within and without the academy” that “it is scientists who bear the major intellectual responsibility for coping with [environmental] degradation” (Conway et al. 1999: 2). They do grant that scientific expertise is indispensable for discovering environmental hazards and for developing and monitoring remedial measures. But, at the same time, they insist that exclusive reliance on scientific knowledge will not suffice as a strategy for coping with environmental problems successfully. Environmental problems, they argue, originate in human interaction with nonhuman nature, and “if we are to understand and device effective solutions for today’s environmental threats, we must locate them within their larger historical, societal, and cultural settings” (Conway et al. 1999: 3). To locate environmental threats in their historical, societal, and cultural settings is to ask for analysis by scholars who work in the different fields of the humanities. In this essay I shall delineate why and how the field of literary studies – conceived of as a part of cultural

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studies – can and must contribute to environmentalist efforts. In the first part, I focus on the conceptualising and world-shaping power of language and texts in order to show in how far the environmental crisis must be regarded as a cultural crisis and in how far literary/textual analysis can contribute to an understanding of its emergence and to the development of remedial measures. In the second part, I introduce the premises and several central categories of analysis of the scholarly discipline – and social movement – of ecofeminism. Ecofeminism addresses environmental problems from a gender-conscious perspective and allows literary and cultural studies scholarship to draw attention to the impact that historically and culturally specific conceptualizations of nature have had on women. In the third and last part of the essay, I proceed with brief analyses of Margaret Atwood’s novels Surfacing (1972) and Oryx and Crake (2003) that focus on ecofeminist issues in order to demonstrate in which way an ecofeminist literary and cultural criticism can provide environmentally relevant knowledge. 1. Language, text and the environmental crisis as a cultural crisis Based on a concept of culture as concretized and mediated in texts, scholars in the fields of literary and cultural studies have pointed out that language plays an important role in creating and limiting knowledge about the natural world and about the political, economic, and ethical dimensions of human-nature interactions. Language is the medium in which meaning is created, the medium that allows social groups to develop, categorize, and negotiate specific concepts of reality, the medium that has a performative function: language does not simply describe, but shape the world. It is language that allows us to develop ontological concepts of nature, culture, and the human, and it is their textual representations that shape human-nature relationships. Texts – in their various manifestations, in an oral, printed, film or electronic form, for instance – direct our perception, they suggest categories of interpretation and evaluation, they function as premises for subject and identity formation, for the creation of ethical systems, and for the establishment of laws that in turn regulate social and economic practices. Concepts of nature, culture, and the human as they are represented in both culturally formative and

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culturally marginalized texts are thus not merely descriptive categories, but political ones.1 To call the environmental crisis a cultural crisis is to claim that the culturally most formative texts – largely texts of Western capitalist and socialist/communist societies whose global spread has affected the planet most heavily during the modern era – have conceptualized nature, culture and the human in an environmentally detrimental way. It is to claim that the narratives that have structured Western thought in – especially, if not only – the modern era have shaped our notions of self and our ethical and legal systems in a way that has led to local, regional, and, ultimately, global environmental damage. Western thought provides a variety of concepts of nature. Dominant in terms of social, economic and ecological effects have, however, been conceptualizations that are characterized by a dualistic, hierarchical dynamics. Philosopher Val Plumwood presents the following list of dichotomous categorization in which the former part is always regarded as superior to the latter: culture reason male mind master reason rationality reason mind, spirit freedom universal human civilised production public subject self

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

nature nature female body (nature) slave matter (nature) animality (nature) emotion (nature) nature necessity (nature) particular nature (non-human) primitive (nature) reproduction (nature) private object other (Plumwood 1997: 43)

1

As an introduction to the issue of the cultural constructedness of concepts of nature, culture and the human see Evernden 1992; Soper 1995; Simmons 1996; and the essays in Cronon 1996. An ecolinguistic perspective provides Chawla 2001/1991.

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Plumwood places the culture/nature dichotomy at the top of the list, and thereby signals that it is the root dichotomy of a logic of domination2 that has characterized the history of Western rationalist philosophy and that has become effective in socioeconomic practices: the realm of nature has been conceived of as separate from and as inferior to the realm of culture. Since the human being was positioned within the privileged realm of culture because of the capacity for rational thought, nonhuman nature was conceptualized as separate from and inferior to the human. It was given the status of resource, and its devaluation legitimized ultimately limitless transformation and exploitation. Moreover, Plumwood shows that it has not just been ‘the human’ that was conceptualized as superior. Ultimately, the rational human subject was defined as male and was given privilege over a feminized nature and over women and other social and racial/ethnic groups which were defined as belonging to the realm of nature. The logic of domination thus extends the exploitation of nonhuman nature towards various forms of discrimination and exploitation. Plumwood argues: The category of nature is a field of multiple exclusion and control, not only of non-humans, but of various groups of humans and aspects of human life which are cast as nature. Thus racism, colonialism and sexism have drawn their conceptual strength from casting sexual, racial and ethnic difference as closer to the animal and the body construed as a sphere of inferiority, as a lesser form of humanity lacking the full measure of rationality or culture. (Plumwood 1997: 4)

Among the most influential culturally formative texts that express dualistic thought and the logic of domination are key texts of Western rationalism – in her study, Plumwood, for instance, discusses extensively Plato’s Timaeus and Republic and Déscartes’ Discours de la méthode – and the Jewish and Christian Bible. Since the late 1960s, since the publication of Lynn White, Jr.’s controversial article “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” there has, for example, been a debate about the impact of the concepts of nature and the human as expressed in Genesis 1, verses 26 to 28:

2

The term ‘logic of domination’ which points toward what has become a key concept in ecofeminist analysis was coined by Warren, 1990, 125-46.

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And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

The creation of ‘man’ in the image of God and God’s call for dominion over the rest of creation postulate the superiority of human over nonhuman nature: the dualism man/human vs. nature is formulated and becomes the premise for ethical thought that legitimizes unlimited use of nonhuman nature. With the spread of Judeo-Christian thought over the centuries, White argued, its conceptual force had contributed significantly to socioeconomic practices, and especially since the beginning of the industrial revolution to environmental degradation. Today many theologians point toward other passages in the Bible that propose the principle of stewardship in order to show that biblical ontological and ethical concepts can also be used for the purpose of supporting environmentally benign human-nature interaction. The principle of stewardship is based on an awareness of the danger that environmental degradation can be the result of an overuse of natural resources.3 And yet, despite these more recent theological efforts to contribute to the development of an environmental ethic, despite the fact that close textual analysis could show the existence of two conflicting conceptualizing narratives, the dualistic concept that implies the superiority of human beings and their separateness from nonhuman nature has only started to lose its conceptual force and is still used as a premise for the legitimization of economic practices that operate worldwide. This may well be a result of the process of secularization that has characterized the modern era, a process which gained catalytic force in the texts by such sixteenth and seventeenth century scientists and philosophers as Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, René Déscartes and Francis Bacon. In their writings the concept of nature as a machine emerged, as an entity separate from and inferior to human rational capacities, as a material object meant 3

On the development of the theological debate caused by White’s essay see Nash 1989: 87-120, and Whitney 1993: 151-69.

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for human use. With the development of the sciences in the historical context of an expanding colonial economy, with the emergence and, since the eighteenth century, industrial deployment of ever new, ever more effective technologies of resource extraction, these concepts gained considerable ethically formative power.4 The analysis of texts thus contributes to our understanding of the current environmental crisis because it reveals the ontological conceptual basis of those ethical systems that have legitimized environmentally destructive practices of resource extraction, production and consumption. Textual analysis must, however, not be limited to such culturally formative texts; it is also very important that scholars search for, study, and teach formerly marginalized texts that present alternative concepts of nature, culture, and the human – concepts that acknowledge differences, but deny dualisms, concepts that emphasize reciprocity and mutual dependence. Since the shaping power of texts depends to a large extent on inclusion in or exclusion from a canon of what are deemed the culturally most relevant productions, it must become the goal for ecologically oriented/environmentalist textual scholarship to reach an inclusion of such texts. Only if they become more easily available, only if they are widely studied, can they perorm their culturally formative work. The long history of attempts to distinguish between the literary and the non-literary has shown that it is impossible to draw any strict boundaries. The term literature has been defined according to a variety of criteria – the definitions reach from everything in print to specific levels of fictionality, aesthetic complexity, and self-referentiality to various attempts to define it with respect to the functions it performs.5 Ultimately, however, literature must be regarded as one textual practice among others. Ecologically oriented literary studies thus has to work with shifting definitions of its object and has to be regarded as a part of ecologically oriented/environmentalist textual scholarship in general. As such it can contribute widely to environmentalist knowledge production. To summarize the most basic contributions it can make: it can add to our understanding of the effects of historically and 4 For a brief survey of the development of the early modern era see Pepper 1996: 135-65. 5 A more recent attempt to define the term functionally is Zapf 2002. He approaches the literary text from the perspective of cultural ecology.

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culturally dominant ontological and ethical concepts; it can draw attention to formerly marginalized texts and genres that provide alternative ontological and ethical concepts; it can provide new readings of established literary periods, genres and modes of representation – and by doing so engage in yet another attempt at redrawing period and genre boundaries;6 and, finally, it can sharpen our awareness of the significance of language and other symbolizing practises in processes of mapping any kind of environment. 2. The challenge of ecofeminism: environmentalism and the significance of difference The brief outline of Plumwood’s critique of rationalist, dualistic thought that legitimizes both the exploitation of nonhuman nature and that of specific social groups has already touched the field of ecological feminist analysis. The term ecofeminism was coined by the French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne in 1974. In her essay “The Time for Ecofeminism” she indicted patriarchal domination of both women and nature and called for an integration of both environ-mentalist and feminist thought and activism (d’Eaubonne 1994: 174-97). As philosopher Karen Warren has pointed out, in the years following ecofeminism has become an umbrella term which refers to a variety of theoretical positions. Crucial for all ecofeminist theory, however, has been the premise “that there are important connections between the domination of women (and other human subordinates) and the domination of nature and that a failure to recognize these connections results in inadequate feminisms, environmentalism, and environmental philosophy” (Warren 1997: x; emphasis in the original). What makes ecofeminist thought especially compelling is the complexity that characterizes its analyses of the causes of environmental problems and that shapes the remedial measures suggested. Instead of focusing on a narrowing critique of anthropocentrism (a stance that has strongly characterized another part of contemporary radical environmentalism, namely Deep Ecology), instead of staging 6

As a survey of the growing body of ecologically oriented scholarship shows, examples for this are a renewed interest in the period of Romanticism, in the genre of nature writing, and in modes of representation such as the pastoral.

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the basic conflict as one of ‘human versus nature’, ecofeminist analysis is based on an awareness of the necessity to integrate social, economic and cultural differences into environmentalist thought – differences that have to be precisely located in regional, national, and, ultimately, global contexts. As especiallyal’s work shows, ecofeminists have pointed out that within environmentalist analysis the category of the human needs further differentiation, especially according to issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Together with environmental justice scholars, ecofeminists claim that it is not humankind as such that is responsible for environmental damage. The responsibility lies predominantly with those human beings and social milieus whose position in socioeconomic power relations has enabled them to take political decisions and profit from their results – in many societies largely, but not only, a male elite. Likewise human beings and even whole societies differ in the extent to which they experience environmental degradation. An individual’s or a community’s position within regional, national and global systems of power determines the risk they run. With respect to developing an environmental ethics (i.e. an ethics that widens the moral universe to include parts – or even the whole – of nonhuman nature) that is no longer premised on the human-nature difference alone, it is thus necessary to reconsider existing interpersonal ethics. As Christine Cuomo points out: “This is relevant to its adequacy as an environmental ethic, as the ethics of human interactions with each other determine, are determined by, and are necessarily related to the ethics of human interactions with our environment and its members. Ecofeminists argue that these ethical spheres are inseparable” (Cuomo 1994: 93). Ecofeminism as a social and political movement has become manifest all over the world.7 It has usually been the local experience, the experience of environmental hazards in the realms of reproduction that motivated women to become active in environmentalist struggles. With respect to the exposure to toxic wastes Carolyn Merchant has pointed out that the body, the home, and the community have mostly been the sites of environmental contest in which women have become involved. She claims: “Women experience the results of toxic dump7

For the variety of ecofeminist activism and theoretical and political positions see the essays in Warren 1997, and Diamond/Orenstein 1990.

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ing on their own bodies (sites of reproduction of the species), in their own homes (sites of reproduction of daily life), and in their communities and schools (sites of social reproduction)” (Merchant 1995: 161). Merchant is very careful to make explicit that these sites of reproduction, especially the home, have nothing to do with a ‘natural vocation’ of women, with the patriarchal notion that ‘women are by nature closer to nature.’ This is the essentialist and naturalizing argument that feminists have fought now for decades, an argument representative of the dualistic reasoning of the logic of domination. Merchant emphasizes instead that it has been historical, socioeconomic and cultural developments in Western societies that have placed many women in these sites. The necessity to make this point explicitly, however, hints at a key problem ecofeminism has to address, namely the tendency to fall back on essentialist notions of femininity. A crucial feature of all ecofeminist positions is, as for example Plumwood argues, “that they give positive value to a connection of women with nature which was previously, in the west, given negative cultural value and which was the main ground of women’s devaluation and oppression” (Plumwood 1997: 8). On the one hand, this insistence on the specific relationship that many – yet not all – women have to nonhuman nature is necessary because its denial would obliterate valid experiences that can be emulated and used for the purpose of devising an environmentally more benign ontology and ethics. Only if human beings develop the awareness that they, too, are ‘nature’, that their intellectual capacity and cultural productiveness is always an embodied one, will they be able to overcome dualistic ontological categorization and its detrimental ethical and political effects. On the other hand, however, postulating a special connection between women and nature can run the risk of perpetuating received essentialist concepts of femininity, concepts, for instance, that postulate the existence of one unified feminine perspective, role, or principle. In her analysis of several ecofeminist positions, Victoria Davion thus distinguishes between what she terms ecofeminist and ‘ecofeminine’ positions: while ecofeminist positions are based on a critique of gender roles as discursively constructed and call for their reconceptualization, ecofeminine positions lack such critical reflection and instead ground their argumentation in a simple reversal of the traditional pattern of evaluation (Davion 1994: 8-28).

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Ecofeminism thus calls for ethical, social, and political transformation that has to be based on differently defined gender relations and on concepts of nature, culture, and the human that take into consideration differences, mutual dependency and the necessity to devise socioeconomic models that are based on the principle of sustainability. Plumwood, for instance, suggests a reconceptualization of the rational, atomistic self in terms of a relational self. The notion of the relational self implies the premise that human beings are a part of and are dependent upon nature. It recognizes not only the human other, but also the natural other “as another self, a distinct centre of agency and resistance, whose needs, goals and intrinsic value place ethical limits on the self and must be considered and respected” (Plumwood 1997: 145). 3. Ecofeminist readings of Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Oryx and Crake In Margaret Atwood’s novels Surfacing and Oryx and Crake8 environmental issues are addressed explicitly. An analysis of both novels that puts emphasis on premises and results of ecofeminist scholarship reveals – and thus allows the reader to understand in greater detail – the logic of domination that denigrates both nonhuman nature and specific social groups. Moreover, in both novels considerable attention is drawn to the culturally formative power of language, to its role in the process of conceptualizing nature, culture, and the human. At first glance Surfacing presents a nameless protagonist’s search for her missing father. He lived in what, from the perspective of city dwellers, must be called a wilderness area, in a lake region in Northwestern Canada that is largely uncultivated and only sparsely inhabited. Atwood’s first-person narrator/protagonist travels with three companions, her boyfriend Joe and the couple Anna and David. In the course of their stay at the cabin where her father, and, several years ago, her whole family, used to live, her search for him turns into a search for self. The representation of the process of this search for self is characterized by a struggle with the network of culturally formative 8

References refer to the 2002 edition of Surfacing (abbreviated S) and to the 2003 edition of Oryx and Crake (abbreviated OC) and are given in parentheses.

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dualisms, a struggle that foregrounds one woman’s specific and unique experience. It is only because the narrator is able to transcend these dualisms that in the end a relational self – to use Plumwood’s term – can emerge, can ‘surface’, a self that is able to survive physically and psychically. The culture/nature dualism and the logic of domination based upon it become manifest most conspicuously with respect to the exploitation of the nonhuman nature of the lake region and with respect to the conceptualization and treatment of women’s bodies. In various passages of the novel the narrator refers to forms of environmental degradation that leave no doubt that nonhuman nature is merely conceived of as an exploitable resource. The number of tall, old trees has been strongly reduced because they were cut to an extent that transcends the purpose of securing human basic needs by far. They are cut by the military, by logging companies, and by companies that raise the lake level in order to create electricity from enhanced water power. The narrator remarks about a logged-out district that “the trees will never be allowed to grow that tall again, they’re killed as soon as they’re valuable, big trees are as scarce as whales” (S, 40). The assumed superiority of culture over nature is expressed in the effects of a science and technology that are correlated with a concept of masculinity that assumes male superiority over women. The narrator’s father and brother are scientists, her companions Joe and David are preoccupied with the intricacies of their camera, male tourists – more often than not U.S. Americans – use high-technology motor boats and guns for their hunting pursuits. All these characters are experienced by the narrator as oppressive, as trying to confine her within a concept of femininity that poses ‘woman’ as passive and as useful for and usable by men. The effect of the application of various technologies is the simultaneous destruction and denigration of nonhuman nature and of women. Besides large-scale deforestation, the over-fishing and the mindless slaughter of a heron (see S 109-10) are examples for the first one; the many physical and psychological cruelties that characterize the relationship of David and Anna are examples for the second one. The denigration of women is, however, most conspicuous in the protagonist’s own experiences in the medical realm, when she has an abortion and when she gives birth to a child. In both cases the medical

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realm – the illegal space where the abortion is performed, and the legal space of the hospital – is represented as one of traumatizing impact. The narrator remembers her impression that her body – the site of reproduction of the species, to use Merchant’s formulation – is regarded and treated as a machine. The gynecologists who were supposed to help her deliver the baby she remembers as “technicians, mechanics, butchers, students clumsy or sniggering practising on your body, they take the baby out with a fork like a pickle out of a pickle jar” (S, 74). Atwood’s narrator addresses the pernicious effects of dualistic thought very explicitly in the following passage that addresses the mind/body (reason/matter) dualism: The trouble is all in the knob at the top of our bodies. I’m not against the body or the head either: only the neck, which creates the illusion that they are separate. The language is wrong, it shouldn’t have different words for them. If the head extended directly into the shoulders like a worm’s or a frog’s without that constriction, that lie, they wouldn’t be able to look down at their bodies and move them around as if they were robots or puppets; they would have to realize that if the head is detached from the body both of them will die. (S, 70)

This passage is a thematically pivotal one, not only because of its explicit critique of an ontology that strictly separates mind and body, but also because it emphasizes the significance of language. The performative, world-shaping power of language is a key theme of Surfacing, again and again the narrator ponders about the relevance and the functions of language. Her process of developing a self that she can accept and feel comfortable with strongly rests on her ability to come to terms with the formative power of language. The old self, the one the narrator is gradually shedding, is a self that is acutely aware of the oppressive force of a concept of femininity conveyed by textual practice. It is the spoken and the written word, but also images, visual signs – photos and her own reflection in a mirror – that force upon her notions of femininity that define ‘woman’ as passive and as useful for and usable by ‘man’. The process of shedding this old self begins with resistance to a language that imposes such meaning. When the narrator remarks, “[l]anguage divides us into fragments, I want to be whole” (S, 140), the process of her ritualistic immersion into nonhuman nature begins. During this

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process, when she destroys signs of civilization and when she assumes an animal-like existence in the woods, she also distances herself radically from the language she has used and suffered from. In moments of close contact to the nonhuman world she imagines a language that does not know nouns, but only verbs (see S, 175), a language in flux, that is, a language that allows for change, that doesn’t know the reification of confining dualistic concepts. When the narrator finally emerges from her immersion into nonhuman nature, she is able to define her new self as a relational self, as a self that transcends traditional dualisms, that acknowledges the inseparability of mind and body, of culture and nature. This relational self, moreover, allows for the significance of language. Reflecting on her existence as a human being Atwood’s protagonist states on the last page of the novel: “For us it’s necessary, the intercession of words” (S, 186). She has come to realize that the use of language is fundamental for human identity formation. A life-generating use of language, an environmentally benign use of its conceptualizing power, however, depends on the kind of human self that employs it. Atwood’s latest novel to date, the science fiction dystopia Oryx and Crake, also represents a society that is characterized by the dualism-based logic of domination, and it, too, puts emphasis on the culturally shaping power of language. The novel is set somewhere on the North American east coast, and it provides two future settings. Its protagonist Snowman lives at a point of time when a heavily commercialized science and technology have not only caused the devastation of large parts of nonhuman nature worldwide, but also the destruction of the human species. Snowman, who used to be called Jimmy, but renamed himself after this global disaster, looks back at his life as a child and at the years of young adulthood that preceded the catastrophe. In an alternating structure of chapters in which Snowman/Jimmy is used as a focaliser, both his present and his past unfold. The society in which Jimmy grows up is already characterized by a scarcity of resources which are inequitably distributed. It is a sharply segregated society. On the one hand there is a small elite that largely consists of scientists and of employees of internationally operating corporations and their families; this elite lives in heavily-watched gated communities and has privileged access to natural and techno-

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logical resources. On the other hand, a large underclass that lives outside those gated communities is largely denied such access. In an economy which is still driven by a modern-era notion of progress that neglects the necessity of risk assessment, it functions as the market for the products which are developed by the scientific elite, most significantly products created by genetic engineering companies. During Jimmy’s childhood it is already common practice to employ various techniques of cloning and genetic modification. His father, a highly paid “genographer” (OC, 22) at OrganInc Farms, for example, works on the project of creating ‘pigoons’, genetically modified pigs that grow “an assortment of foolproof human-tissue organs” (OC, 23) that can be used as transplants. In this context the logic of domination that denigrates nonhuman nature and specific social groups is revealed: the socially, politically, and economically dominant position of predominantly male scientists and corporation managers has created a culture in which both human and nonhuman nature have become thoroughly objectified. Mind rules over matter, reason over emotion. In order to describe the social hierarchy Snowman/Jimmy makes a distinction between “numbers people” and “word people” (OC, 25). He regards the scientists as numbers people who reduce reality to a set of rules that can be mathematically expressed. Both his father and his friend Crake – a scientist who assumes God-like power, not only in terms of creating humanoid life forms, but even in terms of creating a virus that ultimately destroys humanity – are unable to deal with emotionally and morally complex matters that cannot easily be classified and solved. Their rationalist concept of nature and the human involves devaluation, discrimination, and exploitation of human and nonhuman nature alike and, in the end, leads to almost total destruction. A crucial part of this rationalist concept is a concept of femininity that expresses the devaluation of women. It manifests, for example, in one of the first pieces of advice Jimmy receives from his father as a boy. He learns from him that “[w]omen get always hot under the collar.” Retrospectively he remembers: “Hotness and coldness, coming and going in the strange musky flowery variable-weather country inside their clothes – mysterious, important, uncontrollable. That was his father’s take on things. But men’s body temperatures were never dealt with” (OC, 17). Jimmy is introduced to a concept of femininity

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that associates ‘woman’ with the body and with uncontrollable emotionality and that is opposed by a concept of masculinity that associates men with the controlling mind. The naturalizing metaphor of the “strange musky flowery variable-weather country” performs a devaluation of the feminine which in the novel is expressed most conspicuously in the commodification of the girl Oryx who is made use of by internet pornography companies. It is this concept of femininity, moreover, that prevents Jimmy from making sense of his mother’s decision to leave the family: his mother, a former biologist, works on the premises of an ethics – and its underlying ontology – that poses limits to scientific research. She leaves the family, joins an oppositional political organization, but is murdered because of her activism a few years later. As in Surfacing, in Oryx and Crake Atwood again created a protagonist who is highly conscious of the world-shaping power of language. In contrast to his father and his friend Crake, the ‘numbers people’, Snowman/Jimmy categorizes himself as one of the ‘word people.’ Already as a youth he is fascinated by words and phrases that are about to disappear from his society’s language use, and in order not to forget them he begins to create wordlists in his mind. After finishing high school he enters Martha Graham Academy, a liberal arts college, pursues a course of applied linguistics studies, and graduates with a degree in “Problematics” (OC, 188). After that he begins work as a copywriter for the cosmetics and health products company AnooYoo. Jimmy is aware of the commercially manipulating power of language – his Martha Graham dissertation is about “Self-Help Books of the Twentieth Century: Exploiting Hope and Fear” (OC, 195). This insight, however, does not lead to a critical attitude towards manipulative language use. On the contrary, as a copywriter for AnooYoo he participates in this business by employing exactly the same commercially exploitable narratives that have structured these self-help books: narratives that gratify the widespread desires for beauty, physical strength, and eternal youth. In contrast to the nameless protagonist in Surfacing, Jimmy/Snowman never succeeds in reaching a profound critical assessment of the formative power of language. He registers its importance, he learns to manipulate it for the purpose of gratifying some of his desires (among them sexual

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gratification), but is for a long time unable to make sense of his preoccupation with the loss of specific kinds of language use. After the experience of global social and ecological disaster his worries about the loss of language increase: “From nowhere a word appears: Mesozoic. He can see the word, he can hear the word, but he can’t reach the word. He can’t attach anything to it. This is happening too much lately, this dissolution of meaning, the entries on his cherished wordlists drifting off into space.” (OC, 39) It is only then that Snowman realizes more fully that this “dissolution of meaning” points to the loss of a linguistic community that guarantees the existence of a shared, communicable reality. The impossibility to make sense of the word (or concept) of the mesozoic points toward the loss of received categories – here a geological one – on which any order of reality is built. Another case of categorical loss – or, to be precise: of categorical confusion from a traditional point of view – had already become manifest in the construction of new animal species by means of genetic engineering: in the hands of scientists like Jimmy’s father racoons and skunks are genetically transformed into and replaced by ‘rakunks’, snakes and rats are similarly turned into ‘snats’ and wolves and dogs into ‘wolvogs’. The fact that they populate the region after the catastrophe provides one indicator for the loss of biological diversity that is registered in the lexicon of the language. In the context of Snowman’s worries about the loss of language, these examples must suffice to illustrate that Oryx and Crake bears out an argument made by several scholars in the field of ecologically oriented linguistics. Based on the premise that the causes and functions of linguistic diversity correlate not only with developments in time, but also in (the various manifestations of) environment, they argue that the loss of words and phrases, which is to say the loss of linguistic diversity, can be regarded as an indicator of a loss of both cultural and biological diversity (see Mühlhäusler 2001, Glausiusz 2001, Laycock 2001). Snowman’s preoccupation with the vanishing of specific kinds of language use shows that language diversity correlates with the adaptation to new environments. In their insistence on the culturally formative power of language Atwood’s novels draw attention to its essential role in the processes of human interaction with nonhuman nature, to its essential role in the loop-structure relationship between nature and culture. It is especially,

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if not only, the conceptualizing power of language and the power structures of linguistic communities that have to be taken account of by scholars from the various fields of the humanities – most prominently perhaps by those from the fields of literary studies and linguistics – if they wish to contribute considerably to the amount of environmentally relevant knowledge. Bibliography Atwood, Margaret. 2003. Oryx and Crake. London: Bloomsbury. —. 2002/1972. Surfacing. London: Virago. Bible, the. Authorized King James Version 1997. Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Chawla, Saroj. 2001. ‘Linguistic and Philosophical Roots of Our Environmental Crisis’ in Fill, Alwin and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds) The Ecolinguistic Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment. London: Continuum: 115-23. [First published in Environmental Ethics 13/3 (1991) : 253-273.] Cronon, William, ed. Uncommon Ground. Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: Norton, 1996. Cuomo, Christine J. 1994. ‘Ecofeminism, Deep Ecology, and Human Population’ in Warren, Karen J. (ed.) Ecological Feminism. London: Routlegde: 88-105. Davion, Victoria. 1994. ‘Is Ecofeminism Feminist?’ in Warren, Karen J. (ed.) Ecological Feminism. London: Routledge: 8-28. Diamond, Irene and Gloria Feman Orenstein (eds). 1990. Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. d’Eaubonne, Françoise. 1994/1974. ‘The Time for Ecofeminism’ (tr. Ruth Hottell) in Merchant, Carolyn (ed.) Ecology: Key Concepts in Critical Theory. New Jersey, NJ: Humanities Press: 174-97. Evernden, Neil. 1992. The Social Construction of Nature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Fill, Alwin and Peter Mühlhäusler. 2001. The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment. London: Continuum. Glasiusz, Josie. 2001. ‘The Ecology of Language: Link between Rainfall and Language Diversity’ in Fill, Alwin and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds) The Ecolinguistic Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment. London: Continuum: 165-66. Laycock, D.C. ‘Linguistic Diversity in Melanesia: A Tentative Explanation’ in Fill, Alwin and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds) The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment. London: Continuum: 167-71. Merchant, Carolyn. 1995. Earthcare: Women and the Environment. New York: Routledge. —. 1990. ‘Ecofeminism and Feminist Theory’ in Diamond, Irene and Gloria Feman Orenstein (eds) Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books: 100-05.

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Mühlhäusler, Peter. 2001. ‘Babel Revisited’ in Fill, Alwin and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds) The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment. London: Continuum: 159-64. Nash, Roderick Frazier. 1989. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Pepper, David. 1996. Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Plumwood, Val. 1997/1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge. Simmons, I.G. 1996/1993. Interpreting Nature: Cultural Constructions of the Environment. London: Routledge. Soper, Kate. 1995. What Is Nature? Oxford: Blackwell. Warren, Karen J. 1994. Ecological Feminism. London: Routledge. — (ed.). 1996. Ecological Feminist Philosophies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. —. 1996. ‘Ecological Feminist Philosophies: An Overview of the Issues’ in Warren, Karen J. (ed.) Ecological Feminist Philosophies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press: ix-xxvi. —. 1997. ‘Introduction’ in Warren, Karen J. (ed.) Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. —. 1990. ‘The Power and the Promise of Ecofeminism’ in Environmental Ethics 12: 125-46. White, Lynn, Jr. 1996/1967. ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’ in Cheryl Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (eds) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Whitney, Elspeth. 1993. ‘Lynn White, Ecotheology, and History’ in Environmental Ethics 15: 151-69. Zapf, Hubert. 2002. Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie: Zur kulturellen Funktion imaginativer Texte an Beispielen des amerikanischen Romans. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

LOCATING NATURE IN LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND EVERYDAY CULTURE

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(Historical) ecolinguistics and literary analysis Beatrix Busse Abstract: This paper fuses common denominators of ecolinguistic, ecocritical, stylistic and sociological approaches and applies them to the analysis of vocatives in Shakespeare. Using Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar within a framework of the ecological study of language and the linguistic study of ecology, the paper argues that an ecocritical reading of Shakespeare’s use of nominal forms of address construes vocatives as grammatical metaphor and as textual, interpersonal, and experiential markers. The multifunctional approach holds true for both levels of drama – drama as text and performance. Vocatives in Shakespeare are intrinsically dialogical. They create and reflect an anthropocentric as well as biocentric view on nature, the social and on the culture of the contexts depicted in the plays and Early Modern England. Examples to illustrate this ecocritical reading are mainly taken from Othello, Richard the Third, and The Tempest.

1. Preliminaries To this date, ecolinguistic approaches have not very frequently been applied either to early stages of the English language or to literary texts. They have likewise not been fused with stylistics1 – a discipline concerned with “relating linguistic facts (linguistic description) to meaning in as explicit a way as possible” (Short 1996: 4f.) and concerned with effect as well as with how a text comes to mean what it does. Understandably, studying literature from an ecolinguistic perspective does not have the same priority among the main concerns of ecolinguistics, as, for example, pursued in the linguistic study of ecology (Fill and Mühlhäusler 2001). In addition, important ecolinguistic

1

Stylistics in the sense as practised by British stylisticians (Leech and Short 1981, Fowler 1986; Short 1996; Toolan 1996; Douthwaite 2000). For other approaches to stylistics see Weber 1996.

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parameters are also characteristic of other linguistic theories, such as pragmatic approaches and sociolinguistics. However, the fusion of analytical and theoretical constitutive parameters in stylistic, ecolinguistic, and sociological approaches and their application to literature of earlier stages of English are fruitful. Since all these approaches emphasise the interactive, dialogic, social, and contextual nature of language and meaning, Shakespeare’s use of vocatives and their multi-functional meaning potential of vocatives are used as a textual base for the examination pursued here. Following Halliday’s ([1992] 2001: 193) linguistic constructivism and the three metafunctions of language realised in Halliday’s (1994) ecolinguistically groundbreaking systemic functional grammar, it will be argued that vocatives in Shakespeare are intrinsically dialogical. They construe and reflect both anthropocentric as well as socially and culturally upgrading biocentric views on and constructions of nature, and the Early Modern model of it. They also create reality, experience, attitude, and identity. Also due to their status as grammatical and lexical metaphors (Halliday 1994) they become stylistically foregrounded (Douthwaite 2000: 177) experiential, interpersonal and textual markers (B. Busse forthcoming). More generally speaking, the integration of ecolinguistic with stylistics advocates linguistic democracy. Language fundamentally constitutes literature, and in literature a multiplicity of the uses of language can be discerned. Moreover, this integration invites a focus on what may be labelled historical ecolinguistics; it creates an alternative approach to the history of English, which has been demanded for by Trudgill and Watts (2001: 3) because many of the histories of the English language have not only been “sociolinguistically inadequate, anglocentric and […] based on Standard English” (Trudgill and Watts 2002: 2), but also ignored the communicative and pragmatic aspects of language. Finally, analysing Shakespeare’s use of vocatives increases our awareness of current language usage. The relevance of the past to the present has to be acknowledged and the appreciation of history and earlier stages of the English language need to be seen as a key to sociolinguistics, pragmatics, ecolinguistics, and language change.

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2. Common denominators between ecolinguistics and stylistics The two main branches (Fill and Mühlhäusler 2001: 3) of ecolinguistics are the ecological study of language and the linguistic study of ecology.2 The ecological study of language appropriates ecology as a system, uses its main biological parameters of interaction and diversity as metaphors, and investigates as well as regards the interaction between language, nature, and the environment as a necessary prerequisite for an ecological approach to language and culture. The linguistic study of ecology broadly emphasises the role of language in the cultural shaping of nature and the environment. Both strands move beyond the description of nature, as they focus on context, and they give up the common linguistic distinction between form and function because language use and language are always treated in correlation with social activities and ideologies.3 Two “tensional arches” (Fill 2002: 16) of ecolinguistic concern are especially relevant to the analysis of vocatives in Shakespeare: the relationship between the language system and the world, and the relationship between “speaker-hearer-speaker” (Fill 2002: 24), which constitutes dialogue. To begin with the latter, dialogue can be seen as constitutive of all language. In addition, dialogue is interaction and therefore inherently ecological. As such, Voros’ (1997: 83f.) ecocritical parameters, inferred from a study of Wallace Stevens, enhance the understanding of what is dialogical, on the one hand, and illustrate the strong connection between ecolinguistic and ecocritical approaches (Zapf 2002: 25f., 30), on the other. The parameters mentioned are relationship and interrelationship, and the subjectobject relation is re-defined as constantly changing and not dualistic. Furthermore, a focus is on the individual in context, which includes networking and complexity. Shakespeare’s dramatic work inherently consists of dialogue. Hence, the ecological nature of forms of address is one “tensional arch” (Fill 2002: 16) to be dealt within an ecolinguistic reading of Shakespeare’s vocatives.

2 In the attempt to connect the study of language with contexts, the environment and nature, von Humboldt, Sapir, and Haeckel are quoted as being theoretically formative on ecolinguistics (Fill and Mühlhäusler 2001: 5). 3 See also Zapf 2002: 25f..

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When Halliday ([1992] 2001: 185) argues that “language does not correspond, it construes,”4 he points to the fundamental relationship between language and the world. Theoretically as well as grammatically, he expresses this meaning-construing force in the three metafunctions of language – experiential, textual, interpersonal – of his systemic functional grammar (Halliday 1994).5 This second “tensional arch” (Fill 2002: 16) of linguistic constructivism implies the idea that grammar, in the sense of lexico-grammar, shapes human experience. It also transforms our perceptions into meanings, and acts and enacts our cultural being. The ultimate expression of linguistic constructivism – something commonly known as the Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis6 – leads Jameson (1972) to call language a “prison-house” and, more specifically, causes Halliday ([1992] 2001: 185f.) to criticise the English language system for creating, for example, classism. Even though Jung ([1996] 2001: 278f.) is right to cast doubt on the manipulative power of all language, texts impose patterns on the world and give versions of reality. Often, humans use the world and nature as a resource and nature is often shown not only from an anthropocentric point of view but also in terms of her usefulness to humans. The appli4

According to the OED (4.), the verb construe denotes to “give the sense or meaning of; to expound, explain, interpret (language).” Here, in addition, the verb construe is also used in the systemic-functional sense (Halliday 1994) where grammar and semantics both reflect and create experience. I am, however, no extreme deconstructivist because I believe that there are other semiotic modes, e.g. the visual, to represent and create reality. 5 The four main theoretical claims of Halliday’s (1994) systemic functional grammar see language as functional, semantic, semiotic, and contextual (Eggins 1994). These parameters result in three sets of functional labels to describe clause structure. The clause is a simultaneous realisation of ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings (Eggins 1994, Halliday 1994). The interpersonal sees a clause as exchange between speakers (see Toolan for this study’s system of speech moves [1996: 2000]). The ideational metafunction is separated into experiential and logical. My study follows Eggins (1994: 24) in her restriction to experiential meaning. The experiential function encodes experience by means of processes and participants. The textual metafunction describes clauses as messages. It is realised by the system of theme and rheme. 6 The claim is that a language, its grammatical structure and its lexis, sets up a series of categories. Therefore, a language categorises experience for the speaker. The Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis is also known as the doctrine of cultural relativism (Malmkjaer 1995: 306).

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cation of ecolinguistic paradigms to vocatives in Shakespeare will illustrate the effect of these naming-procedures and the potential of vocatives for establishing relationships; it will also demonstrate the interpersonal and experiential force of vocatives in creating relationships, attitudes and experience. Stylistics, the systematic, coherent, precise and explicit application of linguistic theories to literature (Short 1996: 6), places not only emphasis on the contextual nature of all language but, following Halliday (1972, 1994), who is also seen as one of the forefathers of stylistics,7 also regards language as a social phenomenon (Douthwaite 2000: 141f.). Two further fundamental assumptions of stylistics interplay with ecolinguistic parameters: first, that language is always context-oriented and pragmatic (Fowler 1986: 6), and, secondly, that form is not an algorithm for meaning/effect which can be deduced on a oneto-one basis from form.8 Therefore, a single utterance in general and a vocative in particular are multi-layered, and may transfer information regarding not only its prepositional content, but also data relating to emotive, attitudinal, ideological, and structural meaning – hence, relating to the interpersonal, the textual, and the experiential (Halliday 1994). If all observation, description and interpretation is understood to take place in a framework of ideologically and linguistically constructed realities, Douthwaite’s (2000) modifications of the theory of foregrounding need mentioning. Based on the Russian formalist concept of defamiliarisation of routinised structures and world view (Shklovsky [1917] 1976: 10f.), Douthwaite (2000: 197) assumes that habituation, either linguistic or other, routinises life and dulls the senses as well as the critical faculties.9 In order to fight habituation and to raise linguistic and ideological awareness, an entity has to be experienced in a novel fashion and our automatic modes of perceptions have to be surprised so that we are compelled to examine an entity more closely. The main linguistic techniques of foregrounding by which this can be achieved on both a global and a local level of language are parallelism and deviation (Douthwaite 2000: 181f.). To 7

This results from his analysis of Golding’s The Inheritors (Halliday 1972). See also Toolan 2000: 181. 9 However, Douthwaite 2000 does not see literature as distinct from ordinary language usage. He follows Fowler 1986. 8

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levy the degree of foregroundedness of Shakespeare’s address norms, Shakespeare’s English and Early Modern English (EModE) can be seen, for example, as primary norms (Douthwaite 2000: 193f.). The Shakespeare corpus as such and normative sources on the use of forms of address10 should be regarded as secondary norms (Douthwaite 2000: 193f.). However, the context, scene, act, line, character usage – to name but a few important constantly alternating norms (Leech and Short 1981: 57) – have to be treated as formative contextual parameters and they are indisputable in the inference of meaning. The points of intersection between these ecolinguistic approaches and stylistics will now be given concrete substance in their application and interpretation of vocatives in Shakespeare. 3. The ecological nature of vocatives in Shakespeare Nominal forms of address in Shakespeare have hitherto been either mostly neglected within literary, linguistic and other studies on Shakespeare’s plays, and considered to be a marginal, unwieldy linguistic area, or, following Brown and Gilman’s (1960) as well as Brown and Ford’s (1961) parameters of power and solidarity, are often explained only via recourse to the rigid social structure allegedly existent in Shakespeare’s time (Breuer [1983], Stoll [1989], U. Busse [2002]). A fusion of ecolinguistic and stylistic parameters and their application to Shakespeare defies a functional limitation of Shakespeare’s vocatives to social structure. A broader interpretational and meaningful framework must result from the interactive11 and therefore ecological character of drama alone. In conversation, the inherently anthropological constitution becomes obvious, that is the experience of the personal, lived and living social construction, and the creation of relationships. Martin Buber’s ([1962] 1994: 7f., 32) I-You relation, outlined in The Dialogic Principle [Das Dialogische Prinzip], inter-plays with ecolinguistic, discursive and social views on language.12 Although 10

See Williams 1992: 91f. For the extent to which dramatic dialogue interacts with conventions of everyday interaction, see Herman 1995; Toolan 2000; and Short 1998. 12 This is also true of Goffman’s (1967, 1974) ideas about face. Despite major drawbacks of Brown and Levinson’s (1989) interpretation that linguistic work is 11

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Buber’s ([1962] 1994) emphasis on dialogism is theo-logically rooted, his focus on multiplicity and contextuality has an ecological relevance because it views that the creation of identity and face can only succeed in interaction, and, hence, in communication, with others.13 Buber therewith corroborates Halliday’s ([1992] 2001: 187) and Bakhtin’s ([1981] 2000: 275) claims about the social restrictions of each individual in general and holds that each everyday encounter is a social and face- or identity-creating affair. Comparable to Bakhtin’s ([1981] 2000: 276) insistence on the quotation and anticipation of words (Magnusson 1999: 184), Buber also stresses that the speaking subject is formed out of this unceasing play of dialogue. Language helps shape one’s subjectivity, and face “always lies on the borderline between oneself and the other” (Magnusson 1999: 184). The vocative in Shakespeare is also considered the central bridge from I to You.14 As a dynamic and process-like key concept of the dialogical, the vocative is interactive and, therefore, inherently ecological on both the fictional (actor-actor) and the performative (actor-audience) level. It makes real relationships, interaction, and the sociological category of alter ego. Within the framework of an ecolinguistic reading, the experiential and interpersonal meaning potential of vocatives might be more immediately considered interpersonal in vocatives that I have labelled elsewhere (B. Busse forthcoming)15 as natural phenomena, EPITHETs, and terms relating to mainly mitigating and counteracting modes of aggression – conversation is hardly ever inherently cooperative and/or economic – the two aspects of face, emphasised in their model of positive and negative politeness, remain a workable tool. Positive face relates to the “want to be approved by others and negative face relates to the want […] that [one’s] actions be unimpeded by others” (Brown and Gilman 1989: 161). 13 Buber ([1962] 1994: 7f.) argues that the basic relationship, that between I and You, can only be expressed with the engagement of the entire creature. The primal relations are always dual. Through a You a human being can form his own identity (Buber [1962] 1994: 32). 14 Grammars that mention vocatives (Quirk et al. 1985; Leech and Svartvik 2002: 185f.) often only mention the function of speaker selection and only rarely point to the attitudinal potential. 15 In B. Busse (forthcoming), a systematic categorisation of vocatives in 17 Shakespeare plays, which have been selected according to synchronic, diachronic, thematic, and generic criteria has revealed that – against the charge of nit-picking often levied at corpus linguists – vocatives are qualitatively and quantitatively foregrounded and they construe generic, thematic, diachronic, synchronic, character-

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kinship. Think, for example, of Hamlet’s address to the Ghost as “Art thou there, truepenny” (Hamlet [Ham.] 1.5.150),16 or the vocatives Richard receives in Richard The Third (R3) only from the women: “thou lump of foul deformity” (R3 1.2.57), “hedgehog” (R3 1.2.103), or “thou dreadful minister of hell” (R3 1.2.46).17 The interpersonal and experiential dialogic meanings and functions, also of those terms that are often reduced to social structure alone (Stoll 1989), can be illustrated in detail by an example from Othello (Oth.). At Othello’s arrival in Cyprus, his “O my fair warrior!” and Desdemona’s retort “My dear Othello!” (Oth. 2.1.182f.) open the couple’s exchange. This one-verse line represents a textual unity: it is not only vocatively initiated by Othello and terminated by Desdemona but it is further enhanced by the near structural similarity of the vocatives used (deictic – epithet – head). And yet, the beauty of the line somewhat collides with the forms of vocatives which both characters choose for one another. On Othello’s side, recourse to military register may e-vocatively exemplify a clear declaration of love, as in love poetry a woman is sometimes addressed as a warrior in love. However, the vocative’s idealising tone and the facts that in praise and in moments of high emotion Othello recourses to the semantic register he knows best, and is most familiar with, and which will make an impression on the onlookers – the military – tell us much about the speaker. If we apply Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980: 9f.) definitions of metaphor, we may argue that, for Othello, love is war. related, and context-related meanings. For example, the average relative frequency of vocatives is 2.4 for each play. Compared to, for example, a high-frequency-type, such as the indefinite article a, which is 2.5 (Spevack 1968-80), the vocatives’ status as being foregrounded becomes even more obvious. As such, the network of vocatives – consisting of kinship terms, natural terms, specialised fields, EPITHETs, conventional terms, emotion, mind/thought, personal names – more broadly interplays and construes the complex EModE cultural and sociolinguistic experience: such as the increase of the EModE lexicon and the specialisation of lexical areas or semantic fields referred to (Görlach 1994: 111), a focus on rhetoric and copia (Adamson 1999: 567f.), and its complex interaction with the Elizabethan world picture (Tillyard [1943] 1973, Suerbaum 2001: 84f.). 16 Citations follow Evans’ (1997) The Riverside Shakespeare. 17 See B. Busse (forthcoming) for how the women create Richard as the anti-Christ, the vice, and the Machiavellian and also for Shakespeare’s cultural shaping of the image of the historical Richard III (Gillingham 1981; Ross 1999).

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Therefore, the positive historical dimensions and conventions of this metaphor are in strong dialectical inter-dependence with some idealising, martial, aggressive and violent, as well as immature and physical connotations. The vocative does not seem to promise a happy ending, as it echoes, for example, Iago’s “trade of war” (Oth. 1.2.1). The deictic my in the vocative nominal group my fair warrior indicates Othello’s belief in possessing Desdemona, while the epithet fair and the interjection O create her physical beauty (which is also linked to her social status) and her sexual attractiveness (OED 1.a. and b.). However, the vocative also over-emotionally alludes to Desdemona’s praiseworthy character (OED 5.e.). In that sense, Othello’s stylisation of Desdemona and his constant reference to his own exceptional sensuousness also resemble his penetratingly perverse insistence on Iago’s honesty culminating in: “honest, honest Iago” (Oth. 5.2.154). Even though Othello’s use of military diction to create Desdemona’s identity simultaneously is an image of praise and a term of endearment, the vocative as an interpersonal and experiential marker also illustrates the ideological dimensions this vocative transfers: Othello only partly accumulates symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1997b: 143). He projects the world to which he has assimilated himself onto Desdemona. His achievements in war are responsible for the fact that the Venetian senators are at least temporarily able to make do with his “otherness.” It is also natural that Desdemona receives this vocative at one of their happiest moments. The vocative is foregrounded because it appears only once, when they are away from her father and Venice, where their wedding night has been interrupted, and at their first reencounter at a place that seems to be privately and professionally promising. Desdemona’s “My dear Othello!” (Oth. 2.1.182) is reciprocal in terms of the high level of romantic and idealised love that is construed and in respect to the courage with which it is uttered in an official scene in presence of others on guard. Desdemona only partly reflects the ideal wife because she encounters his greeting with a compassionate reply (Pakkala-Weckström 2001: 401, 407). The emotionality differs from Othello’s vocative in its degree of stylisation, intimacy, clarity, and gender-specific female qualities that are apparent. The use of my dear Othello is not only marked because it appears unattached to a specific speech move (Toolan 2000), but also

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because it is one of the few instances in which Desdemona relinquishes her former habitus of my lord-vocatives and enters the private, female, overtly high-spirited sphere of mutual love, trust, and understanding that a relationship as young as theirs is capable of displaying. Desdemona’s positioning of Othello as no less than my dear Othello – hence, her use of a positively amplified personal name – shows a dominance in clarity and authenticity one can only discern if this vocative is seen in relation to the other address forms she uses. Here the connotations that are apparent in the name Othello – braveness, courage, his blackness, otherness, and his sexual attractiveness – are openly transferred by her whole-hearted and warm welcome. The interpersonal force of her plain my dear Othello becomes obvious in Othello’s reply, and thus, in his switch from the military vocative to the EPITHET “O my soul’s joy” in the following line (Oth. 2.1.184). Despite the similarity in the O of joy and ecstasy, in the my of possession, and in Othello’s constant reference to his soul as the seat of his love, Desdemona’s vocative seems to have tuned him into his next retort so that overt emotional force wins over both the idealised as well as stylised tone and the experiential military world that dominates O my fair warrior. Vocative forms other than my lord are foregrounded (Douthwaite 2000: 177) in Desdemona’s address pattern as are her elaborations on Othello’s personal name. However, even her constant repetitions of my lord in the play, which correspond to the fact that this is the vocative form most frequently used in this corpus, are more sincere than Othello’s counterparts, which he uses almost exclusively after he is convinced of Desdemona’s adultery. For example, Desdemona uses my lord vocatives in “How is’t with you, my lord?” (Oth. 3.4.33-36). This address illustrates not only her cautious attempt not to transgress the rules of social decorum and to accumulate symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1997 a, b), but also what Müller-Oberhäuser (2002) has observed in ME courtesy books as the double role of women to create their husbands as emotional managers: [...] Nicht nur soll sie z.B. selbst keinen Zorn fühlen oder äußern, sondern soll sie vor allem dem Zorn anderer, speziell der Männer, mit Sanftmut begegnen. Verbale Höflichkeit wird im Rahmen weiblicher Unterordnung zu einem Besänftigungsmechanismus und damit zu einem Synonym weiblicher Demut. (Müller-Oberhäuser 2002: 44)

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In conclusion, vocatives, as dialogic interpersonal and experiential markers, express and create interaction, attitude, relationships as well as power structures. Their foregrounded status can be inferred from the dialectic interplay between micro- and macro-pragmatic factors. 4. Vocatives as grammatical metaphor That the vocative in Shakespeare functions as a grammatical metaphor and should be interpreted within the structural potential of the nominal group18 is informative on its foregrounded experiential and interpersonal potential for creating attitude and identity. Certainly, the semantics of all vocatives in Shakespeare may be metaphorical in character,19 especially if one considers such figures of speech as discussed above (“O my fair warrior,” Oth. 2.1.182) or vocatives from the field of natural phenomena (B. Busse forthcoming) as Laertes’ loving address to Ophelia, “O Rose of May” (Ham. 4.5.158), or Hamlet’s ironic address to the ghost as “old mole” (Ham. 1.5.162). And yet, according to Halliday (1994: 341), it is not only possible to look at a particular wording in terms of lexical but also in terms of grammatical selections. A grammatical metaphor is a change of perspective from below, “a variation in the meaning of a given expression,” to above, “as variation in the expression of a given meaning” (Halliday 1994: 342).20 The expression of the meaning is metaphorical in relation to a more congruent (or more typical) way of expressing the same meaning (Thompson 1996: 165). Halliday succinctly theorises the idea in some other words as well: “same signified, different signifier” (Halliday 1998: 197). In a nominal group, things are usually construed as commodities, which take on a value and can be drawn up in lists of categories or taxonomies. Hence, a powerful and meaning-creating shift from the interpersonal to the experiential is realised.21 18

See 3H6 5.6.1-5, for the relevance of the nominal group and the epithet. See also Lakoff and Turner (1989: 167), who argue that all language is metaphor and that all metaphors have inbuilt ideological suppositions. 20 For a more detailed discussion of this line of argumentation, see B. Busse (forthcoming). 21 Halliday and Matthiessen (1999: 231) argue that nominalisation and grammatical metaphor are particularly relevant to scientific Modern English writing. In nomina19

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An example from The Tempest (Tmp.), which is the first encounter in the play between Prospero and Caliban, is presented in the following way: Prospero: […] – What ho! slave! Caliban! Thou earth, thou! speak. (Tmp. 1.2.313f.).

The quotation is used to illustrate that the meaningful and functional potential as well as the effects of Shakespeare’s vocatives as nominal groups and as interpersonal elements (Halliday 1994: 53f.) result from their status as grammatical metaphors.22 These entail a constant toand-fro process between the allegedly opposing poles of the interpersonal – in the choice of the vocative – and the experiential23 – in the choice of the vocative’s structural realisation. Moreover, the fusion of these (eco)-linguistic findings concerning the Shakespearean vocative with general ecocritical concerns (Mayer 2004: 9-21) also allow us to foreground the complex, interrelated, though controversially discussed roles of nature and the relationships between nature, culture and the human being as construed in Prospero’s and Caliban’s identities. On the one hand, these vocatives reflect and create an anthropocentric (Krebs 1999: 342-44), hierarchic, and Early Modern dualism of culture and nature and human and nature. Vocatives also construe the master and slave dualism, as well as that between the civilised and the primitive, and between self and other.24 Within this framework, Prospero, representing a civilised human being, is seen as superior, and Caliban, a barbarous cannibal, is regarded as inferior, different, and therefore excluded from the dominant discourse. On the other hand, this rather pejorative reading interplays with an ecocritically more positive, and biocentric interpretation of the vocatives used, because it sees both Prospero, despite his reliance on westlizations, meaning is condensed, seems to get lost, and the relations between participants are obscured. 22 To date, only the status of the vocative as a nominal group has been discussed. 23 So far it has also been questioned that the vocative function within the experiential. See B. Busse (forthcoming) for a contrary line of argumentation. 24 Plumwood (1993: 41-68) coherently describes the logic of dualism in relation to colonisation and other contexts. She also outlines that different philosophers and different periods of philosophy have highlighted different pairs of dualism.

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ern civilisation in order to protect his social position, and Caliban, who is nature and who accords with its music, acknowledging their mutual dependence on each other and on nature. The vocatives in Tmp. 1.2.313f. belong to four different vocative clusters: conventional term, personal name, a term referring to natural phenomena, and the EPITHET thou (B. Busse forthcoming). According to the OED (I.1.a.), a slave is “one who is the property of, and entirely subject to, another person, whether by capture, purchase, or birth; a servant completely divested of freedom and personal rights.” Within Prospero’s (and Miranda’s) belief systems and ideas of social structure, Prospero is Caliban’s master. The introductory blunt, almost brutal, slave – a nominal group without further modifications – clarifies these power structures not only to Caliban, but also to the recipient. Prospero’s address heightens his own habitus and denies the attribution of symbolic capital to Caliban. In performances, for example (see Vaughan and Vaughan ed. 1999: 171), Caliban often rises from a trap door down stage. Locating Caliban’s cave below underscores his opposition to Ariel, who, as an airy spirit associated with lightness and fluidity, can enter from aloft. This opposed depiction of the two slaves also gives an example of possible performative actualisations of the vocative used to inform the recipient. Notice also Prospero’s initial stylistic preference of slave over Caliban and the fact that Prospero’s slave anticipates Miranda’s more brutal “Abhorred slave, / Which any print of goodness wilt not take, / Being capable of all ill” (Tmp. 1.2.352-354). As a grammatical metaphor, one could argue that the nominal group could be reformulated into the relational clause thou art a slave, where slave functions as an identifier. It is also possible to unpack the nominalisation in a completely different way: “thou hast been slaved.” This process is material (Halliday 1994: 109f.), thou25 is the medium of the clause, and the agent is missing. The experiential and interpersonal force of the nominal mode of the vocative pretends Caliban’s position to be normal in relation to Prospero’s social position. This creation reflects dominant economic structures, social prejudices, and 25

Thou is particularly marked in the comedies (U. Busse 2002: 45f.), where the unmarked form of the 2nd person pronoun paradigm is you, which strongly corresponds to the EModE usage at the time when Shakespeare was writing. Hence, Prospero’s use of thou is highly emotional and downgrading.

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forces that control their (and probably our) existence. When Prospero uses the signifier slave, he is not simply conveying the natural signified “one who is dependent,” but actually expresses the implicit “social” signified with all the consequences this creation will have. The contest of habitus happens in much the same way as Othello construes his Desdemona as his “fair warrior” (Oth. 2.1.182); however, the rephrasal of the vocative into a clause allows Desdemona to be seen as the agent, and appropriately so since, in the play, she is indeed fighting for their love. Prospero’s conceptualisations are used to legitimise and to privilege his European social order and culture. This process of naturalisation as well as these essentialist and hierarchic constructions develop constructs of class, race, and culture. They also lead to social and cultural discrimination, and to the exclusion and control of Caliban. The following vocatives, Caliban and thou earth, not only construe different vocative clusters – personal name and a term referring to natural phenomena – but also seem to further reduce Caliban to a debased and uncivilised, earthy creature. When, later in the play, Caliban attacks Prospero and Miranda “You taught me language and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse” (Tmp. 1.2.363), Prospero is created as the vocal master of extraordinary loquacious brutality and the leader of the isle. Caliban, in contrast, is portrayed as hunched and close to earth, his name Caliban may be an anagram of cannibal “savage” or relating to an African Island (Vaughan and Vaughan ed. 1999: 47), and in Prospero’s and Miranda’s eyes he is a “savage” (1.2.356). He resembles the bestial wild man of medieval lore (unkempt, uneducated, thoroughly uncivilised), a morally and socially defiant savage. For both Prospero and Miranda, who only consider their own selves, he is the “other”. As such, the island becomes a “theatrical microcosm of the imperial paradigm” (Vaughan and Vaughan ed. 1999: 40). Prospero’s and Miranda’s constructions are what Plumwood (1993: 4) describes as follows: Thus racism, colonialism and sexism have drawn their conceptual strength from casting sexual, racial and ethnic difference as closer to the animal and the body

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construed as a sphere of inferiority, as a lesser form of humanity lacking the full measure of rationality or culture.26

Prospero’s over-elaborate terms of address, his drift toward the unavoidable concrete, hints at the multi-dimensional character of discourse and power-structure. This portrayal also interplays with the Early Modern Chain of Being where each inhabitant has a specific place and where the Animal Kingdom is inferior to human beings (Suerbaum 2003: 480). Caliban’s negatively assessed affinity to American natives (Vaughan and Vaughan ed. 1999: 44), to Indians, and to Irish folk – where range of verbal and visual representations was immense – also cannot be denied. Hence, with this use of vocatives Prospero also defines himself by means of excluding the other; he temporarily forms his own identity and also safeguards hierarchies. To this extent, relating Caliban to features of nature is downgrading because Prospero, in turn, lacks this negative aspect, because his values are primary and socially defining. Prospero’s brutal precision in his use of vocatives complies with the power structures and conventional view on how master and slave might communicate: no camouflage, no concealment, no covering of antipathy, but pure and brutal attacks or – to use the terminology of politeness theory (Brown and Gilman [1989]) – un-redressed facethreatening acts. The social infamy evoked by the choice of the vocative thou earth – also echoing the Early Modern Chain of Being as contexts of social order, nature and culture – further undermines the rigidity of power, as those in power need to constantly re-establish their superior position in order not to be in danger of losing it.27 Prospero assumes his own position to be superior and thereby liberates himself from a responsibility for Caliban, whom he has tried to civilize according to his standards. Therefore Prospero – the allegedly 26

See also Mayer (2004: 14f.) for further ecocritical dimensions on these lines of argumentation. 27 A quotation from Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2001), in which Coleman Silk succinctly unmasks the allegedly moral and civil superiority of the mainstream characters and their condemnation of all unconventional deeds as a superficial mechanism of self-protection on the one hand, and as a lack of authentic personality on the other, is in dialogue with Caliban’s position in the play. Coleman Silk states: “[b]eing angry with me, makes them all feel better – it liberates everyone to tell me I’m wrong” (Roth 2001: 81).

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socially, linguistically, and morally better sort – is allowed to reveal and undo another of Caliban’s repellent deficiencies in the next locution: flying from Prospero’s mouth is the somewhat alliterating thou tortoise (Tmp. 1.2.317), which overtly alludes to Caliban’s dilatoriness. However, it is obvious that the sharp dualism of superior and inferior, master and slave, as well as culture and nature partly results from a certain kind of denied dependency on a subordinated other. This relationship of denied dependency determines a certain kind of logical structure, in which the denial and the relation of domination/subordination shape the identity of both the relata. (Plumwood 1993: 41)

Furthermore, one also has to remember that Prospero’s reaction is a result of Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda, which, in turn, has the effect of threats of confinement and bodily pain. Caliban, however, remains human and of human form and quality (1.2.283-4). For the first twelve years of his life, he grew without the benefits of European culture, religion and language. Caliban is initially well treated, only later enslaved and his island appropriated. In addition, Caliban is perhaps left to fight for himself. He also wants to get his kingdom back and is happy to be subdued by a master, but determined to be liberated from his current one. Therefore, despite the alleged negative functions of vocatives construed as natural terms, the point needs stressing that even though Caliban may be barbarous and lustful, he is also in tune with nature and its music. He has been the lord of the island, with which he is familiar. Prospero and Miranda have probably been dependent on him, but for their mutual understanding he has learned a European language. Despite the fact that many of the positively identity- and culture-promoting Early Modern constructions of, for example, Native Americans (Vaughan and Vaughan ed. 1999: 45f.) are still based on a European framework, the character of Caliban follows these more progressive models. The (re-)presentation of his character interplays, for example, with what Montaigne has mused in his essay “Of the Caniballes” (Montaigne 1603: 102, quoted in Vaughan and Vaughan ed. 1999: 61). In this essay, Montaigne overcomes the fixed dualism between the savage of the new world and the civilised peoples of

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Europe and argues that behaviour not ethnicity creates barbarism. Caliban is burdened with a wide variety of physical aberrations, and he has adjusted to the European world, but nevertheless he is nature, as the vocatives illustrate. Consequently, through him nature experiences a valorisation. As a further consequence, it may be argued that the vocatives in Tmp. 1.2.313f. also illustrate the need for a permanent interaction of human beings and suggest a biocentric point of view because Caliban can also be regarded as belonging to the realm of prediscursive nature. Caliban has a contribution to make, which needs to be acknowledged. Prospero and Caliban remain a contrasting pair, but the ideologically determining social, political, and cultural anthropocentric dualism may be turned into a more natural, interdependent and also physiocentric distinction or dichotomy. Moreover, Halliday notably argues that there is certainly a great deal of neutralisation taking place when a figure is reworded as a NG [nominal group]; but the result […] is not a loss of semantic distinction but ambiguity: the different possible meanings are still discrete. (Halliday 1998: 196)

Therefore, one may ask whether one could also reword Prospero’s vocative into “I’m slaved by you [Caliban],” although Caliban is socially inferior to Prospero and Prospero tries hard to keep up appearances. This interpretation is especially fruitful with regard to Prospero’s and Miranda’s dependence on Caliban’s knowledge of the isle and nature, as exemplified in “But as ‘tis, / We cannot miss him; He does make our fire, / Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices / That profit us” (Tmp. 1.2.310-12). In conclusion, it may be argued that, on the one hand, thou earth and tortoise and the other vocatives in this example are used negatively and can be seen from a Western egocentric and anthropocentric point of view, which Caliban receives and perceives as such. Halliday ([1992] 2001) and others (Fill 2002: 16) focus on the “anthropocentrism” of language, which sees nature from a perspective suitable to humans (Fill 1998: 9). Even though the choice of animal terms for characters that are heavily despised is a common feature discernible in Shakespeare’s vocatives, as the examples from Richard the Third have illustrated, there are also many natural terms used as

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vocatives that have a socially and culturally upgrading nature and function. Prospero’s attack at Caliban construes an anthropocentric rather than a biocentric point of view, because Caliban can be seen as nature in this play. Prospero positions Caliban away from his own appreciated linguistic framework and also names him from the point of view of his usefulness to Prospero. The vocative as a grammatical metaphor and a nominalization also functions as a means of agent deletion because Caliban’s status is downgraded to that of the modified. Trinculo’s, Stephano’s, and Caliban’s encounters can serve as further examples to underline this point. For instance, Caliban addresses Trinculo with “Wilt thou let him, my lord?” (Tmp. 3.2.30f.), a question that is un-reciprocally encountered with “‘Lord’, quoth he! That a monster should be such a natural!” (Tmp. 3.2.32). Caliban’s initiating locution and Trinculo’s retort illustrate the confusion of hierarchical structure and, hence, power. However, Trinculo’s use of the epithet natural illustrates the extent to which he has been assimilated to these kinds of address patterns between master and servant, even though Vaughan and Vaughan (ed. 1999: 226) translate natural as “idiot”. While Caliban believes in his new role as Trinculo’s servant – and his habitus has also been naturalised accordingly – Trinculo and Stephano are not only too drunk to recognise the sincerity of Caliban’s intentions, but also too dumb to tackle Caliban with sensitivity and respect. At the same time, Caliban’s naïve, subservient, and naturalised attitude towards the jester and the butler is, however, authentic and foregrounded to the extent that he has been “taught” to be that way, although, from a dramatic point of view, it certainly conveys aspects of comic relief. On the other hand, however, vocatives like those directed at Caliban may even function as expressions of a physiocentric ethic of nature (Krebs 1997: 342-44), which grant nature intrinsic moral value. As such, the vocatives from the natural field which are used for Caliban function as terms of endearment because they identify Caliban with his original field of influence: nature and the world of animals, which Prospero and his daughter need to live upon. As a nominal group, these vocatives are also part of a sort of cryptogrammatical level because, usually, the interpersonal dimension of the vocative as part of the interpersonal is stressed. Caliban’s character is complex, as is his language and his form – neither the deeply

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pejorative dualistic model nor the completely laudable description of a biocentric point of view can be seen as a sole model of explanation. It is rather a polyphony of these lines of interpretations that may explain the meanings and functions of these vocatives. Finally, the constant interplay between the allegedly opposing poles of interpersonal and experiential constitutes what makes the vocative a very complex but also compact element. It may be seen as a grammatical metaphor, which has important consequences for the interpretation of Shakespeare’s vocatives. While the speaker sets up a direct exchange with the hearer, because he chooses the interpersonal element vocative as a direct address, the structural potential of the vocative as a nominal group is experientially adding to the interpersonal dimension. Therewith, the vocative enables the speaker to focus on stable, fixed, and compact, but also blurred reality-construing ideas and positions. In this connection, Adamson (1999: 567) also alludes to the importance of epithets and the nominal group in the EModE emphasis on rhetoric, as providing the audience with the effect of a new idea. 5. Conclusions Plays in performance are described as semiotic super-signs (Krieger 1998: 84). Mime, gesture, movement, or costumes are in a dialogical meaning-creating relationship with the spoken word. Therefore, the meanings of Shakespearean vocatives as grammatical metaphors and as interpersonal, textual, and experiential markers also have a performative potential that cannot be restricted to speaker/character identification and selection (B. Busse forthcoming). There has been not enough space, for example, to illustrate the emotive, referential, and conative functions of Bühler’s ([1934] 1999) Organon-model, which are informative on such immediately entertaining vocatives as Antonio’s attack on “Boys, Apes, braggarts, jacks, milksops” (Ado 5.1.91), or Mercutio’s on Romeo in “Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified” (Rom. 2.4.37f.). As an alternative reading of the history of English in general and Shakespeare’s vocatives in particular, this paper argues that theoretical and methodological integration of ecolinguistics’ “tensional arches” (Fill 2002: 16) of dialogue and the language-text/world

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relationship with stylistics broadens the existing studies of Shakespeare’s use of nominal forms of address. The ideological and meaning-construing potential of vocatives has been highlighted as experiential, interpersonal, and textual. Hence, the meanings of vocatives in Shakespeare are foregrounded, interactive, process-like, dynamic, and contextual. Habitus is also constantly contested in specific situations by means of vocatives. A solution to the teacher Evan’s question “What’s the focative case [sic!], William?” (The Merry Wives of Windsor 4.1.50f.) can therefore not be restricted to a Latin-based grammatical approach or to uniform parameters of rigid social structure. On the micro- and macro-analytical level, the Shakespearean vocative creates and reflects a finely orchestrated polyphony of voices. These disclose the constantly changing meanings, functions, and routines of social intercourse. Since all linguistic choices are meaningful – choice is probably the most important concept of style – and all language usage is ideologically loaded, one could argue, following Halliday’s ([1992] 2001: 185f.) criticism of the English language as creating sexism, classism, and growthism, that, in quantity and quality, Shakespeare’s vocatives have similar effects; especially, because of their realisation as grammatical and lexical metaphor working on complex interpersonal, textual, and experiential levels. They construe constructs of nature, culture and the social; they create and reflect both anthropocentrism and biocentrism in the contexts of the plays and in the contexts of Early Modern Culture. However, due to the fact that language is, among various others, a semiotic mode of representing reality, Shakespeare’s vocatives are not only a part of reality, but that they shape reality and serve as metaphors for reality.

Bibliography Shakespeare, William. 1999. The Tempest (ed. V. M. Vaughan and A. T. Vaughan) (The Arden Shakespeare). 3rd Series. Walton-on-Thames: Nelson and Sons. Adamson, Sylvia. 1999. ‘Literary Language’ in Lass, Roger (ed.) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. III: 1576-1776. Cambridge: CUP: 539-653. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 2000. ‘Discourse in the Novel’ (tr. C. Emerson, M. Holquist) in Holquist, Michael (ed.) The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin.

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12th ed. Austin: The University of Texas Press: 259-422. [First edition Austin : University of Texas Press 1981.] Bourdieu, Pierre. 1997a. Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen (tr. W. Fietkau) (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 107). 6th ed. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1997b. Sozialer Sinn: Kritik der theoretischen Vernunft (tr. G. Seib) (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 1066). 2nd ed. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Breuer, Horst. 1983. ‘Titel und Anreden bei Shakespeare und in der Shakespearezeit’ in Anglia 101: 49-77. Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: CUP. Brown, Roger W. & Albert Gilman. 1958. ‘Who says ‘Tu’ to ‘Whom’’ in A Review of General Semantics 15: 169-74. —. 1960. ‘The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity’ in Sebeok, Thomas (ed.) Style in Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press: 253-276. Rprtd. in Laver, J. and S. Hutcheson (eds). 1972. Communication in Face to Face Interaction. Harmondsworth: Penguin: 103-27. —. 1989. ‘Politeness Theory and Shakespeare`s Four Major Tragedies’ in Language in Society 18: 159-212. Brown, Roger W. and M. Ford. 1961. ‘Address in American English’ in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 62: 375-385. Rprtd. in Hymes, Dell (ed.). 1964. Language in Culture and Society. New York: Harper and Row: 234-44. Buber, Martin. [1962] 1994. Das Dialogische Prinzip. 7th ed. Gerlingen: Lambert Schneider. Bühler, Karl. [1934] 1999. Sprachtheorie. Stuttgart: Lucius und Lucius. Busse, Beatrix (forthcoming). A Functional Analysis of Vocative Constructions in the Language of Shakespeare. PhD thesis. University of Münster. Busse, Ulrich. 2002. The Function of Linguistic Variation in the Shakespeare Corpus: A Corpus-Based Study of the Morpho-Syntactic Variability of the Address Pronouns and their Socio-Historical and Pragmatic Implications (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 106). Berlin and Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Douthwaite, John. 2000. Towards a Linguistic Theory of Foregrounding. Torino: Edizioni dell’Orso. Eggins, Suzanne. 1994. An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics. London: Pinter. Evans, G. Blakemore (ed. with the assistance of J.J.M. Tobin). 1997. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Fill, Alwin and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds). 2001. The Ecolinguistics Reader. Language, Ecology, and Environment. London and New York: Continuum. Fill, Alwin, H. Penz and W. Trampe (eds). 2002. Colourful Green Ideas. Papers from the Conference 30 Years of Language and Ecology (Graz, 2000) and the Symposium Sprache and Ökologie (Passau, 2001). Bern: Peter Lang. Fill, Alwin. 1987. Wörter zu Pflugscharen. Versuch einer Ökologie der Sprache. Wien: Böhlau. —. 1993. Ökolinguistik. Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. —. 1996. Sprachökologie und Ökolinguistik. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

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—. 1998. ‘Ecolinguistics – State of the Art 1998’ in AAA – Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 23(1): 3-16. —. 2002. ‘Tensional Arches: Language and Ecology. Im Spannungsfeld von Sprache und Ökologie’ in Fill, Penz, Trampe (2002): 15-27. Fischer, Ludwig. 2002. ‘The Conservation of Conversation beyond English’ in Fill, Penz, Trampe (2002): 59-76. Fowler, Roger. 1986. Linguistic Criticism. 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP. Gillingham, John. 1981. The Wars of the Roses. Peace and Conflict in 15th Century England. London: Phoenix Press. Görlach, Manfred. 1994. Einführung ins Frühneuenglische. 4th ed. Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer. Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. Garden City: Doubleday. Halliday, Michael A. K. 1972. ‘Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William Golding`s The Inheritors’ in Chatman, Seymour (ed.) Literary Style: A Symposium. Oxford: OUP: 330-65. —. 1992. ‘New Ways of meaning. The Challenge to Applied Linguistics’ in Pütz, Martin (ed.) Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution: Studies in Honour of René Dirven. Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 59-95. Rprtd. in Fill, Alwin and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds) The Ecolinguistics Reader. Language, Ecology, and Environment. London and New York: Continuum: 175-202. —. 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd ed. London and New York: Arnold. —. 1998. ‘Things and Relations. Re-Grammaticising Experience as Technical Knowledge’ in Martin, J. R. and Robert Veel (eds) Reading Science: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Discourse of Science. London and New York: Routledge: 185-235. Halliday, Michael. A. K. and Christian Matthiessen. 1999. Construing Experience through Meaning. A Language-based Approach to Cognition. London: Cassell. Halliday, Michael. A. K. and Christian Matthiessen. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. 3rd ed. London and New York: Arnold. Herman, Vimala. 1995. Dramatic Discourse: Dialogue as Interaction in Plays. London: Routledge. Jameson, Fredric. 1972. The Prison House of Language. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Jung, Matthias. 1996. ‘Ökologische Sprachkritik’ in Fill, Alwin (ed.) Sprachökologie und Ökolinguistik. Referate des Symposiums Sprachökologie und Ökolinguistik an der Universität Klagenfurt 27.-28. Oktober 1995. Tübingen: Stauffenburg: 149173. Rprtd. in Fill, Alwin and Peter Mühlhäusler (eds). 2001. The Ecolinguistics Reader. Language, Ecology, and Environment. London and New York: Continuum: 270-85. Krebs, Angelika. 1997. ‘Naturethik im Überblick’ in Krebs, Angelika (ed.) Naturethik. Grundtexte der gegenwärtigen tier- und ökoethischen Diskussion. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp: 337-79.

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Krieger, Gottfried. 1998. ‘Dramentheorie und Methoden der Dramenanalyse’ in Nünning, Ansgar (ed.) Literaturwissenschaftliche Theorien und Modelle: Eine Einführung. Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier: 69-92. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Leech, Geoffrey and Mick Short. 1981. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London and New York: Longman. Leech, Geoffrey and Jan Svartvik. 2001. A Communicative Grammar of English. 3rd ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Magnusson, Lynne. 1999. Shakespeare and Social Dialogue. Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters. Cambridge: CUP. Malmkjaer, Kirsten. 1991. ‘Mentalist Linguistics’ in Malmkjaer, Kirsten (ed.) The Linguistics Encyclopedia. London and New York: Routledge: 305-8. Mayer, Sylvia. 2004. Naturethik und Neuengland-Regionalliteratur. Heidelberg: Winter. Müller-Oberhäuser, Gabriele. 2002. ‘Gender, Emotion und Modelle der Verhaltensregulierung in den mittelenglischen Courtesy Books’ in Kasten, Ingrid, Gesa Stedman and Margarete Zimmermann (eds) Kulturen der Gefühle in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Querelles 7). Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler: 27-51. Oxford English Dictionary on Compact Disc. 1992. J. Simpson, and E.S.C. Weiner (eds). 2nd ed. Oxford: OUP. Pakkala-Weckström, Mari. 2001. ‘Prudence and the Power of Persuasion – Language of Persuasion and Maistrie in the Tale of Melibee’ in ChauR 35: 399-412. Pfister, Manfred. 1997. Das Drama (UTB für Wissenschaft). 9th ed. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge. Quirk, Randolph et al. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Burnt Mill: Longman. Roth, Philip. 2001. The Human Stain. London: Vintage. Ross, Charles. 1999. Richard III (Yale English Monarchs). 2nd ed. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Shklovsky, V. [1917] 1976. The Theory of Prose. New York: Yale University Press. Short, Mick. 1996. Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. London and New York: Longman. —. 1998. ‘From Dramatic Text to Dramatic Performance’ in Culpeper, Jonathan, Mick Short and Peter Verdonk (eds) Exploring the Language of Drama. From Text to Context. London and New York: Routledge: 6-18. Stoll, Rita. 1989. Die Nicht-Pronominale Anrede bei Shakespeare. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Spevack, Marvin. 1968-80. A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare. 9 vols. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Suerbaum, Ulrich. 2001. Der Shakespeare-Führer. Stuttgart: Reclam.

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—. 2003. Das Elisabethanische Zeitalter. Stuttgart: Reclam. Thompson, Geoff. 1996. Introducing Functional Grammar. London: Arnold. Tillyard, E. M. W. [1943] 1973. The Elizabethan World Picture. 11th ed. London: Chatto and Windus. Toolan, Michael. 1996. Language in Literature: An Introduction to Stylistics. London and New York: Arnold. —. 2000. ‘‘What Makes You Think You Exist?’ A Speech Move Schematic and its Application to Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Part’ in Journal of Pragmatics 32: 172-201. Trudgill, Peter and Richard Watts (eds). 2002. Alternative Histories of English. London and New York: Routledge. Vaughan, Virginia Mason and Alden T. Vaughan. 1999. ‘Introduction to Shakespeare’s The Tempest’ in Vaughan, Virginia Mason and Alden T. Vaughan (eds). 1999. The Tempest. (The Arden Shakespeare). 3rd Series. Walton-onThames: Nelson and Sons: 1-138. Voros, Gyorgyi. 1997. Notations of the Wild. Ecology in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Weber, Jean-Jaques (ed.) 1996. The Stylistic Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present. London: Arnold. Williams, Joseph M. 1992. ‘‘O! When degree is shak’d’: Sixteenth-Century Anticipations of Some Modern Attitudes towards Usage’ in Machan, Tim William and Charles T. Scott (eds) English in its Social Contexts: Essays in Historical Sociolinguistics. New York and Oxford: OUP: 69-101. Zapf, Hubert. 2002. Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie. Zur kulturellen Funktion imaginativer Texte an Bespielen des amerikanischen Romans. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

“Trees are what everyone needs:” The Lorax, anthropocentrism, and the problem of mimesis Hannes Bergthaller Abstract: This essay discusses the relation between a biocentric ethics and the project of an ecocritical rehabilitation of outer mimesis as it has been proposed by Lawrence Buell, among others. It argues that a text’s ethical force arises not from the facts it may be said to represent, but from its narrative form. If we seek to understand how texts reshape attitudes towards nature, we should therefore focus our attention not on a text’s faithfulness to ecological facts, but on the way in which it picks up and transforms the narratives circulating in a culture. This argument is supported by a detailed analysis of Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (1971), a children’s book that fails Buell’s criteria for enviromentally oriented work, but which nevertheless has played a significant role in environmental education in the U.S.

It is rhetorics to suggest that it is necessary to really start thinking and acting, again or for the first time. If it was possible to see and to treat reality ‘realistically’, it would always have been seen and treated in that way. More than with the reality which it promises, the pose of the retour au reél must therefore occupy itself with explaining all the illusions, false fronts and seductions that have to be dealt with in the course. Hans Blumenberg

1. Rehabilitating mimesis, recuperating the environment For many ecocritics, the theoretical project most central to their new discipline is what is often described as the recovery of literature’s “referential dimension” or a rehabilitation of mimesis, where the latter is understood as a truthful representation of ecological facts. By keeping faith with the natural environment, it is assumed, literary mimesis can bring about a biocentric reorientation of the reader. In

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this essay, I will argue that this idea is based on a misconception of the relation between ethics and literature: it is not the “referential dimension” which lends a text its ethical force, but rather narrative form. Before I try to clarify this proposition by way of an analysis of Theodore Geisel’s (better known as Dr. Seuss) The Lorax, I want to examine the project of an ecocritical rehabilitation of mimesis in a little more detail. For this purpose, the argument put forward by Lawrence Buell in The Environmental Imagination, a founding text of ecocriticism, may be taken as representative. According to Buell, the anti-mimetic and constructionist bent of most work in the humanities today must be seen as symptomatic of the larger cultural situation of globalised capitalism, in which people are becoming increasingly alienated from the biological fundamentals of their existence and live in artificial environments that obscure ecological realities. By refusing to acknowledge the material facticity of nature as a realm distinct from and pre-existing the various conceptual frameworks within which it is represented, Buell charges, theory has abetted the prevailing ignorance about the natural environment which is chiefly responsible for the current ecological crisis. Beginning with this premise, one might plausibly think of ecocriticism’s main task as that of recuperating the factual environment from the oblivion into which the various textual appropriations have pushed it. It must identify and critique misrepresentations or elisions in texts that are blinded by the reigning anthropocentric bias of their culture, and single out as positive examples those texts that struggle against anthropocentrism and project biocentric ways of relating to the environment. In Buell’s argument, the master text that serves to epitomize this passage from anthropocentrism to biocentrism is Thoreau’s Walden – the Walden project, to be exact, i.e., not only the finished text, but also the journals and the “event” itself. The Walden project, writes Buell, is a “record and model of a western sensibility working with and through the constraints of Eurocentric, androcentric, homocentric culture to arrive at an environmentally responsive vision” (Buell 1995: 23).Starting from the imperialist vision of Emersonian transcendentalism, which looked towards the coming “kingdom of man over nature” (Emerson 1957: 56), Thoreau gradually made himself over into a consummate natural historian, whose minute observations of

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natural process in his native Massachusetts even earned him the praise of Louis Agassiz. Following Thoreau’s footsteps, the ecocritic must peel off the layers of ideology which have prevented us from seeing nature as it truly is – thus taking us back to the “solid earth! the actual world!”, as the motto of ASLE’s 2003 conference emphatically proclaimed. This path would lead ecocriticism beyond the traditional sphere of literary criticism and closer to the natural sciences, while at the same time allowing for a more spiritual view of nature. Ecocriticism must acquire and promote “ecoliteracy” - scientifically sound knowledge of the facts which constitute the ecological context of human actions and use that knowledge to judge whether a text represents the natural environment accurately. Thus, the measure of the value of a literary text would not be verbal artistry as such, but the degree to which it succeeds in putting the latter at the service of ecological truth and accomplishes a mimetically faithful rendering of the “object world” (Buell 1995: 91). Reading “non-fictionally” in the manner proposed by Buell, the ecocritic must recognize the text’s “dual accountability to matter and to discursive mentation” (Buell 1995: 92). The gap supposedly separating literary art and science is thus revealed to be only a matter of degrees: “Literature functions as science’s less systematic but more versatile complement. Both seek to make understandable a puzzling world” (Buell 1995: 94). In some respects, the “rehabilitation of mimesis” as proposed by Buell and other ecocritics is a worthwhile project. It is indeed timely to reconsider the ways in which the non-human resists and contravenes our representations of it (both textual and otherwise), to take seriously science’s claim to be able to provide “truthful” accounts of natural processes, and to re-evaluate the role that such truth claims play in non-scientific literature. To treat all descriptions of nature as being first and foremost products of social power games and ideological forces, as some proponents of post-structuralist theory and cultural studies are wont to do, obscures the issue just as much as it helps to elucidate it.1 If we are dealing with texts that claim to give a 1 If the proposition that nature is a cultural construct is not to lapse into either triviality or absurdity, it must be refined in such a way as to allow for a number of differentiations. For example, it must enable us to distinguish between that which is produced by humans and that which in a significant sense produces itself: a wild bison or a jungle are not constructed in quite the same sense that, say, a cow or a field of

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reliable account of physical phenomena, as texts from the genre of nature writing generally do, it makes good sense to ask whether they live up to that claim – whether their descriptions of the natural environment are consistent with scientific knowledge and can be subjected to similar criteria as would apply to scientific descriptions, particularly whether they are amenable to falsification. That all criteria by which we judge the mimetic accuracy of a representation are necessarily a matter of convention, as Dana Phillips has rightly pointed out in his forceful polemic against Buell, hardly discredits the project as such.2 Buell himself grants as much when he compares “environmental representation” to the novel of manners, where tea ceremonies, tiny conversational nuances, and minute gestures and variances of dress matter intensely. The process of conforming to the codes begins when one accepts that the type of accent or dress one puts on really matters. [...] So too with environmental literacy. We can think of it as a kind of culture, with local and historical variations, requiring efforts of study and adaptation. (Buell 1995: 107)

That the interpretation of environmental texts in the manner proposed by Buell is something that must be learned, and not only by “scholastic investigation,” as he writes elsewhere, but also by a “reenactment” of the actions described in the texts, is precisely his point (Buell 1999: 701). However, this description also suggests that environmental representation is not so much about the imitation of physical objects but rather about the performance and promulgation of certain social codes – which is probably the reason why Buell does not really follow up on the implications of his analogy. The quoted passage points towards a concept of mimesis that is quite different from the one that Buell upholds in other parts of The Environmental Imagination. There, the term “mimesis” designates the accurate rendition of the physical genetically modified corn are constructed, and these in turn differ substantially from such things as a computer or a house (cf. Benton 1993: 66ff). 2 Cf. Phillipps 1999. For an account that treats realistic modes of representation as entirely conventional while maintaining the claim that the internal dynamics of their developement are dependent on the relation between representation and world – an account that is therefore able “to explain the paradox that the world can never quite look like a picture, but a picture can look like the world” (Gombrich 1969: 395) - see E.H. Gombrich’s magisterial Art and Illusion (1969).

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world – it is predicated on the “mastery of environmental fact, texture and nuance” (Buell 1995: 23). Significantly, Buell also uses the term “outer mimesis,” and he makes it quite clear that this ought to be understood largely along the lines of the Horatian imperative of classical poetics: ut pinctura poiesis. I shall not venture too far into the details of the elaborate argument by which Buell tries to circumvent the metaphysical pitfalls of this venerable model of literary representation. My concern is rather with the ethical basis of his argument for the rehabilitation of mimesis. For Buell, the accurate representation of the environment is part and parcel of his biocentric creed. It is not only an aesthetic ideal but, even more importantly, an ethical duty. Insofar as it shows respect for the facticity of nature and abstains from imposing human meaning on it, faithful mimesis constitutes a necessary step towards acknowledging the intrinsic value of the natural world: “the ethos [...] of basing art on disciplined extrospection is in the first instance an affirmation of environment over self, over appropriative homocentric desire” (Buell 1995: 104). Buell’s plea for the rehabilitation of “outer mimesis” is thus based on the notion that nature possesses a kind of intrinsic normativity. His claim that the ethical force of a text is directly related to its capacity for accurate representation rests on the tacit assumption that the knowledge of nature’s materiality and structure is in itself sufficient to ground claims as to what constitutes proper behaviour towards nature: once the text has brought a reader to know nature as it “truly” is, she will also relinquish her anthropocentric habits of thought. She will value nature not for its utilities or the aesthetic gratification it affords her, but for its own sake, and will act accordingly. The best description of nature is therefore a description that does not try to turn it into a symbol or an allegory, but lets the ecological facts “speak for themselves” – an achievement that does not come easily but is the result of a process in which the artist must struggle against the deeply ingrained tendency to project his own human desires onto nature. It requires a kind of asceticism which denies itself even “the most basic pleasures of homocentrism: plot, characterization, lyric pathos, dialogue, intersocial events, and so on” (Buell 1995: 168). I believe that the ideal of an “environmentally responsive” text as Buell expounds it here is based on a profound misconception of the

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nature of ethical commitments in general and the sources of literature’s ethical force in particular. Following theorists such as Paul Ricoeur, Hayden White and Jerome Bruner, I want to argue that it is precisely the narrative dimension of a text that opens up the space for ethical reflection. In order to substantiate this claim, I will examine a text which has a lesser claim on literary fame than Walden or other works from the ecocritical canon such as Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanach or Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, but which has arguably played a crucial part in the spread of an “ecological consciousness” in the US. Most importantly for my purposes, it has the merit of failing utterly to meet Buell’s criteria for an “environmentally oriented work” (Buell 1995: 7). 2. The story of The Lorax Theodore Geisel’s The Lorax was published in 1971, only one year after the first Earth Day, at a time when what historian Leslie Thiele calls the “third wave” of environmentalism was cresting (Thiele 1999). It has since become a mainstay of environmental education at the elementary school level. According to the author, better known as Dr. Seuss, it was explicitly designed as a piece of environmentalist propaganda (Morgan & Morgan 1995: 211), and it fulfilled this function so successfully that the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest tried to ban its use in the classroom and subjected it to the same kind of treatment for which the pesticide industry had singled out Silent Spring almost a decade earlier: it authorized a parody of the text, tellingly titled The Truax.3 Since readers not from the U.S. are probably not familiar with The Lorax, I will briefly recapitulate the story before going into the details.4 The Lorax opens with the image of a little boy standing in the middle of a dismal wasteland, at night, on a path that winds from a 3 The text is available on the internet at: http://www.nofma.org/truaxbook.htm. It appears that the logging industry are not the only ones to get huffy about the political nature of Geisel’s text: Random House rejected my request to reproduce some illustrations from The Lorax in this article, since the latter “was an argument regarding the environment, whereas the former “was meant for children” (personal commication, Dec.1st 2004). 4 Myself included – I would like to thank Jacques Lezra for bringing this text to my notice.

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jumbled conglomerate of buildings in the background to the lower left corner of the panel. The boy stares at a street-sign that reads “The Street of the Lifted Lorax”. The caption informs us that we are “At the far end of town / where the Grickle-grass grows / and the wind smells slow-and-sour when it blows / and no birds ever sing excepting old crows…”. The next panel spells out the question written in the little boy’s face, in the same catchy anapaestic metre which the text will maintain throughout: “What was the Lorax / And why was it there? / And why was it lifted and taken somewhere / from the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows? / The Old Once-ler still lives here. / Ask him. He knows”. So the boy goes to see the Old Once-ler, who lives in a dilapidated tower at the end of the road, and after he has paid the required fee of “fifteen cents / and a nail / and the shell of a greatgreat-great- / grandfather snail”, the Once-ler begins to tell the story of the Lorax. The flashback begins with the Old Once-ler’s arrival by covered wagon in a pop art landscape of green hills and brightly coloured “Truffula Trees”, contrasting strongly with the sombre greys and blues which dominated the depiction of the diegetic present. Over the next few panels, we are introduced to the inhabitants of this rudimentary ecosystem: the “Brown Barba-loots”, “Swomee Swans” and “Humming Fish”, all leading a carefree existence “as they played in the shadow and ate Truffula fruits”. It is the Truffula trees that catch the Once-ler’s fancy. He sets up shop, cuts down a tree and knits its tuft into a pinkish object resembling a toddler’s suit with only two holes. Just as he has finished knitting, a gnomish little creature with a bright yellow moustache pops out of the Truffula stump and scolds the Once-ler with a voice “that was sharpish and bossy”: “ ‘Mister!’ he said with a sawdusty sneeze, / ‘I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. / I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. / And I’m asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs’ - / he was very upset as he shouted and puffed - / ‘What’s that THING you’ve made out of my Truffula tuft?’” The Once-ler tries to appease: “I am doing no harm. / I am being quite useful. This thing is a Thneed. / A Thneed’s a Fine-SomethingThat-All-People-Need! / It’s a shirt. It’s a sock. It’s a glove. It’s a hat. / But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that.” He hardly has finished his explanations before the first customer drops in. Since the thneeds sell so well, the Once-ler sets up a factory, calls up his relatives, and,

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ignoring the Lorax’s continuous protests and employing an ever growing array of strange mechanical contraptions, sets out to log off the Truffula forest. First, the Brown Barba-loots leave, because they cannot find food; then the Swomee Swans take off, because the air has become so bad that they cannot sing any more; the Humming Fish follow when their pond has become a “Gluppity Glupp” that gums up their gills, as the Lorax laments: “They’ll walk on their fins and get woefully weary / in search of some water that isn’t so smeary. / I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.” The Once-ler brushes aside the protests of the Lorax and his own moral qualms by citing the iron laws of economics: “I, the Once-ler, felt sad / as I watched them go. / BUT... / business is business! / And business must grow / regardless of crummies in tummies, you know.” After the last Truffula tree has fallen and the Once-ler has to close down the factory, his relatives say goodbye as well. The last one to leave is the Lorax: “The Lorax said nothing. Just gave me a glance... / just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance… / as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants / [...] and took leave of this place / through a hole in the smog [...].”The only trace that the Lorax leaves behind in the wasteland, which is now recognizable as the setting in which the narrative started, is a pile of rocks engraved with the word “UNLESS.” The significance of this inscription eludes the Once-ler until the little boy comes to see him: “Now that you’re here, / the words of the Lorax seem perfectly clear. UNLESS some one like you / cares a whole awful lot, / nothing is going to get better. / It’s not.” In the very last panel, the Once-ler tosses the little boy a seed and admonishes him: “You’re in charge of the last Truffula Seeds. / And Truffula trees are what everyone needs. / Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. / Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. / Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. / Then the Lorax and all of his friends / may come back.” One would hardly want to call this little parable “mimetic” in Buell’s sense. None of the characters presented seem to owe much to the kind of “disciplined extrospection” he demands – with their unabashed anthropomorphism, the “Brown Barba-loots” and “Swomee Swans” have far more in common with the creatures that people Geisel’s other children’s books or even Disney cartoons than with live Brown Bears or Whooping Cranes. They are highly stylized tokens that stand for whole genera of animals (mammals, birds, fishes) rather

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than for any particular species, and the way in which they are depicted indicates that the text lays far more importance on the function they fulfil in the narrative – namely, as innocent victims of the Once-ler’s greed – than on the creatures as such. For purposes of “external reference” (Buell 1995: 97), The Lorax is entirely useless: it would clearly be a misinterpretation to venture out and search for any Truffulas and Barba-loots which may be there to save, and I assume that very few children would make that sort of mistake. The only point at which the text makes explicit reference to the “real world” is the passage mentioning Lake Erie. Even though Geisel’s text eschews “outer mimesis,” it would obviously be wrong to accuse it of indifference towards questions of ecology. The narrative is easily recognizable as a paraphrase of those stories of environmental destruction with which the public had become familiar in the course of the decade preceding the Lorax’ publication. The exodus of the mammals, birds and fishes closely parallels the disappearance of wildlife described, for example, in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.5 The Once-ler, with his penchant for screws, cogs, tubing and transmission belts, can be read as a personification of that kind of narrowly instrumentalist rationality which environmentalists had singled out as the main culprit for ecological destruction: obsessed with the efficiency of his means, he has lost sight of the ends. The fact that we only get to see his hands, which merge seamlessly with his machines and are always busy operating levers or counting money, supports his identification with “the Machine,” as cultural critic Lewis Mumford would have called it, whose analyses of the latent totalitarianism of Cold War-technocracy had a profound influence on the environmental movement.6 The Once-ler’s arrival by covered wagon associates him with the pioneers, and the specific combination of technical expertise and entrepreneurship with which he sets out to exploit the Truffula paradise seems like an embodiment of the fabled “Yankee ingenuity” which since the days of Benjamin Franklin has been regarded as a 5

Cf. Carson 1962: 67f. An influence that is perhaps most obvious in the works of Gary Snyder (for an example cf. Snyder 1977: 61) and Edward Abbey, who considered dedicating his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang to Mumford (Abbey 1994: 237). Cf. Mumford 1967. 6

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hallmark of the American national character. Accordingly, the “Thneeds”, those “Fine-Somethings-That-All-People-Need”, may be taken to stand for the principles of utility, of the exchange value and of the process of commodification, or, in a more narrow sense, for the flood of ephemeral, disposable goods produced by market capitalism. Their absurd appearance indicates that the “needs” which the Once-ler purports to satisfy are spurious and may even be “manufactured”, as Ludwig Marcuse famously claimed, in order to prop up an exploitative system. The sentence on the trucks delivering the “thneeds” is a poignant parody of the countless slogans by which the advertisement industry tries to stimulate consumption: “YOU NEED A THNEED”. In the Once-ler’s tale, the “Thneeds” rhyme with yet another good whose accumulation turns out to be the true motive behind his obsession with growth: “I meant no harm, I most truly didn’t. / But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got. / I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads. / I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads / of the Thneeds I shipped out. [...] / And I biggered my money, which everyone needs”. Against this background, one might conclude that it is possible, after all, to read even this text in the “non-fictional” mode proposed by Buell and to thus recover its “referential dimension”: the Truffula forest must be read as representing the American environment, its despoliation by the Once-ler as referring to the destruction of the continent’s actual forests, and the repercussions of his actions as a simplified model of the very real consequences of the exploitation of natural ecosystems by a capitalist society. The text’s ethical force would thus flow from the possibility of mapping it back onto an already given reality; its authority and legitimacy would be a function of its relation to the real environment. Significantly, this mode of authorization is figured within the text by the eponymous character who continually admonishes the Once-ler about the ecological costs of his practices: the Lorax embodies the voice of a biocentric conscience which critiques the absolutism of human values and urges the recognition of the rights of non-human species. Sprung from the stump of a tree, he stands in a synecdochical relation to the forest and is thus in an ideal position to represent it politically. This is precisely the privileged position from which biocentric ecocritics like to see their canonical authors speaking: it is their intimate knowledge of and

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closeness to nature which supposedly enables them to lend it their voice, in the manner described by Bill Devall as the principle of ecocentric identification: “I am speaking for this mountain because it is a part of me” (Devall 1990: 52). According to this model, the goal of reading must therefore be to share the knowledge of the author – to acquire “ecoliteracy” – in order to enable the reader to enter the site from which the Lorax is speaking. That this might indeed be the way in which the Lorax “wants” to be read is indicated by the fact that at the end of the text, the little boy, who functions throughout the text as a stand-in for the reader, comes to stand within the stone circle “where the Lorax once stood”: after he has listened to the cautionary tale of environmental destruction, he literally occupies the standpoint of the Lorax. 3. Narrative mimesis of action Yet, if we thus read the text in terms of the facts - if we, in Buell’s terms, make it “accountable” to nature’s facticity - are we not already reading the facts in terms of the text? What enables us to map the world of the text back onto the extra-textual world is not the similarity of its characters and objects to actual persons or objects, but the structural affinity of its plot to the narratives of environmentalism. After all, the assumption that the Truffula forest represents the forests of America is convincing not because the two are similar in any significant sense but because both are cut down; that the Once-ler should stand for certain corporations is plausible because the latter have already been assigned a similar role within the story of ecological crisis. Before we can proceed to read The Lorax literally, we must already have understood it as a kind of allegory: a story whose elements are metaphors for abstract concepts which in turn may be used to understand concrete historical situations. If it is the way in which the different elements of the story are arranged into a plot that allows us to read it as a story about real events, it is this plot, as well, from which its ethical imperative originates. As a story, it tells not only of facts, causes and effects, but, more importantly, of motives and intentions: what causes the trees to fall is finally not the Once-ler’s axe, but his greed. Thus it is not the facticity of the events comprised by a narrative which lends ethical force to the

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latter, but the way in which the events are “emplotted”, i.e. configured into a structure whose coherence is predicated on such categories as “project and intention, motive and reason for action, circumstance, obstacle and occasion, agent and capacity to do something, interaction, adversary and helper, conflict and cooperation, amelioration and deterioration, success and failure, happiness and misfortune [...], the whole network of practical categories by means of which the semantics of action is distinguished from that of physical movement [...]”, as Paul Ricoeur writes (Ricoeur 1981: 19). The sequence of events presented by the text is thus not “necessary” and determined in the way of natural processes, but results from misinterpretations and decisions on the part of one of the characters – the Truffulas could have been saved, if the Once-ler hadn’t been such a mean, hardheaded curmudgeon. Thus the narrative locates the actual course of action within a horizon of possible, alternative stories, in the manner described by Wolfgang Iser (Iser 1976). If the story had merely presented us with a chain of material causes and effects - such as we assume to govern the “factual environment” - there would seem to be no need for the moral conversion which is dramatized at the end of The Lorax: it is the act of narration which turns the present situation from something merely given into something made, for which it becomes then possible to assume responsibility. Only because the story is couched in what the psychologist Jerome Bruner calls a “dual landscape”, because it presents the actual course of events from the perspective of possible alternative courses, can the moral injunction at the end of the text get any traction: the divide between the actual wasteland and the imagined lost garden opens up the space for ethical reflection. On the last pages of the book, there can be little doubt which of the two worlds we are to prefer – the last sentences seem to spell out the message of the Lorax as clearly as possible: “Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. / Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. / Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack”. It is this moment in the narrative at which the Once-ler himself grasps the meaning of his own tale and phrases it as an explicit moral imperative, in such a way that the understanding of the homodiegetic narrator coincides with that of the reader. Formally, this part is clearly marked off from the rest of the text: all the other panels display an abundance of details, whereas here there is little to distract the reader

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from the long arc of the falling seed, which connects the Once-ler’s hand in the upper right hand corner with the extended arm of the little boy on the lower left and is echoed by the white cloud in the background. The sky is now of the same light blue that once stretched above the Truffula forest, as if the ideal past were shedding its light on a better future. The falling seed illustrates that moment of conversion on which the tale as a whole has been converging – it visualizes a “passage from one moral order to another” such as constitutes the only satisfying ending of any historical narrative, according to Hayden White (White 1987: 23). Insofar as The Lorax is read as a didactic parable, the arc of the seed can be interpreted as a mise-en-abyme of the narrative’s own trajectory, whose hopeful message is supposed to fall on the fertile ground of a child’s soul: “ ‘SO.... / Catch!’ calls the Once-ler”. At the end of the story, the seed is suspended in mid-air. In order to catch it, to achieve the closure which the text withholds, the reader must reach beyond the text and take the leap from the fictional world of the text into her own lifeworld – i.e., she must interpret the story of her own world as if it were a version of The Lorax. Such a conversion is, I submit, the object of all texts that strive to “raise consciousness” or aim at any sort of political effect – and it bears repeating that this conversion is not something that can be traced back to “facts,” but an effect of the narrative’s structure. If we take another look at the way in which Buell advances the “Walden project” as a model case for environmentalist writing, it will become apparent that this is true of his own argument, as well. Buell commends the “Walden project” as being a record and model of a western sensibility working with and through the constraints of Eurocentric, androcentric, homocentric culture to arrive at an environmentally responsive vision. [...] To read the published text in light of antecedent drafts and journal material is to see Thoreau undergoing a partly planned, partly fortuitous, always somewhat conflicted odyssey of reorientation such as I myself have begun to undergo in recent years, [...] such as I am asking the reader to undergo by reconsidering the place of the environment in our conventions of reading and writing. (Buell 1995: 23)

Thus, Buell’s own project of a rehabilitation of “outer mimesis” is backed up by a story that tells of the liberation and emancipation of

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nature from its human oppressors, a story that begins with a “fall” and ends with the promise of recuperation, the return to an original home – a story which in its general outline is not at all unlike that of The Lorax. The legitimacy of this story rests not on the “facts” whose faithful representation Buell urges or on its stable reference to an extra-textual ecological reality, but on the way in which it calls up and reconfigures narrative patterns that are rooted in the cultural heritage of the community he addresses. As for the concept of “biotic egalitarianism” (Buell 1995: 303) – the idea that all creatures have an intrinsic value, that a creature as lowly as the Caddis fly “has just as much right as you and I do to be taken as the center of the universe around which everything else shall revolve” (Buell 1995: 107) – which forms the ethical base of Buell’s project, the briefest way to explicate its intimate relationship to the cultural narratives informing U.S. American thought may be by way of reference to another canonical author of environmentalism in the U.S., Edward Abbey. In his diaries, Abbey writes: “all beings are created equal, all are endowed by their Creator (whatever – God or Evolution or Nature) with certain inalienable rights. Among these are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness [...]” (Abbey 1994: 299). With characteristic brazenness, Abbey shows that his biocentric creed appropriates and refashions the basic tenets of American liberalism, in which a state of nature had always figured as the transcendental blueprint for a perfect society. According to the master narrative of American liberalism, the original freedom of the individual has fallen victim to artificial social arrangements; it is the historical mission of the American nation to restore these rights and to lead humankind back into the garden. Carolyn Merchant traces this narrative back to the biblical story of the Fall and identifies it as the ideological basis of the Euro-American conquest and settlement of the North American continent: The concept of recovery, as it emerged in the seventeenth century, not only meant a recovery from the Fall but also entailed restoration of health, reclamation of land, and recovery of property. The recovery plot is the long, slow process of returning humans to the Garden of Eden through labor in the earth. Three subplots organize its argument: Christian religion, modern science, and capitalism. The Genesis story of the fall provides the beginning; science and capitalism, the middle; recovery of the garden, the end. (Merchant 1995: 133)

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As Merchant has pointed out, the stories told by the proponents of environmentalism have not simply done away with this masternarrative, but have rather reconfigured it. For writers such as Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold or Gary Snyder, the garden is no longer located in a genuinely pre-historical past, but can be historically and geographically pinpointed: it is nature, and more specifically it is the American wilderness, untouched by the hands of men. The Fall is no longer seen as the result of Eve’s illicit desire to know good from evil, but as a consequence of man’s drive to master nature. Capitalism, formerly regarded as instrumental to the recovery of the garden, is now seen as the principal expression of this destructive drive. Thus the legitimacy of the project of restoring humankind’s original relation to nature – of re-inhabitation, re-cuperation, rehabilitation, and of so many other composites beginning with the prefix “re-” – does finally not rest on the possibility of accurately representing the “facts” of nature, but rather on a re-configuration of the narrative schemata by means of which a culture produces meaning and a shared identity. It is these narrative schemata which allow individuals to enter into a meaningful relation to their (social and natural) environment – a relation in which things don’t merely “happen” and in which the question “why” cannot be answered with recourse to chains of cause and effect, but requires that the motives and intentions of the actors be addressed. Narratives codify the norms of a community, they establish a “shared space of experience, expectation and action”, in the terms of cultural theorists Aleida and Jan Assmann (Assmann 1997: 16; my translation). Configuring a sequence of events into a narrative thus not only allows individuals to share information, but also to evaluate and sanction the actions related in the narrative. The exchange of narratives is the principal means for establishing the legitimacy of human actions, for staking claims and maintaining the basic consensus on which the cohesion of any community depends. Psychologist Jerome Bruner has demonstrated in his research that the need to tell stories is already a driving force in the acquisition of language during early childhood:

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Although it poses as a simple definition rather than as a story, the passage from Abbey’s diary quoted above is a perfect example of this legitimizing force of narrative: his appropriation of the “Declaration of Independence” signals that what may at first sight appear irrational or extremist – the claim that all species should enjoy the same basic rights - is actually a consequence of the fundamental beliefs of his culture. Liberating nature from human oppression is thus presented as a necessary next step in the sequence of emancipatory advances which supposedly constitute American history. Thus environmentalist texts, insofar as they reflect on ethical questions, do indeed imitate – however, what they imitate is not the physical environment, but human actions and the narrative forms that provide the framework within which these actions become meaningful. This is precisely the sense in which Paul Ricoeur explicates the concept of mimesis as developed by Aristotle in his Poetics. For Aristotle, Ricoeur maintains, mimesis designates “the act of composing, bringing together, and arranging the incidents into a unique and complete action” – in other words, the “activity of emplotment” (Ricoeur 1981: 16). This activity can be described as a form of imitation because humans “always already” understand their actions in terms of symbolic forms which are not generated, but merely transfigured in the act of narration. Narrative is in an important sense indifferent to “reality” - indeed, one might propose this as a minimal requirement for narrative: that it relates events which could also be told otherwise. To declare that we enter into an ethical relation with our environment only by also entering into narrative is therefore tantamount to declaring that the ethical stance we take towards the environment has very little to do with the facts of ecology. However, this is not the same as saying that the facts of ecology don’t matter: only that they cannot, of and by

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themselves, determine what we ought to make of them – a problem that ultimately leads back to the old philosophical problem of the naturalistic fallacy.7 To quote Hans Blumenberg: “the necessity to act is not a ‘real’ factor, it is based on the ‘role’ which is assigned to the actor or by which he tries to define himself” (Blumenberg 2001: 417; my translation). Biocentrists will probably balk at this view. By treating ethical value as something that is not a property of individuals (of whatever species), but as something that arises from the narrative embedding of events, it seems to deny the value they claim is inherent in nature. Since the ability to tell stories is confined to the human species, humans are once again set apart from the rest of nature. Both charges are correct. To the latter, one may reply that any discourse that posits ethical duties – including, of course, that of biocentrism - must assume such a divide between the human and the non-human. If humans were indeed nothing but an undistinguished part of nature, the moral imperative to behave accordingly would be unnecessary or even meaningless: in order to make sense, the admonition must be directed at autonomous agents which are capable of reflecting on their actions, able to define what their interests and needs are, and, most importantly, fallible – i.e., able to commit moral wrongs. The claim that nature has an intrinsic value which humans ought to acknowledge does not dispense its proponents from the necessity of arguing for it, for as long as this value stands in need of human proxies for its articulation. 4. An allegory of postmodern ecology If we take yet another look at Geisel’s Lorax, it will become apparent that there are some twists to the story which may be helpful in reflecting on these complications. If the book was designed to teach us a biocentric perspective on the environment, should we not expect that this lesson be uttered by the Lorax? Yet the Lorax has disappeared 7 It was G.E. Moore who coined this term, but the problem had already been described by David Hume in his Treatise on Human Nature and is usually summed up as “no ‘ought’ from an ‘is.’” For a more recent treatment see Lyotard and Thébaud: “a command [...] cannot find its justification in a denotative statement” (Lyotard & Thébaud 1985: 22).

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before the story even begins. All that he has left behind is a petroglyph with the word “UNLESS” on it. The character who interprets this unspecified imperative for the reader is none other than the same covetous homo faber whose anthropocentric hubris has precipitated the environmental disaster in the first place: it is the Once-ler who finally comes to tell the little boy that “trees are what everybody needs.” In his speech, of course, those “needs” still echo the “Thneeds” he was peddling only a few pages earlier, those other “Fine-Somethings-that-all-people-need.” Were we to follow his it advice, it seems, we might only be knitting a new kind of thneed. If the message of The Lorax is that humans bear responsibility for the integrity of the natural world, it also reminds the reader that this ethical duty can be assumed only from a position of alienation from nature. If nature makes a moral claim on humans in The Lorax, this claim is as unspecified as the stone circle is empty at the beginning of the story. The position of the Lorax, of the authentic spokesperson for nature’s intrinsic value, can only be reconstructed, belatedly, from the position of the Once-ler. In the last panel, of course, the stone circle is occupied by the little boy, but the text gives an iconographic twist to this ending which renders it patently ambiguous: while all the other panels show the little boy’s face, here we get to see only his arms and hands. Thus the text depicts him - precisely at that moment where it dramatizes its own political or ethical effect - as a successor to the Old Once-ler, blinded by the needs in whose name he acts. From this perspective, The Lorax appears less like a straightforward plea to respect the integrity of nature and the rights of nonhuman species and more like an allegory of those paradoxes into which any attempt to think beyond the boundaries of anthropocentrism invariably entangles itself. Biocentrism posits an ethical duty to acknowledge the intrinsic value of nature prior to and apart from any human valuing; however, when it comes to arguing for this intrinsic value, it cannot but speak the language of human values – it must tell a story. Thus the notion of a consistently biocentric perspective is condemned to either remain ineffective or to turn, at the moment of becoming operative, into a position that is easily recognizable as another version of established anthropocentric discourses: “I speak for the trees” becomes “trees are what everyone needs.”

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The stories we tell about the human interaction with the natural environment, no matter how earnestly they aspire to “speak for the trees,” will never be like the speech of the Lorax. They do not spring from the knowledge of what nature is in and of itself, but rather from a negative form of knowledge that comes to know nature only by its absence, through those moments of withdrawal when nature refuses to play along with our designs. Our understanding of ecology – like the understanding of the Once-ler and like the Lorax himself, who has sprung from the first wound which the Once-ler inflicted on the Truffula forest - is largely a direct result of our destructive interactions with the environment. Like the “UNLESS” which the Lorax has left behind, this negative knowledge by its very lack of closure compels us to complete the sentence of which it can only be the starting point. However, such a completion will have to speak the language of the Once-ler, and not only because all attempts to articulate nature’s intrinsic value are circumscribed by the cultural and historical position of the speaker: many of today’s ecological problems would not even be recognizable were it not for modern technologies of biosurveillance. In the words of Peter Strasser: “On a highly advanced level of complexity, the causes (our techno-scientific problems) are prestructured by the techno-scientific complex (which was developed to cope with them) in such a manner that both fit each other like hand in glove.” (Strasser 1989: 165; my translation). In order to understand which measures must be taken in order to keep natural systems in a balance which would allow human societies to subsist, technologies are necessary which will inevitably lead to a further erosion of nature’s normativity, to its further “de-naturalization” under the perspective of its practical availability for human manipulation. In such moments when the soil washes away and bodies become sick, we might say that nature itself forces us to realize that we are a part of it; however, it doesn’t tell us what we are to make of that realization. Ultimately, any plea for the integrity of nature must lead up to the irredeemably anthropocentric act of redefining our needs as human beings – something that nature will not do for us, as Steven Connor has pointed out: “Postmodern ecology requires the rather paradoxical feat of inventing our modes of inherence in the world, determining the nature of our determination by the natural, bringing about the conditions of our givenness” (Connor 1996: 12).

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Bibliography Abbey, Edward. 1994. Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989, (ed. David Peterson) Boston and New York: Little Brown. Assmann, Jan. 1997. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. München: C.H. Beck. Benton, Ted. 1993. Natural Relations. London: Verso. Blumenberg, Hans. 2001. Ästhetische und metaphorologische Schriften. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Bruner, Jerome. 1990. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Buell, Lawrence. 1995. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. —. 1999. ‘The Ecocritical Insurgency’ in New Literary History (30): 699-712. Carson, Rachel. 1962. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Connor, Steven. 1996. ‘After Cultural Value: Ecology, Ethics, Aesthetics’ in Hoffmann, Gerhard and Alfred Hornung (eds) Ethics and Aesthetics. The Moral Turn of Postmodernism. Heidelberg: Winter: 7-28. Devall, Bill. 1990. ‘Deep Ecology and Radical Environmentalism’ in Dunlap, Riley E. and Angela Mertig (eds) American Environmentalism. The U.S. Environmental Movement, 1970-1990. Philadelphia, Washington and London: Taylor &Francis: 51-62. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1957. ‘Nature’ in Whicher, Stephen E. (ed.) Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin: 21-56. Gombrich, E.H. 1969. Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Iser, Wolfgang. 1976. Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Lyotard, Jean-Francois and Jean-Loup Thébaud. 1985. Just Gaming (tr. Wlad Godzich) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Merchant, Carolyn. 1995. ‘Reinventing Eden: Western Culture as a Recovery Narrative’ in Cronon, William (ed.) Uncommon Ground. London and New York, NY: Norton: 132-59. Morgan, Judith and Neil Morgan. 1995. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel: A Biography. New York: Random House. Mumford, Lewis. 1967. The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt & Brace. Phillipps, Dana. 1999. ‘Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology’ in New Literary History (30): 577-602. Ricoeur, Paul. 1981. ‘Mimesis and Representation’ in Annals of Scholarship. Metastudies of the Humanities and Social Sciences (2): 15-32.

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Snyder, Gary. 1977. The Old Ways. San Francisco: City Lights. Strasser, Peter. 1989. Philosophie der Wirklichkeitssuche. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Thiele, Leslie. 1999. Environmentalism for a New Millennium: The Challenge of Coevolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Afterglow: Chernobyl and the everyday Ursula K. Heise Abstract: This essay examines the literary representation of risk scenarios in two German novels written in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986. Christa Wolf’s Störfall: Nachrichten eines Tages (1987) and Gabriele Wohmann’s Der Flötenton (1987) both portray the tenuous relationship between a moment of environmental crisis and the routines of ordinary people’s everyday lives. This relationship can be described by drawing on Ulrich Beck’s characterization of the “second-hand non-experience” that informs the logic of everyday life in what he calls the “risk society” and John Tomlinson’s notion of “deterritorialization,” the detachment of culture from place. Wolf and Wohmann both portray how the Chernobyl crisis alters the everyday perceptions and pursuits of their characters, how its transnational character changes their experience of place, and how this change occurs in a context in which even the most intimate social relations are already lived in a mediated, long-distance mode. While Wolf attempts, unsuccessfully, to salvage a sense of the everyday and the domestic as a refuge from the forces of transnational science and technology, Wohmann emphasizes the inevitable integration of risk into everyday routines. Both authors, as they outline the detrimental effects of environmental risk scenarios on the experience of place, also foreground the way in which deterritorialization enables characters to understand how their own lives are shaped by global ecological and technological connectedness. This positive aspect of deterritorialization challenges conventional environmentalist view of the urgency of a return to a “sense of place.”

1. Global Chernobyl “Then the third angel sounded and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water because it was bitter.” This prediction from the Apocalypse of St. John (8: 10-1) took on a surprising new meaning in the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, when reactor 4 of the nuclear power plant at

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Chernobyl exploded and sent a plume of radioactive dust into the air. Called “Chernobyl” in Ukrainian, the place name is identical to the word for “wormwood,” a particular kind of plant, in this language; in the aftermath of the accident, this coincidence was frequently referred to as a means of highlighting what many in the Soviet Union and around the world perceived as nothing less than an apocalyptic day of reckoning for modern technology. Scientists and writers alike seized on allusions to the “star Chernobyl” so as to impress upon their audiences the magnitude of a disaster most of whose most serious consequences remained eerily invisible to the senses. The millennial reference also helped to counteract the initial delays, obfuscations and distortions in information provided by the Gorbachev government, whose newly declared policy of glasnost here egregiously failed one of its first serious tests. The radioactive cloud that arose from the explosion was initially driven northwest by prevailing winds to Latvia, Lithuania and Scandinavia. On subsequent days, wind currents carried the radioactivity first west to Poland, Austria, parts of Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France, then northwest to the rest of Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain, and later northeast into Russia. Local weather conditions crucially affected the amount of contamination in different places, since rain helped to bring down the radioactive dust to ground level. Altogether, more than twenty countries and 400 million people were subject to fall-out from Chernobyl, and some of the radiation was measurable as far away as the United States.1 Chernobyl therefore turned into a truly transnational risk scenario. Not only the radioactive fall-out criss-crossed national borders, however, but also information flows about the event. News about the accident emerged not in the Soviet Union but in Sweden, where authorities measured elevated radiation levels on April 28 and initiated inquiries about its origin. In response, the Gorbachev 1

For a detailed account of the events see Grigori Medvedev’s The Truth about Chernobyl (originally published in Russian in 1989), Gale and Hauser’s Final Warning: The Legacy of Chernobyl (1988) and the PBS documentary Back to Chernobyl (1989), as well as two more technical accounts, R.F. Mould’s Chernobyl Record: The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe (2000) and George G. Vargo’s The Chernobyl Accident: A Comprehensive Risk Assessment (2000).

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administration informed foreign governments before its own population, parts of which therefore learned about the accident from foreign sources. During the crisis, East and West Europeans relied on media newscasts as their main source of information about the accident as well as of instructions on how to avoid exposure to radiation. These instructions varied from country to country, with some governments recommending consumption of iodine to prevent absorption of radioactive iodine into the thyroid glands, some warning against outdoor activities, others advising against the consumption of fresh foods such as milk and vegetables, and yet others ordering the destruction of certain harvests such as lettuce and cabbage. In the weeks that followed, information about the relaxation or termination of such safety measures also varied considerably. Inevitably, this variation generated a great deal of uncertainty among the affected populations as to the magnitude of the danger and the appropriate responses. Chernobyl, therefore, was not only an industrial accident with large-scale regional ramifications but also a paradigmatic example of how risk scenarios are socio-culturally mediated, magnified or minimized.2 Casting nuclear accident as a latter-day apocalypse through the play on “wormwood” was one such form of mediation. A different one is suggested in German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s book Risikogesellschaft [Risk Society], which he completed just around the time of the Chernobyl disaster. The book’s central thesis that technoecological risk has become so important a feature of world society that it will lead to the emergence of entirely new social structures and a new form of modernity, the so-called “risk society,” was widely and controversially debated in Europe and the US in the 1980s and 90s. Whether one agrees with Beck’s basic claim or not, his observations on regional and planetary risk scenarios, on the difficulty of living with risks that are imperceptible to the senses, and on the mediation of risks through government institutions, corporations, news media and 2

The phrase most commonly used in risk theory is “social amplification of risk,” but this terminology assumes that media and other institutions usually represent risks as larger than they are by scientific standards. See Kasperson et al., “The Social Amplification of Risk”; Kasperson, “Progress”; and Flynn, Slovic and Kunreuther, Risk, Media and Stigma. In the case of Chernobyl, social institutions variously amplified or minimized certain dimensions of the risk scenario.

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cultural attitudes brought the intricacies of risk analysis and theory to public awareness, and linked them in interesting ways to theories of modernization and globalization. The Chernobyl accident, which occurred when the book was already finished, seemed like an eerily perfect instantiation of the risk society. For the purposes of cultural study, one of the most interesting facets of Beck’s analysis is his claim that some quintessentially modern risk scenarios, unlike those of earlier ages, challenge conventional modes of perception and experience through their “mediatedness” or “second-handness.” Most individuals cannot identify and analyze them on their own, including even many scientists and engineers: given the complexity and specificity of contemporary technological hazards, only highly specialized experts can examine them, while the majority of scientists are as non-expert as lay persons. In Beck’s view, the fact that knowledge about risks comes in such highly mediated form to the overwhelming majority of individuals leads gradually to a transformation in the logic that structures everyday life: In order to perceive risks as risks and to make them a reference point for one’s own thought and action, one has to believe in fundamentally invisible causal connections between conditions that are often substantively, temporally and geographically far removed from each other, as well as in more or less speculative projections . . . But that means: the invisible, more than that: that which as a matter of principle cannot be perceived, that which is only theoretically connected and calculated becomes . . . an unproblematic component of personal thought, perception, experience. The “experiential logic” of everyday thought is, so to speak, turned upside down. One no longer only induces general judgments from one’s own experiences, but instead general knowledge that is not based on any experience becomes the determining centre of one’s own. Chemical formulae and reactions, invisible toxins, biological circuits and causal chains must dominate vision and thought to lead to active fighting against risks. In this sense, risk awareness is not based on “second-hand experience,” but on “second-hand nonexperience.” Even more pointedly: Ultimately no one can know of risks if knowing means having consciously experienced them. (Beck 1986: 96; original emphasis)3

As opposed to, say, epidemics of contagious diseases, with which human societies have been familiar for millennia, modernization 3

All translations from Beck are mine.

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creates risk scenarios with no known precedents in Beck’s analysis. No one can forecast with certainty, for example, what the cumulative health effects might be of dozens of different toxic substances in our daily surroundings, each one under the level officially considered dangerous, but never assessed in combination; neither is it easy, even for experts, to estimate the consequences of long-term exposure to the levels of radiation that persisted in the Chernobyl area for years after the accident. Yet all of us, Beck points out, have come to live with a daily awareness and indeed expectation that these kinds of risks form part of our ordinary environment. This analysis raises a range of interesting questions for literary and cultural study. How are ordinary forms of thought and language transformed by such invisible and mediated risk situations? How does risk transform the experience of body and place? How is daily risk awareness of the kind Beck describes translated into cultural practices and aesthetic forms? In particular, the question of how an awareness of environmental deterioration and technological risk can become part of everyday life without leading to apocalyptic despair, reluctant resignation to a new state of normalcy or bored indifference has become an urgent issue for environmentalists and ecocritics. In his aptly named book From Apocalypse to Way of Life, Frederick Buell has examined the cultural shift from the millennial expectation of future crises that prevailed in environmentalist thought and writing in the 1960s and 70s, to the integration of crisis and risk into the experience of the present from the 1980s onward. People no longer fear environmental disasters in the future so much as they “dwell in crisis,” as Buell puts it: that is, they live with an awareness that certain limits in the exploitation of nature have already been exceeded, that past warnings were not heeded, and that slowly evolving risk scenarios surround them on a daily basis. Buell is clearly ambivalent about this shift. On one hand, he recognizes that a steady drumbeat of “gloom-and-doom” rhetoric is liable to discourage and alienate individuals more than it incites them to action; on the other, he is obviously worried that too much normalization of crisis might lead to an implicit acquiescence to the environmental status quo. Instead of such a “domestication within crisis” (Buell 2003: 205), he calls for “a way of dwelling actively within rather than accommodating oneself to environmental crisis”

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(206). What exactly this means in practical terms is not always clear in his account, and he himself notes that precisely the novels that describe the contemporary “dwelling in crisis” without unduly apocalyptic or utopian overtones offer no way out of crisis (322). The question, then, of how to combine the awareness of environmental crisis with everyday life remains unsettled, and disasters at the scale of the Chernobyl melt-down tend to raise it with renewed force. Literary texts that address the Chernobyl crisis take up this question in various ways. Many of them focus primarily on the fate of local residents and rescue workers who were directly exposed to radiation or evacuated from their homes in the intermediate aftermath of the explosion. In these texts, from folk ballads and poems to plays such as Vladimir Gubaryev’s Sarcophagus: A Tragedy (1987) and novels such as Russian émigré Julia Voznesenskaya’s The Star Chernobyl (1987), American science fiction writer Frederik Pohl’s Chernobyl (1987) and Ukrainian American novelist Irene Zabytko’s The Sky Unwashed (2000), the emphasis lies on the way in which catastrophe upsets and undermines everyday life and the assumptions and expectations that shape it.4 But the literary texts that raise more interesting structural and linguistic issues in the representation of crisis and routine are those that focus on individuals who experience the crisis from far away in a highly mediated way, struggle to understand its consequences and translate their understanding into language and narrative form. East German novelist Christa Wolf’s Störfall: Nachrichten eines Tages [Accident: A Day’s News] and West German author Gabriele Wohmann’s Der Flötenton [Sound of the Flute], both published in 1987, raise the question of how individuals can and should live in a globalized environment where risks transcend national borders and are not readily accessible to our physical senses, linguistic conventions or social institutions. Because such regional and global risk scenarios challenge conventional language as well as commonsense reasoning, addressing this question involves narrative strategy as much as content.

4 Surveys and analyses of these texts can be found in Kononenko, “Duma Pro Chornobyl’,” Onyshkevych, “Echoes of Chornobyl” and Weiss, “From Hiroshima to Chernobyl.” Holger Rudloff’s “Literatur nach Tschernobyl” reviews some of the German literature on the subject, but does not mention Gabriele Wohmann’s work.

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In Wolf’s and Wohmann’s novels, the protagonists are forced to reflect on the ways in which they inhabit their local places and daily routines at a moment when both are under threat from forces that originated far away, outside the reach of any immediate action or political engagement they could undertake to counter its effects. While Wolf describes one day in which her main character undergoes the shock of first learning about the Chernobyl disaster, Wohmann focuses on its longer-term impact over the months that follow in the lives of various characters, as consciousness of the accident increasingly becomes part of their experiential background. In spite of their considerable differences in perspective, scope, and style, though, three crucial concerns inform both novels. First and most centrally, both of them investigate how the rhythms and routines of daily life are affected by a transnational environmental crisis, and how it can and should be lived in the aftermath. Second, both novels foreground the way in which a regional risk scenario such as Chernobyl transforms the individual’s relationship to the local and “deterritorializes” the experience of place, in the sense that it detaches cultural practices from the local as their most important shaping framework.5 Third, both texts portray the characters’ increasingly deterritorialized relationship to the local in a context of social and emotional relationships that are already geographically removed and technologically mediated in much the same way the crisis itself is; in fact, these relationships ultimately function as a metaphor for the experience of 5

Like other, closely related concepts, the term “deterritorialization” has been used across a variety of studies, from the globalization theories of Arjun Appadurai and Mike Featherstone to the geographical studies of David Harvey and Doreen Massey and the media analyses of Morley and Robbins. I use it here in the sense in which sociologists such as Néstor García Canclini and John Tomlinson have defined it: the detachment of social and cultural practices from their anchoring in and determination by place. Factors such as increased mobility, exposure to media, and international commerce, production and consumption generate an ever-expanding system of connectivity between the ordinary lives of populations in various regions of the globe that “lifts off” their practices from their local contexts – in some cases to the benefit of particular community, and in others to their disadvantage. In literary and cultural studies, deterritorialization is perhaps most closely associated with the work of Deleuze and Guattari, where it assumes a somewhat broader and more diffuse meaning than in García Canclini and Tomlinson. Tomlinson surveys the different uses of the term in Chapter 5 of Globalization and Culture (1999).

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risk in both novels. The relationship between environmental crisis and daily routine in an increasingly globalized world, therefore, requires a reformulation of basic environmentalist and ecocritical assumptions about the urgency of establishing a “sense of place”: in Wolf’s and Wohmann’s novels, such a sense of place cannot be thought outside of a sense of transnational connectedness. 2. Crisis: Christa Wolf’s Störfall Wolf’s novel focuses on the day when news about the Chernobyl disaster was first disseminated by the media (most likely April 28, 1986), and on the perspective of a single character. The first-person narrator, an ageing writer living in a village in what was then the GDR province of Mecklenburg, spends the day in ordinary activities: preparing meals, gardening, talking to neighbors, riding her bike, making phone calls, reading a book, listening to the radio and watching TV. But these unremarkable pursuits contrast sharply with the invisible yet life-threatening events that occupy the narrator’s thoughts from morning until night. Her brother is undergoing brain surgery for a dangerous tumor that day, and for many hours she anxiously imagines the various steps of the operation and their possible consequences, until a phone call from her sister-in-law informs her of its successful outcome. During her wait, she follows the unfolding news about Chernobyl with increasing unease and outrage, reacting to the warnings and instructions on how to avoid radiation exposure with a mix of worry about its impact on her village and indignation about her neighbours’ complacency. Throughout the day, she questions in her mind what the cultural and perhaps even evolutionary origins might be of the fascination with technology and the disdain for nature and human life that leads up to disasters such as Chernobyl. Literary critics have frequently commented on the novel’s simultaneous engagement with nuclear energy and complex surgery (Brandes 1989: 107; Eysel 1992: 293; Hebel 1989: 43; Kaufmann 1989: 256; Magenau 2002: 346; Rey 1989: 375; Weiss 1990: 102).6 6

In contrast, many scientists took Wolf to task for her portrayal of nuclear technology. The debate was originally published in the scientific magazine spectrum,

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At first sight, this bifurcation of the plot as a juxtaposition of destructive and creative, pathogenic and therapeutic technologies seems like a plausible enough reading, given that the plot contrasts an industrial accident that might increase the incidence of cancer with a medical procedure designed to remove life-threatening tumours. Yet I would argue that such a straightforward dichotomy does as little justice to the actual unfolding of the plot in Störfall as the assumption that it is a simple indictment of nuclear technology. For much of the day, the narrator worries about both the spread of radiation and the ongoing surgery and weighs the dangers of both. She seeks to protect herself from fall-out, but is also concerned that her brother’s tumour might not be removed entirely, that the operation might deprive him of vision or smell, that damage to some parts of his brain might induce severe personality changes or, worse, that injury to the pituitary gland might make him lose his mental and motor faculties on a permanent basis. In other words, for a good part of the day, the narrator perceives serious dangers in both scenarios. Much of the novel’s plot, therefore, revolves not so much around the contrast between good and bad technologies as the comparison between different kinds of risk. The risks that come with brain surgery are well known to the narrator, her brother and her sister-in-law; they have discussed them with the surgeons and accept them knowingly in the expectation that the probability of success is higher than that of failure. As a highly individualized risk, surgery will not affect the health of anyone but the brother. By contrast, news about the nuclear melt-down at Chernobyl comes to the narrator as a completely unanticipated shock: the realization that her small village is contaminated by an event that happened without her knowledge hundreds of miles away upsets her daily routines and turns her perceptions of nature and of her own body upside down. For all its high-technological trappings, brain surgery appears to her as a much more conventional and more comprehensible kind of risk than largescale radioactive pollution: it is local, visible, specific, anticipated, voluntary and focused on an individual whom one can contact and feel sympathy for. Whom to empathize with in the case of Chernobyl? and later collected in a book entitled Verblendung: Disput über einen Störfall (Blinding: Dispute about an Accident), first published in 1991.

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Perhaps the 31 firefighters who died from direct exposure to radiation, or the thousands of evacuees whose plight is broadcast via the media; but in a broader sense, the narrator and her neighbours might be counted among the victims also. Much of the novel, then, contrasts a local and voluntarily incurred risk whose consequences can be predicted with a regional, collective, imperceptible and involuntarily imposed one whose impact cannot be fully estimated in advance. The reason why brain surgery appears as a more benign technology than nuclear energy in Störfall, therefore, is not only that it is designed to cure disease or that it ends successfully – it might not have. Rather, it seems acceptable mainly because the narrator’s cultural context provides her with concepts, categories and emotions that allow her to cope with its risks, while similar cultural templates are not available for the public, large-scale and long-distance risks associated with nuclear disaster. Even though she has no specialized medical training, the narrator reflects at length on the structure of the human brain, on material details of the operation (such as what saws might be used to open up a skull), on possible mishaps and their consequences, and on her brother’s sensations and perceptions after the surgery. By contrast, a risk such as Chernobyl forces average citizens to acquire an entirely new vocabulary: “So the mothers sit down by the radio and attempt to learn the new words. Becquerel. . . . Half-life is what the mothers learn today. Iodine 131. Cesium” (27/35), she reflects at one moment.7 Somewhat later she comments: “The physicists continue talking to us in their incomprehensible language. What are ‘fifteen millirems per hour’?” (41/49). While the narrator has no difficulty envisioning details of her brother’s surgery and recovery, she lacks even the most basic parameters for understanding nuclear risk. The complexity of the nuclear risk scenario arises not only from unfamiliar scientific concepts, however, but also from the unexpected double meanings and ironies it creates for non-scientific discourse, whether it be ordinary, lyrical or religious language. A word such as “radiation,” for example, acquires an odd ambiguity as it refers both to the radioactivity that might cause cancer and the procedure used to 7

Parenthetical page references to Störfall list first the page number in Schwarzbauer and Takvorian’s English translation Accident: A Day’s News (1989) and second the page number in the 2001 German edition.

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fight cancer. The narrator notes this uncomfortable polysemy repeatedly, commenting at one point: “The radiant sky. Now one can’t think that anymore, either. We can do without radiation treatment in view of the histological findings, your doctor will tell you” (21-2/30). At another moment, she similarly combines a poetic reference to nature with nuclear technology when she alludes to a Brecht poem: “O heavens’ radiant azure. According to what laws and how quickly does radioactivity spread, at best and at worst?” (9/18; original emphasis). In both cases, what was originally said in praise of nature assumes a sinister connotation in the context of nuclear disaster, and leads the narrator to doubt that nature poetry has any more relevance to the present: “Marvellous Nature Shining on Me! Perhaps the problem of what to do with the libraries full of nature poems is not the most urgent. But it is a problem all the same, I thought” (37/44-45; original emphasis). A similar series of puns, associations and reflections accompanies the frequent appearances of the word “cloud” [Wolke], which in the context of the novel refers above all to the plume of radioactivity moving westward from Chernobyl. “Calling it ‘cloud’ is merely an indication of our inability to keep pace linguistically with the progress of science,” the narrator comments at one point (27/36). She wistfully thinks back to the time of her grandmother when a cloud referred to something made up of evaporated water, and responds with sarcasm when a voice on the radio reads out the biblical passage about Christ ascending to the heavens on a cloud. The use of clouds as a metaphor for whiteness and purity in poetry leads her to remark: But now . . . it should be interesting to see which poet would be the first to dare sing the praises of a white cloud. An invisible cloud of a completely different substance had seized the attention of our feelings – completely different feelings. And, I thought once again with that dark, malicious glee, it has knocked the white cloud of poetry into the archives. (55/61)8

8

Ute Brandes analyzes Wolf’s puns on “Wolke” by arguing that “‘Wolke’ as an ideal concept is the almost dreamlike symbol of ‘die weiße Wolke der Poesie,’ derived from Brecht’s ‘Erinnerung an Marie A.’ The cloud here represents the utopian, ethereal realm of pure poetry which floats in a sphere so far removed from this day’s reality that it must now be relegated to the archives of sentimentality” (1989: 108). Cf. also Saalmann 1992: 242-43.

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The narrator’s insistence on the obsolescence of nature poetry illustrates the more general collision between the conventions of lyrical language and the new meanings that surge up in the age of Chernobyl. But beyond the failure of conventional poetic language, Störfall highlights the shortfall of ordinary discourse and ultimately of ordinary modes of experience. Critics of the novel have frequently pointed out that the narrator (and, by extension, Wolf herself) pits the realm of the domestic, the pastoral and the everyday against the domain of science, technology and specialized knowledge (Brandes 1989: 111; Magenau 2002: 374; Nalewski 1989: 284-85; West 1997: 260). Chernobyl is referred to as DIE NACHRICHT [THE NEWS] in capital letters on one of the first pages, signaling even typographically its disruption of the ordinary.9 As an alternative and a possible mode of resistance to the forces that created this threat, according to this reading, the novel dwells extensively on details of the narrator’s cooking, cleaning and gardening – so much so that some of its first reviewers declared the novel boring or trivial, wondering why nothing more momentous would have occurred to Wolf on the occasion.10 But what neither the critics who indict Wolf’s “triviality” nor those who defend it mention is that the narrator herself consistently puts in question any attempt to counter extraordinary risk by means of ordinary routines; more than once, she herself concedes that the realm of everyday life cannot be separated from that of science and technology, even in the rural setting of a Mecklenburg village. Radioactive contamination is the most obvious indicator that the natural and the domestic can no longer be decoupled from the technological and transnational. Fresh, home-grown food, for example, is now a threat to both children and adults: even as the narrator prepares the soil in her garden for the planting of lettuce, 9 As several critics have noted, it is also one of Wolf’s many references to her own earlier work. In her novel Der geteilte Himmel [The Divided Sky] (1963), the capitalized NEWS was that of Yuri Gagarin as the first human in outer space, presented as a symbol of utopian hope for the association of socialism and technological progress. By using the same device in reference to Chernobyl, Wolf signals the end of this hope (Brandes 1989: 107; Fox 1990: 472; Magenau 2002: 344; Nalewski 1989: 274; Winnard 1987: 72). 10 Cf. Brandes’ discussion of these reviews (1989: 111).

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spinach and watercress, and even as she delights in the sprouting of her zucchini seedlings, she is also aware that such home-grown vegetables are no longer considered safe for consumption due to the fall-out (20/28-9). Indeed, even contact with the soil is a source of risk, as the narrator discovers when a radio broadcast warns that garden chores, if unavoidable, should only be carried out with rubber gloves. She resists at first and continues to pull up weeds with her bare hands, uttering a “manic clarion call of triumph” (25/33). But on the very next page, we learn that she has donned rubber gloves after all – though perhaps in a last movement of defiance, she leaves it open whether this change of mind is due to the nettles she is now working on, or because she does in the end accept the wisdom of the radio warning. In either case, this warning makes it clear that simple country-life, an active engagement with nature and loving care of the domestic realm offer no refuge from danger, but have themselves become a source of risk. As she begins to understand this new “riskscape”11, it occurs to the narrator that what still separates her from those who design lifethreatening technologies is the concern and care for nature: All of a sudden I found myself wondering whether the perpetrators of those kinds of technology whose hellish danger is part and parcel of their very essence have ever in their lives put into the soil kernels so minute that they stick to the fingertips, later to see them sprout and to watch plants’ growth for weeks, for months. (20-1/29).

But she herself realizes at once that such a simple distinction does not hold up to scrutiny: I immediately recognized my fallacy, since everybody has heard or read that hardworking scientists and technicians are just the ones who frequently seek relaxation through gardening. Or does this thesis apply only to the older ones; is it outdated with regard to the younger generation, those who now have the final say? I resolved to make a list of those activities and pleasures which, more than likely, are foreign to those men of science and technology. To what end? In all honesty: I don’t know. (21/29)

11

The term is Susan Cutter’s, as quoted in Deitering (1996: 200).

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It is hard to imagine a more explicit concession that the attempt to separate out a realm of the ordinary uncontaminated by science and technology is a dead-end from the start. Nevertheless, in her search for alternatives, the narrator returns to this idea a few pages later and draws up [a] list of the activities which these men of science and technology presumably do not pursue or which, if forced upon them, they would consider a waste of time: Changing a baby’s diapers. Cooking, shopping with a child on one’s arm or in the baby carriage. Doing the laundry, hanging it up to dry, taking it down, folding it, ironing it, darning it. Sweeping the floor, mopping it, polishing it, vacuuming it. Dusting. Sewing. Knitting. Crocheting. Embroidering. Doing the dishes. Doing the dishes. Doing the dishes. Taking care of a sick child. Thinking up stories to tell. Singing songs. And how many of these activities do I myself consider a waste of time? (31/39)

This time, the thrust of the final concession is not so much that men of science might indeed engage in the stereotypically feminine activities associated with home, garden and children, but that the woman writer herself may be as removed from this foundation in her own sphere of art as those she criticizes are in their domain of science. Effectively, this implies that distance from the ordinary is not always destructive, just as immersion in it is not always necessarily benign.12 Even more forcefully, the narrator’s idea that not only scientists but ordinary citizens carry a burden of “co-responsibility” [Mitverantwortung] for the Chernobyl disaster short-circuits any attempt to portray everyday pursuits as an alternative to deadly technologies. Her frequent references to the Nazi period and World War II serve above all to highlight this co-responsibility of common people in collective disasters: she remembers, for example, that a family had stopped near her house a week earlier and discussed with outrage how the woman’s father had been arrested during World War 12

Karin Eysel has commented on this list by arguing that “Gender roles – namely the traditional assignment of daily concerns to women and scientific ones to men – have resulted in a split between everyday practices and science; this split lies at the heart of Wolf’s critique” (1992: 290). Andrew Winnard similarly considers this list as evidence of a clear split between women and men, the domestic and the scientific in the novel (1987: 79). Cf. also West 1997: 260. None of them mentions that the immediately following reference to the narrator’s own disregard for such everyday concerns calls precisely this split in question.

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II even though he was “only” a driver with the Gestapo. The relevance of this incident for Chernobyl emerges when the narrator observes with amazement the way in which everything fits together with a sleepwalker’s precision: the desire of most people for a comfortable life, their tendency to believe the speakers on raised platforms and the men in white coats; the addiction to harmony and the fear of contradiction of the many seem to correspond to the arrogance and hunger for power, the dedication to profit, unscrupulous inquisitiveness, and selfinfatuation of the few. (17/26)

If the desire for a comfortable and undisturbed life is one of the factors that contributes to the emergence of large-scale technological risk scenarios (cf. Rechtien 1992-93: 236-39), it is hard to see how the comforts of the domestic and the everyday could at the same time function as an alternative to it. Admittedly, this may simply be one of the conceptual weaknesses of a novel that often seems to want to have it both ways. But if so, the weakness is systematic: every time the narrator evokes the local and the domestic as an alternative to transnational technologies and risk scenarios, she ends up conceding that it can in fact no longer be thought apart from such patterns of global technological and ecological connectedness. If some passages from Störfall might remind one of Michel de Certeau’s analysis of everyday life as a reservoir of strategies for resisting hegemony, Wolf ultimately does not seem to share de Certeau’s confidence that such strategies matter much in a world of transnational industry and technology. The principal means by which the materialities of local, everyday life are embedded in larger networks of politics, economy, technology and ecology in Störfall is the mass media. Without such information and communication technologies, the villagers would not even know that anything unusual had occurred. The narrator herself listens to a small Sanyo transistor radio for much of the day13 and switches to TV coverage of the disaster toward evening, which triggers some of her most direct political criticism. Not only radio and TV, but also the 13 Andrew Winnard has pointed out that the choice of a Japanese radio to convey the news of nuclear disaster may well be intended as a reminder of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a hypothesis that is supported by other allusions to Hiroshima and Japan in the text (1987: 76-7).

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government and scientific establishment of the GDR who control the broadcasts are attacked for their hypocrisy, false reassurances and censorship of important information. As she flips through various TV channels, the narrator describes how formulaic and predictable the (mostly male) establishment’s justifications of the accident soon become – she herself quickly learns to predict the answers to journalists’ questions. On one occasion, however, she turns out to be wrong: when one of the TV reporters asks an expert whether error-free safety predictions can be made for a very advanced area of technology, the moderator and I were forced to learn, to our painful surprise, that this guy – despite his general willingness to be accommodating – was not about to be pinned down to this statement. Well, we heard him say, there was no such thing as an absolutely faultless prognosis in such a young branch of technology. As always with new technological developments, one would have to take certain risks into account until one fully mastered this technology as well. (102-3/106)

This statement brings the narrator’s resistance to its climax: I knew very well that they knew it. Only, I had not expected that they would also say it – be it only this one time. The text for a letter went through my mind in which I – imploringly, how else – was to communicate to someone that the risk of nuclear technology was not comparable to [almost] any other risk and that one absolutely had to renounce this technology if there was even the slightest element of uncertainty. I could not think of a real address for the letter in my mind, so I swore out loud and switched channels. (103/106-7)

The fundamental disagreement between expert and non-expert over what constitutes socially acceptable risk is as remarkable in this scene as the collision of newer and older communication media. While the expert conveys his opinion from an unnamed location via a television screen, the narrator can only imagine her resistance in the form of the older written medium of the letter. But her need for a precise location to which it can be addressed quite literally finds no place in a society of mass media and risks that have moved beyond such geographical specificity. The conflict between expert and lay assessments of risk is here inextricably entangled with communication technologies that structure place in very different ways: one of the most important problems the Chernobyl accident raises is how it is possible to inhabit the local in a context of transnational connectedness.

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But the claim that Chernobyl can be compared “to almost no other risk” also raises intriguing questions about Wolf’s own text, which approaches the crisis precisely by way of repeated comparisons with the World War II era and the colonialism of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The most important comparison, as discussed earlier, is the one between a distant and imperceptible risk and a local and visible one. But to phrase it in this way understates the complexities of the “local” in Störfall. In fact, neither the narrator’s brother nor the rest of her family – her daughters and grandchildren – live geographically close to her. While the narrative simulates a direct address to the brother, who is doubly absent both by virtue of his geographical distance and of his unconsciousness during most of the day, the narrator speaks to her sister-in-law, her daughters, and a friend in London over the phone no fewer than eight times over the course of the day. Her expectation that she will receive news about the nuclear accident every time she turns on the radio or television finds an exact parallel in her expectation that she will hear about the outcome of the surgery every time the phone rings. Both of the novel’s main events, therefore, are in different ways detached from place: radioactivity is everywhere, the surgery could be anywhere (its location is never specified). This detachment is crucial for understanding how the novel configures the relationship between the routines of the everyday and the moment of crisis, as well as between the local and the transnational realms. While the novel draws on some of the standard motifs of backyard pastoral in portraying the narrator’s attachment to her house and garden, it stops short of associating this scenario with family life and emotional intimacy. But the authenticity and depth of her long-distance family relationships are never put in question in the novel. On the contrary, it would seem that it is precisely such relationships that offer the best chance for understanding the experience of place and of risk in an increasingly global context. However invisible or mediated these relationships may be, they shape the ordinary routines of life for the individual, and these routines cannot be properly understood without the non-local relationships embedded in them. The moment of crisis – industrial accident, fatal illness – starkly foregrounds what ordinary rhythms might conceal: namely, that attachments to both places and people are increasingly

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deterritorialized in the sense I outlined earlier; in an age of global connectedness, they are, for better or for worse, increasingly shaped by forces far outside the bounds of the local and familial. It is this representation of risk as a staging of deterritorialized relationships that Wolf’s Störfall shares with West German novelist Gabriele Wohmann’s Flötenton. 3. Routine: Gabriele Wohmann’s Der Flötenton Like Störfall, Wohmann’s novel Der Flötenton takes the Chernobyl accident as the ground on which to explore the routines of everyday life in their relationship to experiences of risk, place and social networks. As in Störfall, the central relationship is one between a brother and a sister, Anton and Emily Asper, who are deeply attached to each other. But the narrative framework in which this relationship unfolds is quite different; in a typically modernist structure somewhat reminiscent of the novels of Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner, the novel delves into the perceptions, memories and anticipations of about a dozen different characters. On the surface connected by no more than geographical proximity – all of them live in or around the town of Gerresheim – these characters turn out to be involved in each others’ lives in various ways as members of the same family, neighbors, current or former friends or employees. The plot starts in May of 1986, when Chernobyl is still constantly in the news but has moved beyond the initial crisis that Wolf’s novel concentrates on, and ends sometime in late October 86; by this time, most of the official warnings and safety measures have been suspended, suggesting a return to normalcy that some of the characters welcome with relief and others reject with scepticism or anger. The variety of characters and the more extended time frame are crucial for Wohmann’s narrative project, which is not to convey the first brutal encounter with a new environmental risk, but to investigate the different ways in which people come to terms with a life from which such risk can no longer be eliminated. On one end of the spectrum, we find Sandra Hinholz, an optimistic and sensuous woman who is completely absorbed by the concreteness of everyday life: her family, her lover, her music lessons, and her academic career plans are the issues around which most of her thinking revolves. She considers

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Chernobyl only in terms of what food it might be best to avoid for her children, but cannot really understand why someone like her lover Anton Asper views it as a serious crisis. On the other end of spectrum, Anton’s sister Emily becomes gradually more obsessed with the nuclear threat and what it implies about the world, to the point where she has a nervous breakdown. She stays away from her work as a high school teacher without notifying the principal, and instead attempts all kinds of minor deceptions to come by a prescription drug that she thinks might alleviate her anxiety. In between these two extremes, the other characters evolve into and out of different positions of awareness and forgetfulness, rebellion and resignation, fear and hope. In exploring the characters’ evolution, Wohmann interweaves the transformations that a new environmental hazard imposes on everyday life with existential concerns that pre-existed Chernobyl but are condensed and precipitated by the crisis: career anxieties, fears about sexuality or old age, successes and shortfalls of social relationships all enter into uneasy conjunctions with nuclear risk in the texture of the characters’ everyday experiences. This subtle imbrication of old and new fears has prompted one critic to argue that in fact Chernobyl itself is only of marginal importance to a novel whose real concern is the Angst caused by the progressive dehumanization of the characters’ lifeworld (Fritsch 1990: 426). But even if one accepts this approach – which leads to a possible but by no means the most compelling reading of the novel – it remains significant that such existential fears would crystallize around the Chernobyl accident rather than any of the countless other scenarios of danger and death that the media provided to average German citizens in the 1980s. In other words, while it is true that the characters’ concerns about Chernobyl are intertwined with other existential issues, nuclear risk is by no means only a screen onto which other fears are projected. In fact, the extent to which it functions as an important motivating force for different characters becomes a measure of their awareness that their lives are shaped by realities that transcend their local surroundings. Anton Asper, the character whose reflections take up more space than those of anyone else in the novel, voices his concerns over the nuclear disaster so frequently that he comes to be called “our colleague with the Chernobyl syndrome” by his co-workers

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(Wohmann 1987: 472).14 Painfully aware not only of the dangers of radiation but also other risks such as airplane accidents or the ozone hole, he overtly criticizes the excessive technological manipulation of nature, rejects nuclear power, and insists that others should become acquainted with the best scientific prognoses. But while his social criticism is at times very specific, it is also clear that his pessimism is rooted as much in personal guilt and self-doubt as in public shortfalls and disasters. Uncertain relationships to his past and present partners, doubts about his own masculinity, and especially latent guilt over his teenaged son Simon, who has Down syndrome and lives in a far-away residence for disabled youth surface again and again in his thoughts and constellate around the more public but equally intangible threat of nuclear radiation. Similarly, his sister Emily’s deterioration and breakdown are triggered by the daily experience of nuclear risk, but have their deeper roots in the long-term frustration of her career ambitions as an economist and latent tensions in her twenty-year relationship with the psychologist Samuel Speicher. For two of the aged characters, Mrs. Asper and the theologian Hinholz, the aftermath of Chernobyl becomes the occasion for reflecting on the loss of their spouses, and on their own attachment to life and anxieties about approaching death. In each of these cases, Chernobyl is experienced in a context of other existential issues with which it comes to be amalgamated in complex ways.15 But the novel does make a clear distinction between those characters for whom Chernobyl is merely added on as just another element in a swirl of daily details and preoccupations that they cannot transcend, and those for whom concern about Chernobyl becomes a motive for rethinking their own position in the world and find some way of returning to a “normal” perspective on the banalities of everyday life. Anton and Emily Asper are perhaps the clearest examples in the novel of characters whose experiential logic is turned upside down in just the way Beck describes in his analysis of the risk society. Anton Asper’s life is successful on the surface: he is the chief executive of 14

All translations of Der Flötenton are mine. Page references are keyed to the second German edition as no English translation of the novel is currently available. 15 Cf. the analysis of fear in Fritsch 1990.

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his corporation’s construction branch, travels widely throughout Germany, Europe and occasionally other parts of the world, and lives with a lively and interesting partner who is somewhat of a television celebrity. Well informed though he is about the consequences of Chernobyl as well as many other risks of cancer or accident in the contemporary world, he nonetheless ignores repeated warnings from friends and family that his own smoking puts him at greater health risk than any of the other scenarios that worry him. This detail may confirm that Chernobyl is a means of externalizing and displacing anxieties that really concern more intimate aspects of his life. Yet whatever the roots of his awareness may be, the novel makes it difficult not to agree with many of his factual assessments as well as his stark indictments of media distortions and politicians’ lack of foresight and honesty. While some of these comments are made in contexts where they needlessly spoil others’ cheerfulness, enjoyment or affection, they also serve as a measuring stick for all that many of the other characters choose to ignore or gloss over. This is particularly obvious in a direct conversation with a Deputy Minister (447-50), where Anton’s acerbic insistence on the facts cuts through the politician’s persistent attempts at minimizing and embellishing the disaster. Whatever the psychological roots of his concern, they do drive him to look facts in the face in a way that few other characters in the novel do, and they lead to a more accurate perception of what living in a “risk society” means. Anton’s sister Emily resists the social pressure to return to a “normal” life and viewpoint in more extreme ways than her brother, and her behaviour clearly becomes pathological over the course of time. As in Anton’s case, her concern about radioactive fall-out is hard to divorce from her personal problems: outrage at her friend Jutta’s pregnancy is as much due to her feelings of envy and inferiority as to health concerns, anger at her students’ indifference as much to her career frustration as to political despair.16 But reducing 16

Wohmann develops the specifically feminist issues of Emily’s career problems and environmental engagement further in her short story “Die weibliche Komponente” [The Female Element], whose protagonist Xenia Adler resembles Emily Asper in many ways. This short story was published in a collection entitled Ein russischer Sommer [A Russian Summer] (1988), which contains several other short stories that revolve around Chernobyl.

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her development to a pathological case study would not do justice to the subtlety of Wohmann’s text, where the characters in spite of their mixed motivations often do ultimately point to real social problems. In Emily’s case, it is particularly the altered relationship to the local that comes to the fore. Unable to cope with personal and collective bleak prospects, she drives around aimlessly in her car and seeks relief in a drug that she and Anton experimented with in their college days. But since the painkiller Vendrix is not available without a prescription, Emily begins to drive from pharmacy to pharmacy pretending to be a traveler in need of medication. When these performances fail, she rings the doorbells of private homes instead, in more and more desperate attempts to mobilize others’ compassion. During one of these excursions, she ends up on theology Professor Hinholz’ doorstep and casually confesses to him, “You know, it’s so strange, I’ve had this feeling for a few days of somehow being nowhere” (358). This helpless admission, beyond signaling her personal disorientation, also indicates quite accurately how tenuous the individual’s rooting in a particular place becomes when the modes of local inhabitation can be fundamentally reshaped by catastrophic events elsewhere on the planet. Living through Chernobyl in Gerresheim, Emily Asper ends up nowhere. After she leaves, Hinholz returns to his desk and makes a note: “The Chernobyl shock: anthropological in nature. Shock of the impotence of all individual experiences of the senses” (358). This note refers primarily to his own anxiety, since he took a walk in the rain on April 30, only a few days after the explosion when each rainfall washed down radioactive particles. The April rain felt good to me because I didn’t know anything about it. Objectively, it has contaminated me. Sandra’s kids played in the sand and grass because both looked as usual, the flowers smelled as usual, Sandra’s chives tasted as usual: Human senses fail. (358-59)

But, coming as it does right after Emily’s appearance at his house, Hinholz’ note is hard not to read as the author’s indirect comment on her predicament as well. It is hard to imagine a better fictionalization of Beck’s comment that life in the risk society forces individuals to rely on the non-experience of others rather than on their own senses. In this context, Emily’s condition seems merely a more aggravated

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version of the general alienation from the physicality of the local landscape that Hinholz here describes with reference to himself and his grandchildren. As sense perception can no longer be trusted to convey important information about the environment, it detaches individuals from their spontaneous physical relationship to the local. But in both Emily’s and Hinholz’ case, it is also this detachment that allows them to view their own ordinary lives critically and to perceive its embeddedness in the regional and the global. By contrast, Hinholz’ daughter-in-law, the flute player Sandra, is and remains completely immersed into the immediacies of the local throughout the novel. Sandra’s cheerfulness, optimism, sensuality and genuine care for the people around her make it hard not to sympathize with her, especially in a context of other figures who are consumed by their own doubts and uncertainties. Yet her naïveté and utter inability to grasp abstract connections beyond concrete details also make her appear at times almost grotesque in a world of international commerce and high technology. Anton is struck, for example, by her account of a tour of the United States she took with her orchestra, “north to south and east to west,” where what she says she had liked most were freshly pressed fruit juices (123). This relentless fixation on the mundane both fascinates and repels Anton Asper, who observes in a subsequent conversation, “Earrings. Freshly pressed fruit juices that impressed you most in the US. Alien world. You make the world seem very small” (145). And later on, he reflects: Every minute of Sandra’s daily life is stuffed with content all the way, and she experiences this content as meaning. Days spoon-fed, overfed with vitality. Her minuscule quantum of participation in other events on this planet limits itself to the miscellaneous news of her local newspaper, last page. (176)

The limits of Sandra Hinholz’ grasp of the contemporary world become obvious even to Sandra herself when she mentally compares herself to Anton’s partner, the worldly, well-informed talk show host Lydia Tulpen: And politics was certainly not the only area in which Sandra would lose out to Anton’s girlfriend Lydia in a test. Probably it was the present in general that Sandra knew less well than Lydia. She readily admitted that she wasn’t particularly concerned about anything beyond her own life circumstances. Main

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The final reaffirmation of the trivial reveals that even Sandra’s bouts of awareness of her own ignorance do not lead to any change in her attitude – not even any profound desire for change. Consequently, Sandra Hinholz’ naïveté as well as her commitment to concrete detail and spatial proximity persist throughout the novel. After starting an affair with Anton Asper during a trip to Portugal, she assumes at first that she can easily integrate her new lover into her family life by having him move in with them. She only realizes gradually that such closeness would not only be far from Anton’s own wishes, but also quite atypical of the way he conducts his own family relations. As Sandra discovers, Anton, his sister Emily and their mother only rarely see each other, even though they are deeply attached to one another emotionally and live in close proximity. Even though they often think of each other and stay in touch through long letters, postcards, and phone conversations, the three Aspers never lay eyes on each other until the last two chapters of Wohmann’s almost 500-page-long novel. Needless to say, this kind of family relationship is completely alien to Sandra. But in the novel, it is Sandra who is the exception rather than the Asper family. Even though the twelve characters who play significant roles in the plot all turn out to live close to each other and to be related by virtue of family, friendship, neighbourhood or employment, they appear strangely distanced from each other in their modes of communication. Not only does Emily turn down invitations from her mother next door and write her letters instead, but her landlord, the one-time novelist Richard Kast, does the same: he is a little in love with Mrs. Asper and secretly drops off anonymous letters at her doorstep rather than engaging her directly. Kast also speaks regularly over the phone to Professor Hinholz, Sandra’s father-in-law, who is a friend and companion from their college days. Hinholz, in turn, likes to spy in secret on Mrs. Asper’s sister Etta Gersteck, whose garden is right next to his. Through phone calls and occasional visits from Sandra, he also finds out about her affair with Anton Asper. The

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telephone, moreover, turns out to be one of Sandra’s obsessions, in spite of her much greater commitment to face-to-face contact; at the same time, it is also Anton’s main means of communication not only with his sister, but with two other women for whom he professes to have profound affection. Just as in Wolf’s novel, then, the social networks in Wohmann’s Flötenton are for the most part quite indirect and mediated by various technologies of communication; but somewhat more surprisingly, relationships function as if they took place at long distance even when the individuals involved are geographically close. Once this basic pattern emerges in the novel, it makes sense that the only physical love relationship that is described in any detail in the novel, the one between Anton and Sandra, does not take place in their hometown, where they had never even met, but during a trip abroad. Indeed, the only reason they meet in Lisbon in the first place is because both their passports were stolen or expired. In other words, the coincidence of emotional and physical closeness between them, a rare occurrence in the novel, is enabled by their being both geographically and administratively deterritorialized from their home country. Once they return to Germany, by contrast, they hardly see each other anymore, and their relationship spins itself out mostly in prolonged phone conversations. In the narrative logic that the novel develops, then, social relationships become more mediated and indirect the more they involve geographical proximity. Direct encounters and physical intimacy, for most of the characters, are incompatible with being in one’s own place. It is tempting to describe this inability to interact directly with those in one’s immediate vicinity as a symptom of profound alienation, and at least some of the characters in Wohmann’s novel intermittently perceive it as such. Yet one cannot introduce this concept without noting simultaneously that the text presents it for the most part as mere normalcy, and without explicit judgment. In addition, it is worth remembering that Sandra Hinholz, the one character who seems to suffer from no such alienation, appears by no means as an unambiguously positive figure, but is rather presented as childish and ignorant as often as she is portrayed as warm, selfless and generous. I would argue that it is not Wohmann’s objective, at any rate, to present some attitudes and relationships as genuine and others

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as inauthentic, but rather to investigate how daily life is lived in this context of deterritorialization, and how it might be translated into language. This is the question that surfaces again and again in the various written versions that different characters give of their experience. Emily changes formulations in her letters repeatedly when she considers how particular sentences might be read by her various audiences – her mother, her brother, and perhaps even her partner Samuel. Mrs. Asper oscillates between delight and fierce struggle as she sits down at her husband’s long-unused typewriter and slowly, for the first time in her life, attempts to give a coherent account of her daily life and self, her confrontation with aging and loss. Anton appears to be writing down three different versions of his encounter with Sandra Hinholz on postcards from Lisbon, until we find out that these different stories all just unfold in his head after he’s already dispatched the actual postcards with the usual travel clichés. Richard Kast’s anonymous missives to Mrs. Asper stand out by their unusually stark attention to the details of life as an aging person that also characterize his own daily struggles with Alzheimer’s disease. Wohmann’s sustained exploration of such situations shows that for her, as much as for Wolf, the crucial question that arises from a disaster such as Chernobyl is how extraordinary risk scenarios relate to the ordinariness of daily life. Wolf, focusing on the moment of shock in which the two collide, attempts to mobilize the small, usually unnoticed routines that tie individuals to place and family as a possible means of resistance to the encroachments of increasingly uncontrollable and dangerous technologies, but also records how such attempts fall short, and ultimately has her protagonist seek refuge in literature. Wohmann, by contrast, is interested above all in the processes by means of which risk and disaster become integrated into everyday life and ultimately almost indistinguishable from it. She describes these processes as extremely varied, ranging from Sandra Hinholz’ easy oblivion to Anton Asper’s hard-won acceptance, from Professor Hinholz’ broadening political horizon to Richard Kast’s amnesia. With a reticence that may annoy the environmentalist and delight the literary critic, the narrative refuses to deliver any definitive judgment on these varying perspectives. Rather, what Wohmann emphasizes is the inexorable force of the process whereby even the

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most frightening risk scenarios and the most earth-shattering disasters become a part of ordinary routines – the path from apocalypse to way of life, in Buell’s words. Whether this process implies apathy and amnesia or a new understanding of the relevance of politics for daily life, it is a necessary and inevitable one in the novel: the alternative to this normalization is the paranoia and nervous breakdown that the Asper siblings suffer from during most of the plot. But this does not imply that the moment when Anton and Emily recuperate their normal sense of life is described as a return to an authentic and unproblematic mode of experience. Anton Asper reaches his final moment of reconciliation in a scene that brings together most of the novel’s major characters during the filming of a TV documentary on the life and work of his long-deceased father, the poet Louis Asper, which was instigated by Lydia Tulpen. As he watches his friends and family mill about his aunt’s garden, he is overcome by a feeling of deep love and happiness for those around him. He immediately and typically catches himself, however, and reflects with a sharp sense of irony that this harmonious family scene was generated by that most inauthentic of media, television. But right afterwards, he puts this ironic distance itself in question and reaffirms that regardless of authenticity or inauthenticity, he really is happy and enjoying the beautiful day. “He decided in favour of them all, in favour of the reunion and in favour of fear of flying,” the section concludes (478), combining both mediated social relationships and technological risk scenarios in its final affirmation of an however inauthentic and deterritorialized everyday. 4. Everyday risk in the age of globalization Both Wolf and Wohmann, then, describe Chernobyl as a large-scale, regional and even global risk scenario in its impact on more or less average characters’ daily lives. Both focus on the contrast that arises from the collision of a catastrophic industrial accident and the habits and routines that make up ordinary life, and both highlight the conceptual, linguistic, social and affective difficulties that this clash entails. The logic of “second-hand non-experience” described by Beck shapes the protagonists’ lives in both narratives. But as it turns out, the local setting in which this collision occurs is in both novels already a highly

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deterritorialized one. All of the characters are surrounded by mass media that crucially shape the way they inhabit their physical and social worlds, and almost all of them experience important social relationships, even quite intimate ones, mostly through the intermediary of various technologies of communication rather than in faceto-face encounters. This deterritorialization of local relationships functions to some extent as a symptom of modernist alienation, but it also metonymically conveys the dissociation from the local that is brought about by transnational ecological and technological connections, even when individuals continue to inhabit the same place. In this deterritorialized context, Wolf tries to maintain the tension between the everyday life and technological risk by exploring them as potential opposites; her novel, in the end, is balanced uneasily between her attempt to keep these two areas separate – culminating in the narrator’s claim that nuclear risk is difficult to compare to anything else – and the realization that risk scenarios will and must somehow be integrated into life practice. As I have pointed out, Störfall does not quite solve this conceptual problem. Der Flötenton, by contrast, takes such integration as a given and investigates by what means, under what circumstances and at what cost it is achieved by different characters. Since it does not definitively condone or condemn the different accommodations characters arrive at, Wohmann’s novel is in some ways a less “engaged” or “environmentalist” one than Wolf’s; but at the same time, it avoids some of Wolf’s conceptual tensions and presents a much broader and more nuanced portrait of life in the risk society. Environmental writing and criticism from the 1970s onward has invested a great deal of conceptual as well as literary capital into the celebration of the local, and into the emphasis on its primary importance as a means of reconnecting with the natural world. The challenge that novels such as Wolf’s and Wohmann’s hold out to this way of thinking about “reinhabitation,” to use Gary Snyder’s wellknown term, is a reflection on how everyday life in its material practices as well as its social networks has in fact detached itself from its local roots even when it continues to be lived in a specific place. While both authors show some of the negative consequences of this detachment – all the way from anxiety about one’s gardening to existential feelings of solitude and emptiness – they also subtly but

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insistently highlight how precisely this detachment enables an understanding of the way in which local sites function in a network of global connectedness. Far from any simple appeals to Gaian-style holism, the central characters in both novels wrestle with the implications of risk scenarios that originate far away from their place of inhabitation and yet have the power to change their everyday experience of the local fundamentally. In their more or less successful attempts to integrate their awareness of such risks into their daily routines, these characters – none of them primarily nature lovers or environmental activists, but quite average people – seek for a way of relating to the global that strikes a balance between an eco-paranoia that would paralyze everyday life, and an absorption into the ordinary that would blot out this broader framework of thinking. To the environmentalist reader, this quest holds out the challenge of imagining deterritorialization not only as a threat to nature- and placebound forms of inhabitation, but as a constructive mode of inhabiting the ordinariness of the global in the risk society. Bibliography Atkins, Robert. 1996. ‘Chernobyl and Beyond: Green Issues in the Recent Works of Gabriele Wohmann’ in Carleton Germanic Papers 24: 197-214. Back to Chernobyl. 1989. Dir. Bill Kurtis. WGBH Educational Foundation. Beck, Ulrich. 1986. Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Brandes, Ute. 1989. ‘Probing the Blind Spot: Utopia and Dystopia in Christa Wolf’s Störfall’ in Gerber, Margy et al. (eds) Selected Papers from the Fourteenth New Hampshire Symposium on the German Democratic Republic. Lanham, MD: University Press of America: 101-14. Buell, Frederick. 2003. From Apocalypse to Way of Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century. New York: Routledge. Certeau, Michel de, Luce Giard, and Pierre Mayol. 1980. L’invention du quotidien. Paris: Union générale d’éditions. Deitering, Cynthia. 1996. ‘The Postnatural Novel: Toxic Consciousness in Fiction of the 1980s,’ in Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press: 196-203. Eysel, Karin. 1992. ‘History, Fiction, Gender: The Politics of Narrative Intervention in Christa Wolf’s Störfall’ in Monatshefte 84: 284-98.

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Flynn, James, Paul Slovic, and Howard Kunreuther (eds). 2001. Risk, Media, and Stigma: Understanding Public Challenges to Modern Science and Technology. London: Earthscan. Fox, Thomas C. 1990. ‘Feminist Revisions: Christa Wolf’s Störfall’ in The German Quarterly 63: 471-77. Fritsch, Hildegard. 1990. ‘Spielarten der Angst in Gabriele Wohmanns Der Flötenton’ in Neophilologus 74: 426-33. Gale, Robert Peter, and Thomas Hauser. 1988. Final Warning: The Legacy of Chernobyl. New York: Warner. García Canclini, Néstor. 2001. Culturas híbridas: Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. New edn. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Gubaryev, Vladimir. 1987. Sarcophagus: A Tragedy (tr. Michael Glenny). New York: Vintage. Hebel, Franz. 1989. ‘Technikentwicklung und Technikfolgen in der Literatur’ in Der Deutschunterricht 41(5): 35-45. Kasperson, Roger E. 1992. ‘The Social Amplification of Risk: Progress in Developing an Integrative Framework’ in Krimsky, Sheldon and Dominic Golding (eds) Social Theories of Risk. Westport, CT: Praeger: 153-78. Kasperson, Roger E. et al. 1988. ‘The Social Amplification of Risk: A Conceptual Framework’ in Risk Analysis 8(2): 177-87. Kaufmann, Eva. 1989. ‘‘Unerschrocken ins Herz der Finsternis’: Zu Christa Wolfs ‘Störfall’’ in Drescher, Angela (ed.) Christa Wolf: Ein Arbeitsbuch. Berlin: Aufbau: 252-69. Kononenko, Natalie. 1992. ‘‘Duma Pro Chornobyl’: Old Genres, New Topics’ in Journal of Folklore Research 29: 133-54. Magenau, Jörg. 2002. Christa Wolf: Eine Biographie. Berlin: Kindler. Massey, Doreen. 1993. ‘Power-Geometry and a Progressive Sense of Place’ in Bird, Jon et al. (eds) Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change. London: Routledge: 59-69. Medvedev, Grigori. 1991. The Truth about Chernobyl (tr. Evelyn Rossiter). N.p.: Basic Books. Mould, R.F. 2000. Chernobyl Record: The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe. Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing. Nalewski, Horst. 1989. ‘Ernstfall: Störfall’ in Drescher, Angela (ed.) Christa Wolf: Ein Arbeitsbuch. Berlin: Aufbau: 270-91. Onyshkevych, Larissa M.L. Zaleska. 1990. ‘Echoes of Chornobyl in Soviet Ukrainian Literature’ in Agni 29-30: 279-91. Pohl, Frederik. 1987. Chernobyl. Toronto: Bantam. Rechtien, Renate. 1992-93. ‘‘Prinzip Hoffnung’ oder ‘Herz der Finsternis’?: Zu Christa Wolfs ‘Störfall’’ in New German Studies 17: 229-53. Rey, William H. 1989. ‘Blitze im Herzen der Finsternis: Die neue Anthropologie in Christa Wolfs Störfall’ in The German Quarterly 62(3): 373-83. Rudloff, Holger. 1990. ‘Literatur nach Tschernobyl’ in Mitteilungen des deutschen Germanistenverbandes 37: 11-19.

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Saalmann, Dieter. 1992. ‘Elective Affinities: Christa Wolf’s Störfall and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.’ Comparative Literature Studies 29: 238-58. Snyder, Gary. 1995. ‘Reinhabitation’ in A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint: 183-91. Tomlinson, John. 1999. Globalization and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vargo, George J. (ed.). 2000. Chernobyl: A Comprehensive Risk Assessment. Columbus: Battelle Press. Voznesenskaya, Julia. 1987. The Star Chernobyl (tr. Alan Myers). London: Quartet Books. West, Russell. 1997. ‘Christa Wolf Reads Joseph Conrad: Störfall and Heart of Darkness’ in German Life and Letters 50: 254-65. Weiss, Sydna Stern. 1990. ‘From Hiroshima to Chernobyl: Literary Warnings in the Nuclear Age’ in Papers on Language and Literature 26(1): 90-111. Winnard, Andrew. 1987. ‘Divisions and Transformations: Christa Wolf’s Störfall’ in German Life and Letters 41(1): 72-81. Wohmann, Gabriele. 1988. Ein russischer Sommer. 2nd ed. Darmstadt: Luchterhand. Wohmann, Gabriele. 1987. Der Flötenton. 2nd edn. Darmstadt: Luchterhand. Wolf, Christa. 1989. Accident: A Day’s News (tr. Heike Schwarzbauer and Rick Takvorian). New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. Wolf, Christa. 2001. Störfall: Nachrichten eines Tages. Verblendung: Disput über einen Störfall. Munich: Luchterhand. Zabytko, Irene. 2000. The Sky Unwashed. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Press.

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“Syllabled to us for names”: Native American echoes in Walt Whitman’s green poetics Christine Gerhardt Abstract: The essay explores the relationship between Whitman’s shifting environmental perspectives and the elusive presence of Native Americans in Leaves of Grass. Whitman’s poetic voice linguistically appropriates the purported “natural” Native American relationship to the land for his democratic “language experiment”, while Native Americans as autonomous subjects who sustain specific ways of living with the earth constitute a remarkable void in his vision. A reading of six poems from an ecocritical/ post-colonial perspective suggest that the view of Native Americans as organically linked to the land subtly strengthens the considerable green voice that runs through large parts of Leaves of Grass, even though the precarious position of the continent’s indigenous peoples in Whitman’s expansionist vision also foregrounds the limited scope of his green rhetoric.

Ecocriticism has only very recently begun to explore the environmental implications of Walt Whitman’s poetry.1 Apart from the field’s initial focus on prose writings2, this reluctance may also 1

Cf., especially, M. Jimmie Killingsworth’s essay “The Voluptuous Earth and the Fall of the Redwood Tree: Whitman’s Personifications of Nature” (2002) and his forthcoming Walt Whitman and the Earth: A Study in Ecopoetics. See also Agnus Fletcher’s A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination (2004), which reads American poetry, including Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, as based on nature and the sciences. Among the many studies on Whitman and nature that predate ecocritical paradigms, see Cecilia Tichi’s New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from the Puritans through Whitman (1979) which reads Whitman’s work in the context of the conservationist movement. Another important precursor of current green interpretations is Gay Wilson Allen’s “How Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman Viewed the Frontier” (1980), which M. Jimmie Killingsworth recently brought to ecocritical discussions of Whitman. 2 See for example Daniel J. Philippon’s “‘I only seek to put you in rapport’: Message and Method in Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days” (1998), which argues that

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have to do with the way in which Whitman linked his poetic evocations of nature to other issues whose immediate political and social urgency seems to eclipse their ecological significance. Already in his 1855 Preface Whitman claimed that, “[t]he land and sea, the animals fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests mountains and rivers, are not small themes...but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects” (1982 [1855]: 10; emphasis added), and throughout the successive editions of Leaves of Grass he kept relating his views of the earth to meditations about America’s political union (as in “Our Old Feuillage”) and its continental expansion (in “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”), the emerging “new sciences” (“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”) and the human body and sexuality (“I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing”). Yet if one asks what his poetry tells us about “nature and humanity’s place in, with, or against it” (2000: 1), as Patrick Murphy condensed one of ecocriticism’s central questions, the range of themes that intersect with Whitman’s reflections about the natural environment make his poetry particularly fascinating for an ecologically informed analysis because they not only help account for his multilayered and contradictory green perspectives, but also situate Whitman’s views of nature within a web of nineteenth-century discourses that shaped his culture’s attitudes towards the earth. Among the many central aspects of America’s nineteenth-century cultural imagination that factor in Whitman’s green poetics, Native Americans and their relationship to the land occupy a crucial position. Even though Native American individuals appear only sporadically in Leaves of Grass, their elusive presence intersects notably with the collection’s frequent evocations of nature and human-nonhuman relationships. A number of studies have already begun to explore this particular junction; however, the focus has been mostly on Whitman’s views of Native Americans, not on his environmental perspectives. Maurice Kenny, for example, expresses regret that “[e]verything […] was allowed a pentameter in Whitman’s work – but only rarely the the text re-presents nature so that readers can have a “healthful” rapport with it, and Betsy Erkkila’s Whitman the Political Poet (1989), which considers Specimen Days “the medicine of nature” in post-war America, a text that “depicts again and again the presence of self in nature, nature in self” (297).

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American Indian, the indigenous native to the land, what the Native American sons and daughters know as Mother Earth” (1992: 29), while Ed Folsom, who has amply demonstrated that Whitman’s poetic engagement with American Indians and his country’s Indian politics was rather substantial3, argues that “[f]or Whitman, the Indian was synonymous with authenticity, a raw and unmediated experience of this land, the natural embodiment and expression of the topography” (1994: 72).4 This association of America’s indigenous peoples with the land also informs the way nature itself figures in Whitman’s poetry. In this paper I argue that his repeated gestures towards Native Americans as “Race of the woods, the landscapes free, and the falls” (“Yonnondio”)5 are intricately linked to his conflicted, often contradictory views of the environment. Specifically, I discuss the green implications of the ways in which Whitman linguistically appropriates the purported “natural” Native American relationship to the land for his democratic “language experiment”, while Native Americans as autonomous subjects who sustain specific ways of living on and with the earth constitute a remarkable void in his vision. In recent years, ecocriticism has turned towards race and ethnicity as formative categories of difference in America’s environmental imagination, offering new readings of African American, Native American, and Chicano/a literatures; as part of this move, postcolonial 3

Apart from the chapter in Folsom’s Walt Whitman’s Native Representations (1994), see also his “Culturing White Anxiety: Walt Whitman and American Indians”, esp. pp. 291-92, “Walt Whitman’s Prairie Paradise”, esp. pp. 55-6, and the entry in the Walt Whitman Encyclopedia (449-51). 4 Interestingly, in Folsom’s short overview of late 20th century (Native and nonnative) American poetic responses to Whitman, nature is again a recurrent theme: Joseph Bruchac, for example, acknowledges Whitman as someone whose “celebration of the earth and natural things, his precise namings, are very much like native American song” (qt. in Folsom 66), while W.S. Merwin, a well-known environmental poet writing about American Indian struggles, comments critically on Whitman’s enthusiastic acceptance of westward movement: “It makes me extremely uneasy when [Whitman] talks about the American expansion and the feeling of manifest destiny in a voice of wonder. I keep thinking about the buffalo, about the Indians, and about the species that are being rendered extinct” (qt. in Folsom 67). 5 Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass (1891-92). Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, ed. Justin Kaplan. New York: Library of America, 1982. 626. All subsequent quotations from Leaves of Grass are from this edition and cited as LoG parenthetically in the text.

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studies are gaining attention as a possible link between green criticism and analyses of race and ethnicity. 6 I believe that for an examination of nature and Native Americans in Walt Whitman’s poetry, a combination of ecocriticism and post-colonial studies can be productive even though U.S. American cultural phenomena do not lie at the heart of the post-colonial project.7 The social and political situation of Native Americans, in particular, can arguably be understood as (post-) colonial. While post-colonial populations are generally defined as “peoples formerly colonized by the West” (Childs and Williams 1997: 12), the argument has been made that colonial situations never quite end but continue to shape the relationship between colonizers and colonized, and that a formal end of colonialism does not even constitute a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of anti-colonial cultural practices.8 America’s First Peoples may never have become post-colonial in the narrow sense of the term, but they were historically subjected to mechanisms of white colonial control, and their relationship to white settlers has been shaped by resistance to an ever-expanding imperial power that claimed permanent ownership of the land. The rationale for a post-colonial reading of the land itself may be less apparent. While “place” is a critical category in post-colonial studies, “a concept of contention and struggle”, a “continual reminder of colonial ambivalence, of the separation yet continual mixing of the 6 See, for example, Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace, ed. Beyond Nature Writing (2001), and Sylvia Mayer, ed. Restoring the Connection to the Natural World: Essays on the African American Environmental Imagiation (2003); for studies on ecocriticism and Native American literatures, see especially Patrick Murphy’s Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques (1995), and Joni Adamson, American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism (2001). See also my own essay “The Greening of African American Literary Landscapes” (2002). 7 Regarding the contested issue whether post-colonial models can be applied to the United States, Peter Childs observed: “On the one hand, many delineations of postcolonial studies either elide the United States or situate it primarily as the foremost contemporary imperial power. On the other hand, the US has been viewed as the first post-colonial nation. Writings on colonialism span opposition of English government, to settler colonies, to slavery, and to an expansionist foreign policy”. (79) 8 Childs and Williams emphasize that the notion of anti-colonial cultural practices “introduces the other most important meaning of post-” in post-colonial discourses. (Childs 1997: 3)

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colonizer and colonized” (Ashcroft 2000: 177; 179), it is seldom looked at as a colonized Other, even though inclusive definitions of post-colonial criticism invite such a theoretical transfer (cf., for example, Moore-Gilbert 1997: 12). Since the awareness of the multiplicity of (post-)colonial dynamics in diverse contexts forms an integral part of post-colonial theories, its methods may certainly become productive for textual representations of nonhuman entities who can neither “speak” nor “resist” but are nevertheless objects of colonial exploitation. Finally, post-colonial analytical concepts are applicable, at least to a certain extent, to a rereading of nature and Native Americans in Whitman, whose work is characterized both by inclusive, anti-colonial impulses and by mechanisms of imperial subjugation. As Stuart Hall summarizes a nexus discussed by Lata Mani and Ruth Frankenberg, “‘colonialism’ always was about, and ‘post-colonial’ certainly is about, different ways of, ‘staging the encounters’ between the colonizing societies and their ‘others’” (1996: 247). While it would clearly be misleading to regard Whitman as post-colonial writer, the questions that post-colonial studies ask of texts produced from within (formerly) colonized cultures also enable a rereading of colonial or anti-colonial dynamics in the national poetry of one of the nineteenth century’s foremost colonizing powers. I believe that an ecocritical/post-colonial reading of Leaves of Grass that foregrounds both the figure of the Native American and nature can bring to the texts a heightened awareness of the parallels between two colonial processes, and underscore the overlaps between Whitman’s ambivalent positions towards the colonization of the continent’s indigenous peoples and the conquest of the land. 1. Contemporary names – contemporary lands The most direct link between Whitman’s visions of the land and of Native Americans emerges from his frequent use of aboriginal place names that were moving into the American language at midnineteenth century. Ed Folsom has pointed out that “[d]uring Whitman’s adult life, of course, the new states entering the Union often carried native names, as did an increasing number of the rivers, lakes, mountains, and other named features within the landscape of

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those states” (1994: 86), and that the poet’s embrace of Native American place names was in line with a larger national fascination with aboriginal words and their potential for the creation of a distinctly American idiom9: Whitman “was part of a revival of interest in native names, a movement in the 1840s to absorb Indian words into the language by restoring their names to the geography of the land” (1994: 80). Here, Folsom already addresses a crucial link between the poet’s love of native words and his environmental imagination. I would like to take off from this junction between Native American names and nature and focus on its implications for Whitman’s representations of the land itself, of “[t]he profound earth and its attributes” (“Song of the Answerer,” LoG 85). Two poems in which Whitman’s imaginary maps of the continent are thickly lined with Native American names are “Our Old Feuillage” and “O Magnet-South”, both included in Leaves of Grass in 1860. “Our Old Feuillage” constitutes one of the most prominent examples for the way in which Native American place names help to ground the poet’s continental vision in America’s diverse geographies, as in the following passage: Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering, On interior rivers by night in the glare of pine knots, steamboats wooding up, Sunlight by day on the valley of the Susquehanna, and on the valleys of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the valleys of the Roanoke and Delaware, In their northerly wilds beasts of prey haunting the Adirondacks the hills, or lapping the Saginaw waters to drink […] (LoG 319)

Here, after the initial, cursory reference to “interior” rivers, it is the list of geographically specific Native American names that contributes 9

Similarly, C. Carroll Hollis argued earlier that Whitman found native names more authentic and “appropriate” because of their “poetic value and patriotic fitness” (Hollis 1957: 147), and Michael Dressman emphasized that Whitman was interested in them because of their potential to culturally remove the United States further from Europe (Dressman 1978: 70).

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to the poem’s reluctant place-orientedness. Read from an ecocritical perspective, such Native American names do more than run into one another10 to create an organic web that spans the entire U.S.; they also anchor Whitman’s broad and hurried vision in a multitude of particular landscapes. A similar dynamic can be observed in “O MagnetSouth”: Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery sands or through swamps, Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine, O pensive, far away wandering, I return with my soul to haunt their banks again, Again in Florida I float on transparent lakes, I float on the Okeechobee, I cross the hummock-land or through pleasant openings or dense forests, I see the parrots in the woods, I see the papaw-tree and the blossoming titi […] (LoG 584)

In this poem, the speaker is less concerned with America’s national expansiveness than with the particulars of one regional landscape. Again, Native American names are the anchors that pull the speaker’s imagination from the generic into the geographically more specific, turning “slow sluggish rivers” into the waters of “the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine”, “lakes” into the “Okeechobee”, and “the woods” into a site of “the papaw-tree and the blossoming titi”. In both poems, Native American names thus strengthen the presence of actual landscapes in the text, not as a mere stage for America’s national development, but as a palpable, physical place. Regarding the green significance of Native American place names in these and similar passages it is interesting that Whitman seems to

10

For a somewhat ecologically informed discussion of the sensuous quality, the element of plentitude, and the intricate design of Whitman’s catalogues and their unity in diversity, see Lawrence Buell’s early essay “Transcendentalist Catalogue Rhetoric: Vision Versus Form”. On Whitman: The Best from “American Literature”. Eds. Edwin H. Cady and Louis J. Budd. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987. 113-23.

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have appreciated Native names precisely because of this quality, as a well-known passage from the American Primer suggests: What name a city has—what name a State, river, sea, mountain, wood, prairie, has—is no indifferent matter.—All aboriginal names sound good. I was asking for something savage and luxuriant, and behold here are the aboriginal names. I see how they are being preserved. They are honest words—they give the true length, breadth, depth. They all fit. Mississippi!—the word winds with chutes—it rolls a stream three thousand miles long. Ohio, Connecticut, Ottawa, Monongehela, all fit. Names are magic – One word can pour such a flood through the soul. (in Traubel 1987: 17-8)

For Whitman, Native American names were not only “magic” because of their sensory qualities but also because of the evocative richness with which these words could lift the land with its geographical peculiarities onto the page. The unpretentious directness with which aboriginal place names appear in his poems further adds to a matterof-fact-like presence of natural places and phenomena they refer to, an imaginary presence that goes beyond the level of sound or metaphor. In this context, what C. Carroll Hollis has identified as “a distinctive device in Whitman’s use of names: the conscious use of the aboriginal names, not as in Longfellow to lend the exotic or otherwise romantic note of distance or remoteness” (1957: 14; emphasis added), but, if you will, an unaffected there-ness, gains a new, environmental significance. Both in “Our Old Feuillage” and in “O Magnet-South”, Native American place names serve as conduits for the particulars of America’s diverse topographies, contributing to the fulfillment of Whitman’s self-imposed imperative to “acknowledge contemporary lands” (“Our Old Feuillage”, LoG 179). This commitment to the continent’s physical geographies finds its equivalent at the end of “Our Old Feuillage”, when Whitman expresses his sense of accomplishment through yet another evocation of Native American emblems: “See, pastures and forests in my poems – see, animals wild and tame – see, beyond the Kaw, countless herds of buffalo feeding on short curly grass” (LoG 187). From the perspective of ecocriticism, which has begun to revalue place as a “specific resource of environmental imagination” (Buell 2001: 56), such textual strategies gain ecological

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momentum as they bring into language and thus make culturally available “the complex networks of sensations and value commitments that tie people to the locales they care about”, working against “the ground condition of place obliviousness” (Buell 2001: 61) that forms one basis of environmental destruction and abuse. Yet the frequent use of contemporary Native American place names also draws attention to an aspect of Whitman’s poems that undermines their subtle green implications. The lingering cultural difference of these references – the “Susquehanna”, “the Potomac and Rappahannock” in “Our Old Feuillage”, and “the Roanoke, the Savannah, the Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine” in “O Magnet-South” – is a constant reminder that these names were once used by America’s First Peoples to name the very land Whitman’s poetry claims for his own “race of races” (1855 Preface, LoG 7), that they were used by cultures who are curiously absent from the lands he is singing. By foregrounding the way in which Whitman’s celebrations of America’s topography are fundamentally acts of re-possessing it, based on a history of conquest in which the subjugation of indigenous peoples preceded the subjugation and control of their lands, Native American place names also subvert the organic connection to the landscape that they were deployed to engender. This double-edged link between Native American place names and natural landscapes in Whitman’s poetry also echoes a curious intersection between racial and environmental discourses of the day. Mid-nineteenth century race theories saw different races as “naturally” connected to particular parts of the earth; in 1854, the well-known naturalist and geologist Louis Agassiz, who considered racial difference as indicator of the existence of separate human species, argued in a contribution to Types of Mankind by Nott and Gliddon that there are “natural relations of the human family and the organic world surrounding it”, and “natural relations between the different types of man and the animals and plants inhabiting the same regions” (Agassiz 1854: lviii). To a degree, the power of such pre-Darwinian arguments in nineteenth-century America helps explain the broad fascination with Native American languages as “authentic” and “naturally linked” to the earth, a fascination that Whitman, who always sought to “absorb” his culture as much as possible, brought into his poetry. This

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move does anchor his works in his country’s “geography and natural life and rivers and lakes” (LoG 1855, 7) – yet for all the “native” sense of place, the underlying white supremacist assumptions remain a part of his enthusiasm for the “savage and luxuriant” names, highlighting the colonial impetus of his poetry and thus distancing it from the (Native) American landscapes he yearns to embrace. 2. Wilderness memory A second way in which Whitman’s poetry links the specter of the Native American to the continent’s nature is the persistent use of names that had already been replaced by Anglo-Saxon (or AngloSaxonized) terms at mid-century. This is particularly pronounced in his choice to call Long Island “Paumanok”, and New York City “Mannahatta”. In his discussion of Whitman’s use of these two names, Ed Folsom has shown that “the Indians’ nativity on the land was for Whitman a vital quality. Probing his native ground for authentic origins, Whitman made an attempt to rename his own locales with aboriginal accents” (1994: 85). Again, the question I would like to ask from here is how this yearning to make his poetic language more native by way of using anachronistic Native American place names relates to his grand project of singing “Nature without check with original energy” (“Song of Myself”, LoG 188). Two poems in which the multilayered resonances of Paumanok and Mannahatta affect the way the land itself comes into view are “Starting from Paumanok” and “Me Imperturbe”. In “Starting from Paumanok”, the flagship poem of the 1860 Leaves of Grass that has remained a central expression of Whitman’s poetic program, this connection is subtly evoked right in the opening lines: Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born, Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother, After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements, Dweller in Mannahatta my city, or on southern savannas […] (LoG 176)

The speaker suggests that his song directly emerged from a specific natural landscape – rural Long Island with seashores in a distinctly maritime shape – before being enriched by the diverse geographies of

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other places, both urbanized and uncultivated. In this context, “Paumanok” and “Mannahatta” do not merely point to particular locations on the American map. The archaic quality of these names opens a memory of imaginary pre-industrial, pre-colonial territories that also shaped the poet’s perception – both with regards to Paumanok, whose landscape in this passage retains much of its “original” natural qualities, and also in terms of Mannahatta, the city with “populous pavements”, where these characteristics are only there as residual memory. More implicitly, Whitman’s deployment of old aboriginal names also condenses and makes available the figure of the Native American who once was a part of these places, thus “preserving” not only aboriginal words, as he had promised in the American Primer, but the memory of human-nonhuman relationships that differed from how European settlers appropriated the land. The short poem “Me Imperturbe” further specifies how “Mannahatta” not only signifies a contemporary urban opposition to the natural beauty of Paumanok but, just like its double, also references the actual island surrounded by bodies of water and the figure of the Native American. This poem, too, activates North America’s geographical memory and gears it towards conditions that in the mid-nineteenth century no longer dominated Manhattan’s topography: Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things, Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought, Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland, A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada, Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies, To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do. (LoG 173)

The image of the speaker-poet as “imperturbable” hinges centrally upon his rootedness in natural places, within and among nature’s “irrational things” – a context in which Mannahatta does not primarily evoke a bustling cityscape but its geographical foundations. Repeating

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and amplifying the speaker’s critical reconsideration of contemporary “occupations”, the uncommon name itself incorporates this place’s past conditions, joining in with the forces that pull the speaker back from his present urban “occupations” towards a timeless presence as “river man, or man of the woods”, and from visions of being the “master and mistress of all” towards one of nature’s appreciation and identification with its creatures. Again, the old-fashioned name faintly evokes the specter of the Native American; the popular, idealized image of the “noble savage” is part of the scene even before the poet formulates the vision of a dignified man “standing at ease in Nature” whose pride grows from his timeless connectedness to place rather than from attempts to control or “improve” it. Even if the idea of the “ecological Indian” has recently come under attack as a twentieth-century construct (cf. Krech 1999), it remains a cultural construct that, for all its colonial limitations, includes ways of living in and with nature that did not threaten the survival of the non-human environment. Whitman’s coded gestures towards the continent’s indigenous past creates imaginary landscapes inhabited by “uncivilized” yet “noble” savages who supposedly were a “natural” part of the land, evoking precolonial relationships with the earth that de-emphasize large-scale cultivation and development. In reaching out for “luxuriant”, “honest” native names, then, Whitman also reached back towards words that were forged in correspondence with the ancient history of the land and still resonate with it. In “Starting from Paumanok” and “Me Imperturbe”, the old Native American names carry with them the memory of these places’ alternative existence, a timeless potential that is present in the here and now of the poem and that also invokes the stereotypical native “man of the woods”. What weakens these green implications of “Paumanok” and “Mannahatta” is that the white speaker-poet chooses to remember the place names but not the Native American stories, or histories, of relating to these places. For all the environmental resonances that “Paumanok” and “Mannahatta” develop in Whitman’s poetry, they condense the memory of Native American’s lives on the American continent in the name, which not only limits their presences largely to the dominant culture’s stereotypical notions, but allows the speaker to privilege his own stories of the land and of Native

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American interaction with it. Whitman’s use of “Mannahatta” is a case in point: as Ed Folsom has shown, he insisted that it meant “the place around which there are hurried and joyous waters continually”, even after he was corrected that it meant “the place where bows are bought” (Folsom 1994: 86). Whitman’s way of preserving traditional Native American place names to make his own language more “natural” (which doesn’t mean more referential) admits to his poetry the memory of past geographies and Native American ways of living with the land, but only as isolated, indirect presences they can easily be absorbed into the dominant culture’s vision of continental mastery. Interestingly, Whitman’s poetry performs this move at a time when American culture at large, rapidly spreading across the continent, began to formulate ideas about preserving designated wilderness areas in their pre-colonial state. As Mark Spence has recently shown, these early conservationist discussions were invariably linked to debates over the role of Native Americans in the Western territories. Specifically, Spence argues that in the second half of the nineteenth century, around the time when Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872, the romanticized notion of an “Indian wilderness” – a wilderness of which Native Americans were a “natural part” – gave way to the notion of an “Indian-free wilderness”, an ideology that disengaged the history of the land from the history of aboriginal American cultures, and sought to “preserve” nature by removing Native Americans (cf. Spence 1999: 70). In this context, Whitman’s use of almost forgotten Native American place names participates in his culture’s interest in preserving America’s diminishing pre-colonial topographies as well as in the growing uneasiness about the role of Native Americans in such “wild” areas – without, however, performing a whole-sale erasure of Native American presences. Even though Native Americans, just as nature itself, remain largely “passive, receptive, and silent” in his poetry, the ancient place names do preserve the memory of pre-colonial forms of interaction with nature, and thus constitute a green voice that pushes against the domination and subjugation of the natural environment in the very act of performing this incorporation.

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3. A poetics of vanishing A third link between Whitman’s engagement with nature and Native Americans emerges from his repeated meditations on his own poetic voice as organic expression of the land. Several times in Leaves of Grass, the speaker expresses an abiding yearning for a “natural”, authentic eloquence in ways that curiously blur the line between Native American voices and the voice of nature, dramatizing the conflicted relationship between the two in his poetry. I’m going to focus here on a passage that Whitman had intended to turn into a poem called “Aborigines” but then included in “Starting from Paumanok” (Folsom 1994: 93), and on his later “Song of the RedwoodTree” (1873), both of which address the junction of nature, Native Americans, and poetic language from related perspectives. In a key section of “Starting from Paumanok”11 Whitman actually spells out an “aboriginal” poetics of place: And for the past I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines. The red aborigines, Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names, Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco, Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla, Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names. (LoG 186)

Pausing for a moment on his rushed journey across the everexpanding United States, the speaker remembers a past rich with nature and Native Americans, and celebrates the ability of the “red aborigines” to translate the physical essence of particular natural phenomena into names. As Ed Folsom has shown in his discussion of the poem, “it was the heroic and noble side of the natives, their healthy attachment to American landscape, that Whitman believed he could absorb into the American consciousness via words, stories, 11

Ed Folsom explains that Whitman had actually intended to turn this section into a poem called “Aborigines” but then included it in “Starting from Paumanok” (1994: 93)

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sounds” (1994: 93). What is particularly significant to an environmental reading is that the text absorbs an imagined Native American natural aesthetic that humbly receives the names from the land instead of imposing them on it in an act of mastery. This purported ability constitutes the realization of an ideal Whitman had invoked in his 1855 preface as the ultimate achievement of the American poet: “[T]o speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insousiance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside” (LoG 1855: 13). As the speaker seeks to come closer to his own ideal by way of embracing an imagined aboriginal eloquence, he implicitly also expresses his high esteem for respectful ways of relating to the land, and for humility in our ongoing attempts to grasp both the natural world itself and humanity’s varied ways of relating to it. What further adds to the environmental resonance of this yearning for a natural poetics that is nurtured by a perceived Native American earthly eloquence is the melancholy tone of the passage, which admits a subtle sense of loss vis-à-vis the “natural” Native American poets who are forever “leaving, melting” from the places they have named. If the Indians figure as the “natural” incarnation of the land, their “disappearance” is also linked to, and perhaps foreshadows, the loss of a particular quality of America’s natural landscapes. The poem may conceive of the disappearance of Native Americans as a quiet, peaceful, almost organic process, but it is a loss nonetheless. And while Whitman’s poetry may hardly express concern for the speed with which undomesticated nature was being driven from the continent, the way in which “Starting from Paumanok” mourns the irrevocability of the Native American demise – a demise of cultures that were once as diverse and abundant as the long lines of names they are leaving behind – also gestures toward a possible demise of America’s seemingly endless natural riches, relating the myth of the vanishing Indian to the emerging idea of the vanishing wilderness. Yet again, the link between the speaker-poet’s natural poetics and Native American cultural expressions also underscores Whitman’s profoundly conflicted position vis-à-vis the natural world. In the passage from “Starting from Paumanok”, the speaker acknowledges and activates the magnificent Native American accomplishment – to speak from nature, to grasp its essence in a “natural” language – only

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to import it into the language of the double-colonizer. Whitman’s remarkable project of resisting the colonizing act of mapping a place by naming it from above and without original knowledge of its natural history deprives the “red aborigines” of a viable speaking position and ultimately appropriates the natural environment’s spiritual essence as much as its physical presence, with the American poet emerging as even more effective colonizer. The lines immediately following the passage quoted above reinforce this dynamic: utilizing the energy and evocative power of aboriginal languages, the poet now rejoices in the land from which the Native Americans have vanished as a “world primal again”, ready to be taken over and mastered by “[a] new race dominating previous ones and grander far” (LoG 187). This imaginative link between the poet’s yearning for an organic form of expression and the vanishing Native American “voice of nature” finds its negative culmination in “Song of the Redwood-Tree”. In an interesting parallel to “Starting from Paumanok”, where the “melting” of Native Americans subtly evoked the vanishing of undomesticated nature, the irreversible elimination of old-growth redwoods in “Song of the Redwood-Tree” indirectly suggests the removal of Indian tribes; yet here, Native Americans are no longer vanishing but completely gone. Their utter absence remains symbolically related to the ongoing destruction of America’s natural landscapes also by way of a curious transfer between the voices of nature and the speaker’s own poetic expression. In the opening lines, the dying trees leave their song to the poet while departing, in a way that subliminally echoes the fading Native American of the earlier poem: A California song, A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe as air, A chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads departing, A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.

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Farewell my brethren, Farewell O earth and sky, farewell ye neighboring waters, My time has ended, my term has come.

(LoG 351) As M. Jimmie Killingsworth has shown, “the language of the poem – the mention of superior races and assimilation, for example – nods toward the darker side of manifest destiny, the racist logic that at the time Whitman wrote the poem was used to uproot indigenous peoples from their land” (2002: 20), while the poem’s “ghostly discourse”, in particular, links it to nineteenth-century notions of the vanishing Indian and the “nationalizing or globalizing impulse” which it served, performing an “all too easy substitution of red people for redwoods” (Killingsworth 2002: 20). In a grand vision of control, the poet imagines nature condoning its own destruction much like he pictured Native Americans as vanishing peacefully; and just as he utilized the “natural breaths” of Native Americans, he now appropriates the “ancient and rustling” words of the redwood-tree (LoG 353-54) – reminiscent of the voices Native Americans that had “melted” into the “earth and sky” – to claim and colonize the land. All that is left of the possible green implications of the junction between Native American and nature is a subdued sense of guilt that speaks from the “ecstatic” lines of colonizing poet. This symbolic transfer is directly related to nineteenth-century America’s relentless expansionism, in particular to the supposedly humane policy of Indian removal that was to open Western lands for white settlement and the exploitation of natural resources. The removals were carried out against rather substantial humanitarian arguments, and met with diverse forms of Native American resistance, nullifying Indian treaty rights and compromising the United States’ egalitarian ideals. Whitman virtually ignores the forceful Indian removals in his poetry, turning domination and control into peaceful relinquishment – in what appears to be an attempt to reconcile, at least in part, his culture’s conflicting attitudes regarding America’s indigenous peoples. That his poetry yokes the fate of the NobleSavage-turned-Vanishing-Indian to the fate of nature suggests that here, too, he may have tried to reconcile his conflicting cultural

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loyalties. Yet his expansionist rhetoric compromises the tentative ecological positions, positions that also emerge from the Native American resonances of his poetry. Ultimately, the uneasy junction between Whitman’s enthusiasm for an aboriginal poetics of the earth and his view of Native Americans as rooted in the land but doomed to vanish infuses his views of nature with a similar sense of a great but vanishing entity, which may be mourned in passing but cannot be helped. Whitman’s repeated evocations of a Native American “natural” poetics link his ambivalent views of “the red aborigines” to his equally conflicted position towards the environment in a dynamic interplay that pulls in two directions, preserving both the act of colonization (of Native Americans and the land) and its criticism. Whitman’s references to the land in contemporary as well as archaic Native American terms ultimately serve to define the continent’s natural geographies for the dominant, Euro-American culture, undermining evocations of a (Native) American life based on humility and empathy, which his poetry also performs. Similarly, his Native American figures often emerge as savages who “syllable” words to the colonizers from a pre-linguistic state, even though they also carry a faint memory of speakers from an ancient culture that may have found a way of sounding with nature that Whitman’s new America is largely deficient in; the melancholy tone of many “Indian” passages in his poetry subtly gestures towards this deficiency. Because these two discursive forces at work in Whitman’s acts of singing the continent in a “native” voice are neither equal in strength nor static, they constitute not a dead-lock but a possibility, also and especially for ecocritical interpretations. In a subtle but persistent way, the view of Native Americans as organically linked to the land strengthens the considerable green voice that runs through large parts of Leaves of Grass, while the precarious position of the continent’s indigenous peoples in his expansionist vision also foregrounds the limited scope of his green rhetoric. Ultimately, the text itself develops an environmentally resonant voice during several Native American moments in Leaves of Grass, even if Whitman’s stated interest is in the colonizing progress of his “new race” across and over the American natural landscape.

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Bibliography Adamson, Joni. 2001. American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Agassiz, Louis. 1854. ‘Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and Their Relation to the Different Types of Man’ in Nott, Josiah Chaste and Geo. R. Gliddon (eds) Types of Mankind: Or, Ethnological Researches, Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon Their Natural, Geographical, Philological, and Biblical History. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co: lviii-lxxvii. Allen, Gay Wilson. 1980. ‘How Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman Viewed the Frontier’ in Budd, Louis J., Edwin H. Cady and Carl L. Anderson (eds) Toward a New American Literary History: Essays in Honor of Arlin Turner. Durham: Duke University Press: 111-28. Armbruster, Karla and Kathleen R. Wallace (eds). 2001. Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. 2000. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge. Buell, Lawrence. 1987. ‘Transcendentalist Catalogue Rhetoric: Vision Versus Form’ in Cady, Edwin H. and Louis J. Budd (eds) On Whitman: The Best from ‘American Literature.’ Durham: Duke University Press: 113-23. —. 2001. Writing for an Endangered World. Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard. Childs, Peter and R.J. Patrick Williams. 1997. An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory. London: Prentice Hall. Dressman, Michael R. 1978. ‘‘Names Are Magic’: Walt Whitman’s Laws of Geographic Nomenclature’ in Names 26: 68-79. Fletcher, Angus. 2004. A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Folsom, Ed. 1992. ‘Culturing White Anxiety: Walt Whitman and American Indians’ in Etudes Anglaises 45(1): 286-98. —. 1998. ‘Native Americans (Indians)’ in LeMaster, J.R. and Donald D. Kummings (eds) Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. New York: Garland: 449-51. —. 1999. ‘Walt Whitman’s Prairie Paradise’ in Sayre, Robert F. (ed.) Recovering the Prairie. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press: 47-60. —. 1994. Walt Whitman’s Native Representations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gerhardt, Christine. 2002. ‘The Greening of African American Literary Landscapes: Where Ecocriticism Meets Post-Colonial Theory’ in Mississippi Quarterly 55(4): 515-33.

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Hall, Stuart. 1996. ‘When Was ‘the Post-Colonial’? Thinking at the Limit’ in Chambers, Iain and Lidia Curti (eds) The Post-Colonial Question. Common Skies, Divided Horizons. London: Routledge: 242-60. Hollis, C. Carroll. 1957. ‘Names in Leaves of Grass’ in Names 5: 129-56. Kenny, Maurice. 1992. ‘Whitman’s Indifference to Indians’ in Martin, Robert K. (ed.) The Continuing Presence of Walt Whitman. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press: 28-38. Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. 2002. ‘The Voluptuous Earth and the Fall of the Redwood Tree: Whitman’s Personifications of Nature.’ in Folsom, Ed (ed.) Whitman East and West. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press: 14-25. Krech III, Shepard. 1999. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: Norton. Mayer, Sylvia (ed.). 2003. Restoring the Connection to the Natural World: Essays on the African American Environmental Imagination. Münster: LIT. Moore-Gilbert, Bart. 1997. Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics. London: Verso. Murphy, Patrick D. 2000. Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. —. 1995. Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques. Albany: SUNY Press. Philippon, Daniel J. 1998. ‘‘I Only Seek to Put You in Rapport’: Message and Method in Walt Whitman’s Specimen Days’ in Branch, Michael P. et al. (eds) Reading the Earth: New Directions in the Study of Literature and Environment. Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press: 179-93. Read, Allen Walker. 1980. ‘Walt Whitman’s Attraction to Indian Place Names’ in Literary Onomastic Studies 7: 189-204. Spence, Mark David. 1999. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Traubel, Horace (ed.). 1904/1987. An American Primer by Walt Whitman. Stevens Point, WI: Holy Cow. Tichi, Cecilia. 1979. New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from the Puritans through Whitman. New Haven: Yale University Press. Whitman, Walt. 1965. Leaves of Grass (ed. S. Bradley and H. W. Blodgett) (Comprehensive Reader’s Edition). New York: Norton. —. 1855/1982. Leaves of Grass. Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (ed. J. Kaplan). New York: Library of America. —. 1892/1982. Leaves of Grass. Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (ed. J. Kaplan). New York: Library of America.

“We are dirt: we are earth”: Ursula Le Guin and the problem of extraterrestrialism Tonia L. Payne Abstract: The essay contributes to the ecocritical discussion of the problematics of dualistic thought, of concepts of the human that position the human being as separate from the natural world, by analyzing two short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, “Newton’s Sleep” and “Paradises Lost,” in which this problematic is addressed. Le Guin’s stories create a setting in which the separation of human and nonhuman nature becomes concrete: space travel. The characters in the stories are physically separated and psychologically alienated from Earth and have developed new concepts of reality that allow them to make sense of their situation–in the first story, one that rests on the absolute value of pure reason; in the other, one that rests on the absolute value of spiritual transcendence. Drawing on scholarship that explores the problematics of dualistic thought, such as David Ehrenfeld’s The Arrogance of Humanism, the essay delineates how Le Guin’s texts, by employing the metaphor of space travel, demonstrate “how literature can help us to re-examine our connection to our planet here and now.”

1. Introduction Ecocriticism entails an implicit critique of the notion that humans are in some way separate from the natural world. Ecocritical readings of texts can function to remind us that we are, in fact, animals of this particular planet. Certain literary texts make this point explicitly. In two short stories, “Newton’s Sleep” and “Paradises Lost,” Ursula K. Le Guin uses the metaphor of extended life in outer space, where humans are disconnected from terrestrial life and become literally extra-terrestrial, to explore the problem of separating ourselves, psychologically, from the source of our lives. Many of Le Guin’s science fiction works explore the issues of “extra-terrestrialism” as an issue of aliens, Terran humans and humans (to use the term loosely) from different planets encountering each other. Here, however, she

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focuses on the disconnection space travel requires from any planet – and the problems inherent in such a disconnection. In both stories, the Terran humans have chosen to create a new reality for themselves as space inhabitants. In doing so, they separate themselves from the realities of terrestrial life, though their reasons for doing so differ in the stories. In addition to the physical separation from Earth, the characters in both stories attempt a psychic separation from our planet – or planetary life of any sort – and the methods through which they create that psychic separation also differ: In “Newton’s Sleep,” the attempt is to separate from the reality of terrestrial life through the application of pure reason; in “Paradises Lost,” the attempt is through religious faith. Both responses are seen as worthy attempts to adjust to the reality of extended life in space; both are fully understandable adaptations to the circumscribed world of the space colonies the characters inhabit. Le Guin is not primarily concerned with criticising reason or religion. But in her view, both reason and religion are problematic in that they attempt to reduce “reality” (an admittedly problematic term) to something that can be fully contained in and thus in a sense controlled by the human mind. In this sense, both stories relate to what David Ehrenfeld calls “the arrogance of humanism” (in his book of the same name). The underlying assumption – indeed presumption – of humanism, Ehrenfeld argues, is precisely the idea that humans have the power to control whatever we chose, from our own minds and bodies to everything that surrounds us. The fundamental basis of Western societies at this point in time relies on a firm belief that “all problems are soluble by people” and furthermore that “many problems are soluble by technology” (Ehrenfeld 1981: 16–17). This is precisely the assumption that Le Guin’s stories confront and question. As both stories illustrate, any entity as intricate in its systems and the totality of its existence as a planet – or a human being – is far too complex to be contained and controlled by the application of human intellect, whether that application is framed as the use of reason or reliance on religious faith. Planets as a whole and human beings individually are, in fact, wild, in the sense that Gary Snyder discusses in his essay “The Etiquette of Freedom,” when he equates the definition of “wild” with the definition of the Dao:

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[…] eluding analysis, beyond categories, self-organizing, self-informing […] independent, complete, orderly, unmediated, freely manifesting, self-authenticating, self-willed, complex, quite simple. (Snyder 1990: 10)

Since Le Guin’s works evidence her deep and abiding interest in Taoist thought, this definition is particularly apt. In what follows, however, I shy away from the word “system,” as in “planetary system,” because it harks too much of the kind of scientific ordering that is being reevaluated and critiqued in the stories under discussion. Nevertheless, in both stories, the humans in question are attempting to tame the systems in which they exist, and indeed to tame their responses to those systems. They live in the only possible fully tamed system: one that is entirely the product of human construction. The metaphoric aspects of this are crucial, as here and now we appear to be in the process of attempting to tame our entire planet, despite its essential wildness and despite the ways in which the planet is clearly beyond our capacity to tame. Hence, Le Guin presents her readers with characters who exist wholly in the “tamed” environment of man-made space vehicles in order for us to question what we would lose should we succeed in turning our planet into an entirely human construct. Ehrenfeld points to the futility of such an endeavour in the first place, noting Eric Kraus’s assertion that “There is an inevitable discrepancy between our scientific models and the much more richly textured world of everyday experience” (qtd. in Ehrenfeld 1981: 66). In both stories, Le Guin demonstrates what the human-constructed environments of her protagonists contain as well as what they lack of our “richly textured world.” Implicitly, the stories metaphorically address our own desire to control our environment, to shape it entirely to our own needs and comfort. The nonhuman is, we know, unpredictable, often deeply mysterious despite continued efforts on the part of scientists to create ever deeper understanding of all its manifestations and therefore, as Chellis Glendinning suggests in “Recovery from Western Civilization,” profoundly frightening. When we no longer live within nature as an inseparable part of it, we find ourselves lost and terrified. […] Slowly, as our physical reality became less wild and more technological, we needed to create a new psychic context for ourselves. But since

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2. “Newton’s Sleep” In the story “Newton’s Sleep,” the characters have created what they feel is a “techno-utopia,” and the protagonist, Ike, is a devotee of pure reason as the only necessary guiding principle. His character evidences our contemporary separation from the Romantic approach to nature, which at very least acknowledged the value of artistic production as a nonrational but necessary aspect of apprehending reality. As Karl Kroeber says, contemporary devaluing of the nonscientific, nonrational – embodied in characters such as Ike – “reveals the degree to which we have internalized a masculinized ideal of selfhood founded on separation from nature, rational objectivity, and a need to dominate: individuality as a will to power” (Kroeber 1994: 17). Indeed, the title of the story – taken from a Blake poem that is a critique of reason as the valourised method for apprehending reality – gives us immediate warning that the story will question the primacy of intellect and the rational as the basis of our approach to our lives. Ike, his family, and a number of like-minded survivors have abandoned Earth in order to live in the Special Earth Satellite, or Spes (an acronym that is also, not coincidentally, the name for the goddess of hope). Ike believes the inevitable logic of that decision was manifest at the first signs of “resource exhaustion, population explosion, the breakdown of government” (Le Guin 1991: 25), which he says had been in full evidence for one hundred years prior to the time when the story takes place. With those givens, the rational, reasonable conclusion was obvious. Earth could not be saved, so reason dictated that people must find the money and means to leave Earth behind. Of course, the statement “Earth could not be saved” begs the question “why not?” Ike never questions whether different choices could have been made during that preceding one hundred years that might have led to a different reasonable conclusion. And readers are being led to question the choices being made right now, as presumably we are living sometime during that hundred-year span. Are our choices inevitably going to lead us to the point where Ike’s logical

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conclusion is the only one left? Ike’s decision is logical, given what Earth looks like at the time of the story. Implicitly, however, Le Guin is asking us to examine the choices we are making now, choices that become ever narrower over time. And she asks us to consider whether the alternative that Ike and the rest of his community have found is one we are willing to accept. In this regard, the story reminds us what we stand to lose, in part by demonstrating what has already been lost. The Spes dwellers have fled fungal plagues, new and horrifically virulent viral infections, and the utter breakdown of political systems. The planet itself, as Ike’s daughter Esther notes, is “all dead”: the Amazon basin, for instance, has been reduced to “dunes and bald red plains” (Le Guin 1991: 25). The issue for Ike, however, is not merely that the Spes inhabitants have escaped the horrible fate of the planet and its remaining inhabitants. What they have left behind is a world that cannot be comprehended using (or at least using exclusively) reason, a world that was uncontrollable. “Weather,” Ike says, “Weather was the worst! Just to get free of that stupid, impossible unpredictability!” (Le Guin 1991: 29). In light of the disasters facing Earth, that weather was the “worst” is instructive: for Ike, as a reasonable man, unpredictability is “stupid,” and stupidity is intolerable. Ike is less repelled by physical illness and social malaise than by anything that seems to him to be anti-intelligent, and intelligence is equated in his mind with the ability to control. On Spes, everything is controlled, including projected images that provide inhabitants with comforting visions of an idealised past Earth, images such as Vermont, Florida, Urban, or Boulder. However much those who live on Spes enjoy the comfort of those images, Ike is leaning towards agreement with the idea that the images are detrimental. As Ike explains: […] it’s a matter of honesty. Let’s use each area honestly, let it find its own aesthetic, instead of disguising it in any way. If Spes is our world, let’s accept it as such. The next generation – what will these pretenses of earth scenery mean to them? (Le Guin 1991: 28)

Ike understands that the images provide an unsevered link to the planet itself, and in his view, this link is a chain that keeps them prisoner, prisoner of the planet whose fate they intend to escape and

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from which they have severed the basis of their lives. As he says, removing the Earth images from their living space “would turn us from clinging to the past, free us toward actuality and the future.” Similarly, Ike dislikes the video screens that allow the space dwellers to view what is happening on the home planet, and he refers to them as “a lien, a tie, an umbilicus” (Le Guin 1991: 28). In Ike’s eyes, the colonists’ connection to their home planet is both an unpaid debt and evidence of unformed infancy; thus, in order to be fully individuated and independent, they must sever the connections. However, the sense of the tie as an unpaid debt is significant: the colonists do, in fact, owe their very existence to the planet, and that is a debt they have not repaid. Further, the sense of the tie to the planet being an umbilicus is complex and very important. Ike’s metaphor seems to imply his belief that humans are still in a gestational stage and need to be born into a reality separate from the planet and an animal basis to existence. Apparently, the gestational period will end when all humans pass from the amniotic fluid of emotion (homesickness, nostalgia, love for the home planet) into the clear air of pure reason. Ike himself feels in some ways reborn: He realized that he was happy – absolutely happy. […] It was more than just bodily [happiness]. It was what man had sought so long and never found, never could find, on earth: a rational happiness. (Le Guin 1991: 29)

Recalling Kroeber’s point, noted above, that our contemporary consciousness has incorporated and assumes the primacy of control and reason as the routes to understanding, the idea that happiness is “rational” also evokes a point made by Antonio Damasio. Irrational emotion divorces us from our ability to reason, and reason – at least for Ike and those like him – is all that makes it possible for us to problem solve and, moreover, live to our full potential. As Damasio says: The ‘high-reason’ view [of problem solving]… assumes that when we are at our decision-making best, we are the pride and joy of Plato, Déscartes and Kant. Formal logic will, by itself, get us to the best available solution for any problem. An important aspect of the rationalist conception is that to obtain the best results,

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emotions must be kept out. Rational processing must be unencumbered by passion. (Damasio 1994: 171)

So Ike clings to that sense of rational happiness, even in the face of the anti-Semitism that has followed the colony into space, along with other cultural detritus from the Earth past – such as “power hierarchy, division of labor by gender, Cartesian values” and racism – all of which are evidence that the colony has not, in fact, been able to “form a true human community and do it right,” as Ike had hoped (Le Guin 1991: 33). Ike’s daughter, Esther, works to express the voice of irrational emotion and indeed a resistance to Ike’s insistence that Spes contains everything valuable. Esther does, as noted above, acknowledge the death of Earth, its horrific destruction, but she is not an adherent of reason, partially because she is female, and thus herself one of the Others that masculinised rationality excludes, and moreover because she is a teenager, and thus a member of a notoriously irrational, resistant tribe. Esther also cherishes memories of the diversity that has been left behind: She remembered all sorts of stuff […] stuff like cockroaches, rain, pollution alerts, and her best friend in the building, Saviora, who had ten million little tiny short braids each one tied with a red thread and a blue bead. Her best friend in the building and in the Building Mothers’ School and in the world. Until she had to go live in the United States and then Bakersfield [base for the Spes project] and be decontaminated, decontaminated of everything, the germs and viruses and funguses, the roaches and the radiation and the rain, the red threads and the blue beads and the bright eyes. (Le Guin 1991: 38)

In Esther’s memory the evils of their previous Earth-bound existence – germs, viruses, cockroaches, and radiation – are inseparable from the beauties that have also been left behind, rain and her black bestfriend’s brightly coloured braid ties. Ike would see the loss of one as justifying the loss of the other: for Esther, the logical necessity of losing the bad does not make up for her sorrow at losing what she also cherished. Esther provides an interesting metaphor as well: she is genetically “perfect” – carries no genes that would cause problems for potential offspring – but she has “severe vision deficiencies,” despite numerous operations meant to correct them, and she wears corrective lenses. On

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Spes, she is to have her final operation, receiving a new pair of eyes – “a pair of 20-20s from the organ freeze” (Le Guin 1991: 24). The replacement of Esther’s eyes is an effort to replace her vision in a metaphoric sense: to get her to see as others see, to induce her to apprehend reality in the same way Ike does, for instance. In an extension of the humanist sense that all problems are soluble, and most soluble by technology, this view of the human body as a machinelike entity with interchangeable parts demonstrates not only that we think of our problems as soluble through applications of reason and technology but also that we think of ourselves as already cyborgean, an idea developed by N. Katherine Hayles in How We Became Posthuman. As she says: The posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body [or its parts] with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. (Hayles 1999: 3)

Ike demonstrates this point of view, and he does not understand Esther’s reluctance to undergo the surgery: he assumes she is afraid of the surgery itself, but it seems she is resistant to literally changing her way of seeing. Indeed, as Hayles points out, the assumption that our apprehension of reality can be separated from the body that does the apprehending is problematic: Indeed, one could argue that the erasure of embodiment is a feature common to both the liberal humanist subject and the cybernetic posthuman. Identified with the rational mind, the liberal subject possessed a body but was not usually represented as being a body. Only because the body is not identified with the self is it possible to claim for the liberal subject its notorious universality, a claim that depends on erasing markers of bodily difference, including sex, race, and ethnicity. (Hayles 1999: 4, emphasis original)

Erasing, or attempting to discount the significance of, those markers becomes an issue on Spes, where there are no blacks and where, as previously noted, anti-Semitism still exists, though Ike tries to rationalise away both issues, attempting to find ways to make them non-issues. Esther, however, is painfully aware of the problems on Spes, for she feels both, experiencing irrational – and bodily based –

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emotion. And even through her thick eyeglass lenses, she sees the limitations to Ike’s way of looking at the world and struggles to resist his limitations, to understand – see – her world in her own way. Indeed, the story becomes most interesting when the issue of what can be seen turns into a problem of determining what is real. As the story progresses, mysterious intrusions from the Earthly past begin to make their way onto, into, Spes. The first to see these intrusions are children. That children are the first to see the ghosts (or, as Ike prefers to call them, hallucinations) is itself a critique of reason and a valourising of intuitive, emotional apprehensions of reality, as children are creatures of intuition rather than reason. Children also are Others, ones who live outside the boundaries of Western rational male constructions of “us” as opposed to “them,” as Le Guin herself notes in her introduction to Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (Le Guin 1990: 9). Children, as human Others, are well positioned to see other Others, human or not. The first intrusion is human: children report seeing a gutwrenching woman and she was really like burned all over, shiny, even her clothes burned off except a sort of rag thing […] “like in those history vids […] you know, all those people that used to live where that was before the desert, right, Africa? That’s what she looked like. Like those famine people.” (Le Guin 1991: 37)

Gradually more and more people begin to see the “ghosts,” though there are exceptions – notably (and not surprisingly), Ike – and the new arrivals become healthier and more “natural,” as if, as Ike’s son notes, they are from times further and further back in human history. Animals also appear, including creatures patently incompatible with an orbiting space station, no matter how large – such as horses, buffalo, and whales. Even Ike at one point feels some unseen presence, a “soft electric thrilling along his arms and back, the sense of crowding, a murmur below the threshold of hearing, a smell of sweat or musk or human breath.” Ike’s response is to fight against it, not just as being unreal but as a threat to all he holds most precious. “You cannot let this happen,” he says, though to whom is unclear, “[t]his is all the hope we have” (Le Guin 1991: 48–9). The apparitions cannot be rationally explained, so accepting them is, to him, the death

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of hope, his hope (our cultural hope) that the irrationality of terrestrial life can be transcended. What Ike cannot accept is that the appearance of these presences is not a sign of a terrible problem, an end to hope, but in fact a sign that there may be hope in a direction he had never considered: hope from the emotions, from the nonrational, the realms beyond reason. The nonrational as a source of hope is detailed by Kroeber. He asks: What if one conceives of life as diverse processes striving to sustain what we call ecosystems, complexes of interactivity that enhance the power and endurance of their vitality through a cooperative interplay of self-transforming individualities? Then a hopeful prospect of successfully coordinating individuality and social or material regularity emerges. The true “orderliness” of nature then appears to be not the deadly mechanicalness of limited regularities but the ever-surprising contingent interactions of differing and varying vital rhythms. These unexpected patternings to “enlightened” rationalizers appear to be disruptive accidents, signs of disorganization. They are, on the contrary, manifestations of a profounder organization. (Kroeber 1994: 106)

Ike continues to believe that the new arrivals, perceived by more and more of the Spes inhabitants, are indeed “disruptive accidents, signs of disorganization” – in his estimation, signs of mass hallucination, a descent of the entire colony into madness. When even his own family not only sees but accepts as real the various “ghosts” or “visitors,” Ike breaks down. When his wife, Susan, offers comfort, he says, “It’s not OK. It’s not all right. It’s all gone crazy. It’s all ruined, ruined, wasted, wrong. Gone wrong” (Le Guin 1991: 51). For Ike, the prevalence of something he cannot understand or explain rationally is ruinous, and it is part of Le Guin’s point in this story that he sees as ruinous all the Others of Western society: those that are different racially, or culturally, or because of economic class, or because they are nonhuman. Susan seems more adept at finding an accommodation of the nonrational in her otherwise rational, reasoning mind (perhaps, again, because like the children who first see the old woman, she herself is an Other, being a woman). She says: “It scares me when I think about it, Ike. It seems like something supernatural, and I don’t think there is anything supernatural. But if I don’t think about it in words like that, if I just look at it, look at the people and the – the horses and the vine by

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the door – it makes sense. How did we, how could we have thought we could just leave? Who do we think we are? All it is, is we brought ourselves with us… The horses and the whales and the old women and the sick babies. They’re just us, we’re them, they’re here.” (Le Guin 1991: 51, ellipsis original)

In the end, readers are left with a sense that in fact, the umbilicus cannot be cut, or perhaps that it is not an umbilicus but a literal life line. Susan sums it up: “Who do we think we are?” she asks. In the standard Western Cartesian way of thinking, we are something separate from, indeed better than, the rest of the lives that surround us, the ball of water and earth we stand on, the sea of air we swim through without thinking about it, and all the myriad Others who share the planet with “us.” But in fact, Le Guin suggests, we are inextricably a part of all the things we separate ourselves from. We are creatures of reason, yes, but that is not all we are, and if we attempt to live our lives using only reason or logic as our yardsticks for value and significance, we miss seeing the reality that our lives are implicit in everything around us and cannot be extracted from that wholeness. In the end, the issue of vision and what is real becomes almost dreamlike in its complexity. Esther has had the operation on her eyes but it has failed: the new eyes were not successful. However, through the same process that brings the trumpet vines and horses to Spes, Esther turns out to be able to see, and it is Ike who stumbles, blind, literally and metaphorically, in the world he does not comprehend. He calls out to Esther for help and, in the final benediction of the story, through his admission of bewilderment (a literal being lost in the wild), he regains his ability to see. The reality he can now see includes Esther’s little black friend, his own mother, and all the rest of his emotional, human life. When Ike accepts the irrationality of existence, he regains his world. 3. “Paradises Lost” The situation in “Paradises Lost” is different in that the extraterrestrial Terran humans are on a multigenerational voyage between planets, from Earth, which is generally referred to by an Anglicised version of the planet’s name in Chinese, Dichew (Ti Chiu), travelling towards a planet offering potential for colonisation, referred to as Sindychew (Hsin Ti Chiu – New Earth). The original members of the expedition

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very much wanted their descendants, who would live their entire lives in transit, in space, to understand and value Earth, terrestrialism. One woman from the first generation, in journals widely read by the subsequent generations, worries: “How will they forgive us? […] We who took the world from them before they were ever born – we who took the seas, the mountains, the meadowlands, the cities, the sunlight from them, all their birthright?” (Le Guin 2002: 268)

However, over the course of the generations, references to Earth become essentially meaningless to the travelers. How can one understand a reality one has never experienced? The narration clarifies the problem: Programs, photographs, descriptions – all representations of Dichew were suspect, since they were products of technology, of the human mind. They were interpretations. The planet of origin was inaccessible to direct understanding. (Le Guin 2002: 285)

However, some inhabitants of the Discovery, as the ship/colony is named, struggle to understand Dichew and why it is important. Even the structure of the names of the two protagonists indicate the awareness that they are parts of a continuum that had a discrete beginning and is meant to have a concrete end: 5-Liu Hsing and 5Nova Luis, the 5 indicating which generation of travelers they belong to, then their patronymics, then their “first” names. Five generations removed from Dichew, Hsing and Luis cannot comprehend basic ideas such as sky, or fully comprehend the distinctions between words such as hill, wind, and cow, as all are utterly alien to their experience. Le Guin details how radically different their view of “life” is than ours. The only non-human presences in their world are the various symbiotic creatures of our own bodies – all much too small to be perceived through direct experience. As far as the awareness of the travelers goes: Nothing in the world has more or less than two legs. Nothing has wings. Nothing sucks blood. Nothing hides in tiny crevices, waves tendrils, scuttles into shadows, lays eggs, washes its fur, clicks it mandibles, or turns around three times before it lies down with its nose on its tail. Nothing has a tail. Nothing in the world has paws or claws. Nothing in the world soars. Nothing swims. Nothing purrs, barks,

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growls, roars, chitters, trills, or cries repeatedly two notes, a descending fourth, for three months of the year. (Le Guin 2002: 251)

This passage clearly defines for readers what has been left behind: not only the things we think we would be happy to be rid of permanently (ticks, mosquitoes, and so on) but also the other living presences that make our own lives interesting. We, reading this passage now when all these various presences are still actually present, are reminded of our emotional responses to them. Clearly the animals with tails and paws, who turn around three times before lying down, are dear to us; the passage calls up for us images of the Others that we cherish (dogs, cats, birds) and reminds us that even the ones we are often repelled by or frightened of – the ones with mandibles and claws and that scuttle into corners – are part of the texture of our lives, are at the very least interesting, objects of curiosity and exploration. I have quoted the passage at length because of its emotional impact, which is precisely what Le Guin wants us to consider. How empty, how monochromatic and textureless would our lives be without all those Others? In fact, the story indicates that what has been left behind is not only animal presences but, in fact, wildness itself, which is both a treasure and a terror. The complexity of human reactions to wildness are demonstrated in two events. In the first, Hsing provides evidence of the terror reaction to wildness. In her early schooling, she is shown “bookscreens” of animals on Earth and realises that some are funny and some attractive: she wishes she could touch them. But Some are frightening. There’s one with bright hair all gold and dark, with terrible clear eyes that stare at you without liking you, without knowing you at all. “Tiger in zoo,” the [narrating] voice says. Then children are playing with some little “kittens” that climb on them and the children giggle and the kittens are cute, like dolls or babies, until one of them looks right at you and there are the same eyes, the round, clear eyes that do not know your name. (Le Guin 2002: 251)

What is wild does not know our names, does not interact with us as other humans do (hence the nonhuman as the ultimate and most extreme of all Others), and Hsing bursts into tears and says “I hate it, I hate it!” (Le Guin 2002: 251). In her experience, “Only people are real. Only people are alive. … People know you. They know your name” (Le Guin 2002: 252). If you meet another person who does not

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know your name, the solution is simple: you introduce yourself. Wild things don’t much care what we name them or ourselves: they are sufficient unto themselves, and that independence is what frightens Hsing. Her response, hating what does not accept her individuality, her unique humanness, illustrates one reason why, perhaps, humans find it so easy to disregard the fate of those wild Others: If they won’t grant us our worth in ways we can understand, why should we grant them theirs? The moment in which someone who has never experienced an animal presence finds her- or himself facing an animal is one Le Guin likes to explore, because it helps us to question, to examine, our responses to Others. Hsing’s friend and co-protagonist Luis also has an experience of wildness through a virtual reality programme that is intended to teach the inhabitants of Discovery various possible methods for dealing with humans who live earth-based lives: the programme is called Jungle. Though Luis first attempts all the variations of the programme in dealing with the “ugly, degraded little savages” who inhabit the jungle (Le Guin 2002: 281), eventually he attempts to subvert the programme by stopping on the virtual path before reaching the human village. He simply stands in the virtual jungle, experiencing the sheer weight of all those other living presences – including, ultimately, a creature the indigenous humans call garan (either a jaguar or a leopard, depending on whether the jungle is South American or African). Despite his awareness that what he sees is an artifice, an aspect of the programme constructed by humans, he is struck, “transfixed,” by the elegance of the creature – and by the fact that it does not look at him. The independence that terrified Hsing when she was five years old entrances Luis as an adolescent. He realises that experiencing even a supremely controlled, utterly humanmediated version of “wilderness” has “strangely enriched his thinking” (Le Guin 2002: 282). Hsing and Luis are typical of Le Guin’s protagonists, as both are in some senses isolated from their community. Their isolation, however, is a matter of profound individuality rather than the “separation that is such a troubling part of the modern condition” (Spencer 1980: online 2004). As Kathleen L. Spencer notes, Le Guin’s protagonists throughout her stories “are isolated without being alienated. […] They do not see themselves as objects, or as powerless victims shoved

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around by monstrous impersonal forces [over] which they have no control.” Indeed, Hsing and Luis are isolated because they do not conform entirely to their society, it seems out of a deep-seated, innate need to question. Their position is thus liminal, in the sense pointed out by Spencer, and therefore they are capable of bringing dynamic change to their society. As Spencer explains, those in liminal positions create the dynamic interchange between the structure of a society, which leads it to “stability […] knowledge” and the “communitas” of that society, which “is […] the modality of change.” In counterpoint to Hsing and Luis, however, are the travelers who refer to themselves and each other as “Angels.” The Angels have adapted to the reality of their environment by determining that the references to a Terran past and a terrestrial future are metaphoric: the Angels are adherents of a new religion, which they call Bliss, that tells them that the whole point of their existence is transcendence from terrestrial bonds. As their founder, 1-Kim Terry says: “We here, now, travel away from the body into the realm of the soul. We are free. We are utterly free of darkness, of sin, of Earth. […] You are divine beings, sacred souls, who have been called to live in bliss. All that remains to us to do is to know who we are, that we are the inhabitants of heaven. That we are the blessed, the heavenborn, chosen for the eternal voyage.” (Le Guin 2002: 295)

The angels thus function as a stable force – so stable, in fact, that they see no value in anything other than a continuation of their lives as they know them. Stability may be laudable – even necessary – but the problem is that in order to maintain that stability, the Angels are engaged in a process of eradicating information and denying knowledge – not just to themselves but to all on the Discovery. The Angels are growing in number and are, in fact, manipulating the data stores so that evidence of the real Earth past and any information about the destination planet are slowly being expunged – so Luis, a born questioner and one who recognises the need for informed choice, attempts to understand the drive that leads people to this mode of thought. He explains to Hsing: “Bliss is a self-contained proposition, a closed system. It is a psychic adaptation to our life – ship life – an adaptation to a self-contained system, an unvarying artificial environment providing all necessities at all times. We of the middle

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The closed system of the religion echoes the closed system of the ship itself. As Luis clarifies, the religion is an understandable adaptation to the reality of their situation, an attempt to make sense of, find value in, their lives inside an entirely human-constructed environment. This harkens to the near worship of technology pointed out by Ehrenfeld. As he points out We must worship the machine if we wish to maintain the fiction that the myth of control is true. […] Humans are not gods, despite the occasional god-like quality that crops up. […] The evidence of technology, alone, tells us this. Yet technology is our major godly output, our flow of miracles. […] So our machine-worship has a reassuring quality – in the midst of danger we tell each other that there is nothing to be afraid of. (Ehrenfeld 1981: 102, emphasis original)

In the midst of the very real dangers of a long-term space voyage, a religious sense of the perfection of the vehicle itself as well as its task is thus nearly inevitable. Further, Ehrenfeld points out that humanism’s assumptions lead us to the sense that our approximation of angelic status requires a separation from nature, for “angels are not supposed to mix with mortal Nature” (Ehrenfeld 1981: 21). Thus, in the terms of the religious system that develops on the Discovery, the only way to find value in the reality of their lives is to transcend their planetary roots, to deny them, all the more so since those roots cannot be directly experienced. The travelers do not “mix with mortal Nature” beyond what is required for their own survival and contained in a self-sustaining system of their own devising. Thus, they can legitimately consider themselves as Angelic. Further, it is not surprising that the human-made environment in which they live is seen as the only value: anything else, everything outside that constructed space, is dangerous (literally true in a space voyage). It is therefore a small metaphoric step to seeing anything outside as sinful, not merely physically but morally and spiritually deadly.

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Hsing and Luis are among those who question the Angels’ thinking: both of them feel a desire for there to be something more than simply the human-made environment, something outside, something else. They do not understand planetary realities, but they are drawn to the idea of other colours, textures, experiences than those entirely mediated by humans. Through them – and through the fact that we do not question their interest as normal, natural, laudable – Le Guin suggests we consider what we need apart from human experiences, and why and how our own lives are augmented by the nonhuman Others who surround us. The crisis in the story occurs when it is revealed that the voyage is going to be drastically shorter than expected: that they will, in fact, reach their destination – an actual, real planet – within a matter of four years instead of forty. The Angels and the non-Angels have to decide whether they wish to explore the planet and leave, simply leave, or stay on the planet as colonists. A number choose to leave – and their fate is left to the outer reaches of space: we have no eye on board that ship once Hsing and Luis depart. That as readers we are left on the destination planet with Hsing and Luis indicates Le Guin’s valourising of that choice as the correct one, though it is an enormously difficult one for the colonists. They enter a world that is filled with Others: “Creatures. There were creatures everywhere. This world was made of creatures. The only things not alive were the rocks. Everything else was alive with creatures” (Le Guin 2002: 354). This is not a bad description of our own planet, and although the colonists are at first dismayed and overwhelmed by the multiplicity of creatures, they come to find a place for themselves in this world. In describing the process by which the colonists adjust themselves to the intricacies of a terrestrial existence, Le Guin plays with language, presenting the colonists’ use of – indeed their discovery of the true meanings of – words that we understand without question to lead readers to a questioning of our underlying cultural assumptions. Some of this use of language occurs even when the colonists are still aboard the ship: Hsing, for instance, reads in a history volume about people on Earth throwing things away and wonders where “away” is (Le Guin 2002: 267), an idea which brings the contemporary reader up short. Where is “away,” if we stop to consider the question?

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On Sindychew, all the colonists’ assumptions are overturned, and their confusion is explored through description of their encounters with words: On the ship you had known words that had no meaning at all, words that signified nothing in the world. Words such as cloud, wind, rain, weather. […] Words whose reality was imaginary, or virtual. But here, the word that had no meaning, the concept without content, was the word virtual. Here nothing was virtual. Clouds came over from the west. West, another reality: direction: a crucially important reality in a world you could get lost in. (Le Guin 2002: 357)

In showing us the colonists’ shock at such discoveries – the discovery that weather continues, does not stop; the discovery that the world has its own time, seasons, that operate without consideration of human needs or desires – Le Guin reminds us of the realities of our own planet, which we tend to overlook, or, more to the point, think we can (or hope we soon will be able to) control. Le Guin is, in a sense, asking us to consider what we would do, how we might behave, if we could have a fresh start – on our own planet or on some other one. The key to starting over, she suggests, is to develop an entirely different sense of our place in the scheme of things. In a wholly human-constructed environment, continuity – what allows us to continue to live, to have culture, to be human – was entirely under human control. On a planet, however, “continuity […] did not depend on human beings. Though they might depend on it. It was a different matter” (Le Guin 2002: 355). The continuity in question is that of simple things, like the sun rising in the morning and setting at night, the coming of winds and rains, the generations of the creatures. If any of those stop, then human life stops as well. In addition, Luis becomes aware of his connection to that new world as a profoundly intimate experience: many of the colonists suffer from headaches, Luis among them, and as the resident doctor, Luis is aware that the headaches may be caused by particles in the air, particles of dirt, plants’ pollens, substances and secretions of the planet, its outbreath. He lay in his [tent] in the long heat of the day, in the long ebb of the pain, thinking about the secrets of the planet, imagining the planet breathing out and himself breathing in that outbreath, like a lover, like breathing in Hsing’s breath. Taking it in, drinking it in. Becoming it. (Le Guin 2002: 352)

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This is a beautiful description of how intimate we are with our own planet, whether we are aware of it or not. By placing her colonists in an environment that is familiar to us but utterly strange to them, Le Guin allows us to glimpse a different way of thinking of our place in our world. What if we were not conquerors, or environmental mechanics, or in any sort of control, but rather were companions, lovers, with our world? Through the colonists, we can explore a new paradigm for our relationship with our planet, one that might, possibly, allow us to begin beginning anew, without having to leave Dichew. 4. Conclusion As these stories suggest, we may in time become extra-terrestrial, in that we may, in the future, come to spend our lives away from any planet. Still, what we cannot do and survive is belong to no Earth, as evidenced by the problems of the space travelers in these stories. As Le Guin says, she is not opposed to the idea of space travel and exploration; rather she wants to critique our sense that somehow we can antiseptically cleanse ourselves of our involvement with all the Others of our existence. She says, “I really do think we have to take our dirt with us wherever we go. We are dirt. We are Earth” (Le Guin 1994: 11). Consequently, in using the metaphor of space travel, Le Guin’s fiction demonstrates how literature can help us re-examine our connection to our planet here and now. This connection is important, Glendinning suggests, because What happens [when we restore the sense of connectedness] is the return of the things that we’ve lost: a more solid sense of ourselves, a sense of connectedness to our deeper selves, to other people, to the world, to the animals, and a deeper communication with soul, body, and Earth. (Glendinning 1995: 40)

The stories indicate that the issue we must confront is far greater than simply the biological functions that support our lives: our need for our planet is far more extensive and complex, involving matters of the mind and soul as well.

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Bibliography Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Déscartes Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Avon Books. Ehrenfeld, David. 1981. The Arrogance of Humanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glendinning, Chellis. 1995. ‘Recovery from Western Civilization’ in Sessions, George (ed.) Deep Ecology for the 21st Century. Boston: Shambhala: 37 – 40. Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kroeber, Karl. 1994. Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind. New York: Columbia University Press. Le Guin, Ursula K. 1990. ‘Introduction’. Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences. New York: ROC (Penguin Books): 7 – 12. —. 1994. ‘Introduction’. A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. New York: Harper Paperbacks: 1 – 11. —. 1991. ‘Newton’s Sleep’ repr. in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: 23 – 53. —. 2002. ‘Paradises Lost’ in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories. New York: Harper Collins: 249 – 362. Snyder, Gary. 1990. ‘The Etiquette of Freedom’ in Practice of the Wild: Essays by Gary Snyder. New York: North Point Press (Farrar, Straus and Giroux): 3 – 24. Spencer, Kathleen L. 1980. ‘Exiles and Envoys: The SF of Ursula K. Le Guin’ in Foundation 20: 32.43. Online at http://ezproxy.ncc.edu:2055/servlet/LitRC (consulted 21.05.2004).

Virtual tourism: the consumption of natural and digital environments Christian Krug Abstract: The essay focuses on virtual forms of tourism made possible by digital technology and considers their cultural impact on natural environments that are both protected areas and traditional tourist destinations – nature reserves, national parks, and public parks. The focus is on the semiotics of visual consumption, and amongst the digital products considered are interactive armchair tours on CD-ROM, internet hypertexts, web-cam images, desktop wallpaper, screen savers, and computer games. The essay argues that while virtual tourism raises some pertinent questions of a categorical nature with regard to ecocriticism, ecocriticism can offer a new, valuable perspective on New Media Studies as well.

Currently, with the instantaneous broadcasting revolution, we are seeing the beginnings of a ‘generalized arrival’ whereby everything arrives without having to leave, the nineteenth century’s elimination of the journey (that is, of the space interval and of time) combining with the abolition of departure at the end of the twentieth, the journey thereby losing its successive components and being overtaken by arrival alone. Paul Virilio, Open Sky (1997: 16) I am assuming that travel is now impossible and that tourism is all we have left. Paul Fussell, Abroad (1980: 41)

This essay explores new, virtual forms of tourism made possible by digital technology. Virtual tourism can sometimes take the form of elaborate cyber-journeys to traditional tourist destinations (or, more precisely, to their virtual equivalents on CD/DVD-ROM or the internet). More often, however, the term applies to instances where a virtual experience supplements more traditional forms of tourism. In

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fact, virtuality and modern tourism are anything but mutually exclusive concepts: both 20th-century theme parks and the seaside resorts of the 19th-century (Brighton and, to some extent, Blackpool) are among the many examples of tourist spaces which incorporate virtuality into the tourist experience. The tourist destinations this essay will focus on, however, seem to be diametrically opposed to the digital and the virtual: nature reserves, national or public parks. ‘Locality’, ‘authenticity’, the ‘natural’ and the ‘material’ are the bedrock of these “protected areas” (Eagles and MacCool 2000)1 – and yet, such natural environments have become favourite sites for virtual tourists. While virtual tourism thus pertains to the computer age and denotes a postmodern phenomenon, the term also evokes literary and visual traditions long before the advent of computers. Many medieval and early modern travel books, fabulous and otherwise, were also exercises in virtual travelling – and this regardless of the question whether the journeys described were real or imaginary. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo’s Travels, and indeed a lot of the Orientalist travel fiction of the 18th and 19th century, afforded their readership the opportunity for virtual tourist impressions of places that were known (or believed) to exist but difficult to access. The British stage, especially in the late 18th and early 19th century, is heavily indebted to this tradition; it produced popular plays that aimed at ‘accurate’ representations of foreign places (chief among them the Orient) in order to offer its audience the theatrical equivalent of a tourist gaze – an audience that at this time was largely made up of segments of the society that could not hope to travel to any of these places.2 Modern science fiction has also toiled with virtual tourism. In the globalized society of Philip K. Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”, written in 1966 on the brink of our 1

Fennell (2003: 45–60) offers useful definitions of what constitutes a nature reserve, a park or protected area, drawing on categories for conservation management established by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and National Resources (IUCN). 2 Although Orientalist plays were rarely based on a playwright’s own journeys to the Far East (Eyles Irwin is an exception), many attained historical and geographical accuracy by consulting travel narratives, and a large part of the attraction (and the commercial success) of a performance was the visual impact of ‘accurate’ stage designs. Cf. Brown (1947: 67–8) and my monograph Das Eigene im Fremden (2001: chapter 4).

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contemporary computer culture, the Orient as Europe’s Other no longer seems to suffice, and the planet Mars is the new exotic site of tourist aspiration. The short story explores the possibilities of virtual travel: A company called Rekal Incorporated sells “ersatz interplanetary travel,” ‘all-inclusive’ virtual tours for tourists who cannot afford the actual journey. In 1966, Dick had not yet devised journeys into cyberspace; his tours are virtual in the sense that the company sells memories of journeys which travellers merely believe they have taken, bolstered by physical mementos that supply “tangible proof”: a ticket stub and a passport that proves the traveller went and returned, postcards, souvenirs, and “shots you took of local sights on Mars with a rented movie camera”. Most of the examples given so far are, of course, fictional journeys – but this does not necessarily distinguish them from the object of this essay. When it comes to digital representations of geographic spaces, ‘fiction’ and ‘fact’ become notoriously unstable categories. This is especially true since digital representations are often bound up in narrative structures, and many of them consciously evoke traditional travel narratives. What distinguishes the act of reading a traditional travel book from, say, taking an online journey to the site of ‘Virtual Stonehenge’ is, above all, the interactive potential of digital texts. Interactivity allows for a more dynamic relationship between tourist sites and the virtual traveller. It generates a potential for ‘tourist activities’, as it were – digital technology helps provide a virtual approximation of the performative aspect of tourism. In many ways, it is therefore only fitting that cyberspace should provide the medial base for modern virtual tourist endeavours. There are close historical links between the World Wide Web and tourism; one of the earliest global applications of computer networks was the ticketing systems of airlines. More importantly, using the internet is metaphorically conceptualized as ‘physical travel’: We ‘visit’ a homepage by entering an ‘address’ and clicking a ‘go’-button, and the icon of the Netscape ‘Navigator’, a ship’s steering wheel, evokes an early modern means of travelling and exploration, sailing. By employing such metaphors, the internet hides its own virtuality, as it does by retaining residuals of the physical spaces it maps, such as its ‘addresses’, “.uk”, “.de”, “.at”. Many hopes are invested in virtual tourism. Journeys into cyberspace may, in the future, appeal to segments of the population

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that are barred from actual travel – because of disabilities, or for financial or political reasons.3 Virtual travels may help to preserve locations and environments that are in danger of losing their natural (and hence cultural) identity by an excess of modern-day tourism: internet projects such as “Virtual Stonehenge” or “Virtual Tibet” were specifically designed with such an aim in mind. Virtual travels may also infuse new life into the industry of “ecotourism” – a term and a concept that, along with other forms of “alternative tourism” (“nature tourism, appropriate tourism, ethical tourism and responsible tourism”),4 has received harsh criticism in recent years as being “no more than a cynical marketing ploy” (Meethan 2001: 58). But this future, like the world portrayed in Dick’s short story, is still worlds away. In 2000, the “Tourism and Leisure Research Group” of the School of Management at the University of Surrey asked potential customers whether such forms of virtual tourism provided a viable alternative to traditional forms of travel (cf. Baur 2000). The answer they got was, from a commercial point of view, disappointing: Customers were interested in it, but they weren’t buying – yet. 1. Forms and functions of virtual tourism There are two good reasons why it is still worthwhile to look at ‘virtual tourism’ from an academic, and indeed from an ecocritical point of view. I will briefly consider both of them in turn. First, forms of virtual tourism already exist, and I believe that even on a positivist level, they merit attention. The second reason is a methodological one: Virtual tourism raises important questions of a categorical nature with regard to ecocriticism, questions that a new field of enquiry needs to address. Already, forms of virtual tourism come in many digital shapes and forms: virtual ‘all-inclusive’ packages both on the Internet and on CDROM, digital tourist guides, webcams, digital souvenirs, desktop wallpaper, screen savers, and educational software all to some degree participate in the logic and logistics of virtual tourism. Virtual ‘all3 4

3).

See, however, Dewailly (1999). Wall (1997: 37); for a critical discussion of these terms see Prentice (1997: 210–

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inclusive’ packages, for example, may not yet sell well – but they do occupy a fringe market. On the internet, AmericaSol, a company that specializes in (physical) ecological tourism and adventure travel in South America, also sells virtual trips to the Machu Picchu district (www.americasol.net). On CD-ROM, aptly named “ArmchairTours” (a trademark of Eden Street Software) allow customers to travel to tourist environments such as the historic district of Charleston, South Carolina, or the Vieux Carré district of New Orleans on their desktops – both have been digitized in their entirety and come with virtual tour guides and a virtual “interactive museum”. Even where travel contains a strong ritualistic aspect and where the physical act of travelling is an integral part of the journey, the internet attempts to offer virtual approximations. Pilgrimages are a case in point:5 Lutz Kaelber, a sociologist at the University of Vermont, has collected some religious pilgrimage sites; among them, an educational site that allows visitors to experience a Christian medieval pilgrimage.6 Kaelber also discusses a site in Hindi that attempts to help its audience experience the ritual of cleansing in the Ganges. Since the internet collapses traditional categories of space and time, both integral parts of a pilgrimage, the website has found alternative means to preserve the ritual aspect of the journey. The physical hardship of travelling to the Ganges, an important part of the ritual, is reformulated and takes the form of overcoming bureaucratic hurdles (filling out forms, submitting a picture). After registering, the virtual pilgrim then has to wait several days for the actual – virtual – ritual to be performed online.7 5

On 13th- and 14th-century pilgrimages as forms of tourism see Urry (1990: 4, 9– 10). MacCannell (31999) discusses tourism and pilgrimages as two versions of the quest for the sacred. See also below. 6 www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/pilgrimage/pilgrim.html and http://crusades.boisestate. edu/vpilgrim/. The latter site is part of a fully virtual course on “The Crusades”, offered for college credit through Boise State University. 7 Kaelber comments on a virtual pilgrimage: “it is interesting to see the ways in which the government in the Indian state Uttar Pradesh tries to engage the audience in an experience that may be impossible for the reader to recreate in real life. Among the steps taken by this website to that end, a survey asks the reader's caste, gender, and physical attributes, and asks that the reader attached a passport-type picture. The reader is also asked to choose a date for the virtual cleansing. At that time, the reader can go to the website and see his or her picture superimposed as a head on a virtual body (of the same body type as indicated in the questionnaire) cleansed in an

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While ‘all-inclusive trips’ and virtual journeys are still an exception, other, almost imperceptible forms of virtual tourism that do not yet supplant but supplement and enhance traditional forms of tourism are gradually becoming the norm. Webcams on the internet offer real-time digital images of the major tourist attractions of all National Parks in the US, accessible anytime and everywhere, reaffirming the ubiquitous “tourist gaze” that these parks cater to in the first place.8 Travellers can buy a host of digital mementos in the stores of nature resorts; virtual equivalents of the material objects that early travellers used to purchase or pilfer from tourist sites. (While Philip K. Dick’s science fiction stories envisaged virtual journeys with material objects as tangible proof, modern-day tourism seems to move in the opposite direction: journeys are still conducted physically, but the paraphernalia of travelling, souvenirs and especially photography, have increasingly turned digital.) Among the digital souvenirs on offer in the stores of nature resorts are “Digital Picture Postcards,” “National Park Desktop Wallpaper,” and “Panoramic Screen Savers of America’s National Parks, Monuments, and Memorials.” When used in a computer, images of natural environments cease to be mere tourist snapshots – instead, their ‘natural’ content enters into complex negotiations with their digital mode. Just as the internet uses metaphors of traditional means of travelling to hide its own virtuality, computer wallpaper and screen savers employ natural metaphors to playfully comment on their digital technology. “National Park Desktop Wallpaper” is a case in point: The function of desktop wallpaper is to provide the bottom layer of a computer’s graphical user interface; ‘beneath’ it, there is only digital code, which for most users is simply unintelligible. Wallpaper is thus a powerful visual metaphor for the deepest, most fundamental layer of animation depicting the river. In addition, the site claims that a photograph of the participant will be dipped into the river itself on a selected day” (www.uvm.edu/ ~lkaelber/pilgrimage/pilgrim.html). 8 The phrase is John Urry’s and is used here with reference to his seminal study, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (1990). For a useful application of Urry’s theories to computer games in general and to the game Myst in particular, see Strain (2002); she argues convincingly that the mediation of space in adventure games “is an attempt to satisfy the tourist’s desire to both be immersed in a space and understand it from a distance.” (606)

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significance for ordinary computer users, and in keeping with the interactive nature of modern operating systems, users are even invited to choose their own metaphorical content for it. If they choose “National Park Desktop Wallpaper”, nature imagery will mask a computer’s digital computations by metaphorically providing a ‘natural’ background that seems to underlie the workings of the digital machine. “Panoramic Screen Savers of America’s National Parks” have a similar function. A screen saver is designed to kick in when human work on computers stops; it represents leisure time, or at least a pause in human-digital interaction. As the interaction stops, virtual representations of natural environments ‘infiltrate’ the local desktop and conjure up a view of the digital’s natural ‘Other’; when the processor is idle, the machine seemingly ‘regresses’ into a pre-digital state and offers its users images of the natural world for tourist consumption. The “Panoramic Screen Savers of America’s National Parks” contain not just digitally rendered and enhanced representations of the ‘natural’ features of National Parks: landscape mostly, but some animal life and the occasional cultural artefact if it is deemed sufficiently ‘natural’ – paintings by Native Americans of the late 13th century qualify, for example (cf. Canyon Country 2001: “Four Faces”). They also partake of an aesthetics of the picturesque that was instrumental in establishing these National Parks in the first place (Byerly 1996).9 At the same time, they adhere to a new form of digital aesthetics that simultaneously affirms and hides their digital nature. It affirms it because screen savers produce a visual spectacle that invites watching; this alone draws attention to the possibilities of computer technology. On the other hand, desktop computers conceptually avoid stasis and hide all phases of non-productivity.10 When human interaction stops for too long, the computer, usually by default, substitutes the semblance of work, of interaction, of any kind of 9

Urry (1995: 198–9) claims that the idea of nature as a predominantly visual conception (as scenery, view, perceptual sensation) became the norm in the 19th century. This in turn did much to the development and structure of the National Parks as places of visual contemplation. 10 The opposite is true for most laptop computers; in order to conserve energy, a laptop computer would go into ‘hibernation’ (again a metaphor taken from the natural world, this time to express extreme stasis).

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action, and celebrates it on the screen. And in the case of these specific screen savers, the digital machine appropriates virtual representations of protected and intrinsically static natural environments, moves them across the screen, to mask its own lack of digital productivity. Other instances of supplemental virtual tourism are explanatory or educational in nature. Commercial and non-profit websites such as “The Grand Canyon Explorer” serve as virtual tour guides and are aimed at replacing the printed Baedekers of old. Some educational sites teach through virtual experience: Bruce Herbert at the Department of Geology of Texas A&M University offers a virtual field trip to Big Bend National Park and a virtual hike on the lost mine trail on his website, explaining the geological formations of the landscape along the way. Finally, in my brief survey of supplemental forms of virtual tourism to natural environments, there is a developing market of more sophisticated commercial software whose semiotic point of reference (or ‘tourist destination’) has become uncertain. This software provides interactive maps of National Parks, but whether these maps still function as representational surfaces, symbolic and iconic signifiers of geographical, ‘natural’ referents, or whether they have become tourist destinations in their own right, virtual playworlds for armchair travellers, has become difficult to determine. An example may illustrate the point: Maptech, one of the companies that specialize in digital maps of natural environments, have developed a “Terrain Navigator Software Engine” that allows users to access individual “National Park Digital Guides”. The list of parks that have been digitally mapped so far and are available for virtual consumption is surprisingly extensive. The product functions partly as a digital Baedeker; it features a traditional, two-dimensional map that utilizes a simple hypertext technology: The map’s icons provide links to lists of planned activities; the product touches on the history and on geographical features of each park, gives difficulty levels for various excursions, and even contains information about where to find the burger stands in any of 55 U.S. parks. Although the software thus allows for the planning of actual trips in a traditional fashion, its main focus – if not commercially, then at least conceptually and technologically – lies with virtual travel, and the company acknowledges this fact somewhat coyly when it advertises its product

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as being “perfect for ‘armchair travelers,’ too!”11 Tourism is inscribed into the very interface of the software, which employs metaphors of travelling throughout: the interface is structured by “routes” and “tracks” and by means of a “compass”; the map’s individual quadrants are broken down not into spatial units (miles or yards) but into temporal ones: one quadrant equals 7½ minutes of virtual travel time. Conceptually and technologically, the object of the software is to immerse users in a distinctly virtual environment, not so much in its ‘real life’-equivalent. Fittingly, the software comes with a paper-pair of red-and-blue-lens 3D glasses and contains a special, three-dimensional mode in which users can freely navigate through the topography of the parks.12 Leaving aside the positivist argument that all these forms of virtual tourism already exist, there is another reason why it seems worthwhile to look at virtual tourism from an academic point of view: it raises some pertinent questions of a categorical nature with regard to ecocriticism. When dealing with virtual tourism, ecocriticism needs once again to question and rethink some of its fundamental categories, such as ‘nature’, ‘the environment’, and the very term that makes up part of its name, ‘eco.’ Faced with the digital and the virtual, concepts that at first glance seem to elude the very domain ecocriticism is accustomed to deal with, ecocriticism must ask about the ‘nature’ of virtual environments and about their relationship to the geographical environments they ‘represent’. In how far do digital environments differ conceptually from non-digital, but equally ‘virtual’ environments such as “managed, constructed, or disturbed landscapes” (Ulman 2001: 345) – which is in effect what most nature preserves or national parks are? Virtual tourism powerfully demonstrates how electronic media collapse traditional notions of space and time – the latter, if one believes the plights of Paul Virilio, of even more crucial

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www.carolinamapdistributors.com/products/maptech/topo.htm. Ellen Strain (2002: 609) notes that CD-ROM travellers navigate through virtual space in similar ways to traditional travellers (forward, back, left, right), but that with a click of the mouse “this immersion may be temporarily abandoned while a map screen is consulted or textually conveyed information is sought” – a virtual traveller often has the option to ‘move’ into another way of seeing, to travel between different modes of presentation.

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concern to ecological studies.13 What, therefore, does the act of travelling in virtual environments and their natural counterparts entail? And in how far do digital constructions of tourist attractions influence the consumption of ‘actual’ environments? This last question is especially pertinent with respect to natural places. With the ubiquity and the expansion of virtual spaces in popular culture, more pressure is brought to bear on ‘the natural’ (as a category, as a commodity) to produce an aesthetic surplus of meaning. The mere logistical problems of actually travelling to a National Park to see the spectacle of a geyser erupting charges a sight with meaning – the very effort it takes to acquire an elusive view lends it an almost magical quality, and one that many travel narratives can attest to. The ubiquity of such views through the proliferation of webcams may mean that such sights become increasingly commonplace – and indeed profane. There is much to argue for an intrinsic notion of sacredness attendant not only to bourgeois concepts of nature from the middle of the 18th century onwards, but to forms of modern tourism as well.14 Modern tourism may be said to involve a process of “sight sacralization”; tourism involves intricate social rituals designed to elevate and enshrine both sights and sites and render them sacred objects.15 Virtual tourism may attest to the subversion of these rituals and the digital ‘inflation’ of the object of the tourist endeavour, and it may thus contribute to a secularization of nature tourism. National Parks, places that rely on tourism and on the powerful attraction of the tourist gaze, would need to develop new strategies to turn their sites/sights into 13

As early as 1995, Paul Virilio had argued in La vitesse de libération for a new ecological science that would not just address air and water pollution but also the radical effects of the collapse of traditional temporal perception and the emergence of virtual ‘real time’: “In a word, ecology as a discipline does not sufficiently register the impact of machine time on the environment”; “Unless we treat ecology simply as public management of profits and losses in the substances and stocks that make up the human environment, it can no longer effectively make headway without also making sense of the temporal economy of interactive activities and their rapid mutations” (1997: 23). 14 For concepts of Romanticism’s “natural supernaturalism”, one of the central notions of Romantic studies of the 1960s and 70s, see Abrams (1971). I would argue that this tradition is still powerfully felt in the construction of natural places for tourist consumption. 15 Cf. MacCannell 31999: 42–8; Urry 1990: 8–10.

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quasi-sacred objects again. On the other hand, the ubiquity of the virtual tourist gaze may achieve the opposite effect: when a sight multiplies virtually, the uniqueness and authenticity of the ‘natural spectacle’ may again lend it a special aura and reaffirm its quasisacred status. 2. Virtual places: digital and material I would like to consider these questions by looking at some websites and their geographical referent. The physical location in question is both a preserved natural environment and a major urban tourist destination – Fort Tryon Park in New York City. The park is located on the Hudson River in northernmost Manhattan, north of Harlem and west of the Bronx. It is a favourite destination for tourists and for New Yorkers wanting to take a day out – the journey time from downtown Manhattan is 15 minutes on the A-Express to the 190th Street station. The journey is, of course, infinitely shorter in cyberspace, and for tourists willing to embark on a cyber-journey, New York’s Department of Parks & Recreation now provides a website, a virtual hub, that allows immediate multimedia access to a growing number of parks. The Department already offers a variety of basic “online tours” (tours that utilize simple hypertext technology to display images and text) and advanced “virtual tours” (Macromedia Flash Player 6 presentations).16 The latter tours are interactive; while travelling down the Bronx River, users ‘stop’ at (i.e. click on) individual spots where they are provided with illustrative text, ‘live’ audio commentary and video interviews with local river keepers. The chief attraction, however, is a series of panoramic 360-degree views that allow them to virtually turn around and take in the scenery. Fort Tryon Park itself has become the common denominator, or centrepiece, of a ‘web ring’, a circle of pages all dedicated to the Northern Manhattan/Washington Heights region. This in itself is important: The principle of a web ring is to link together independent and often very heterogeneous pages; users ‘travel’ from one page to the next of the ring in a circular movement. A web ring is both dynamic (adding a page merely requires changing two links) and 16

www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/flagship_and_virtual.html.

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decentralized; in a manner of speaking, it has neither a fixed place nor a centre even in cyberspace terms. Yet the pages on Fort Tryon, most of them produced by locals, exhibit a strong sense of physical locality, even of pride in the neighbourhood they depict. Websites of the kind I have looked at most often highlight the natural environment of the park, most celebrate the famous ‘views’ the park offers, some also delve into the history of the place, and a few stress its cultural significance. The function of this virtual place-building is to charge a geographical space, to some extent the site owners’ living space, with meaning or to reaffirm such meaning, often in a political and financial context. The famous views the region offers are, for example, put forward in connection with a project to advance the Hudson Parkway, a motorway that runs parallel to the river, and to have it designated as a scenic byway. The virtual representations of this internet platform play an important part in the cultural negotiations – and the political ones – of the initiative. Tourism is the conceptual metaphor that organizes the consumption of many of these pages, and almost all pages toy with and instrumentalize the ‘tourist gaze’ – Stuart Brorson’s extensive pages on the Washington Heights region, for example, feature a “virtual tour of my neighbourhood, Fort Tryon Park, the Cloisters, and Washington Heights”, complete with snapshots of the best-known views Fort Tryon has to offer (www. brorson.com/neighbourhhood/ParkTourNew.html). The conceptual differences between virtual representations of Fort Tryon Park and their ‘material’, geographical, referent, are not to be found along a simple dichotomy of virtual and factual. Instead, both place and cyber-place attach themselves to categories such as the ‘natural’, the ‘historical’, the ‘cultural’ and the ‘virtual’, and they influence and modify each other in a complex fashion. Fort Tryon, the geographical location, has a rich history that is an integral part of the texture of its significance.17 The densely forested high ground at the northern tip of Manhattan Island, known as ‘Long Hill’ to the early Dutch colonists, was later named Old Fort and Fort Washington. Eventually it was renamed by the British for Major General Sir 17

The Internet appropriates this history, and a surprisingly large amount of information, including historical maps, can be found on public and private webpages. Cf. Stuart Brorson’s page quoted above, or the page of the Friends of Fort Tryon Park, www.hhoc.org/fftp/index.html.

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William Tryon (1729–88), the last British governor of colonial New York. During the 19th century, wealthy New Yorkers built elegant estates around the Fort Tryon area, and in 1917, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. bought the largest of these estates, the Billings estate, and began developing the property. He had ridden over the densely wooded lands of Northern Manhattan as a young man and shared Muir and Thoreau’s concern that these areas were gradually becoming deforested (Forsyth 1992: 54) – Muir famously quoted Thoreau who said about the eastern States that “soon the country would be so bald that every man would have to grow whiskers to hide its nakedness” (Muir 1901: 356–7). Rockefeller’s chief attraction, however, were Fort Tryon’s stunning views; he even purchased land on the New Jersey side of the Hudson – now known as the Palisades State Park – to preserve these views.18 It is interesting to note that from the beginning, looking away seems to have been the chief attraction of the place. Rockefeller donated the 56 acres of land to the City in 1931, and it was designated parkland the same year. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870–1957), whose father helped design Central Park, then spent four years transforming the site’s rocky topography and thin soil into a manicured landscape19 – even though Fort Tryon is now a preserved landscape, it was, like so many other nature reserves, first disturbed, constructed, cultivated and managed and is, in this sense, a virtual landscape itself. Again, Olmsted Jr. was careful to preserve the spectacular views of the Hudson and the Palisades. He noted in 1927 that his park presented one of the few unspoiled river views of Manhattan. Lewis Mumford, in the New Yorker, echoed his sentiments in 1935: The best thing about Fort Tryon Park, which has just been opened, is the site. And to say this is not being unkind to the planners, the Olmsted Brothers, who have done, in the main, a pretty commendable job. But the point is that this site gives one of the most magnificent views in the world, with the Palisades on the opposite 18

Cf. www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php ?id=12315. The Department of Parks and Recreation maintains an online library of historical signs for every named park across the five boroughs, thus further mapping the virtual onto geographical parks. More than 500 of the signs were researched and written by college students in a joint program with the department. 19 Ibid.

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The rugged cliffs of the Palisades and the gothic steel skeletons of the George Washington Bridge towers seem to “take the breath away” far more completely than the manicured, ‘merely’ beautiful landscape of Fort Tryon Park. The argument evokes a well-worn theme in the history of aesthetics; in 18th and 19th-century terminology, it is the difference between the beautiful and the sublime: the former pleasing by means of calmness, proportion, and measured variety, the latter by being awe-inspiring, intense, and magnificent.20 The notion that the visual consumption of the park should aim at the sublime, and not merely the beautiful, is taken up again on websites on the Washington Heights Region. On his homepage, book scholar Paul Romaine, formerly a local of the area, publishes a view from Fort Tryon Park looking up the Hudson River in Washington Heights, with some full-grown trees in the foreground. According to Romaine, the photo does not depict the park’s natural beauty. Instead, it illustrates “how much (Ed Koch’s and Rudy Giuliani’s) NYC Parks Commissioner Stern had allowed the trees to grow” – reiterating the idea that the park is a manicured landscape that needs to constantly be kept in check. Letting the trees grow to Romaine seems to be an unruly or childish act, for he adds in parenthesis that he “love[s] Stern’s policies and pranks, as well as his pro-tree policies”. However, his chief criticism is that the unruly trees spoil the views Fort Tryon affords, a fact that Stern should not have allowed: “I think he has to remember that humans also respond to the sublime. The Hudson is among the most sublime of America’s Rivers.” (http://romaine.home. pipeline.com/nyc/). Other sites echo the sentiment. On the website of 20 While it would be problematic to use 18th-century aesthetic categories out of their historical and cultural context, ‘the beautiful’, ‘the sublime’, and towards the end of the century, ‘the picturesque’ (see below) have to some extent established aesthetic norms and traditions that are at work throughout the 19th century (cf. Burke 1958: xciv–cxxvii). Some notions of the sublime survive in Rockefeller’s conservationist work on the Palisades, his penchant for Gothic art and, in a more general sense, his Romantic notion of the Middle Ages. On the picturesque aesthetic and the National Park system see Byerly (1996).

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the “Hudson Heights Owners Coalition”, Seth Kugel treats the trees less harshly, but as an aesthetic category, “the sublime” is once again reserved for the views of the Hudson and the Palisades.21 The manicured landscape of Fort Tryon, then, is a manufactured, ‘virtual’ spot constructed for viewing pleasure, it serves as a foil for the more sublime views away from the Park; again, beauty provides the setting for the sublime. Late 20th-century digital aesthetics thus replays a central debate of the late 18th-century, where ‘the picturesque’ became an aesthetic category that comprised notions of the sublime and the beautiful, and travelling became the proper pastime to attain such views.22 I am dwelling in some detail on the history of Fort Tryon Park because in many respects this picturesque viewing space is paradigmatic for some aspects of the development of modern-day tourism. There has been some debate about the beginnings of modern tourism, and scholars usually evoke two somewhat different historical developments as ‘predecessors’ or ‘starting points’ for structured consumptions of other places. Fort Tryon’s history exhibits quintessential features of both these traditions. The first, the development of the seaside resorts in the early 19th century, marked the production of leisure space on a large scale. The seaside resorts delimited, structured and marketed an environment for tourist consumption. I have attempted to show that Fort Tryon Park (and to some extent the whole National Park system in America in general) shares ideological features of such manufactured, virtual environments.23 But even prior 21

“The 80-foot American elms soar in the Heather Garden in Fort Tryon Park, paths wind through flower beds that bloom into December, and the views of the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades are sublime.” (Press release, 2 December 2001, http://hhoc.org/media/hg_12_02_01.htm). 22 Cf., for example, William Gilpin’s second essay on the picturesque, “On Picturesque Travel (first published 1792). Gilpin first muses about “the general intention of picturesque travel”, anxious to secure its cultural status among “more useful ends of travelling” (21794: 41), before he defines the picturesque as an aesthetic category: “Sublimity alone cannot make an object picturesque. However grand the mountain, or the rock may be, it has no claim to this epithet, unless it’s form, it’s colour, or it’s accompaniments have some degree of beauty.” (sic, 43) 23 “The initial construction of national parks and wilderness areas as places of spectacular scenery and national monuments for the few were transformed into places of mass recreation in the 1950s and 60s, and to places of tourist commodification in

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to these ‘industrialized’ tourist spaces, and this would be the second tradition usually evoked, the Grand Tours of the 18th century provided instances of an organized consumption of foreign environments, and Fort Tryon Park has been shaped by this tradition as well. 18th- and 19th-century tourist encounters with other cultures and environments often focused on the tangible, on material objects; gentlemen-travellers such as Lord Byron, tourist Elgins on a smaller scale, brought back marbles from Greece and Turkey in the 1810s. In the early 20th century, George Grey Barnard, an American sculptor and ingenious (some would say unscrupulous) antiques dealer, roamed the French countryside in search of medieval artefacts; he pilfered everything he could lay his hands on and shipped entire European monasteries to New York.24 Barnard’s first collection of medieval art was exhibited close to Fort Tryon Park on Fort Washington Avenue and was subsequently bought by John D. Rockefeller in 1925.25 Rockefeller augmented Barnard’s already sizeable collection to produce his own vision of the middle ages, ‘The Cloisters’, on the northernmost hill of Fort Tryon Park. In modern critical terminology, The Cloisters is one of the first “site” or “ambience” museums: discrete architectural elements, most of them authentic, are grafted onto a new building; the building complex, the interior decoration, and individual exhibits provide an ensemble that evokes a specific historical era (Landais 1992: 42–3). In light of the severe criticism directed against the museum for its patchwork design, today’s description of The Cloisters by its parent museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is very delicately phrased: The Cloisters “is not a copy of any particular medieval structure, but an ensemble of rooms and gardens that suggest, rather than duplicate, the European originals” (Young 1990: 3).26 Another way to refer to The Cloisters

the 1980s and 1990s, partly through the notion of ecotourism” (Hall and Page 1999: 278). 24 Barnard’s activities prompted the government to tighten French export laws in 1914, but by that time, Barnard had most of his artefacts safe and sound in America. 25 The following account of the role of Barnard and Rockefeller Jr. in the history of The Cloisters is indebted to Forsyth (1992). 26 This is the official guidebook to The Cloisters.

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would be as a virtual – albeit very material – medieval theme park:27 The Cloisters condenses seven centuries of European art, from the 10th-century Romanesque to 16th-century late Gothic, and a plethora of geographic locations (more than 35 of them) into a single building (Landais 1992: 41). A closer look at one room, the Langon Chapel, may illustrate this principle. Notre-Dame-du-Bourg, the name of the original chapel, was built between 1125 and 1155 by Benedictine monks in Langon, southeast of Bordeaux, and in the 1920s, parts of the chapel were acquired, taken apart and shipped to New York to be incorporated into the new museum. However, since the original chapel did not fit the scale of the rest of The Cloisters, it was reduced to about two thirds of its original size; and since not all of the original stones had been acquired, one authentic wall was augmented by three walls made of modern building material (Young 1990: 31–2): The Langon Chapel has been ‘pruned’ and ‘manicured’ in much the same fashion as Fort Tryon Park has. Furthermore, the overall design of The Cloisters – the individual buildings’ superstructure – was inspired just as much by an ‘authentic’ monastery, the French Cistercian abbey of Royaumont, as it was inspired by Walter Scott’s Kenilworth (1821), a novel that at the time held a strong hold over Rockefeller’s imagination (Landais 1992: 41).28 The whole ensemble – the European materials used for the buildings with their conflicting provenance and multiple histories, the structure that houses them, and the history of Fort Tryon Park itself which houses the whole ensemble – is an uneasy fusion of the ‘natural’, the ‘historical’, the ‘cultural’ and the ‘fictional’.

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In keeping with the idea of a virtual medieval space is another cultural practice firmly associated with the park: since the 1970s, Fort Tryon Park has been the site of an annual medieval festival, which was originally organized under the auspices of The Cloisters. The festival depicts village life in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, and many of the participants still dress in period outfits. Cf. www.washington-heights.us/ history/archives/000292.html, just one of the many articles submitted by James Renner, the online-historian of the Washington Heights website “washingtonheights.us”. 28 Forsyth (1992: 57) reproduces an early sketch done for the architect, Charles Collens, which clearly shows how the middle tower is devised like a castle keep.

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3. Transported immobility and the virtual tourist gaze The Cloisters may be seen as a culmination (and an excess) of 19thcentury material culture, and while it remains firmly rooted in this tradition, it already looks forward to contemporary virtual culture. It shares certain features with virtual travels, not least the fact that The Cloisters is, to some degree, a virtual place, designed to represent medieval art in toto. Part of the attraction of the museum is its claim to be able to collapse, for the benefit of a touristic experience, the categories of space and time – the building condenses seven centuries and large parts of Western Europe and unfolds them again in front of the visitors’ eyes. As far as the mode of representation in forms of virtual tourism is concerned, The Cloisters is, in a sense, the material ancestor, or at least the structural predecessor, to virtual travelling on a computer screen: The World Wide Web also collapses traditional categories of space, and to some degree of time, and projects their simulacra onto the screen. Both virtual travelling and a visit to The Cloisters create a virtual travel-space while at the same time they more or less deduct actual movement from the experience. The tourist space is constructed so that it ‘travels’, while the gaze of the tourist remains immobile. Such “transported immobility” is a central paradox of modern touristic experiences in general, not just of virtual ones. While dining in a moving railway car and watching the picturesque landscape move by, Roland Barthes muses in his essay “Dining Car” that at the heart of his tourist experience is the fiction of immobility. He reflects on the success of Thomas Cook, the first British entrepreneur of the packaged tour who started his business in 1841: “all the arts of travel have for their goal the very illusion of immobility: in the panic and pleasure of transplantation, Cook sells the spectacle of stability” (Barthes 1979: 144).29 Anne Friedberg expands this idea into the metaphor of “the mobilized virtual gaze”; a “gaze that travels in an imaginary flânerie through an imaginary elsewhere and an imaginary elsewhen” (Friedberg 1993: 2). The mobilized virtual gaze is for her a central prerequisite of the postmodern condition, and 19th-century 29

In “Wagon-restaurant”, Barthes describes the ritual of consuming Compagnie Cook’s prix fixe dinner onboard a train.

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tourism provides one of its dominant early cultural contexts. With regard to Barthes’ description of modern-day tourism, she draws the conclusion that “the organized spectatorship of tourism – packaging this transported immobility in a narrative of ‘staged authenticity’ – followed a historical development similar to that of the [19th-century] panorama, diorama, and [eventually] cinema where, as the gaze become more ‘virtually’ mobile, the spectator became more physically immobile” (Friedberg 1993: 61). This ties in with John Urry’s definition of the tourist gaze, which, much like the tourist sites themselves, is a managed commodity, strictly governed by a highly evolved and complex semiology of tourism and informed by travel narratives, by stereotypes and “place-myths”, and by anticipation (Urry 1990: 3 and 1995: 195–7).30 Moreover, the modern tourist gaze is often limited to selected points (“viewing points”) along routes that have been specifically constructed for tourists. Alison Byerly argues that the careful design of the access highways that traverse national parks, filled with scenic overlooks that designate ideal picture-taking locations, results in “virtually identical photographs that many visitors bring back from Rocky Mountain, Yosemite, or Yellowstone [which] are in a sense replicas of the watercolor scenes that early British tourists brought back from Italy or the Lake District” (Byerly 1996: 59). The design and management of national parks thus reflects a sense of nature as a picturesque commodity and, as far as the tourist gaze is concerned, has a normative function. Forms of virtual tourism bring into focus and expose the transported immobility of modern-day tourism. While the virtual tourist is highly immobile, tied to his computer screen, his gaze seems to become not just mobile but hypermobile – the utopian promise of digital technology is the unlimited access of the gaze. This promise is, of course, an illusion, for at the same time, the tourist gaze is heavily curtailed by the computer programmes or the websites the tourist uses. Just as the fiction of mobility is increased, so are the constrains; the virtual tourist gaze is even more of a managed, programmed, commodity. Wallpaper and screen savers again reduce the touristic 30

Urry rightly insists on the historical and sociological variations of the tourist gaze, and in this section of my essay I implicitly refer to what Urry would call the ‘romantic tourist gaze’ of the ‘post-tourist’ (i.e. the postmodern tourist). On the semiotics of tourism cf. Culler (1981).

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experience to ‘highlight’ views while eliminating the spaces in between, and hence the act of travelling. It is interesting to see that in a lot of products, the idea of movement apparently still needs to be reaffirmed. This is done by narrative means; in a typical digital screen saver purchased from a National Park, movement takes the fictional form of a travel (or tourist) narrative – as in the following short descriptive texts: “Starting from the parking lot at mile 81.1 along Skyline Drive, you can walk down the trail for 1.3 miles to see this waterfall. The trail is steep in parts, but beautiful all the way. The waterfall is worth the effort” (Shenandoah National Park Screen Saver CD-ROM 2000: “Doyles River Falls”). The effort in this case consists of reading through the narrative to get to the actual picture – and yet this may be precisely one function of the text. The ‘highlight’ views which are part and parcel of traditional forms of tourism provide, amongst other things, gratification for the toilsome act of physical travel. By substituting the act of reading for the act of travelling, the digital product manages to at least approximate the principle of gratification by delaying the consummation of the view. Travel narratives do not provide the only traditional backdrop to the new forms of virtual tourism I have outlined so far. Like their predecessors, the panoramas of the 19th century, panoramic screen savers offer a sequence of detached views from fixed positions that each affords a panoramic sweep, a 180-degree view, thus approximating a tourist’s gaze. The symbolic economy that organizes virtual tourist gazes is patterned along interrupted moments of complete visual (albeit virtual) access. Likewise, virtual tours such as the one that New York’s Department of Parks & Recreation offers along the Bronx River (see above) also have as their chief attraction a series of isolated vistas or views, all of them panoramic 360-degree views that allow users to virtually turn around and take the scenery in completely. Again, the software deducts the act of travelling from the act of digital consumption. In this respect, digital products take up and focus a principle of modern tourism in general; one that Urry has described and that serves as a common denominator to the very different critical perspectives that inform the observations of Paul Virilio and Paul Fussell quoted at the beginning of this essay. Like the modern tourist of the 19th and 20th century, virtual tourists of the 21st century do not ‘travel’ any more, they consume without moving.

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4. Virtual travels through the worlds of Myst and Riven The semiotics of visual consumption have already spilled over into other cultural products that are not normally associated with tourism. I will conclude this essay with a brief look at Myst and Riven, a series of very successful computer games by brothers Rand and Robin Miller. The first game, Myst, was published in 1993 and was, because of its unusual game play, a spectacular success: unlike virtually any other game, it was touristy in nature and did not focus on combat or on the construction of new worlds. The game allows players to travel through the spectacular and often surreal landscapes of an island called Myst; the object is to get to know the island, to revel in its beautiful scenery. Myst, like its two sequels, is a celebration of a pure and unadulterated tourist gaze. In Myst, Rand Miller comments, you can’t separate the graphics from the game play. It was the visuals that pulled people forward. It was the carrot that pulled people around the corner. It sounds like marketing drivel, but if you’re sitting in a room with the lights low and the sound turned up, we want you to think you’re really in that place. The box said, ‘A surrealistic adventure that will become your world.’ That’s what we wanted. (DeMaria and Wilson 2002: 260)

Both the frame story, which involves the designer of the island and his two sons, and the various riddles players have to solve along the way do not mitigate the tourist experience. Players need to interact with the game only to advance, to prolong and expand the tourist gaze. H. Lewis Ulman has analyzed Riven (1997), the second game in the series, and he argues that new, digital virtual-reality-environments such as Riven may help us understand how we create belief in other kinds of virtual, non-digital environments, including preserved landscapes. In the following passage, Ulman uses Roman type to identify Riven, the virtual landscape of the game; italics refer to the game Riven: part of what sustains my immersion in Riven is the utter familiarity of moving through a disturbed landscape that includes the presence of unthreatening animals, structures and artifacts, paths, and vistas that reflect a human sense of the picturesque. I find it easy to create belief in Riven not because it deposes or resembles an original, natural world but because it so closely models a few familiar experiences of landscapes. From these correspondences, I can sustain an

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The third instalment of the series, Myst III: Exile (2001), reestablishes the familiar focus of the game play with its very first image: a landscape panorama. “Breathtaking, isn’t it?” a voice, offscreen, comments, and reminds viewers that the game will again be concerned with the visual consumption of picturesque landscapes, with nature in a digitized and fictionalized form. Myst III expands on many of the features of the two previous games. Like its predecessors, it constantly oscillates between a fictional and a metafictional level – the frame narrative is concerned with a designer of virtual worlds, the very virtual worlds players explore. In a metafictional twist, the game constantly reminds players how the seemingly ‘natural’ environments they travel through are manufactured, how their tourist gaze is constructed for them. The god-like figure presiding over the world of Myst, Atrus, waxes lyrical about questions of structured environments, called “Ages” in the game, and the role of nature in them. The following extracts are in his “note-books”: Writing Ages is a science – a precisely structured equation of words. […] Perhaps I should be striving to offset the energy that already exists within our civilization by providing it with a more stabilized environment in which to grow. An environment in which the natural equilibrium of the world serves as a counterpoint to the upheavals of civilization. The more I consider it, the more I wonder if I should make Nature the foundation of this new Age […]: nature encourages mutual dependence. As one life withers and dies, it provides nourishment so that another might live. Plants become food for other animals, and the waste products animals cannot absorb become nutrients to sustain the other plants. So long as nothing intrudes to upset this balance, nature can maintain itself indefinitely. An interesting metaphor to set as an example for my people! (Myst III: Exile 2001)

This is, of course, an elaborate metaphor for the problems of designing computer games in general, for their touristy and interactive nature; and in yet another metafictional twist, Atrus, the designer of Myst’s worlds, is played in the game’s video sequences by Rand Miller, the chief designer and programmer of the game. Environ-

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mental design and game design, the game’s content and its production process, collapse into one. The Myst-trilogy also cleverly addresses the question of mobility in a tourist context again. Travelling through this game follows the established pattern that also informs, for example, the panoramic screen savers discussed above. Unlike other seminal games of the time, Myst and its successors do not feature fluent, real-time movement through three-dimensional worlds. Instead, players take up a series of fixed, static positions, each of which affords them with a panoramic, 360-degree view of their environment. ‘Movement’ through the game is visualized as exchanging one panoramic image for the next: the player ‘leafs through’ static images very much as he would leaf through the pages of a book (which is another central metaphor of this game). Although players are therefore not able to take up positions in between assigned spots (they never ‘travel’), they can turn around and take in their surroundings at each designated vista. At the heart of the tourist experience of Myst, Riven and Myst III, we find ourselves back in Roland Barthes’ railway carriage again: The game compresses journey-time into “real time”, it eliminates travelling from its game-play, but at the same time it lingers over its views.31 Like its predecessors, Myst III: Exile strings together a sequence of picturesque views, it instrumentalizes the tourist gaze in much the same fashion as panoramic screen savers do – but with the added promise of increased interactive control. Myst, Riven and Myst III: Exile celebrate the future of virtual tourism by presenting the utopian ideal of an unmitigated tourist experience made possible by digital technology; they promise an experience where the visual consumption of natural and digital environments becomes one. In this respect, they are paradigmatic of some of the other forms of virtual tourism I have discussed in this essay. But again, the promise rings hollow. The tourist gaze is once more carefully constructed, packaged, and maintained; and a player’s interactive control of the game, which appears to be limitless, remains pre-planned and, in fact, preprogrammed. 31

But see Smith (2002: 492–3), who argues that technical limitations (for example, the relatively slow access times of CD-ROM drives) and the spatial arrangement of objects re-introduce traditional travel time into the game.

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Bibliography Abrams, Meyer Howard. 1971. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York and London: W. W. Norton. ArmchairTour: Explore the Historic Streets of Charleston. 2001. Eden Street Software. ArmchairTour: Explore New Orleans’ Historic French Quarter. 2001. Eden Street Software. Barthes, Roland. 1979. The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies (tr. Richard Howard). New York: Hill and Wang. Baur, Andreas David. 2000. ‘Desktop statt Restplatz: Virtueller Tourismus eine Zukunftsbranche?’ (12 July 2000). On line at: http://matrix.orf.at/bkframe/ 200709_2.htm (consulted 01.04.2003). Brown, Wallace Cable. 1946. ‘The Near East in English Drama, 1775-1825’ in Journal of English and Germanic Philology 46: 63-9. Burke, Edmund. 1958. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (ed. J. T. Boulton). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Byerly, Alison. 1996. ‘The Uses of Landscape: The Picturesque Aesthetic and the National Park System’ in Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens, Georgia and London: The University of Georgia Press: 52-68. Canyon Country Screen Saver CD-ROM. 2001. Impact Photo Graphics. Culler, Jonathan. 1981. ‘The Semiotics of Tourism’ in Framing the Sign: Criticism and its Institutions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 153-67. deMaria, Rusel and Johnny L. Wilson. 2002. High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games. New York, Chicago, et al.: McGraw-Hill/Osborne. Dewailly, Jean-Michel. 1999. ‘Sustainable Tourist Space: From Reality to Virtual Reality’ in Tourism Geographies 1(1): 41-55. Dick, Philip K. 2000. We Can Remember It for You Wholesale: The Collected Short Stories. Vol. V. London: Gollancz. Eagles, P. F. J. and S. F. MacCool. 2002. Tourism in National Parks and Protected Areas. Wallingford: CAB International. Fennell, David A. 2003. Ecotourism: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Forsyth, William H. 1992. ‘Five Crucial People in the Building of The Cloisters’ in Parker, Elizabeth C. (ed.) The Cloisters: Studies in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 51-62. Friedberg, Anne. 1993. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press. Fussell, Paul. 1980. Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilpin, William. 1794. Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty, on Picturesque Travel, and on Sketching Landscape: To Which Is Added a Poem, on Landscape Painting. London: Printed for R. Blamire.

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Hall, Colin Michael and Stephen J. Page. 1999. The Geography of Tourism and Recreation: Environment, Place and Space. London: Routledge. Krug, Christian. 2001. Das Eigene im Fremden. Orientalismen im englischen Melodrama, 1790–1840. Trier: wvt. Landais, Hubert. ‘The Cloisters and the Passion for the Middle Ages’ in Parker, Elizabeth C. (ed.) The Cloisters: Studies in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 41-8. MacCannell, Dean. 1999. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Meethan, Kevin. 2001. Tourism in Global Society: Place, Culture, Consumption. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave. Muir, John. 1901. Our National Parks. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. Myst. 1993. Cyan/Brøderbund Software. Myst III: Exile. 2001. Ubi Soft Entertainment. Prentice, Richard. 1997. ‘Cultural and Landscape Tourism: Facilitating Meaning’, in Wahab, Salah and John J. Pigram (eds) Tourism, Development and Growth: The Challenge of Sustainability. London and New York: Routledge: 209-36. Riven. 1997. Cyan/Brøderbund Software. Shenandoah National Park Screen Saver CD-ROM. 2000. Impact Photo Graphics. Smith, Greg M. 2002. ‘Navigating Myst-y Landscapes: Killer Applications and Hybrid Criticism’ in Jenkins, Henry, Tara McPherson and Jane Shattuc (eds) Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press: 487-502. Strain, Ellen. 2002. ‘Narrativizing Cyber-Travel: CD-ROM Travel Games and the Art of Historical Recovery’ in Jenkins, Henry, Tara McPherson and Jane Shattuc (eds). Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press: 605-21. Ulman, H. Lewis. 2001. ‘Beyond Nature/Writing: Virtual Landscapes Online, in Print, and in ‘Real Life’’ in Armbruster, Karla and Kathleen R. Wallace (eds) Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia: 341-56. Urry, John. 1990. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage. —. 1995. Consuming Places. London and New York: Routledge. Virilio, Paul. 1997. Open Sky (La vitesse de libération, tr. Julie Rose). London and New York: Verso. Wall, Geoffrey. 1997. ‘Sustainable Tourism – Unsustainable Development’ in Wahab, Salah and John J. Pigram (eds) Tourism, Development and Growth: The Challenge of Sustainability. London and New York: Routledge: 33-49. Young, Bonnie. 1990. A Walk through The Cloisters. Text by Bonnie Young, photographs by Malcolm Varnon. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Gertrud Leutenegger’s metanoic narrative Kontinent Andrew A. Liston Abstract: The Swiss author, Gertrud Leutenegger, is known for her unconventional texts where quinces and zebra crossings are placed in a syntactic relationship for no better reason than the shared colour yellow. Similarly, her narrative Kontinent (1985) hovers between references to an identifiable Alpine reality and subjective Chinese dream-like sequences and thus makes demands of the reader, problematising the hermeneutic process. The tale is related by a bewildered first person female narrator who undergoes a process of assimilation into a mountain village community. The narrator comes to the village in order to make a recording of sounds from the natural environment for the aluminium works, the major local employer. Her task ironically illustrates the damage caused by the works to the natural environment. It is therefore a text that deals on the one hand with social alienation, while simultaneously addressing the ecological effects of industrialisation. This essay seeks to investigate how these seemingly disparate elements of the work function together and how the author’s language carries the ecological content.

1. Introduction “I wish to write against the grain,”1 claims the Swiss writer Gertrud Leutenegger, and certainly her work challenges conventions in both form as well as content. She made her literary debut in 1975 with the novel, Vorabend, which won her critical acclaim. The text nominally deals with a demonstration and might therefore be expected to be a politically-committed text such as was common in the 1970s. According to the narrator however, the novel has “no subject” (1975: 16).2 Leutenegger’s refusal to follow trends has become a trademark of her work: Nineve (1979) reconsiders and politicises the biblical story of collective salvation through the actions of a chosen 1 2

Gertrud Leutenegger, personal communication, my translation, Zurich, 10.07.03 All translations of quotations from Vorabend are mine.

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individual; in Gouverneur (1981) the writer moves beyond realistic and chronological narration (cf. Herwig 1993: 564); Lebewohl, Gute Reise (1980) reassesses the Gilgamesh epic, centralising the point of view of the temple whore with the intention of revising more recent homosexual versions of the myth;3 her short prose pieces in the volume Das verlorene Monument (1985) are in part reactions to proposed governmental action and are therefore also written against the grain; Kontinent (1985) demolishes the notion of the Swiss village idyll as a phenomenon existing in isolation. 2. Metanoia Justifying these revisions, Leutenegger explains: “I see the world a little bit differently.”4 In this sense, she is a metanoic writer. The biblical term “metanoia” refers to a moment of radical change. Importantly, it contains the sense of a transformation. In the Old Testament, metanoia refers to the complete dedication of a person to Yahweh (1st Kings 18, 37). In the New Testament, metanoia occurs on the road to Damascus: Saul has a blinding vision of Christ and becomes Paul, who then continues his journey with a changed perspective (Acts 9, 1-20). The Swiss eco-philosopher Beat SitterLiver refers to an ecological metanoia. Central to his notion is the sense in the Damascene Enlightenment that a change of perspective is undertaken and that with this new outlook the protagonist continues on his/her journey. In this way, Sitter-Liver distances himself from conservative environ-mentalism with its negative reputation for simplistic and reductive nostalgia and moves towards the philosophy of Arne Næss and the Deep Ecologists. Rather than constituting a complete revolution, metanoia implies a paramorphosis, or a change but not a whole-sale change. Understanding existence as defined by environment, the deep ecologists argue the importance of the senses in our knowledge of ourselves. Since the senses rely on the surrounding environment, the deep ecologists thus contradict the prevalent notion in capitalist soci3

Leutenegger expressed this intention in conversation with the author, Zurich, 10.07.03 4 Leutenegger, personal communication, my translation, Zurich, 10.07.03

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eties of the self as a self-contained individual (Næss 1995). We can identify a reliance in Leutenegger’s work on sensual impressions. Have you ever read an essay about the questionability of human laws, human methods of punishment, or human love, that has unsettled you in the depths of sleep’s flickering consciousness. I have always reacted to such pieces of advice with a lassitude. However, a bend in the road, a chair pushed to one side, a resigned shrug of the shoulders can suddenly burst through with signals and erase the clarity of boundaries. Their beligerent meaning. A little redness. How irrelevent it was at the outset. (Leutenegger 1975: 68)

Rejecting clear arguments as a way of convincing an audience of one’s point, Leutenegger presents her readers with uninterpreted impressions, about which the reader must make his/her own decisions. As Henriette Herwig puts it, she shows “...sceptism towards anything discursive and trust in the phenomena themselves” (1993: 571). As readers, we are left alone to interpret such things as a turn in a road or a chair, which has been pushed to one side. Leutenegger consciously avoids clarity. This is apparent in her reluctance to give interviews because she feels interviews can become a betrayal of the text.5 Instead, she believes her texts should speak for themselves and should not be reduced to one definitive interpretation.6 Subjectivity is encouraged while the existence of an objective reality is questioned. 3. Kontinent Kontinent is the author’s most ecologically committed text. The narrative takes the reader from an unnamed Alpine village via the narrator’s memories to China. This journey is undertaken by a firstperson female narrator. The text is centred on the narrator’s relationship to both her physical and social environments. Indeed, Leutenegger calls the work “the epic representation of self-realization” (qtd. in Matt 1985). The narrator has been employed by the aluminium works in the village to record a piece of music for a celebration they are holding. The end result provides an interesting record of the village’s relationship to the surrounding environment. 5 6

Leutenegger, correspondence with the author, 06.05.03 Leutenegger, personal communication, Zurich, 10.07.03

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The other two main strands in the narrative are, firstly, the narrator’s problematical assimilation and, secondly, the intercalated reminiscence of a past love affair. These superficially divergent parts of the narrative are brought together by the shared themes of belonging, alienation and ecology. The novella begins with the narrator being brought to the village by two locals. She moves into a house by the canal at the bottom of the village. Dominating the view from her veranda, and the surrounding countryside, is the observatory, which is conspicuously painted red. In going about her work, the narrator comes into contact with various villagers, notably the ‘Verwalterin’, or female director, with whom she establishes a good relationship. Her work is intended to be a collection of natural sounds and so she is brought into close contact with the local environment. She sees the effect that industry has on the landscape and in turn on the inhabitants. Since her work is commissioned by the aluminium works, she also has to visit the factory and is thus confronted with the effects it has on both the inhabitants and the environment. The novella culminates with her music being played at the village’s music festival and her absence at the aluminium works’ celebration. She is accepted by the villagers and moves from the canal house at the bottom of the village to the observatory at the top, which she paints blue. The opening pages of the novella encapsulate the primary elements of alienation. The narrator arrives in a mountain village that she doesn’t know and so everything seems new and foreign. She reports: “The passenger doesn’t glance at the pine woods still in shade or the gravel deltas” (Leutenegger 1985: 7).7 The mention of the features of the landscape indicates that although the co-driver may not be looking at them, the narrator herself has certainly noticed them. The difference between perspectives implies an alienation between the narrator and the villagers. 4. Mankind’s ambivalent relationship to nature The beginning of the narrative also expresses succinctly how the villagers have an ambivalent relationship to their natural environment. 7

All translations of quotations from Kontinent are mine.

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As they approach the village the co-driver reminisces about childhood games on the frozen pools beside the river. They used to light the bubbles of gas trapped in the ice, which then burnt impressively. As a result of watching the flames they burnt off their eyebrows. Despite the negative side-effect the co-driver still tells the tale fondly and with excitement. The game amounts to an exploitation of nature for a simple pleasure, which the boys carry out without regard for personal safety. Leutenegger touches here on the complex psychology that may lie at the heart of the damage humans do to their environment: we exploit nature even when the exploitation is detrimental to ourselves. Edward O. Wilson puts it as follows: “The audaciously destructive tendencies of our species run deep and are poorly understood. They are so difficult to probe and manage, as to suggest an archaic biological origin” (1984: 118). The co-driver laments that the experience is also restricted to the past, since the pools no longer freeze. The effects of global warming are therefore also implied by this anecdote. This ambivalent and complex relationship with nature is equally manifest in the recent change in the way of life of the villagers from farming to either the factory or industrialised viticulture. The farming way of life meant a rich surrounding environment, with which the villagers had to cultivate a close relationship in order to survive. The diverse range of crops and livestock, now replaced solely by the industrialised viticulture, not only constituted a wider range of biodiversity, but also brought the villagers into contact with one another: “The cattle had been everyone’s priority before and discussions about cattle had constituted the majority of social interaction” (Leutenegger 1985: 75). The change in their work has therefore had a negative effect in their social relationships as well as on the surrounding en-vironment. But they do nothing about it, there is no organised opposition to the aluminium works. The villagers continue to go about their existence mute. This passivity is almost ubiquitous among the local inhabitants and allows the works to continue unimpeded despite wreaking havoc on the life of the village. The industrialised viticulture is a further example of how the way of life in the village is no longer in harmony with nature. The felling of trees in order to expand the vineyards results in landslides. One occurs prior to the notional present of the text, sweeping houses away.

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The tragedy of the landslide lives on tin the village in the form of an old woman, who lost her home in the disaster and since then has been unable to communicate coherently. The narrator identifies her by the children’s socks that she wears – a cryptically poignant detail, which must remain unexplained because the old lady cannot communicate. Once again damage done to the environment hinders communication, this time by rendering someone practically dumb. Another landslide occurs during the notional present. It causes uproar in the village, especially among the women. A Cassandra figure complains that their warnings have not been heeded. Nonetheless, the reaction remains passive: “Silence has arrived” (56) and nothing is done to change the status quo. The process of industrialisation means that a helicopter is used to spray the vines with pesticides. This too has had disastrous consequences with misunderstandings resulting in workers being sprayed. The damaging effect of the intensive methods used in the cultivation of the vines is summed up in a scene towards the end of the novella. The narrator helps the woman with children’s socks free a bat that has entangled itself in the netting strung over the vines. The net is very tough and the narrator has difficulty breaking it. There is no knife and the narrator has no idea what to do. The old lady solves the situation by simply biting through the net. The two figures demonstrate the benevolent human impulse towards nature while the net opposes them, representing human exploitation of nature. In a short scene we can therefore identify an exposition of the schizophrenic attitude towards the natural world apparently inherent in humanity. The narrator’s task also balances on the see-saw of the ambivalent human attitude towards nature. She is supposed to be making a collage recording of sounds from the surrounding environment. The aluminium works have commissioned the piece for their celebration and also intend to play the recording in the works over the tannoy. The most salient sounds, and the ones she therefore records, are, however, almost all linked in some way to the damage the aluminium works is doing. Typical of Leutenegger, a preoccupation with a sensual contact with nature remains in the foreground. In Kontinent, the narrator’s task draws our attention to the sense of hearing. The narrator’s

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recordings pare down the experience of nature to the piercing tone of a warning siren.8 The sense of hearing is central for the reader too. Our impression of the scene is largely generated through aural details. We hear squeaking bats, chirping crickets, rushing streams and sounds coming from a smashed accordion in a gully. The wealth of aural detail makes the deafening effects of the aluminium works and the viticulture symbolically significant for the reader. They are invested with an additional resonance in the connections made by the narrator between them and mutilation. 5. Self-realization Over the course of the novella the protagonist’s position alters. As we have seen, her arrival is bewildering for her. This sense of bewilderment pervades the text. When she arrives in the village she presumes that she will live in the observatory. She is surprised to find that, instead, she is in the canal house. So there is an initial disappointment. The narrator comments: “The observatory shines red on the hill. Unapproachably red” (106). The observatory thus seems distant from her. However, towards the end of the novella, by allowing her to move into the observatory, the villagers show that she has been assimilated into the community. Her transformation includes her attitude to her work. By the end of the text, she is still recording sounds even though she has fulfilled her task for the aluminium works. Thus her music has become purely personal expression and no longer has anything to do with the factory. This independent attitude is summed up in the music festival towards the end of the novella, when the narrator’s music is played and enjoyed by the villagers. The villagers organise it to take place on the same evening as the celebration planned by the aluminium works. Although the festival scarcely constitutes direct opposition to the works, it is nevertheless the first occasion when the villagers rise out of their apathetic passivity.

8

Warning sirens are a recurrent feature in Leutenegger’s work. See for example: Lebewohl Gute Reise, Der Tod kommt in die Welt , Vorabend.

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The de-alienation of the narrator encapsulated in the festival is illuminated by the growing suspicion that she and her predecessor could in fact be the same person. This is evident from the conversations with the villagers, which rarely omit a comparison between the narrator and her predecessor (cf. Gao 1997: 131). The instances where the narrator slips into memories that could be those of the predecessor further suggest this. The suspicions are further strengthened by the knowledge of the surrounding area that she displays and one narratorial comment in particular: “The red colour of the observatory scares me like a hidden part of myself” (Leutenegger 1985: 106). The implication appears to be that the observatory is the narrator’s former home and therefore holds clues to the nature of her self. Following this implication, her alienation from the village can be understood as an alienation from her former self. Her move can be understood as her ultimate acceptance of the village and her past. Self and place are therefore closely related in Kontinent. A Heideggerian sense of “being-in-the-world” lies at the heart the novella. Her journey of discovery of the self is fundamen-tally grounded in an experience of her immediate natural environment. 6. Narrative strategies Thanks to the narrative strategies, the narrator’s experience is partly regenerated for the reader. The text is primarily composed in the present tense. Because we share the narrator’s present, the text has an immediacy for us. It is not a closed and finished article. We cannot read it simply as an account of the narrator’s former uncertainties in the secure knowledge that it has all taken place in the past. We do not know where the text is going because without the past tense we cannot assume an end to the tale. The future is therefore open. The narrator’s past is also narrated in the present tense and is thus woven into the narrator’s present. We therefore encounter a present that drifts with the homeless narrator. The use of the present tense has an ecological implication. The process of damage to the environment highlighted by the text remains contemporary and immediate. We are not allowed to relegate it to the past but are forced to accept that it is part of the present. The past tense would be inappropriate since the dramatic climax of ecological problems has not yet taken place.

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The alienation felt by the narrator is also transmitted to the reader. As it is a first-person narrative, there is no omniscient narrator supplying the information that we do not learn from the protagonist. Therefore, the lack of names, the gaps in the stories told and the various mysteries are just as bewildering for the reader as for the narrator. The sense of bewilderment is compounded by the narrative wanderings, such as the narrator’s memories of China. These are presumably familiar to the narrator but are not made so for us. Here we can identify a parallel between the text and the village: the text is just as bewildering for us as the village is for the narrator. The links between geography and consciousness are therefore identifiable. In Leutenegger’s text, the experience of each is highly subjective. We can identify further geo-conscious links in the textually omnipresent observatory. It is not only central to the plot of the novella, but remains central also in the thoughts of the narrator. It thus dominates the narrative. The relative problems of interpretation have provoked impatient criticism of Kontinent. Jürgen Jacobs’ has described the text as a “porridge of thoughts and atmosphere, of arbitrary associations” (1985). This may seem valid enough at the start of the text but once the reader has a sense of the whole, he/she can identify too much of a structure to call the text a “porridge”, and the connections appear more than “beliebig”. Again, this suggests a parallel between text and topography. We can learn to feel at home in the text, and thus understand it, just as the narrator learns to feel at home in the village. If it is complex and difficult to follow, this is because the narrator is not in harmony with her social, psychological and physical environment. In this way the reader shares the alienation and the uncertainty felt by the narrator, as well as the process of de-alienation and reintegration. We can therefore see that the “irritating incoherence” (ibid.) serves the purpose of generating a bewildering textual environment for the reader. Leutenegger’s prose is often described as poetic.9 Hinting at connections that nevertheless remain only partially articulated, the text shares the concentrated and condensed form of poetry. This “radical compression” (Kondrič-Horvat 2002: 178; my translation) is centrally 9

See Kuhn 1985; Matt 1985; Kurz 1988.

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important for the author’s metanoic purposes. The conventional syntagmatic implications are diminished and the linear inference is reduced, so that the prose becomes more of a sequence of impressions and associations than a story. Often passages reinforce the subjectivity of the narrative because they appear to be simply the record of the narrator’s experience, a sequence of impressions suggestive only of a sense of unease and foreignness. The poetic nature of Leutenegger’s prose can also be interpreted as having ecological implications. Poetry represents a highly subjective expression of being and is furthermore a literary genre that is often perceived to be born out of the emotions (cf. Staiger 1951: 24). Beat Sitter-Liver, considers a subjective understanding of our relationship to our environment as fundamental in establishing a more ecological way of life. He perceives poetry as a means of achieving this.10 We have already seen how central subjectivity is to the form, content and reception of Kontinent. Why should this be so important for an ecological text? Interestingly, the need for a subjective expression of experience begins with the rejection of the notion of the self as a selfcontained entity. When one is in love, the emotional state of the self is changed. This change is dependent on another person and the relationship to that person. The emotional state of the self is therefore not controlled from entirely within the self alone but is also influenced by what is around the self. This is true of all emotions, which are a very real part of the self. So, a knowledge of the self depends upon an understanding of emotions and therefore in turn an understanding of the environment. This chimes with the philosophy of deep ecologists such as Arne Næss. Næss demonstrates, with the example of the neurosis of displaced Eskimos, that the stability of a self can be partly dependent not only on the individual’s relationship to other human beings but also on his/her relationship to his/her environment. Leutenegger’s subjective and poetic “epic representation of self-realization”, which deals with alienation and de-alienation from both social and physical environments, can thus be understood as a deeply ecological text. Further elements of deep ecology can be detected in the rejection of narrative norms in Kontinent. The text toys with various narrative 10

Beat Sitter-Liver, in conversation with the author, Zurich, 06.05.03

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norms but never allows them to take control. Leutenegger’s unsettling modernist techniques prevent the work being classified simply as a Swiss village tale.11 Instead, the text asks us to look beyond the superficial idyll of the traditional Dorfgeschichte (village tale). The work also displays some of the characteristics of a Bildungsroman. The narrator undertakes a journey, undergoes a change, moves from a position of alienation from her home to a position of acceptance in a community, and makes a positive impact on that community. However, the dialectic of past and present self/ves is never clarified. There is no perceptible underlying metanarrative and so the narrator remains the sole authority. It appears that the narrator returns to the village, just as a Bildungsroman protagonist might do, but her assimilation into the village community is not the result of her learning to fit in, as would be the case with a Bildungsroman hero, but, as we have seen, stems instead from her efforts to realise her own subjective reality. The story also lacks the length and the passage of time that are characteristic features of a Bildungsroman. Precisely because they are aberrations from the norm, these variations draw attention to themselves, and highlight the role of subjectivity in the story. Why has the author chosen a recognisable narrative norm and then written a text that only conforms partially to that norm and in fact goes some way to undermining it? A possible answer could be that the text is intended as a correction of the traditional genre: while the traditional form proposes the society as the ultimate authority, Leutenegger suggests that self-realisation is the beginning of community. Leutenegger defies conventions too by omitting a generic exergue for Kontinent. This reflects the fact that the work does not fit readily into any generic category. By way of this omission, she avoids establishing a set of expectations.12 The lack of generic classification also allows the text to free itself from the conventional differentiation between fact and fiction, again reinforcing the notion of subjective

11

For a fuller discussion of this notion see Pender 1990. The relationship established by an exergue between text and reader was described at the Polyphony Workshop, Monte Verita, May 2003, by Arno Renken as ‘contractual.’ By this he means that in giving a text a generic classification an author establishes a set of expectations. 12

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reality, reminiscent of Christa Wolf’s “subjective authenticity” (Wolf 1987). 7. Conclusion “I had to discover my own music in order to discover the music of the world” (Leutenegger 1985: 142). With this realisation towards the end of Kontinent, the narrator draws together the themes of belonging, alienation and ecology. In the recognition of the interrelationship of her own ‘music’ and that of the world we can see that the narrator has achieved an understanding of how self-expression and self-realization are necessary to a comprehension of existence in a wider sense. The way the sentence is constructed suggests that her primary aim was “ to recognise the music of the world.” With this in mind, we can see that self-realization is a step on the road to finding a home in the world and does not merely imply a restrictive form of individualisation.13 Nevertheless, the fact that there are two sorts of music demonstrates the existence of the dialectic between belonging and alienation, and despite the progress the narrator makes in the village, this tension remains ever present. This is evident in the final passage where we appear to return to the beginning of the work with the same removal men, who brought her to the canal house, coming to take her on the short journey to the observatory. The narrator is in a constant process of learning about herself; she is on a continuing journey from alienation to belonging. The interface between these two themes is Leutenegger’s language of dwelling, her ecology. We can see that Leutenegger’s sense of ecology is close to the meaning of the original Greek terms. Indeed, she warns against a ‘shallow’ ecological interpretation of her work: “fassen Sie die ‘ökologische Stimme’ nicht zu eng; es geht um alles Kreatürliche, die Schöpfung überhaupt. Don’t be too restrictive with your definition of an ‘ecological voice’; my work is about everything living, the Creation in a broad sense.”14 Her work is not ecological in a 13

Næss considers the conventional understanding of self-realization to be a restrictive, individualistic ego-trip. He uses the term in order to capture people’s attention, because they feel safe with it. For a more comprehensive investigation of these ideas see Næss 1995. 14 Leutenegger, in correspondence with the author, Zurich, my translation, 6.05.03.

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conservationist sense, even if it highlights the decline of biodiversity. Rather, it embodies the “intellectual revolution” that Richard Leakey suggests is in the process of taking place (1995: 223). The work amounts to a textual representation of consciousness, by joining dream, memory and notional reality all on the same narrative level. To draw the various strands together, the text can be considered to be thoroughly ecological on the levels of language, structure, syntax, content, and also the effect it has on the reader. Rejecting traditional forms and resisting interpretation, Leutenegger’s prose is iconoclastic and ground-breaking. The narrator has found a language for her home, a language that achieves a sense of what to be at home means. Bibliography Gao, Yunfei. 1997. China und Europa im deutschen Roman der 80er Jahre – Das Fremde und das Eigene in der Interaktion. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang. Herwig, Henriette. 1993. ‘Gertrud Leutenegger. Zwischen Tradition und Individuation’ in Battig, J., and S. Leimgruber (eds) Grenzfall Literatur. Freiburg, Schweiz: Universitätsverlag. Jacobs, Jürgen. 1985. ‘Die Sammlerin des Naturtons’ in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (10 October). Kuhn, Christoph. 1985. ‘Eine Wirklichkeit, die sich in Musik auflöst’ in Tages Anzeiger (21 September). Kurz, Paul Konrad. 1988. ‘Aufstieg zum Innersten’ in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (29 March). Kondrič-Horvat, Vesna. 2002. Der eigenen Utopie nachspüren. Bern: Peter Lang. Leakey, Richard and Roger Levin. 1995. The Sixth Extinction. Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind. New York: Doubleday. Leutenegger, Gertrud. 1975. Vorabend. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. —. 1980. Lebewohl, Gute Reise. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. —. 1985. Kontinent. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. —. 1985. ‘Der Tod kommt in die Welt’ in Das Verlorene Monument. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Matt, Beatrice von. 1985. ‘Gertrud Leuteneggers Roman ,Kontinent’. Gespräch’ in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (13/14 July). —. 1985a. ‘Ungelöste Erinnerung’ in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (5 September). Næss, Arne. 1995. ‘Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being-in-the-World’ in Næss, A., and G. Sessions (eds) Deep Ecology for the 21st Century. London and Boston: Shambala. —. 1973. ‘The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement’ in Inquiry (16): 95-100.

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Pender, Malcolm. 1990. ‘Themes in the German-Swiss Novel of the Eighties: Beat Sterchi’s Blösch and Gertrud Leutenegger’s Kontinent’ in Williams, A., S. Parkes and R. Smith (eds), Literature on the Threshold. The German Novel in the 1980s. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Staiger, Emil. 1951. Grundbegriffe der Poetik. Zürich. Atlantis-Verlag. Wilson, Edward, O.. 1984. Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. Wolf, Christa. 1987. ‘Subjektive Authentizität. Gespräch mit Hans Kaufmann, 1973’ in Wolf, Christa (ed.) Die Dimension des Autors. Essays und Aufsätze, Reden und Gespräche, 1959–1985. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.

NATURE, LITERATURE AND THE SPACE OF THE NATIONAL

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Nature/place, memory, and identity in the poetry of Lithuanian émigré Danut÷ Paškevičiūt÷ Irena Ragaišien÷ Abstract: This essay seeks to examine the meanings produced by the interplay of nature/place, memory, and identity in the poetry of Danut÷ Paškevičiūt÷, a post-World War II Lithuanian émigré woman writer. Though she lives in the United States, she continues writing in her native Lithuanian language. In her poetry, the notion of ‘place’ has cultural, social, and political connotations. These are implicit in the frequent juxtaposition of rural nature and urban culture. Nature functions within these texts not so much as the opposite pole of culture but as the terrain of shared language and cultural codes as well as full-fledged intersubjectivity. The nature/culture duality, in this way, encompasses the conceptual frame of reference that marks the borderline between the past, inextricably associated by the poetic personae with the lost homeland, and the present, perceived as self-identification with an exile in hostile urban surroundings. The encounter between the two realms is interspersed with reflections on the impact of the Soviet occupation on the ecology of homeland. The paper concludes by linking the analysis of place as a social construct that affects selfidentification to the concept of the ecology of language.

1. Homeland lost, environment found The poetry of Danut÷ Paškevičiūt÷ (b.1926), a war refugee who emigrated to the United States of America in 1944,1 reveals that the representation of identity not only slips into binaries of “Us” and “Them” but also reflects on interactions between humans and the 1

According to the biographical account presented in Lietuvių egzodo literatūra, 1945-90, eds. Kazys Bradūnas, and Rimvydas Šilbajoris (1992), Paškevičiūt÷ studied philology at the University of Mainz and moved from a German Displaced Persons camp to the United States in 1949. In the U.S., she taught at a Lithuanian school, worked for Lithuanian radio programs, and published articles, novellas, and poems in Draugas, Darbininkas, and Moteris periodicals, published in Lithuanian in the United States.

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environment. Such a thematic span, among considerations of cultural bifocality that are commonly associated with émigré writing, suggests environmental implications.2 These implications acquire an added significance in light of Sven Birkerts’s ‘more inclusive idea of the “environment”’. Here, the environment is not limited to meanings of “natural” or “wilderness.” It also includes, as per Kathleen R Wallace and Karla Armbruster, “cultivated and built landscapes, the natural elements and aspects of those landscapes, and cultural interactions with those natural elements” (2001: 4). Such a perspective permits a view of nature and culture, in the words of Wallace and Armbruster, “as interwoven rather than as separate sides of a dualistic construct”, a dynamic interrelationship that reflects a wide range of modes of human agency (2001: 4). Their expanded perspective on ecocriticism, by directing attention to the cultural aspects of the environment rather than merely foregrounding the study of the natural, provides a window on manifestations of environmental sensitivity in a broader range of literature. Thereby, the ecocritical perspective can be applied to texts where “nature is less than obvious, texts from the point of view of diverse populations with alternative perspectives on nature and human relationships to it” (2001: 5).3 In this light, the juxtaposition of a lost homeland and the New World in Danut÷ Paškevičiūt÷’s poetry opens a space for an analysis of place/landscape as a social construction.4 Further, it offers an investigation of forces that affect its development and shape self-identification. She accomplishes this by using a rich overlay of images and 2

Émigré writing, commonly associated with diaspora or ethnic studies, lacks ecocritical attention. A similar view is expressed by Steven Rosendale who states that Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a novel that depicts the immigrant experience in the United States has never “been taken seriously as a novel with important environmental implications, a failing that [Steven Rosendale’s] essay seeks to correct” (2002: 61). One more correction could be suggested. In this analysis of The Jungle, it is never mentioned that the Rudkuses are Lithuanian immigrants to the United States of America. 3 This dovetails with Cheryll Glotfelty’s argument that ecocriticism has expanded to “[include] all possible relations between literature and the physical world” (1996: xxi). 4 David E. Nye surveys recent research in landscape studies and argues that “one can say that notions of landscape as nature are seldom advanced any more. Authors seem to recognize that every landscape is a social construction” (1997: 63).

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associations of landscape suggesting environmental consciousness. Paškevičiūt÷’s only poetry collection is entitled Beyond Lament (1961).5 The connotations of the title immediately evoke an association of women’s poetry with the sentimental and the lachrymose, a thematic network defined by T. E. Hulme as “tears” and “roses” (Hulme in Gilbert and Gubar 1988: 153). However, the poems point to self-determination, an attempt to bridge the gap between nostalgia and the concern for the homeland. They also indicate efforts to position oneself in the multicultural United States of America.6 The purpose for this analysis of Paškevičiūt÷’s émigré poetry is multifaceted. First, this discussion sets the social and historical context for the reading of her work, explaining the mass emigration of Lithuanians during World War II. Second, it reveals discursive positions that reflect the dynamics of identity transformation in relation to place. Third, it discusses the meanings encoded in the rural nature/urban culture dichotomy. The objective is to highlight the layering of past and present implicit in this dualism which conveys the signification of home/homelessness, associated with war-inflicted emigration, as well as indicates concerns relevant to environment/landscape. Within this context, the nature/culture duality does not function as an oppositional construct but designates the “natural” as that which has been left behind, whereas “cultural” as the new and the foreign. The treatment of the relationship between human agency and the environment in Paškevičiūt÷’s poetry needs to be presented in light of its historical context. Lithuania, the native country of the author, suffered not only World War II but also occupations by two superpower enemy forces.7 The Soviet occupation in 1940 was 5

Aš negaliu verkti in the original. All translations of Paškevičiūt÷’s poetry are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 6 For the discussion of immigrant integration into the multicultural American society, I am drawing on the ideas of Orm Øverland (2000). The representation of the immigrant experience in the literature of Lithuanian émigré writers has been extensively discussed by Vytautas Kubilius (2003) and Dalia Kuizinien÷ (2003), for instance. 7 For the information regarding the historical context of Danut÷ Paškevičiūt÷’s émigré poetry, I am indebted to my colleague Milda Danys, a Lithuanian immigration scholar and the author of the book DP: Lithuanian Immigration to Canada after the Second World War (1986).

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followed by Nazi occupation in June 1941 as Germany advanced into USSR territories. Lithuania resisted each occupation to the best of its abilities to retain its own sovereignty. In the spring of 1944, the Soviet Army began pushing the German Army back and by summer, Lithuania was the war front between the Russian and the German armed forces. Those who were able fled the country following the retreating German Army through the only available westward corridor into Germany for what they believed to be a temporary retreat until the end of the war. The Soviet regime was greatly feared due the repressions it had exercised. One of the harshest forms had been massive deportations to forced labor camps in Siberia, starting in 1940-1941. When Hitler broke the (then secret) Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by invading Lithuania in 1941, the massive deportations were interrupted and replaced by Nazi repressions. Staying in the homeland meant danger, primarily to citizens who held the more important positions in the society from either of the enemies on the war front. In 1944, it was clear that Hitler and the Nazis had lost the war, and it was announced over the radio that the war would end in the fall of 1944. Soviet reoccupation of Lithuania was unavoidable (it occurred in June of 1944). The terror of further massive deportations prompted another wave of chaos and masses of people fleeing in an effort at survival.8 A very similar scenario can be traced in Latvia and Estonia. People awaited liberation of Lithuania by the Allies (that unfortunately never occurred). Refugees in the areas of Germany that fell under jurisdiction of the Western Allies (United States, Great Britain, and France) were assigned Displaced Person (DP) status and situated in refugee camps. Due to the start of the Cold War with the USSR, Western powers did not force Lithuanians to return to their 8

According to the statistics presented by the Center of Genocide and Resistance, “every third citizen of mid-twentieth century Lithuania fell victim to the apparatus of the Soviet genocide. During 1940–1958, 131,000 people were deported to Siberia, 200,100 were imprisoned, 20,000 freedom fighters and 5,000 civilians were killed, and over 1,000 people were sentenced to death. The fear of terror and repressions forced 490,000 people to leave Lithuania. Together with 245,000 lives lost during the Second World War, the population in Lithuanian decreased by 1,091,000.” For this and further information on the Soviet genocide and losses of the Lithuanian population caused by World War II, see http://www.genocid.lt/GRTD/departam.htm (June 12, 2004).

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homeland.9 Programs for emigration of DPs were instituted. In the meantime, life in the DP camps left an indelible mark in the memories of the war refugees who eventually emigrated to the West. According to Milda Danys: Many of the DPs must have personally despaired of ever remaking their lives. But put together by nationalities for linguistic and administrative convenience, the DPs adopted a strategy that seemed naïve but was unexpectedly fruitful: they refused to admit that their history had been snapped into two, that their countries and cultures had seized to exist. They denied their impotence and lived and acted as though they still had power over their lives. With the DP era, national divisions were re-emphasized and national identities sharpened to an acute and almost unnatural point. (1986: 41-2)

Under the conditions specific to life in DP camps, according to Danys, Lithuanians fostered their uprooted national identity by joining into singing, dancing, and performing arts groups, establishing newspapers and periodicals, publishing books, and starting schools as well as professional organizations and clubs. These artistic and educational activities assisted not only in coping with personal problems caused by exile but also helped the DPs to generate a feeling of group consciousness (1986: 55-64). Without this prolonged shared experience, Danys argues, the people who emigrated to Canada, Australia, South America, England, and the United States “would have been more scattered, less organized and less self-conscious about who they were and what their role was” (1986: 64). With regard to émigré writing, the late Lithuanian critic Vytautas Kubilius links the dual vision of cultural migration and attachment to homeland in the following enlightening explanation: The literature of Lithuanians living in exile veered towards an aim of retaining national identity under new conditions of life. This literature changes the 9 With reference to the data provided by Kangeris, a historian of Latvian nationality living in Stockholm, Lithuanian historian Alfonsas Eidintas states that “there were approximately 300,000 Lithuanians in Germany in October 1944” of whom “approximately 75,000 […] were [young Lithuanians] deported for forced labor in the factories and on the farms of the Reich” (2003: 207). Eidintas also states that, according to Natalija Kairiūkštyt÷, because of the repatriation decree from the Soviet Zone of occupation, “approximately 50,000 Lithuanians returned home from Germany in 1945 alone” (2003: 207-8).

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Irena Ragaišien÷ behavior, nature, and language of fellow nationals. It is meant to awaken a longing for the Lithuania left behind – it describes the beauty of the country until it was viciously axed down by history. It is meant to enkindle hope – we shall return and continue the existence of an independent country. It must draw the limits of past and present national identity in order that we not forget who we are. The literature of the émigré community was one of the links in the chain of resistance, the same as the Saturday schools, folk dancing groups, and song festivals. The ‘Lithuania of DPs’ – the singular audience of readers – sought its remembrances, idealistic visions and expressions of faith within a Lithuanian work of creativity. In our visions, we want to see Lithuania and the Lithuanian – such is the unique content of literary work and its most important designation. The writers in exile had to remain by the gate of the farmstead of their birth, envisioning the beauty of their former homes with anguished longing, and by the use of their words, intermingle a penetrating lyrical note with an elemental richness of vision. (2003:63)10

For many émigré writers, as the extensive scholarship on émigré writing, including the above illustration, has revealed, a sense of identity and subjectivity is inextricably related to the space which is often envisioned as home lost. In postwar Latvian émigré writing, according to Inita Ezergaikis, the lost home is often associated with Lost paradises, innocent of reflection, sin, or divisive self-knowledge, aesthetically and morally whole, and self-contained. […] The lost homeland takes on the hues of all the mythical homes and paradises. Memory blends childhood reminiscence, actual and idealized, fortified by individual and community nostalgia, with common traditional ‘memories’. It is not surprising that the writing of exiles abounds with patterns of loss and attempted recovery. (1989)

Lithuanian post-war émigré poetry also abounds with a similar Romantic revelation of home. It is perceived as an irreversible mythical space, the conceptual framework of which comprises a connotative set pertaining to tradition. Any alteration of it is considered a violation of the previous order and existential security. In this light, place embodies cultural or human geography, in Carl Sauer’s sense, showing the impact of culture on the place and its landscape. In the context of Lithuanian post-World War II émigré writing, analysis of the agency of culture encompasses modes of interaction of, to use Sauer’s terms, “natural landscape” and “cultural 10

Translation from Lithuanian into English by Vijole Arbas.

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landscape.” The cultural is understood as a rupture between the present and the past (2000:28).11 The comprehensive view of the relationship between culture and time relevant to the perception of homeland, then, may be rendered as an opposition between, as Lithuanian critic Rimvydas Šilbajoris would have it, a free, pre-war Lithuania, envisioned as “Arcadia, a land of ancient myth and of fresh green beauty” and sovietized Lithuania, subjected to devastation after the Soviet occupation. Šilbajoris links this divisive vision of homeland to literary history, earth history, and political history in an elucidation, quoted next at length: The native Lithuanian poetic tradition is provincial and Arcadian in its origins. The first important poets, Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714 -1780) and Antanas Baranauskas (1835 -1902) wrote of the labors of the peasant, the changes of the seasons, and of the glorious minutiae of native forest full of life. Later poets, such as Jonas Maironis (1862-1932) sang of romanticized landscapes, ancient castles and of the deeds of heroes past, dreaming great visions of Lithuania reborn to its ancient glory. With the coming of independence in 1918, many talented poets continued this tradition even as they began to relate to various trends in West European and Russian poetry. Through all its experiments in the direction of symbolism, Christian mysticism, or even futurism, the Lithuanian poetry did not venture very far away from nature, nurturing its imagination on the gentle offerings of the native landscape. The Second World War shattered this pastoral scene and sent many of the best poets into exile. Instead of native brooks and meadows, the appalling cadaver of once-proud West European civilization now presented itself to their imagination. In a typical gesture, during the early postwar years most of the exiled Lithuanian poets turned their eyes away from this grand catastrophe, and concentrated with passion upon their own suffering, their own dispossession. The Arcadian image of their previous poetry now became a paradise lost, and the poets could hardly bear to speak of anything else. Consequently, the same landscape of home now left behind continued at the center of their creative effort, and the framework of nature remained as the dominant system of images. (1974: 5-6)

Several critics have argued a similar point. Violeta Davoliūte (1998) and Vytautas Kavolis (1988), to mention but a few, stated that the 11

In the presentation of Carl Sauer’s theory of the morphology of landscape, Don Mitchell explains that, “in contrast to environmental determinism”, culture is regarded as “the primary agent” that induces the changes of landscape which manifest themselves in different forms of “cultural landscape” (2000: 28).

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perception of the lost homeland in terms of nature/culture opposition in Lithuanian émigré writing may be seen as a response to the Soviet occupation in 1940 and re-occupation in 1944. The occupation brought forceful industrialization and urbanization as well as Russian ethnic and cultural imperialism. Therefore, a pre-industrial agrarian homeland became an embodiment of harmonious stability and security. Many local Lithuanian and émigré writers seem to envisage homeland in terms of contrast to urban life and technological development that alters the nation’s socio-political consciousness, disturbs the country’s ecological stability, and introduces uncertainty about the development of national and cultural identity. 2. Writing exile, writing return The poetry of Danut÷ Paškevičiūt÷ invokes similar themes that cluster around the pastoral vision of the lost, now occupied Lithuania. In descriptions of the immigrant experience in the cities of America, this desperate longing for homeland translates into, what John Elder would describe as, the “poetry of cultural despair”. Elder modeled this term on Leo Marx’s statement that central to American literature is the opposition between pre-industrial (wild) America and urban civilization often delineated as a pattern of retreat into solitude in wilderness and return to society (1985: 24). However, the opposition between wilderness and urban life in immigrant experience descriptions departs from the meanings delineated in retreat and return motifs recurrent in nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature, notwithstanding the diversity of meanings encoded in these dualities by different writers. Exile by definition is an involuntary transition into a different environment. Thus, by implication, the discursive rendering of the experiences of an immigrant who is in a new locale not by personal choice differs significantly from recordings of conditions in other lands commonly associated with travel or ecoconscious writing. There exists quite a different focus on the investigation of the relationship between human agency and nature.12 According to Susan Rubin Suleiman, exile is “in its narrow 12

For the survey of nature-human agency interrelationship developments in ecocritical practice, see Clarence J. Glacken (1999: 11-5).

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sense a political banishment”, while “in its broad sense designates every kind of estrangement or displacement, from the physical or geographical to the spiritual” (1998:2). Salman Rushdie states that the experience of exile involves displacement of an individual from origins, language, and culture. These three focal points constitute “the most important parts of the definition of what is to be a human being. The migrant, denied all three, is obliged to find new ways of describing himself, new ways of being human” (1991: 277-8).13 Rushdie highlights that exiles are radically new types of human beings […] who root themselves in ideas rather than places, in memories as much as in material things; people who have been obliged to define themselves – because they are so defined by others – by their otherness; people in whose deepest selves strange fusions occur, unprecedented unions between what they were and where they find themselves. The migrant suspects reality: having experienced several ways of being, he understands their illusionary nature. To see things plainly, you have to cross a frontier. (1991: 124-5)

Crossing the frontier between homeland and the country of immigration inevitably entails realignment of the association of identity with the landscape of a native country and dissociation from the perception of motherland as a source of wholeness that generates subjectivity.14 Such a migratory condition entails negotiating the multiple self-identifications that comprise the immigrant’s social and ethnic identity.15 It has become common to define identity in terms of continuous change, hybridity, and hyphenation. Émigré writings, including the poetry of Paškevičiūt÷ used for this analysis, reveal tensions inherent in the movement towards recognition of a hyphenated or diasporic identity.16

13

I am indebted to Alena Heitlinger (1999) for helping me to find this useful source. I am drawing on Joanna Anneke Rummens statement that “allegiance to a given nation state or territory” is a component part of national identity (Rummens 2001: 11). 15 For the discussion of immigrant/diasporic identity, see Stuart Hall (1990). 16 According to Benzi Zhang, “What diaspora implies is not only a movement across the borders of a country, but also the experience of traversing boundaries and barriers of space, time, race, culture, language, and history. As a multifold journey over various discursive and non-discursive domains, diaspora enacts a socio-cultural practice that thrives on a process of constant resignification of the established assumptions and meanings of identity” (2000:125). 14

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In Paškevičiūt÷’s discursive representation of identity, the two sides of the hyphenation point to successive stages of attempts to assimilate into the American multicultural and multilingual society. At the same time, the persistence of hyphenation indicates deeprootedness in her lost homeland and Lithuanian identity. On the other hand, hyphenation designates a binarism that evokes a comparison between the natural landscape of the occupied homeland and the urban setting of the host country. Taken in this manner, the two sides of the hyphenation may be read as a juxtaposition that encodes a consideration of ethnic, national, and political issues spelled out in the rural nature/urban culture dichotomy. In the poem “The Longest Journey” (1961: 12-13),17 Paškevičiūt÷ imagines a visit to her native country, which she associates with reading a letter from the homeland “left so long ago”.18 The poem functions on several planes: the facts represented in the letter, the speaker’s perception of these facts, and fantasies that the letter evokes. Further to be taken into consideration is that a letter sent to or from a Soviet country must get past censors. Therefore, implied in the poem is that the person, writing the letter, and the recipient have to rely on a shared system of symbols and private codes. The letter, coming from the homeland, says that everything has changed in the native country: the “house and barn have been demolished / and a thicket of birches has grown near the road. / Only the same sky remained”.19 The scope of the transformation of the landscape suggests that all the essential elements that constitute the physicality of homeland have been destroyed by imperial powers, and only the celestial sphere, “the sky” which is beyond human control, stays unaltered. The different conditions for the material and celestial spheres point to the disruption of harmony of nature and the cosmos, yet also allude that the oppressive ideology did not suppress Lithuanians’ strong faith in God and in His power to restore the earlier order to the native country.20 17

“Ilgiausia kelion÷” in the original. Original: “T÷višk÷ mana seniai juk palikta”. 19 Original: “Jie sako, kad nei pirkios tos n÷ra, / Nei svirno / Kad ten prie vieškelio suaugo / Tankus beržų miškas, / Paliko tik tas pats dangus”. 20 A representation of homeland in similar terms as harmony among all spheres of life is presented in Edmunds Valdemars Bunkse’s discussion of the meaning of nature in Latvian culture (1999). 18

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That the birches have grown into a thicket implies a lack of human hands undertaking the care of the woods. In other words, the increase of trees may imply a decrease of population or a changed attitude to trees (and the economy of farming). For a Lithuanian, whose cultural inheritance includes a pagan affinity with nature, trees are not merely inanimate objects but are vitally connected with human beings. Since both the implied author of the letter and the first person speaker know the anthropomorphic equality between the human condition and nature, the thickening of the forest may also suggest that the forest has become the abode of freedom fighters, here personified as birches. Although the reasons for the great changes at home are not named, the informed reader knows that the facts presented in the letter allude to the radical decrease in population due to the war – death, imprisonments, massive deportations to exile in Siberia, and emigration to the West. The poetic persona to whom the letter is addressed tries to participate in the reality described in the letter, since she has but a dim hope of visiting her native country, which has been sealed off from the rest of the world behind the Iron Curtain. Letters, memories (or fantasies), then, are the only bridges to the lost homeland. The speaker reveals her attachment to the places of her childhood, when she remembers walking in the green fields of home or expresses her empathy for a wet bird. Memories associated with her native place reveal her sense of oneness with her “home”. The native country is imagined as an all-inclusive integral system: life is structured along vertical (spiritual) and horizontal (worldly) planes. While trees and their semiotic field embody a world axis and a vertical link between heavenly and terrestrial spheres, the road is consistent with the archetypal symbolism of the road of life in that it represents the axis of the community and serves as a symbol of horizontal continuity. The cycles of life and death are structured along the road, which witnesses the change of generations and the cycles of nature. That people lived in tune with nature is suggested by the use of the verb “waded through” (one word in Lithuanian) to signify both the change of seasons and the change of generations (1961: 13).21 The reference to the death of the grandfather, the old patriarch of the family, points to 21

“Nubrido” in the original.

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the vertical descent to the roots of existence. The grandfather figure represents cultural and religious traditions; he is endowed with the strength to confront the invasion of the new order. In this light, the death of the grandfather may symbolize the loss of family and nation. 3. Shifitng seasons in a strange land To understand the meaning of the changed homeland, Margaret Drabble’s discussion of the past and memory in relation to the perception of landscape and identity may be especially pertinent here: The past lives on, in art and memory, but it is not static; it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadows backwards. The landscape also changes, but far more slowly; it is a living link between what we were and what we have become. This is one of the reasons why we feel such profound and apparently disproportionate anguish when a loved landscape is altered out of recognition; we lose not only a place, but part of ourselves, a continuity between the shifting phases of our life. (1979: 270)

Drabble’s association of the landscape with self helps us throw some light on the speaker’s attempts to come to terms with her past and present identities through a mental return to her birthplace along the same road which led her into the unknown. In the description of the emigrant experience, the emphasis is on the absence of shared language, cultural symbols, and social interactions. The represented configuration of exile extends into an attempt to delineate a discursive negotiation of countries/cultures and identities, despite the feeling of alienation created by strange cultural realities that intervene in the delineation of links between place and identity. The poem “Sunday in Central Park” with a subheading “Autumn” (1961: 18-19)22 opens with a positive perception of the place envisioned as the New World and a potential home: “The sky gilded by the luxuriance of the foliage / The consolation of a Sunday afternoon” (1961:18).23 The sky evokes a tinge of universality which helps to bridge the gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar in the signification of the landscape. Here 22

Original: “Sekmadienis Central Parke: Ruduo”. Original: “Medžių lapų ryškus, paauksintas dangus. / Rami, nutilusi sekmadienio diena”. 23

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again, like in “The Longest Journey”, the speaker tries to find traces of harmony between the terrestrial and the celestial spheres. However, attention is directed to different cultural frames that constitute the landscape: a languishing lady in a purple dress, a French bulldog, and punting children, the entities that comprise the perception of the park as a location for the mingling of cultures and a site for recreation. The feeling of consolation experienced in the park reminds us of Elizabeth Wilson’s statement that places for recreation in a city such as parks and zoos may serve as expressions of “some longing for what was so absent from the stony streets in which we lived and wandered: a memory of the rural life we left behind” (2000: 146-47). Wilson also states, with reference to Walter Benjamin, that the park is often envisaged a place where people hope to find a lost tranquillity in the green vista with its lines of trees in faultless perspective. The flowers and especially the spring blossoms, like all flowers in cities, appeared as a luxury item set against the urban fabric, rather than as an invasion of nature or rural enclave; they symbolized some other, idealized world. (Wilson 2000: 147)

In Paškevičiūt÷’s poem, the treatment of the park highlights the absence of the natural. The ride in a black phaeton sets the movement of time in the opposite direction. The speaker’s vision becomes overpowered by seeking resemblance between the lost homeland and the New World where the sky is no longer seen as lit up by sunrays but rather, pictured as a menacing naval blue. It is compared to the skies of the homeland where “aslant sun rays / Mildly touch the earth”.24 The idea which emerges is that the landscape of the metropolis, taken in the view of the recreation area as cultivated nature, suggests a disruption of the natural balance of all forms of life. In effect, this epitomizes the spiritual instability of the speaker. In search of inner strength and an assurance with which to confront the menace associated with the strange city, the speaker turns to her memories of the rural landscape of homeland and remembers the prickling of stubble, the rancid smell of burning potato tops, and the scattering cobwebs, all harbingers of approaching autumn.

24

Original: “nuožulnūs saul÷s spinduliai / Neryškiai šviečia žem÷n”.

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The vision of the fall season back home, represented under the subtitle “Autumn”, is also coloured by nostalgia. The emphasis is not on the autumnal decay of nature over which human subject exercises no control or on the sadness evoked by the close of the summer. Rather, it is on expectations of jolliness associated with the feast of St. Ann,25 an occasion that recalls pleasant moments of communality and family gatherings to the speaker.26 These memories enhance the speaker’s feeling of loneliness in the city, a place that, in the words of Kevin Lynch, should provide “a vivid and integrated physical setting” for its inhabitants and that “can furnish the raw material for the symbols and collective memories of group communication” (1970: 4). Instead, the speaker in Paškevičiūt÷’s poem feels like a stranger in the city. The feeling of alienation is somewhat reminiscent of Clarence J. Glacken’s words that in the pre-Romantic and Romantic periods there was a frequent tendency to link the motif of alienation with a distancing from nature (1999: 14). The reverie about, what Paškevičiūt÷’s speaker perceives as, an idealized mode of being in the pristine nature of the motherland probably should not be read as a longing for the idyllic or a nostalgic longing to return to the origins/womb. For an alternative reading, the statement by Rimvydas Šilbajoris may be recalled that “Nature is especially important for many Lithuanian poets, for it is used as a metaphor for national identity, because in its constant cyclical repetitions nature presents a timeless continuum that can only be broken by the peremptory intrusion of man armed with lifeless technology” (1973: 10). In this light, the poem “Sunday in Central Park” may be read as a re-mapping of the speaker’s self-identification with the Soviet occupied homeland, which is sealed off from the speaker, and the New World, inevitably associated with a hope for safety, security, and a better life. On the other hand, a redefinition of the relationship between self and the external calls to mind the association of the city with, what Elizabeth Wilson calls, the masculine principle “in its 25

Šventa Ona in Lithuanian. Danut÷ Brazyt÷-Bindokien÷ states that “because Lithuania is a Catholic country, all major church feasts were celebrated as holidays during the years of independence. Certain feast days were celebrated more than one day (Christmas, Easter). On holidays, all schools and state agencies were closed. Only agencies and offices indispensable to the country’s population remained open” (1989: 140).

26

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triumphal scale” (2000: 151). This is that the epistemological models of Western thought extend into a hierarchical nature/natural/matter vs. culture/unnatural/mind oppositions. Just like in “Sunday in Central Park,” which is part of the cycle of poems “Skyscrapers and People” (1961: 14-15),27 “Staten Island Ferry” (1961: 20-21), and “The Buried Monk” (1961: 16-17)28 that have subheadings denoting seasons, it is suggested that the city is a product of a culture created by the impersonal soulless mind embodied in the crowd of the metropolis. This evokes contemplation on the powers of human mind that the speaker associates not only with creativity but also with destruction and ideological perversity that translates into rule that may devastate nature and cause forced movements of people in search of safety and security. In the aforementioned cycle of poems, the disruption of natural links with the native land and, by extension, worldview, is conveyed through the disruption of traditional meanings associated with seasons. The poem, “A Buried Monk”, with the subheading “Summer”,29 the season associated with the thriving of life, creates a conceptual oxymoron. It informs about the poem’s metaphorical network focusing on the exploration of links between the tolling of the church bell, the monk’s prayer, and the exhausted crowd of Hudson. The poem presents an anatomised description of the prayer. It states that the prayer whispered by the lips of “The monk buried in a solitary window”30 does not resonate in the heart; only “the feet of passers-by carry away / the suppressed echo of the church bells”.31 It seems that the prayer and the offering fail to reach a transcendental dimension, implicitly meaning that spirituality can only smoulder in the metropolis, the soullessness of which is evoked in the faceless mob. The subheading “Spring”32 to the poem “Skyscrapers and People” may imply promising beginnings and cherishing of hopes associated with integration into the new culture and surroundings. The use of place names like “Fifth Avenue”, “Grand Central”, “Bangor” within a 27 28 29 30 31 32

Original: “Dangoraižiai ir žmon÷s”. Original: “Palaidotas vienuolis“. Original: “Vasara”. Original: “ir vienišam lange palaidotas vienuolis”. Original: “O varpo dūžio slopų aidą / Praeivių kojos nusineš”. Original: “Pavasaris”.

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Lithuanian text triggers un-Lithuanian thematic frames that focus on mediating between different cultural contexts. Many of them are actualised by probing the meaning of cultural artefacts such as the bronze statue of Vanderbilt, niches of Grand Central, and lions carved from stone guarding the façade of the library on Fifth Avenue. Such objects, recognized as embodiments of rationality, polarise culture and nature: “In the park, shyly dialoguing with the wind, tree buds turn into leaves / That will never reach to the beyond in the shadows of skyscrapers” (1961: 14).33 The city is encapsulated in an atmosphere of gloominess and anxiety. Birds do take flight, though their wings flutter in fear, while occasional passers-by disappear into railway tunnels where they board the trains that take them to their suburban homes. The metaphorical network associated with going home opens up a space centred on the opposition between a desire for homeland and the inability to get there. The speaker spells out her situation as a realization that the panorama of the New World is in the focus of her vision, whereas the homeland becomes more of an emotional and conceptual rather than visual notion. She describes her memories of homeland as scattered temporal and spatial lived visions that “deeply scarred the heart” (1961: 15).34 The poem “The Gem of Nephrite” (1961: 53-54)35 signals a transition from the perception of the city in terms of rural/urban opposition to a spotting of the city’s inner life. Such a modification confirms, as it were, Elizabeth Wilson’s statement that “urban search for mysteries, extremes and revelations” is “a quest [that is] quite other than that of the wanderer through the natural landscape: a search less hallowed, yet no less spiritual” (2000: 148). The poem “The Gem of Nephrite” presents two visions – internal and external – realized in the observation of a Chinese restaurant. Contemplation on Chinese culture is related to the speaker’s realization of the need to know the many cultures that constitute an American city, a knowledge that would encompass cosmopolitan values while still preserving a Lithuanian identity. The encounter with a strange culture is expressed as the observation of an exorcism of daemons through a projection of 33 Original: “Pavasariniam v÷jui šnera bailai medžiai, / Kurie dangoraižių šeš÷liuos dangaus jau niekad nepasieks”. 34 Original: “Paliko gilų randą”. 35 Original: “Nefrito brangakmenis”.

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hopes on magic stones. However, the symbols that represent a worldview of a strange culture fail to provide guidance to the wandering poetic persona in search of the lost integrity between an unfamiliar landscape and identity. The poem closes with a recognition that “Two of us stood on the pavement: soaked and grinning / My daemon and I”.36 The speaker is unable to shed the anxiety, which is synonymous with a longing for the homeland; by extension, its is suggested in “Fingers of Anxiety” as being identical with the self (1961: 59-60).37 The speaker of the poem “Why Travel” (1961: 55)38 has but a dim hope to recover from the confusion related to an inability to put down roots in the host country: “Why travel / If I cannot escape myself”.39 Travelling, a quest in Northrop Frye’s sense, implies a transformation which marks the resolution of the conflict that triggered the quest. The outcome of the quest focuses on personal change and its impact on the constellation of social relations (Frye 1990: 213). The poem “Why Travel”, like most of Paškevičiūt÷’s poetry, suggests that only upon a return to and a touching of the roots of birth, all the connections that determine the speaker's sense of identity may be recovered. The pronounced association of identity with homeland and nationality can be explained by the fact that many exiles that, like Paškevičiūt÷, left Lithuania in 1944 did not intend to remain in the United States. Most planned to return to the motherland as soon as the Soviet occupants were driven out, an idea that is rather explicitly suggested in the poem “Staten Island Ferry” with the subheading “Winter” (1961: 20-21).40 Standing at Bay Ridge, the speaker reflects on the concepts of the temporal and the eternal by looking at the crowd hurrying to the Staten Island Ferry and states that the old Statue of Liberty will forever observe the interrupted rhythm of life, but the speaker’s “fate will no longer be there”.41 Lithuanians residing in the United States were very active in joining political organizations, the aim of which was to liberate the 36 37 38 39 40 41

Original: “Stov÷jome šaligatvy abu: sušlapęs, isišiepęs / Mano demonas ir aš”. Original: “Nerimo pirštai”. Original: “Kam keliauti”. Original: “Bet kam gi man keliauti, / Jei pati nuo savęs pab÷gti negaliu?” Winter is “Žiema” in the original. Original: “ten dalios manos senai nebus”.

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homeland. Lithuanian-Americans raised funds, and organized meetings and demonstrations that were expected to call the attention of American authorities, not only of the Lithuanian and other ethnic communities in the United States. However, the political developments of the Cold War period extinguished hopes for a quick return to the homeland, although efforts to regain the independence of the Baltic States continued until 1990.42 4. Conclusion The present discussion has focused on the relationship between identity and place delineated through the distinguishing between the landscape of the lost homeland and the country of immigration. The aim has been to illustrate that the treatment of the relationship between rural nature and urban culture can be very much ideologically biased and in many ways different from the deconstructive treatment of this dualism in much of ecocritical discourse. Conversely, the context of immigration depicted in Paškevičiūt÷’s poetry which was written in the United States albeit in Lithuanian evokes a consideration of the “ecology of language”, so named at the conference ‘Literature, Culture, Environment: Positioning “Ecocriticism”’ held in Münster, Germany in 2004. It is beyond the scope of this discussion to present a detailed analysis of this complex problem in the light of processes of integration with the European Union and massive globalisation. As a concluding remark, a project launched by the Longfellow Institute deserves mention. As explained by Orm Øverland, it aims at decentralizing the monopoly of the English language by publishing literature written or published in America in languages other than English and, through facing-page translations, make it available to a broader audience (2001: 7). In this connection, it would be pertinent to refer to Øverland’s statement that “the strange anomality of combining multicultural theory with monolingual practice has been largely unquestioned in American studies” (2001: 2). Øverland argues that multiculturalism as a legitimisation and celebration of cultural differences is inseparable 42

For the discussion of the political emigration to the United States and the forms of struggle for independence, see Alfonsas Eidintas (2003: 203-23).

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from multilingualism. This is a rejection of the belief prevalent since the times of Theodore Roosevelt that only the English language ensures full-fledged integration into the multicultural society of the United States. Such a policy legitimized monolingual practice in American society despite much emphasis on cultural pluralism. Translation and study of literatures written in languages other than English would not be “an attempt to iron out differences but to study what there may be of common elements that may justify speaking both of an American culture and of American cultures (2001: 3, 6).43 Literatures written in national languages reveal, in the words of Øverland, ‘how ideological and cultural traits recognized as “American” have found expression in a variety of languages’ (2001: 8). Such a scholarly focus seems to examine processes of integration into American society, while the study of the reflection on the situation of immigration/exile in literature seems to be incorporated into analysis on how writing in national languages helps “to negotiate a new culture through an old language” (2001: 9). These considerations lead me to believe that the influx of new names (and cultures) into ecoconscious writing, where the relationship between language, social factors, and the construction of identity may carry a different weight, will bring fresh hues of reflection to the relationship between memory, identity, and landscape/place. Bibliography Bradūnas, Kazys and Rimvydas Šilbajoris (eds). 1992. Lietuvių egzodo literatūra. 1945-90. Čikaga: Lituanistikos institutas. Brazyt÷ Bindokien÷, Danut÷. 1989. Lithuanian Customs and Traditions. Chicago, Ill.: Pasaulio lietuvių bendruomen÷. Bunkse, Edmunds Valdemars. 1999. ‘God, Thine Earth is Burning: Nature Attitudes and the Latvian Drive for Independence’ in Buttimer, Anne and Luke Wallin (eds) Nature and Identity in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 175-89. Center of Genocide and Resistance. On line at: www.genocid.lt/GRTD/departam.htm (consulted 12.07.2004). Danys, Milda. 1986. DP: Lithuanian Immigration to Canada after the Second World War. Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario. 43

Emphasis in the original.

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Davoliūt÷, Violeta. 1998. ‘The City and the Cityscape in Two Lithuanian Novels: Jurgis Kunčinas’ Tūla and Ričardas Gavelis’ Vilniaus Pokeris’ in Lituanus 44 (3): 56-73. Drabble, Margaret. 1979. A Writer’s Britain: Landscape in Literature. London: Thames and Hudson. Eidintas, Alfonsas. 2003. Lithuanian Emigration to the United States: 1868-1950. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas. Elder, John. 1985. Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. Ezergaikis, Inita. 1989. ‘Going Home: A Reading of Ilze Škipsna’s Victim’ in Lituanus 34(3). On line at: www.lituanus.org (consulted 02.02.2004). Frye, Northrop. 1990. Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays, 1974-1988 (ed. R. D. Denham). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. 1988. No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press. Glacken, J. Clarence. 1999. ‘Reflections on the History of Western Attitudes to Nature’ in Buttimer, Anne and Luke Wallin (eds) Nature and Identity in Cross Cultural Perspective. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers: 1-17. Glotfelty, Cheryll. 1996. ‘Introduction: Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis’ in Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press: xv-xxxii. Hall, Stuart. 1990. ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ in Rutherford, Jonathan (ed.) Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart: 22237. Heitlinger, Alena (ed.). 1999. ‘Émigré Feminism: An Introduction’ in Émigré Feminism: Transnational Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 316. Kavolis, Vytautas. 1988. ‘The Radical Project in Lithuanian Émigré Literature’ in Lituanus 34(1): 5-16. Kubilius, Vytautas. 2003. Tautin÷ literatūra globalizacijos amžiuje. Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universiteto leidykla. Kuizinien÷, Dalia. 2003. Lietuvių literatūrinis gyvenimas Vakaru Europoje 1945-1950 metais. Vilnius: Versus Aureus. Lynch, Kevin. 1970. The Image of the City. Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press. Mitchell, Don. 2000. Cultural Geography: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Nye, David E. 1997. ‘From Landscape to Cityscape: Recent Interdisciplinary Work’ in American Studies in Scandinavia 29(1): 63-70. Øverland, Orm (ed.). 2001. ‘Introduction: Redefining “American” in American Studies’ in Not English Only: Redefining “American” in American Studies. Amsterdam: VU University Press: 2-11. —. 2000. Immigrant Minds, American Identities: Making the United States Home, 1879-1930. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Paškevičiūt÷, Danut÷. 1961. Aš negaliu verkti. London: Nida.

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Rosendale, Steven. 2002. ‘In Search of the Left Ecology’s Usable Past: The Jungle, Social Change, and the Class Character of Environmental Impairment’ in The Greening of Literary Scholarship: Literature, Theory and the Environment. Iowa: University of Iowa Press: 59-76. Rushdie, Salman. 1991. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granta Books. Rummens, Joanna Anneke. 2001. An Interdisciplinary Overview on Canadian Research on Identity. On line at: http://canada.metropolis.net/events/ethnocultural/ publications/identity_e.pdf (consulted 09 Dec 2004). Suleiman, Susan Rubin (ed.). 1998. ‘Introduction’ in Exile and Creativity: Signposts, Travellers, Outsiders, Backward Glances. Durham: Duke University Press: 1-8. Šilbajoris, Rimvydas. 1974. ‘An Intellectual’s Encounter with Nature – Modern Trends in Lithuanian Poetry’ in Lituanus 20(2): 5-14. —. 1973. ‘Challenge to Arcadia: Notes on Soviet Lithuanian Poetry’ in Lituanus 19(2): 5-15. Wallace, Kathleen R. and Karla Armbruster. 2001. ‘Introduction: Why Go Beyond Nature Writing, and Where To?’ in Armbruster, Karla and Kathleen R. Wallace (eds) Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism. Charlotttesville: University Press of Virginia: 1-25. Wilson, Elizabeth. 2000. ‘Into the Labyrinth’ in Rendell, Jane, Barbara Penner and Iain Borden (eds) Gender Space Architecture: An Interdisciplinary Introduction. London and New York: Routledge: 146-53. Zhang, Benzi. 2000. ‘Identity in Diaspora and Diaspora in Writing: The Poetics of Cultural Transrelation’ in Journal of Intercultural Studies 21(2): 125-42. On line at: http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?wasp=4g11 7bnpwl3rt (consulted 04 Dec 2004).

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German literature, nature and modernity before 1914 Colin Riordan Abstract: This essay discusses some of the ways in which German literature acknowledges and negotiates the increasingly problematic relationship between human beings and the natural world as a result of the industrial and economic transformations subsumed under the term modernity. The changes in landscape that took place with increasing rapidity from the 1830s gave rise to dilemmas which writers initially struggled to identify, let alone resolve. Yet it is possible to trace an increasingly sophisticated approach as the century progresses, even if the insights are outweighed by the limitations.

The shaping and manipulation of nature, both objective and perceptual, is not a new phenomenon. Environmental depredation has existed since there have been human beings; sources as ancient as Plato noted the way in which overgrazing on a hillside could lead to the washing away of topsoil and the irrevocable loss of meadowland (see Wall 1994: 36-7). In more recent times, there are substantial records of complaints about problems which we would recognize today as having an environmental dimension. To take water pollution as an example, there are records of downstream residents objecting to emissions from dye manufacturers as far back as the middle ages (see Sieferle 1984: 62) while in Germany, legal proceedings were brought against polluters on a regular basis from the mid-19th-century onwards. Records show that in Saxony in 1877 there were 273 complaints about river pollution, 93% of which were ascribed to factories (Rommelspacher 1989: 44). Modernity – the social, political and cultural transformations wrought by rapid industrial and technological developments – had inevitable impacts on the natural environment, in ways that we would now recognize as having ecological implications. During the period in question, however, it is not environmental depredations that are themselves the issue, but their

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effects on more familiar concepts: the iconic place of nature within German culture; the aesthetic possibilities of art and literature; and, more prosaically, the economic effects on the livelihoods of country people. Literary representations of the effects of the industrial revolution on the natural environment follow distinct trends in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. The most common reaction is fear, and a desire for the changes to be halted or reversed. This is frequently linked with the simultaneous recognition of the futility of any such hope. Technological change is, ironically, seen as an unstoppable natural force, against which the only defence can be to take refuge in some natural idyll, preserved in an undefined manner. There is an often-quoted section in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821) which expresses fear at the ubiquity of machines: “Das überhandnehmende Maschinenwesen quält und ängstigt mich, es wälzt sich heran wie ein Gewitter, langsam, langsam, aber es hat seine Richtung genommen, es wird kommen und treffen” (Goethe 1887: 249). Paradoxically, the growth of technology is represented as a force of nature over which human beings have no control. As one of the reflections has it: So wenig nun die Dampfmaschinen zu dämpfen sind, so wenig ist dies auch im Sittlichen möglich; die Lebhaftigkeit des Handels, das Durchrauschen des Papiergelds, das Anschwellen der Schulden, um Schulden zu bezahlen, das alles sind die ungeheuerlichen Elemente, auf die gegenwärtig ein junger Mann gesetzt ist (Goethe 1976, 293).

Perhaps surprisingly, however, these bleakly realistic assessments of the effects of the advent of the machine age in Germany offer no judgement about the likely impact on the natural world. By contrast, Karl Immermann’s novel Die Epigonen, the first volume published in 1836, betrays an awareness of the impact that such developments will inevitably have on the countryside and on traditional ways of life: Vor allen Dingen sollen die Fabriken eingehen und die Ländereien dem Ackerbau zurückgegeben werden. Jene Anstalten, künstliche Bedürfnisse künstlich zu befriedigen, erscheinen mir geradezu verderblich und schlecht. Die Erde gehört dem Pfluge, dem Sonnenscheine und Regen, welcher das Saamenkorn entfaltet, der fleißigen, einfach-arbeitenden Hand. Mit Sturmesschnelligkeit eilt die Gegenwart einem trockenen Mechanismus zu; wir können ihren Lauf nicht

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hemmen, sind aber nicht zu schelten, wenn wir für uns und die Unsrigen ein grünes Plätzchen abzäunen und diese Insel solange als möglich gegen den Sturz der vorbeirauschenden industriellen Wogen befestigen (Immermann 1971: 486).

Given that these words are spoken by Hermann, the character who has just unexpectedly inherited a large industrial site, the implication is clear. Although he as owner would be in a position to abandon the concern, he seems unwilling to consider such a course of action. Industry appears as an unstoppable, incomprehensible, overwhelming natural force. Nature itself, by contrast, appears in simple, elemental terms. Immermann’s style, as Goethe when he speaks of industry, is redolent of resigned, even bewildered acceptance. Hints of the impotent rage which lies beneath the above quotation are increasingly found later in the century. Industry, and particularly the railways, are depicted in demonic terms. Industry as a natural force is superseded by industry as supernatural. Supernatural imagery is also freely deployed by those who celebrated technological advances. The sheer exhilaration of speed, the freedom it confers, the material advantages that accrue from industrial development, the aesthetic possibilities afforded by this transformed world: all these positive elements of the industrial revolution can be found in the poetry of the period. Adelbert von Chamisso, for example, the distinguished explorer and naturalist, was the earliest known author of a poem inspired by trains (“Das Dampfroß”, 1830). In Chamisso’s case it is not the effect on the environment but the extraordinary possibilities offered by the new technologies which are of interest. In a remarkable, if accidental anticipation of relativity theory, “Das Dampfroß” amusingly speculates on the possibility that the sheer speed of travel offered by steam locomotives will allow time travel. Chamisso became an enthusiast for the railways, investing at least 10,000 Thaler in the Halle-RheinWeser Eisenbahngesellschaft in 1831 and encouraging others to do the same. Both the positive and the negative reactions to the transformational effects of the railways are exemplified in a poetic exchange between Justinus Kerner and the much younger Gottfried Keller, still hoping for a career as an artist and not yet established as a writer, in 1845. Kerner (1786-1862) was a minor poet who, though a doctor, was famous as much for his belief in the occult and, in later years, his anti-

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modernism as for his lyric poetry. A representative of the “schwäbische Romantik” centred on Tübingen, where he studied, Kerner was much better known for his prose works such as “Die Seherin von Prevorst” than for his poetry, though his output was prodigious. As might be expected from a poet heavily influenced by Romanticism in his youth, poems passionately in praise of nature are common throughout his work. A polemical text on vegetarianism illustrates his belief that living close to nature is the advisable course: Je mehr die Menschen in erkünstelten Staatenvereinen von der Natur sich lossagen, je mehr kommen sie auch von den einfachern naturgemäßeren Nahrungsmitteln ab, und durch Überreizung erschlafft, kann ihnen nur noch das Zusammengesetzte oder Ungewöhnliche munden (Kerner 1974: 118)

Such views go hand in hand with a more general anti-modernism such as may be found in the works of Ernst Moritz Arndt, or, later, in those of Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl. It is no surprise, then, that the poem “Unter dem Himmel” (which appears in the Werke as “Im Grase”; see Kerner 1974) exemplifies a fear of the effect of industrial progress and modernity in general on nature. Unter dem Himmel/Im Grase (1845) Laßt mich in Gras u. Blumen liegen Und schaun’ dem blauen Himmel zu: Wie goldne Wolken ihn durchfliegen, In ihm ein Falke kreist in Ruh. Die blaue Stille stört dort oben Kein Dampfer u. kein Segelschiff, Nicht Menschentritt, nicht Pferdetoben, Nicht des Dampfwagens wilder Pfiff. Laßt satt mich schaun’ in diese Klarheit, In diesen stillen, sel’gen Raum: Denn bald könnt werden ja zur Wahrheit Das Fliegen, der unsel’ge Traum. Dann flieht der Vogel aus den Lüften, Wie aus dem Rhein der Salme schon, Und wo einst singend Lerchen schifften, Schifft grämlich stumm Britanias Sohn.

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Schau’ ich zum Himmel, zu gewahren Warum’s so plötzlich Dunkel sey, Erblick’ ich einen Zug von Waaren Der an der Sonne schifft vorbey. Fühl’ Regen ich beym Sonnenscheine, Such nach dem Regenbogen keck, Ist es nicht Wasser wie ich meine, Wurd in der Luft ein Oelfaß leck. Satt laßt mich schaun vom Erdgetümmel Zum Himmel eh’ es ist zu spät, Wann wie vom Erdball so vom Himmel Die Poesie still trauernd geht. Verzeiht dieß Lied des Dichters Grolle, Träumt er von solchem Himmelsgraus, Er, den die Zeit, die dampfestolle, Schließt von der Erde lieblos aus.

What distinguishes this poem from others on technological developments is that there is an attempt to speculate on the possible future consequences in ways which go beyond imagining an apocalyptic scenario where the earth is completely sheathed in railways, such as may be found, for example, in Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl or Christian Friedrich Scherenberg. The natural environment, as it appears in the first stanza, is capable of remaining aloof from the changes which appear inevitable on the earth itself. The skies remain inviolable and at peace. The poetic voice then speculates that if technological progress continues, there will be consequences which go beyond the aesthetic. Not only will the peace and aesthetic perfection of the skies be destroyed by the invention of commercial flight, but there will be ecological consequences. Larks will suffer the fate of the Rhein salmon, driven out by the effects of industrialization. (This is not evidence of ecological consciousness, it must be stressed, but an observation that we can recognize as having ecological implications.) In this dystopian future, industry appears as the polar opposite and nemesis of the natural world. The poetic subject appears entirely powerless and resigned, at the mercy of the times. While there are quite frequent references in the literature of the period to the polluting

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consequences of industry, as here in the form of oil dripping from the skies, this is perhaps the earliest and clearest literary recognition that there the price to be paid for industrial advances may include an adverse impact on natural habitats with a consequent reduction in biodiversity. Yet there is more to it than this: the main thrust of the poem is that there will also be an artistic price to pay for the impact on nature. The implication is that poetry, the muse, has already been driven from the earth, and that the only unspoilt realm, the sky, is also no longer safe. The emphasis on art makes it clear that nature is a specific object of concern, since art, by implication, depends on unspoilt nature. There is no attempt here to reconcile nature and modernity: the two are seen as a dichotomy and mutually exclusive. Later in the century efforts are made precisely to achieve such a reconciliation, but at this stage the premises of the poem are non-negotiable: the steam era possesses an unstoppable popular momentum. Modern technology is causing irreversible damage to nature by upsetting the ecological balance. Since nature is the source of poetic muse, the poet, and poetry, must be excluded from the contemporary world. It is to these central arguments that Keller light-heartedly objects in his poetic response. In 1845 Keller was a passionate, idealistic young liberal, in the throes of finding his artistic identity by gradually abandoning his career as an artist in favour of writing, at which he was much more successful. Keller’s poetry was extensive, though it is of course for his dramas and prose works, especially Der grüne Heinrich, that he is best known. Keller’s early poems are paeans to nature, exemplified by the following stanza from a poem entitled “Unter den Sternen”, in a collection under the title Buch der Natur (Keller 1902: 20): Mag die Sonne nun bislang Andern Zonen scheinen, Hier fühl’ ich Zusammenhang Mit dem All und Einen!

The sense of oneness, and wonderment at the beauty of nature, is everywhere apparent in Keller’s work, though it is overlain in later life by a concern for the effects that industrialization was having on the environment (see Boeschenstein 1969: 19). All the more surprising,

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then, that Keller felt moved to defend the future possibilities outlined by Kerner in his own poem (Keller 1846: 296-8): Justinus Kerner, Erwiderung auf sein Lied: Unter dem Himmel (1845) Dein Lied ist rührend, edler Sänger! Doch zürne dem Genossen nicht, Wird ihm darob das Herz nicht bänger, Das, Dir erwidernd, also spricht: Die Poesie ist angeboren, Und sie erkennt kein Dort und hier; Ja, ging’ die Seele mir verloren, Sie führ’ zur Hölle selbst mit mir. Inzwischen sieht’s auf dieser Erde Noch lange nicht so graulich aus; Und manchmal scheint mir, Gottes: Werde! Ertön erst recht dem ‘Dichterhaus’. Schon schafft der Geist sich Sturmesschwingen Und spannt Eliaswagen an – Willst träumend Du im Grase singen, Wer hindert Dich, Poet, daran? Ich grüße Dich im Schäferkleide, Herfahrend, — doch mein Feuerdrach’ Trägt mich vorbei, die dunkle Haide Und Deine Geister schaun uns nach! Was Deine alten Pergamente Von tollem Zauber kund Dir thun, Das seh’ ich durch die Elemente, In Geistes Dienst verwirklicht nun. Ich seh’ sie keuchend sprühn und glühen, Stahlschimmernd bauen Land und Stadt: Indeß das Menschenkind zu blühen Und singen wieder Muße hat.

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This seems positively a celebration of technology, modernity, even futurism. Kerner’s fears that the airships will pollute the skies and drive out the larks are passed over dismissively. Though the poem is patently light-hearted, with an ironic veneer (after all, the prospect of commercial flight was still a distant one) there is a serious undertone. Industry’s effects on nature will not banish the artistic muse, because the muse is inherent in the poet, not in the environment, as the second stanza indicates. Thus technological development need not be feared as a destroyer of poetry. It is notable that in both cases, the fate of literature seems to be more important than that of nature itself: neither Kerner nor Keller take anything approaching an ecocentric approach. In contrast to Kerner, Keller makes an attempt to reconcile the apparent opposites which Kerner has posited by combining traditional virtues with the modern. In Keller’s poetic vision, the airship is importing wine from Greece (and perhaps olive oil, in contrast to Kerner’s British ship with machine oil). Keller clearly does not accept that nature is under serious or widespread threat: in his view the advent of new technologies will not affect the ability of the poet to commune undisturbed with untainted nature. What these poems illustrate is the differing reactions to the impact of modernity on nature: on the one hand a despairing resignation, on the other a celebration of new possibilities. Yet the industrialization of Germany was not taking place in a political vacuum. What fuels the modernity debate in the later 19th century is the nationalist imperative, or rather, the interrelationship between the political imperative of nationalism and the cultural imperative of the celebration of landscape and nature. Nationalism, as the dominant political paradigm, relied on the rise of the bourgeoisie for its ultimate success, for only through capitalism and rapid

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industrialization would Germany acquire the economic power to facilitate the communications system and the technological military capability essential to the success of the project of a German state. But as the century progressed, the deleterious effects of industrialization both on human health and on the landscape become increasingly apparent and are reflected in literature. The effects on nature, however, give rise to a particular dilemma which tends to undermine the whole ideology of nationalism. One of the primary problems of German nationalism was how to define the German nation. Language was certainly a major unifying factor, although linguistic diversity militated against using this as an absolute measure, especially since it was clearly not a realistic political aim to unite every single German-speaking (or German-dialectspeaking) community in a single state. From the earliest part of the nineteenth century, then, landscape and a particular relationship with nature were pressed into service as defining elements in the German psyche; as distinctive markers of Germanness. In 1819 Ernst Moritz Arndt, for example, an early vocal proponent of German nationalism, exhorted German youth to reject the degeneracy of urban life for the fields and the forest, valleys and mountain, since the Germans were characterized by “Naturliebe, ein stilles Verständnis, eine innige Freundschaft und ein zarter Umgang mit der Natur” (Arndt 1910: 246). His pupil Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, in the middle of the century, argued that the continued existence of the forest and of wilderness in Germany was the guarantee of national success, by contrast with England and France, whose loss of forestry reserves had left them fatally weakened. By the 1880s, the musician and nationalist Ernst Rudorff was able to draw on tradition in asserting that the very essence of Germanness lay in the trees, forests, rivers and mountains of the new Empire. How, then, to reconcile the competing demands of politics and the cultural tradition? Wilhelm Raabe’s Pfisters Mühle, which was first published in 1884, faces this dilemma directly. Life at the working mill of the title is seriously disrupted with seasonal regularity by organic pollution from a sugar factory upstream. As a result the millstream is converted every autumn and winter into a stinking sewer which kills the fish and coats the water-wheel with a noxious slime. The smell drives away both customers and staff, and the eponymous owner faces ruin. In

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despair the mill owner, Bertram Pfister, calls upon the chemist Adam August Asche, a family friend and tutor of his son Ebert (who is also the first-person, reminiscing narrator), to help him solve the problem. Asche’s scientific analysis of samples of the stream water trace the source of the pollution without any difficulty or doubt to a sugar factory at Krickerode upstream. Asche’s results help Pfister in a successful legal action against the factory, but Pfister himself dies, his life’s work in ruins. The son, Ebert Pfister, moves to Berlin and sells the mill, which at the close of the novel is being demolished to make way for a factory on the river. Clearly, it would be tempting to view this as an early example of an extraordinarily modern environmental novel, especially since the work – based, incidentally, on a contemporary court case – is permeated by a wistful sense of loss as the characters contemplate the gradual degradation of a natural environment which seems to belong to a no longer attainable idyll. However, on closer inspection a much more ambivalent attitude is to be found. As a National Liberal Raabe was committed to German unification and German prosperity. For Raabe the writer, unspoilt nature is, in common with others of the period and in the Goethean tradition, a central feature of his work. In Pfisters Mühle, I would argue, Raabe makes a determined if sometimes whimsical attempt to reconcile that internal contradiction of German nationalism. The pollution which features so centrally is actually treated as an inevitable, almost natural drawback in an otherwise wholly positive development. But by a process of assimilation which takes place during the course of the novel, that drawback is disarmed. All the younger characters survive by constructing an understanding of nature, or “inner nature”, which allows the integration of the waste products of industrial advances into objective nature with no perceived ill effects. The characters neither accept nor reject the effects of industrial society, but integrate them into their world view, so that by the end of the story, romantic nature has been reconstructed to allow for the presence of industrialism. This is a process which takes place not only thematically, but also in the structure of the narration. What we end up with in this text is a paradigm of the way in which society assimilates environmental depredation, perhaps with regret, perhaps with wistful nostalgia, but in such a way that nature can be viewed as a continuum infinitely

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capable of absorbing the effluent of progress. Far from being precociously ecological, then, this text is more or less the opposite: it demonstrates how it is possible to continue to hold nature dear whilst encroaching repeatedly upon its external manifestation, a feat achieved by continually adapting and reconstructing “inner nature”. It would be wrong to say that the text is not about ecology; it clearly is; what it is not about is political ecology, except in a negative sense. Rather than perceiving ecological damage and agitating to change the circumstances which lead to the damage, here damage is perceived and the agitation is directed towards changing the perception. This is the persistent problem which has plagued political ecology ever since. The key techniques used to achieve this are structure and language. For reasons of space I will only discuss the latter. What Raabe does is to create characters who talk about the polluted landscape in terms which were applicable to the unspoilt countryside. The irony is unmissable, but the effect is to allow the characters to redefine nature, as outlined above, so as to include industry. By way of example, one of the early scenes describes the attitude to town and country in the 1860s in the following terms: Mit der Natur steht die Landjugend auf viel zu gutem Fuße, um sich viel aus ihr zu machen und sie als etwas anderes denn als ein Selbstverständliches zu nehmen; aber die Stadt – ja die Stadt, das ist etwas! Das ist ein Entgegenstehendes, welches auf die eine oder andere Weise überwunden werden muß und nie von seiner Geltung für das junge Gemüt etwas aufgibt. (Raabe 1996: 9)

It is surely not a coincidence that at this point nature is described as “ein Selbstverständliches”, whereas in the final scene of the novel, grotesque parallels are drawn between life in the city and the “gute, alte Zeit” at the mill, as the surviving characters are shown taking their leisure by the Spree. Asche is now a successful industrialist, owning a polluting chemical clothes-cleaning factory on the Berlin river; Ebert and his wife visit the Asches” house nearby: Wir gehen zum Tee unter der Veranda. Nebenan klappert und lärmt die große Fleckreinigungsanstalt und bläst ihr Gewölk zum Abendhimmel empor fast so arg wie Krickerode. Der größere, wenn auch nicht große Fluß ist, trotzdem daß wir auch ihn nach Kräften verunreinigen, von allerlei Ruderfahrzeugen und Segeln belebt und scheint Rhakopyrgos als etwas ganz Selbstverständliches und Gleichgültiges zu nehmen. (Raabe 1996: 186-88)

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Whereas earlier the unspoiled natural environment was “ein Selbstverständliches”, now an industrial wastedland is described in precisely the same terms. The manifestations of industrialisation are here taken for granted. The noise pollution, atmospheric emissions and industrial effluent have become part of the natural surroundings. The badly polluted Spree is treated as though no pollution were present, both by the trippers and by our characters. What we are dealing with here is a redefinition of nature, a cultural manifestation of the assumption that external nature is a limitless resource, capable of absorbing whatever humanity puts into it. In the late nineteenth century this was a broadly supported scientific notion, particularly as far as rivers were concerned. The theory of the “Selbstreinigung der Flüsse” was enthusiastically embraced, partly because it seemed to have some scientific basis, but mainly, perhaps, for the carte blanche which it afforded polluters (see Rommelspacher 1989: 50-51). In the characters, this understanding of nature is complete by the end of the story. Indeed, Asche goes so far as to call the area round his factory “die ‘schöne Natur’” (Raabe 1996: 173), the outrageous, if deliberate irony of which does not escape Ebert, who nevertheless comments (apparently sincerely) that “wir freuen uns wirklich sehr auf dieselbe” (ibid.). Almost twenty years later Hermann Hesse, in Peter Camenzind (1903), also engages with idyllic nature, but in a manner far less willing than Raabe to accept the devastation wrought by the industrial revolution. However, in contrast to Goethe, to whom Hesse himself said he owed the greatest literary debt, Hermann Hesse has not commonly been appropriated as a green guru. While a powerfully mystical element is a frequent component of his work, especially in later life, Hesse’s enthusiasm for nature is often treated as a matter of youthful exuberance. Yet in the early work, most particularly in this, first successful novel, we discover not only a passion for nature on the part of the eponymous narrator, but an apparent emotional affinity with ecological issues including holism, notions of Gaia and animism, as well as harmony with nature, nature as a refuge and sheer antimodernism. The novel is underlain by an aesthetic in which the poet appears as the conduit between nature and humankind, able to articulate its language in ways inaccessible to most human beings.

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The key to Hesse’s understanding of nature is that the important relationship is not that between the individual and society, but between the individual and the cosmos. The eponymous narrator of the novel assumes for himself prophetic status, as a metaphor at the beginning of chapter three indicates: wie ein ahnungsvoller Seher stand ich an dunklen Abgründen, dem Brausen großer Ströme und Stürme lauschend und die Seele gerüstet, den Zusammenklang der Dinge und die Harmonie alles Lebens zu vernehmen (Hesse 1974: 47)

Since the majority of the population in an urban age are alienated from nature, it is the poet’s “wahrer Beruf, der stummen Natur in Dichtungen Ausdruck zu gewähren” (Hesse 1974: 62). This is much more than the traditional interpretation of nature by the poet; it is an empowering of nature, a means of articulation in human terms for the natural world. Crucially, this process engenders a “ein Gefühl der Verantwortung” for nature (ibid.). The anti-modernism in the text, so characteristic of a Germany which had undergone an extremely rapid industrial expansion since unification, is particularly striking. Practically nowhere is the presence of industry or of technological innovation acknowledged. Despite the passionate embrace of nature, and the postulation of a holistic aesthetic, the text implicity distances itself from the threat to nature posed by the rapid catch-up industrialization of Germany, and indeed condemns wholesale “die ganze schäbige Lächerlichkeit der modernen Kultur” (Hesse 1974: 87). While Raabe twenty years previously was documenting in detail the ravages wrought by German industry on rivers, air and landscape, in this text industry and technology are very much in the background while nature is foregrounded as an idyllic refuge still available if you know how to appreciate it. Virgin nature seems a real possibility if properly perceived (see Hesse 1974: 107-8). As the book progresses, this view continues to hold true, although the notion of nature as a refuge is moderated. Isolation in nature, Camenzind recognizes, is not an answer in itself; what is needed is a reconciliation leading to harmony between human society and nature. He conceives the great literary project of his life to be an attempt to bring nature closer to his contemporaries, to teach them affection for the “das großzügige, stumme Leben der Natur” (Hesse 1974: 129). The narrator once more

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freely deploys Gaian imagery in his efforts to propagate a holistic view of our place in the cosmos. His aim is to teach people auf den Herzschlag der Erde zu hören, am Leben des Ganzen teilzunehmen und im Drang ihrer kleinen Geschicke nicht zu vergessen, daß wir nicht Götter und von uns selbst geschaffen, sondern Kinder und Teile des kosmischen Ganzen sind (Hesse 1974: 129-30).

He wants to preach a kind of nature religion: Ich wollte aber auch die Menschen lehren, in der brüderlichen Liebe zur Natur Quellen der Freude und Ströme des Lebens zu finden [...]. Gebirge, Meere und grüne Inseln wollte ich in einer verlockend mächtigen Sprache zu euch reden lassen und wollte euch zwingen, zu sehen, was für ein maßlos vielfältiges, treibendes Leben außerhalb eurer Häuser und Städte täglich blüht und überquillt. Ich wollte erreichen, daß ihr euch schämt, von ausländischen Kriegen, von Mode, Klatsch, Literatur und Künsten mehr zu wissen als vom Frühling, der vor euren Städten sein unbändiges Treiben entfaltet, und als vom Strom, der unter euren Brücken hinfließt, und von den Wäldern und herrlichen Wiesen, durch welche eure Eisenbahn rennt. (Hesse 1974: 130)

It is noticeable that the audience here is figured as the other, while the narrator appears as the lone prophet literally in the wilderness. That said, the narrator has now come to realize that nature without people is “ein Unding” (Hesse 1974: 132). Is this tantamount to a realization that nature is a construct, in stark contrast to its previous representation in the text? At the least it is an admission that while nature does not need us, we have no choice but to live with it. There are, then, limitations to the ecological imagination as it appears in Peter Camenzind. What is striking, however, are not the limitations, but the extent to which ecological ideas are implied. Though the text purports to be above or beyond politics, there are certainly implications both for green politics and for green philosophy which are impossible to overlook from today’s standpoint. This is not to say that Hesse was an ecologist, or that Peter Camenzind is some kind of green tract, but that the way nature is constructed in the text is remarkably forward-looking even though it derives most of inspiration from a long-standing tradition. Nature in Peter Camenzind is not presented as a static given, but as a dynamic force in constant flux, both in itself objectively and through

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the observer subjectively: not only is it in constant motion, but we consistently invent and re-invent it. And that process of re-invention can be seen over time in Hesse’s work as well. Just two poems will help to illustrate this point, starting with a poem written seven years after the publication of Peter Camenzind and after a seminal travelling experience: Von einer asiatischen Reise, IV: Abschied vom Urwald (Sumatra Oktober 1911) Auf meiner Kiste sitz ich am Strand, Drunten am Dampfer schreien Inder, Chinesen, Malayen, Lachen laut und handeln mit Flittertand. Hinter mir liegen fiebernde Nächte und Tage Glühenden Lebens, die ich schon jetzt, Da noch der Urwaldstrom meine Sohlen netzt, Sorgsam wie Schätze im tiefsten Gedächtnis trage. Viele Länder und Städte weiß ich noch warten, Aber niemals wohl wird der Wälder Nacht, Wird der wilde gährende Urweltgarten Wieder mich locken und schrecken mit seiner Pracht. Hier in dieser unendlichen leuchtenden Wildnis War ich weiter als je entrückt von der Menschenwelt — O und niemals sah ich so nah und unverstellt Meiner eigenen Seele geformtes Bildnis. (Hesse 1917: 41)

The poetic self here is obviously quite different from the character of Peter Camenzind, even though both are strongly autobiographical. The intense closeness to nature, which amounted almost to a subsumation of identity, which characterizes the earlier novel, is here replaced by a wistful recognition that nature in the raw is likely to lose its fascination. Confrontation with wilderness is an alienating experience which leads to a turning inwards. Here on the border, on the margin between the human and the non-human world he is able to recognize that isolation, in the so-called “wilderness”, leads to the clearest perceptions not of the environment, but of the self. Here could be no

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clearer indication of the recognition that “nature” is the Other by which we define ourselves. A later poem still evinces a more startling change, given the present context. There are minor changes to the published version which tend to give a more sceptical impression about industry, but the apparent ambivalence evident here, and the acknowledgement, let alone aesthetic celebration of industry, stands in stark contrast to the earlier texts: Hermann Hesse: Fabrik im Tal (1919) Du auch bist schön, Fabrik im grünen Tal, Ob auch verhasster Dinge Sinnbild u. Heimat: Jagd nach Geld, Sklaverei, düstre Gefangenschaft. Du bist auch schön, oft erfreut Deiner Dächer zärtliches Rot mir das Auge Und dein Mast, deine Fahne: das stolze Kamin. Sei gegrüßt auch du u. geliebt, Holdes verschlossenes Blau an ärmlichen Häusern, Wo es nach Seife, nach Bier u. nach Kindern riecht! In der Wiesen Grün, in das Violett der Äcker Spielt das Häusergeschachtel u. Dächerrot Freudig hinein, freudig u. dennoch zart, Bläsermusik, Oboe u. Flöte verwandt. Lachend tauch” ich den Pinsel in Lack u. Zinnober, Wische über die Felder mit staubigem Grün, Aber schöner als alles leuchtet das rote Kamin, Senkrecht in diese törichte Welt gestellt, Eines Riesen vortreffliche Sonnenuhr. (Hesse 1987: 121)

Here industry, finally and rarely, is granted the accolade of aesthetic appreciation. The poetic self’s surprise at its own generosity in this respect is almost palpable. Yet in aestheticizing the products of the industrial revolution, Hesse was only pursuing a route already well marked out early in the second half of the previous century. Paradoxically, the systematic exclusion of industry from Peter Camenzind is far more telling than its inclusion in this poem. The passion and rage that infuses the earlier novel is part of a visceral reaction to changes in the natural surroundings with which many of

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Hesse’s contemporaries, from all parts of the political spectrum, had difficulty in coming to terms. The savage intensity of Peter Camenzind’s raptures are an elegy for nature: they are an object lesson in the insight reached in “Abschied vom Urwald”; when we talk about nature, when we mourn its fate, we are really talking about ourselves, and mourning our own. During the course of the 19th century, then, we see an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the problems and dilemmas engendered by the advent of modernity in a culture where nature has traditionally occupied such a central position. To some degree these reactions are a reflection of broader social movements and echo the bewilderment at rapid change to be found in other areas of human experience. However, they also trace out the ways in which the relationship between people and their natural surroundings has been repeatedly re-negotiated in order to take account of competing cultural demands. Although the complexity of these competing demands was identified more readily towards the end of the century, as the full implications of industrialization became apparent, there is little evidence that the attempts to reconcile the contradictory were any more successful than the hopes expressed in the earlier period that modernity might pass by whilst the human subject remained ensconced in a “grünes Plätzchen”. These literary engagements with the problem of modernity and nature, then, remained characterized by an air of cultural pessimism and practical impotence which is the hallmark of environmental concern today. Bibliography Arndt, Ernst Moritz. 1910. Geist der Zeit IV (ed. August Leffson and Wilhelm Steffens) (= Werke: Auswahl in zwölf Teilen, vols 8-9). Berlin: Deutsches Verlagshaus Bong. Boeschenstein, Hermann. 1969.Gottfried Keller. Stuttgart: Metzler. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1887. Goethes Werke (Abt I Bd 25) (herausgegeben im Auftrage der Grossherzogin Sophie von Sachsen. Weimar: H. Böhlau. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1976. Maximen und Reflexionen. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag. Hesse Hermann. 1917. Musik des Einsamen. Neue Gedichte. Heilbronn: Eugen Galyer. —. 1974. Peter Camenzind. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

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—. 1987. „Fabrik im Tal” in Schneider, Peter-Paul et al. Literatur im Industriezeitalter 1. Eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Literaturarchivs im SchillerNationalmuseum Marbach am Neckar (Marbacher Katologe 42/1). Deutsche Schillergesellschaft: Marbach am Neckar. Immermann, Karl. 1971. Die Epigonen. Familienmemoiren in neun Büchern 1823-35 (ed. Benno von Wiese) (Werke in fünf Bänden, vol II). Frankfurt am Main: Athenaeum. Keller, Gottfried. 1846. Gedichte. Heidelberg: Akademische Verlagshandlung von C. F. Winter. —. 1902. Gesammelte Gedichte. Stuttgart: Cotta. Kerner, Justinus. 1974. “Über das unnatürliche Essen des Menschen” in Werke: 6 Teile in 2 Bd (ed. Raimund Pissin) (reprint of the edition Berlin 1914). Hildesheim and New York: Olms. Raabe, Wilhelm. 1996. Pfisters Mühle. Ditzingen: Reclam. Rommelspacher, Thomas. 1989. “Das natürliche Recht auf Wasserverschmutzung. Geschichte des Wassers im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert” in Brüggemeier, Franz-Josef and Rommelspacher, Thomas (eds) Besiegte Natur. Geschichte der Umwelt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Munich: C. H. Beck: 42-63. Sieferle, Rolf Peter. 1984. Fortschrittsfeinde? Oppostion gegen Technik und Industrie von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: C. H. Beck. Wall, Derek. 1994. Green History. A Reader in Environmental Literature, Philosophy and Politics. London and New York: Routledge.

Nature and nationalism in the writings of Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860) Caroline Delph Abstract: This essay explains the manner in which Ernst Moritz Arndt’s concern for the natural landscape of Germany was actuated by his sense of nationalism. The fact that the landscape was believed to influence human emotions and characteristics had a long established tradition. However, Arndt is noteworthy for suggesting that a specifically German landscape was responsible for shaping the German national character. He believed the essence of Germanness resided in the landscape and, above all, in the woodlands and that, in their destruction, the future of the Volk was also compromised. Moreover, this concern led Arndt to express an apparent knowledge of some environmental issues, such as the role which the trees played in maintaining a balanced climate and their importance in combating soil erosion, as well as an awareness of the issue of sustainability. Whilst Arndt was clearly motivated by his desire to safeguard the German Volk, his thoughts also exhibit elements of both environmentalism and ecologism which make him an individual worthy of further investigation.

Environmental policies can be found in the manifestos of most political parties whether they are to the left or right of the political spectrum. In this respect, the environment, as well as being an important political issue in its own right, can also be used as a political weapon aimed at winning support for the party. In recent history, parties have even been established on their environmental credentials. However, whilst the use of the environment in this manner does not necessarily carry with it any negative connotations, this has not always been the case. In Germany, for instance, the natural landscape has a long history in the service of the nationalistic cause. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, individuals expressed a concern for the destruction of the natural landscape and championed its

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preservation actuated by their desire to safeguard the German race.1 They believed that the German people had a particular empathy with the landscape and that the very essence of Germanness, their unique identity, was defined by the German landscape: its rivers and streams, plains and mountains but, above all, by its trees and woodlands. 1. Nature and nationalism The reverence attached to the natural landscape and the woodlands stemmed from the Roman historian Tacitus, who was one of the first to describe the relationship between the German people and the land they inhabited, in his work Germania; or, On the Origin and Situation of the Germans, written around the year 98 AD. In extolling the virtues of the German race, in comparison to that of the Romans whom he considered degenerate, Tacitus described a rugged, pure and free race which had, on the whole, remained in tune with nature; a nature which was “for the most part bristling forests and foul bogs”, “pleasant neither to live in nor to look upon unless it be one’s fatherland” (Schama 1995: 76 and 81).2 At the end of the twentieth century, this relationship was still being cited in the literature of an organisation known to have sympathies with the far-right; however, the manner in which it was exploited for ideological purposes during the Third Reich is more well known.3 Under National Socialism, the mythical bond between the German people, in particular the peasants, and the German landscape and the 1

Arndt is widely regarded as the first in the nineteenth century to express such a concern; however, later figures who demonstrated a similar belief include Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl and Ernst Rudorff. The use of race is in its nineteenth century meaning of nation. 2 Schama takes his translations from Hutton (Tacitus. 1980. Germania (tr. M. Hutton, rev. E.H. Warmington). Cambridge, Mass: Havard University Press: 189 and 131), except where they seem to him “to gloss over the force of Tacitus’ descriptions”. Thus he translates paludibus foeda as “foul bogs” rather than “unhealthy marshes” (Schama 1995: 583-4). 3 In one publication by the Gesellschaft für biologische Anthropologie, Eugenik, und Verhaltensforschung, the German race are exemplified in proving that environmental destruction is not part of human nature. This race historically worshipped in groves and trees and, alongside other members of the Nordic race, are the most committed to environmental protection today (Neue Anthropologie 1988: 91).

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soil was exploited not only to preserve the German race, but also to guarantee its racial purity. This bond was summed up by the term Blut und Boden, a slogan accredited to Richard Walther Darré, Hitler’s Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture, and Reichsbauernführer, between 1933 and 1942. Although Darré was certainly not the “‘Father of the Greens’” as Anna Bramwell controversially suggested in the title of her article published in 1984, he did promote some environmentally-sound policies during his period in office, alongside the more racially malign concept of Blut und Boden (Bramwell 1984: 7). He did much, for example, to encourage organic farming techniques. He also wrote on the problems of soil erosion and the advantages of smaller and more self-sufficient farms (10). His agricultural policies, however, were not founded on any real concern for the environment but were fundamentally aimed at re-establishing the German peasantry as an influential social class, and at making Germany autonomous in terms of food, both of which were ultimately aimed at securing the future of Germany. The existence of the relationship between nature and nationalism, evident during the Third Reich and in the previous century, has long been recognised by scholars who have traced it back to the start of the nineteenth century and Ernst Moritz Arndt. However, whilst Arndt’s place in this tradition has been recognised, a detailed analysis of his thoughts has so far been lacking. Most commentaries tend only to cite a few select quotations from one article to illustrate the fact that Arndt recognised the importance of preserving the German landscape in order to guarantee the future of the German people. Moreover, some even imply that his views on preserving the landscape are akin to a demonstration of a modern ecological outlook. However, although it is true that Arndt did, at times, display a real understanding of some environmental issues, this does not denote ecologism. His preoccupation with nature and the natural environment was related to his sense of nationalism, an issue into which this article hopes to provide a better insight. 2. Ernst Moritz Arndt Born on 26 December 1769 on the island of Rügen, Arndt was destined to become a prominent and influential figure in the nine-

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teenth century. He has been described as belonging to the “Galerie der ‘Großen Deutschen’” (gallery of the ‘greatest Germans’); an apt accolade when one considers that during his ninety-one years Arndt became an accomplished writer, statesman and academic (Sichelschmidt 1981, 7).4 In his political career, he was a member of the first national assembly which convened in St Paul’s Cathedral in Frankfurt am Main between April 1848 and May 1849; academically, he held professorships at the University of Greifswald, where he was first a Privatdozent, and later at the University of Bonn. His success, however, did not mean he was above contention. He was suspended, for example, both from his post at Greifswald between 1807 and 1810, and again between 1820 and 1840 whilst he was at Bonn; the latter occasion on a charge of “staatsgefährliche Umtriebe und Verbindungen” (activities and connections threatening state security, Pundt 1968: 138; emphasis in the original). Despite these achievements, Arndt is perhaps best-remembered for his fervent nationalism which, by his own admission, only developed over a period of time. During his childhood, for instance, the island of Rügen and his family had allegiances and connections not to Germany but to Sweden. However, his own intellectual and emotional development, as well as events of the period, such as Germany’s Wars of Liberation with France, led him to support and identify with Germany. His nationalistic feelings towards his adopted country informed many of his views on contemporary issues which he expressed in the form of songs and poems as well as in articles and books. One of his best-known nationalistic offerings is the poem ‘Des Deutschen Vaterland’, published in 1813, in which Arndt questioned what exactly constitutes the German Vaterland, coming to the conclusion that it was defined by the area where the German language could be heard. His focus on Germany continued in his four-part work Geist der Zeit (Spirit of the Time), published between 1806 and 1818, which consists of a number of essays in which Arndt addressed the issues and problems he felt Germany was facing. He even published his own short-lived journal, Der Wächter (The Watchman), which appeared between 1815 and 1816, and which he used to vent his own nationalistic opinions. Much of what he wrote on the political and social situ4

All translations are the author’s own except where otherwise indicated.

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ation in Germany at that time was neither new nor unique. Contemporaries of Arndt, such as Fichte and Jahn, expressed similar views on many of the issues which preoccupied his own thoughts. Arndt was unusual, however, for the fact that he was perhaps the first author in the nineteenth century to make the connection between nationalism and the natural environment. In his essays, he employed the landscape, and German’s unique relationship with it, to define both the geographical area of Germany and the German race. 3. Landscape and identity More commonly, attempts at defining the German people and their lands were carried out via the medium of the German language; a venture in which Arndt himself had partaken, and one which was not reliant on the existence of a German nation-state. Indeed, it was precisely because neither a politically nor a legally defined German nation existed until 1871 that notions of national unity and Germanness were expressed within the cultural sphere and were thus often associated with language. It was a phenomenon which could be traced as far back as the eleventh century and the epic poem the Annolied (Hughes 1988: 18). However, the linguistic association between the people and their geographical territory was also a problematic one. On the one hand, the German language was a commodity shared with other nations, including Austria and Switzerland, whilst on the other the German language was not the lingua franca of all the inhabitants living within the boundaries of Germany: even where German was spoken the many dialects often caused problems of communication amongst the regions. Thus, the landscape was an ideal feature, unique to Germany, which could be employed to unify the race and to re-enforce notions of a German identity and a sense of place. In tangible terms, the landscape offered a physical obstacle, in the form of its mountains, rivers and forests, which protected the German people from invasion and domination. It also provided a source of food and national income as well as supporting the Bauerntum whose existence, because of their simple way of life and closeness to the soil, was seen to be vital to Germany’s future. The peasants were the purest of the Volk, encapsulating the very essence of Germanness, from which the future

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race should stem. Alongside these physical advantages, the natural landscape was also thought to be able to determine human characteristics and mould man’s – i.e. human beings’ – inner spiritual being. Again, this idea was neither unique to Arndt nor new to the nineteenth century. Nature’s ability to influence human beings was centuries old, and had been popularised in the eighteenth century by writers such as Herder and Montesquieu. Yet, whilst these authors wrote of nature’s influence on the human race as a whole, Arndt is significant for the manner in which he utilised this concept specifically to consolidate his concerns for the German landscape and people. He described the importance of the landscape, evaluated its worth, and argued for its preservation in order to save the German race which he perceived to be suffering from decline and degeneration. He referred to many features of the landscape, but some he regarded as being more beneficial than others. The inhabitants of coastal and mountainous regions, for example, were regarded as being physically stronger than those living on the plains (Arndt s.d.b:196). The sea, however, did not offer the same measure of security in terms of trade as the land, and thus, those races who gained their livelihoods predominantly from the soil were not only more secure, but also “glücklicher auf die Dauer” (happy in the long term) (Arndt s.d.b:197). Yet whilst Arndt believed in the benefits of mountainous and coastal landscapes these were confined to specific regions of Germany. In contrast, the woodlands provided him with a feature which was truly national, for the ancient woodlands and groves had been regarded as characterising the German countryside since the time of the ancient Romans. Building on the image of a woodland folk portrayed by such authors as Tacitus and Caesar, Arndt and later nationalist writers embellished on the importance of trees to the German people and the mythical bond which existed between the two. The trees conjured up a sense of strength, stability and security. They represented a notion of longevity and survival because of their long-established place in the German landscape not only against the physical enemies but also the political and social transformations which were taking place in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Yet at the start of this turbulent century, the great woodlands which had once dominated the countryside were disappearing at an alarming

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rate. Over the course of time, trees had been felled, and forests cleared, in order to provide man with space to live in and to farm, as well as providing an essential source of fuel and building material. Although this process had been essential for human development, it had also depleted the size of the original forests. Nevertheless, natural and artificial planting had ensured that the area covered by woodland had remained at around twenty-eight percent since about the sixteenth century (Lehmann 1996: 33). Eventually, however, despite the introduction of Rodungsverbote, the oldest of which dated from 1226, and the foundation of forestry schools in the eighteenth century, which helped to establish the subject of forestry as a scientific and economic discipline, the demand for timber gradually outstripped supply; particularly at risk were the ancient deciduous woodlands. By the late eighteenth century, at the very latest, it was finally recognised that this finite resource was in very short supply. Just as today, when the threatened, or actual, loss of a once common feature raises public awareness to its existence or value, the rapid and increasing destruction of the woodlands may well have roused Arndt’s interest in the natural landscape. Moreover, he may well have correlated the rate of destruction of the woodlands with that of his perceived decline in the German race and society, further offering to explain why Arndt regarded the trees to be so essential for the survival of the Volk. The woodlands were thus intrinsic to Arndt’s sense of nationalism. Like the German race, they were threatened by the changes taking place in society whilst, conversely, their survival would also safeguard the existence of the people. He expressed his thoughts on the relationship between the German people and the natural landscape on three separate occasions: firstly, in the article ‘Ein Wort über die Pflegung und Erhaltung der Forsten und der Bauern im Sinne einer höheren, d.h. menschlichen Gesetzgebung’ (“A Word on the Care and Preservation of the Forests and the Peasants in the Sense of a Higher, i.e. Humane Law,” trans. by Riordan, p. 35), first published in Der Wächter in 1815; secondly, in part four of his collective work Geist der Zeit, published in 1818; and lastly, in an article which appeared much later, in 1852, in the Kölnische Zeitung entitled ‘Der Flamersheimer Erbenwald’(“The Flamersheim Ancestral Wood”).

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4. Ein Wort über die Pflegung und Erhaltung der Forsten und der Bauern im Sinne einer höheren, d.h. menschlichen Gesetzgebung The first article, comprising sixty-three pages, is Arndt’s longest offering on the subject of man and the environment. In it he describes man’s relationship with the landscape, its importance to the German people, and the solutions which he thought necessary to redress the problem of deforestation. As in many of his literary offerings, he is sometimes repetitive, confusing and contradictory, but merely the length of this essay, compared to the other entries in this short journal, demonstrates the importance which Arndt warranted this subject. From the outset, Arndt’s appreciation of the landscape, and the unsatisfactory manner in which it was treated by man, is readily apparent. He believed that man’s interaction with the environment could either result in destruction or improvement but that ideally: “Der Mensch soll die Erde, seine Natur, so verwalten und regieren, daß das Schöne und Gute in ihr bleiben and wachsen könne” (man should administer and govern the earth, his natural surroundings, so that beauty and goodness can remain and develop in her, Arndt 1815: 347). Unfortunately, however, the reality in Arndt’s view was very different. In the very next sentence, he continued to imply that this ideal was hard even to formulate let alone achieve. Yet despite his obvious distress at man’s inability to fashion the landscape in an aesthetically pleasing manner, his apparent concern for the state of the environment is not an indication of an environmental outlook but one which was anthropocentric. The earth was there for the service of mankind; to be used and exploited to cater for man’s needs. Man’s role in this process was merely to manage and improve his surroundings aesthetically and in terms of productivity. This notion of man as a caretaker, a kind of global gardener, had been current since biblical times and is a constituent of anthropocentrism. Even the few lone individuals in the nineteenth century who did broach the subject of how increasing urbanisation and industrialisation was drastically altering the aesthetic appearance of the landscape were, in the main, considering their own survival and not that of the natural environment. They did not oppose the exploitation of the environment per se but were merely anxious that it should be carried out in a manner which was pleasing to the eye. It was an attitude which continued to be

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adopted by early proto-environmental groups in the twentieth century. The Bund Heimatschutz, established in 1904 out of a concern for the destruction of the landscape, for example, accepted that the needs of industry took precedence over those of the environment. On the majority of occasions, they did little to oppose the construction of factories and other edifices such as hydro-electric dams. Instead, they merely hoped that they would be aesthetically pleasing and in tune with the natural features of the landscape. Alongside the importance Arndt placed on the appearance of the landscape and its ability to provide materially for mankind was the belief that man’s intervention in the natural landscape was directly related to his physical and mental attributes. The formation of “die stärksten, gesündesten und schönsten Menschen an Leib und Seele” (the strongest, healthiest and most beautiful people in mind and body) was the result of a well-managed environment whilst, according to Arndt, one which was maintained in an “ungeschickt” (clumsy) manner resulted in a race which was “schwächer, verkrüppelter und häßlicher” (weaker, uglier and more deformed, Arndt 1815: 350). He put forward three reasons connected to the landscape why this might be so. In some countries, for example, the landscape was merely too primeval and underdeveloped to generate and sustain a race with desirable qualities. In others the natural terrain was simply too inhospitable. Areas covered in snow and ice, deserts, barren mountainsides and swampland were all example of such landscapes. In Arndt’s opinion, however, there were also many instances of countries whose landscape was spoilt by human intervention. Through neglect or a lack of wisdom, once pleasant and fertile lands were transformed into ugly and barren wastelands; a particular concern for Arndt because of the inextricable link between man and nature. He wrote: “Wo der Mensch schlecht und erbärmlich wird, da wird auch die Natur schlecht und erbärmlich […]. Wo die Natur schlecht ist oder schlecht wird, da ist oder wird der Mensch auch schlecht” (where man is poor and pitiful, nature will reflect this and vice versa, 352). Whether the environment was naturally marred or degraded by human activity, according to Arndt, a population which had once demonstrated admirable qualities would be adversely affected in such conditions. Equally, the landscape could reflect the degeneration or Entartung of a race if, for example, a once brave and free Volk fell prey to cowardice or slavery (354).

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Ultimately, the destruction of the environment could eventually lead to both “das Ausarten der Länder und Völker” (the atrophying of the country and the race, 356). Yet even though mankind and the landscape were intrinsically linked to one another, the relationship was imbalanced with nature exerting a far greater influence over mankind than vice versa. According to Arndt, this was both an undeniable and a well-known fact. Even though he found it impossible to describe precisely how, or even why, the land affected its inhabitants, Arndt considered the influence to be so obvious that it was almost absurd to have to state its existence at all. Moreover, some races displayed a particular affinity to certain natural features. The Italians, for example, were associated with citrus trees, the Indians with palm trees and the German people with the oak and the beech trees. This relationship between the Germans and their ancient deciduous woodlands, however, was threatened by man’s mismanagement of the landscape which, over the course of time, had reached such an extent that Arndt believed that nature had all but deserted man (ibid.). The occurrence of this phenomenon perplexed him since he believed that mankind had sufficient knowledge to prevent the collapse of this unique and beneficial relationship. The poor state which many countries found themselves in was mostly the result of human activity, and only in a minority of cases were the adverse conditions caused by natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Predominantly, man was to blame. He was “der Zerstörer oder der Versäumer” (the destroyer or negligent one, 357). His actions could precipitate the extremes of flooding or drought, both of which could result in an imbalance in the environment and problems such as soil erosion. Despite this glimmer of environmental awareness, however, Arndt’s thoughts on man’s role in the environment remained grounded in anthropocentrism. He was not against development per se. On the contrary, he believed that the landscape needed to be improved in order to create the optimal environmental conditions in terms of nutrition, air, light and warmth. These requirements applied to every plant and animal as well as to mankind. With respect to human needs, however, Arndt believed that the ideal landscape was one which was predominantly firm, dry and stable. His aversion to swampland

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explains why he held both the trees and the mountains in such high esteem: whereas swamps, by their very nature, were constantly in flux and unable to provide the firm foundations necessary to assure the population of a secure future, the great groves and woodlands were fixed entities. His image of an ideal landscape also conveniently corresponded to the environmental and climatic conditions of northern Europe, further offering to explain why Arndt prized a vista dominated by trees and mountains rather than a tropical or more arid landscape. The survival of the mountains was a natural given fact, but it was also crucial for the survival of a pure and healthy German race that a sufficient area of land remained forested. Trees could be felled, but there was also the implication that, if they were well-managed, they could remain a permanent feature of the landscape. Yet despite the necessity to maintain the woodlands, Arndt was surprisingly neither critical of past deforestation nor the thinning out of dense areas of woodland. Both these actions he considered to be necessary whereas if he had been more environmentally motivated he might well have been more critical of past destruction which he recognised had altered the climate, and ultimately changed the biodiversity of the region, even leading to the loss of some species. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, it would be unrealistic to expect Arndt to have such a deep ecological understanding. The sciences, in general, were in their nascent stage, and the word ecology was only coined in 1866 by Ernst Haeckel. Nonetheless, Arndt did surprisingly exhibit some environmental knowledge and understanding. He was disturbed, for example, by the manner in which clearing the land and exposing it to the natural elements could lead to a loss of fertility, a change in climatic conditions and soil erosion. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, man’s intervention in the natural landscape had gone too far for Arndt. Yet it was not so much industrialisation which he viewed to be a threat to the landscape and traditional society but the growth in capitalist and materialistic values. The urban and middle-class business families were forsaking a simple way of life based on ancient customs and traditions and increasingly regarding the landscape merely as a source of income. Interestingly, many modern-day green thinkers share Arndt’s criticism of capitalism and also advocate a less materialistic

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lifestyle.5 Like him, they are critical of contemporary society and the impact it is having on the natural environment. For Arndt, however, the nineteenth-century society’s perpetual search for artificial goods was directly affecting man’s mental state. Man was no longer calm and level-headed and could no longer differentiate between good and evil. Even more disturbing was the fact that he was unable to recognise “das zarte Fühlen und Verstehen der Natur und ihrer geheimen Kräfte” (the gentle feeling and understanding of nature and her hidden powers) to such an extent that he could no longer make arbitrary decisions which were once second nature (Arndt 1815: 368). The implication of this decline in humanity was a similar decline in the state of the natural environment. Contrary to the impression gained from reading many secondary sources, however, Arndt did not advocate that the nineteenth-century Germans should recreate the landscape of their ancient forefathers. In truth, he thought that the ancient Germans had lived in a land with an overabundance of woods and forests: “Es gab eine Zeit, wo zu viel Wald in Germanien war” (There was a time when Germany had too much woodland, 382). Whilst such a comment, at first sight, appears rather paradoxical given the fact that Arndt later proposed a vast reforestation project, one can deduce from such a statement that he realised the necessity of human development which had required the clearing of the forests in the past. Nevertheless, he equally believed that this trend was continuing at a dangerously fast pace to the point that it was now vital that Germany re-establish some of her lost woodlands. It is no surprise that in a century when many writers and thinkers extolled the Middle Ages as Germany’s Golden Age, Arndt too regarded this period as a time when the geographical and climatic conditions had been at their most harmonious with respect to sustaining a spiritually healthy race (370). By this time, the topology of the landscape had altered, and some species had either become extinct or been driven out of Germany, but, on the whole, the 5

The most radical political ecologists believe that green politics should transcend capitalism as well as communism because both are based on industrialism which is anthropocentric and unsustainable. Like Arndt, they demand a reduction in consumption and a return to a more spiritually fulfilled lifestyle. For a more detailed analysis of ecologism in general see Dobson 1993: 216-232 and Dobson 1995: 14-38.

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woodlands and groves still dominated the character of the landscape (372). He described a picture of environmental sustainability and balance. He clearly wanted to see an environment which was harmonious and well regulated, but he was not primarily actuated by a concern to maintain a healthy environment but by his nationalistic concerns of maintaining the German race. This balance was, however, now in jeopardy because of the destruction caused “durch menschliche Unwissenheit und Ruchlosigkeit” (through human ignorance and dastardliness, 373). It was not only affecting the landscape itself, but, more importantly, the German people were at risk of becoming a weak and gibbering race of “Halbmenschen” (semihuman); a comment which poignantly foreshadows later National Socialist discourse (374). He thought that the current generation should learn to emulate the ancestral Germans in their worship of the trees and once again preserve the ancient holy groves. Moreover, other European nations should also take heed of this advice: “Denn jetzt wird in vielen Ländern Europas die Axt, die an den Baum gelegt wird, häufig zu einer Axt, die an das ganze Volk gelegt wird” (For in many European countries the axe which is now placed upon the tree is often the same as if an axe is taken to the whole race, 375). According to Arndt, trees appeared to play a role in preserving the people of many nations. Forests provided a source of food and fuel as well as offering a place of sanctuary. Furthermore, trees acted as a bridge between the temporal and spiritual worlds, and thus mankind should preserve them “in ihrem Leben auf den Stämmen mit ihren Blättern und Zweigen” (alive as trees with leaves and branches, 376).6 This comment, according to Joachim Radkau, supports the notion that Arndt displayed a view which was “zugunsten einer schon ökologisch zu nennenden Sicht des Waldes” (in favour of an early 6 In the book-form of this article, published in 1820, Arndt included the tree’s usefulness in work and war, as well as its use as a source of heat: “Ich will nicht daran erinnern, wie nützlich die Bäume dem Menschen auf dem Herde und im Kamin, auf dem Schlachtfelde der Arbeit oder des Krieges sind, nein ich will sie bloß in ihrem Leben auf den Stämmen mit ihren Blättern und Zweigen betrachten” (I want, not only, to remember how useful trees are for mankind in terms of fuel for the stove, or for work or war; no, I want to view them alive as trees with leaves and branches) (Radkau 1986: 65).

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ecological view of the woodlands) (Radkau 1896: 65). Such a statement, however, can be misinterpreted. Even though Arndt clearly acknowledged and understood the function of trees in the environment, he valued them from an anthropocentric not an ecocentric perspective. His interest lay in their significance for the human race since “man [findet] die frischesten und stärksten Menschen immer in Wäldern und Waldbergen” (one [finds] the liveliest and strongest people in the forests and wooded mountain areas, Arndt 1815: 377). Again, he did not confine the benefits of the woodlands exclusively to Germany. The Scots and the Swedes had also benefited from a wooded landscape, whilst in Sicily and Sardinia, where deforestation had made the land “schlecht und unfruchtbar” (poor and infertile), man too had become “schlechter und schwächlicher […], wie die Natur” (poorer and weaker like nature, 377 and 379). However, whilst he cited the importance of the trees and woodlands for other countries, one gains the impression that he did so merely to consolidate his belief that they were essential for the survival of the German people. Thus of far more concern to Arndt, and perhaps said as a warning to Germany, was his belief that once an area was cleared of trees any attempt at reforestation was carried out in vain (379-80). Particularly in the hotter countries, such attempts were doomed to failure. With this notion in mind, he even questioned whether the deserts of the Sahal, Arabia and Mesopotamia had once been covered with groves and streams; an assumption which was at least partly correct (380). Although there are various factors involved in the formation of deserts, many were once covered in some form of vegetation or woodland and are, as Arndt implied, also created, at least in part, by the deleterious actions of mankind.7 With respect to Germany, Arndt was convinced that the current rate of destruction had to be halted (382). Furthermore, he was critical of the ease at which trees could be felled with little or no retribution. He believed, for instance that, given the inclination, even he possessed 7

One can safely assume that Arndt associated the creation of deserts with human activity as he goes on to mention the loss of mountain woodlands which he later attributes to increased arable farming (Arndt 1815: 380 and 392). Deserts are not solely created by the actions of mankind, but many scientists agree that it is one important factor. For further information see Middleton 1991: 13; Grainger 1990: 3335 and 101; and Thomas and Middleton 1994: 67-79.

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“die teuflische Freiheit” (the devilish freedom) to destroy all the trees and bushes with “die mörderische Axt” (the murderous axe) and thus create “plötzlich ein anderes Klima und bald auch ein anderes schlechteres und schwächeres und ungöttlicheres Volk, als die Teutschen jetzt noch sind” (a different climate and soon after, a different, poorer, weaker and more ungodly race than the Germans already are, 381-82). He was not only horrified at the thought of this deplorable act which would have sounded the death knell for the German race, but it also prompted him to an apparent recognition of the problem of sustainability: Ja in manchen Landschaften Teutschlands hat man in den letzten zwanzig und dreissig Jahren sehen können, wie der heilloseste und ruchloseste Unfug mit den edlen Bäumen und Wäldern getrieben ist und wie ganze Forsten ausgehauen und ganze Bezirke entblöst sind, weil der einzelne Besitzer mit der Natur auf das willkürlichste schalten und walten kann. Was kümmert es den, der Geld bedarf und in zehen [sic] Jahren zu verbrauchen gedenkt, wovon sein Urenkel noch zehren sollte, ob er eine öde und Menschen künftig wenig erfreuliche ja Menschen oft kaum brauchbare Erde hinterläßt? (384) (In the last twenty or thirty years, we have seen noble trees and forests in many tracts of German landscape subjected to the most unholy and dastardly mischief. Whole forests have been cut down and whole areas denuded because the individual owner can do as he pleases with nature in the most arbitrary way. What difference does it make to somebody who needs money and intends to use up in ten years something that was meant to sustain his great-grandchildren, if he leaves behind a barren tract of land which will in future yield little pleasure and be of barely any use to people?, trans. Riordan 1997: 9)

Yet even though this passage demonstrates that Arndt was unusually aware of the environment for the time, one can not go so far as describing Arndt’s comment, as Hermand does, as being “ökologisch” (ecological) (Hermand 1991: 44). As previously stated, ecological is far too modern a word to describe such a concern at the beginning of the nineteenth century. His comment displays conservatism, and even an element of environmentalism, but it also demonstrates his nationalism. He is interested in saving the German race through managing of the forests in a sustainable manner so that the land would still be of use not in one or two generations’ time but for many years to come. Clearly, Arndt related the state of the environment, and its management, with the survival of the German race. However, he also politicised the landscape by introducing the notion that it was the

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remit of government to protect the landscape and thus its citizens. Nevertheless, this did not imply that the population should be allowed to increase in size to the detriment of the quality of the race. In this respect, the government “soll die Natur so verwalten und die Gesetze so stellen, daß ein gesundes starkes und freudiges Menschengeschlecht sich entwickeln und erhalten kann” (should manage nature and implement laws so that a healthy, strong and happy race can develop and sustain itself, Arndt 1815: 390): an aim which could, for Arndt, only be wholly accomplished through the preservation of the forests. However, the woodlands were under threat not only from the establishment of more factories but also from agriculture. The increasing population meant that ever more land was being lost to arable cultivation and other farming practices; a development which clearly perturbed him: Also weg mit den waldverwüstenden Fabrikanten! weg mit ihnen von den Höhen und Berggipfeln! weg dort mit dem Pflüger, der alles ausroden und keine Wälder neben sich dulden will! (92) (Thus away with the forest-destroying factories! Away with them from the hillsides and mountain tops! Away from there with the plough, which wants to clear everything and cannot tolerate forests next to it!)

Yet even though the forests were threatened with destruction, the measures in place to protect them disappointed Arndt. Their threatened disappearance alongside their importance in “die Erzeugung und Erhaltung eines edlen und kräftigen Menschengeschlechts” (the creation and maintenance of a pure and healthy human race) led Arndt to propose a comprehensive programme of reforestation for Germany (395). He suggested that in areas which had previously been devoid of trees or woodlands, tracts of forest, at least fifteen hundred feet in width, should be planted at intervals of one and a half miles and that these should be “nie so gelichtet oder durchgehauen werden, daß die Stürme einen freien Durchzug hätten” (never thinned or felled, so that storms could have free passage through them, 396). His proposal supports the notion that Arndt had a real understanding of the problem of soil erosion; however, it hardly proves that Arndt wanted to create “eine kleine ‘grüne’ Utopie” (a small green utopia), as suggested by Hermand, nor does it confirm that Arndt wanted to

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return Germany to, as he also suggests, “ein tacitäisches ‘Land der Wälder’” (‘a country of woods’ as depicted by Tacitus, Hermand 1991: 45). Instead, for the good of the nation and the German race, Arndt envisaged a landscape dominated by trees and forests without which the race would inevitably spiral into decline: “so mögten wir nach einigen Jahrhunderten ein Volk seyn, auf das unsre Väter nur mit Jammer von ihren lichten Sitzen herabschaueten und das sie als ihre Enkel verschmäheten” (we [the German people] could, in a few centuries, become a race which our fathers look down upon from on high with pity and reject us as their grandchildren) (Arndt 1815: 402). For Arndt, they were an absolute and vital component of the German landscape, so much so that “das nackte und waldlose Germanien [wird] nicht mehr Germanien seyn” (a denuded and deforested Germany will no longer be Germany, 402). Despite the rambling nature of his article, Arndt provides an illuminating illustration of the state of the German landscape at the start of the nineteenth century: the changes in land use; the speed at which the ancient woodlands were disappearing; the housing projects necessary to accommodate an increasing population; the changes in the structure of society; and the construction of more factories. These were all developments which obviously alarmed Arndt to such an extent that he felt compelled to express in print his thoughts and fears about the future of the German race and country. Moreover, he did so long before the population exploded and industrialisation proper began. Three years later, in Geist der Zeit IV, volumes eight and nine of his collective Werke, published in 1818, Arndt continued the exploration of the relationship between the natural environment and the German race. 5. Geist der Zeit In this volume, his comments about the relationship between the German Volk and the natural environment occur in the penultimate chapter entitled ‘Das Alter, die Jugend’ (‘The Aged, The Youth’). He reveals that his hopes for the future of Germany rested on the younger generation and on a united Germany which would represent a Vaterland for the Volk. However, he was also wary that the current situation in Germany could thwart these hopes. Again, he regarded the

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preoccupation with money and financial matters, which affected every country and race, as an evil of the time (Arndt s.d.a: 283). Moreover, he feared that the German people had become so preoccupied with success and empty dreams that, in reality, they achieved little of any consequence. They appeared to be trapped in a sort of purgatory between the spiritual and physical worlds which made them of little use to the Vaterland or the world as a whole (287). In order to prevent this problem from arising, Arndt instructed the German people to remain vigilant to this danger and to concentrate on more earthly matters. According to Arndt, this was a simple task, for the German people were endowed not so much with a sense, or feeling, for nature but with a “Naturseele” (a soul in harmony with nature, 287). It was a permanent characteristic of the Volk which was unaffected by factors such as climate, religion or legal matters (285). Moreover, it was accompanied by a “Naturliebe” (love of nature) which was embedded deep in the souls of the German race and was demonstrated predominantly by “ein stilles Verständnis, eine innige Freundschaft und ein zarter Umgang mit der Natur” (a quiet understanding of nature as well as a deep friendship, and gentle contact with nature) (287). This sensitive race could not survive without daily stimulus from nature; it supplemented their material existence and supplied them with elements which they lacked. The natural environment endowed them with a vital “Lebenskraft” (vital energy, 287). Their appreciation of, and affinity towards, the natural environment was aided by the fact that the German people were Christians. Non-believers could marvel at the uniqueness and majesty of nature, but, because they had little real interaction with it, they not only cherished it less but also had less need for it. In comparison, Christians, and thus the German people, naturally possessed a “liebende Verständnis und träumerische und schwärmerische Empfängnis aller Natur” (a loving understanding and a wistful and enthusiastic conception for all nature) which also provided them with artistic and intellectual abilities and enthusiasm (288). Moreover, nature also provided “die Auflösung der ungeheuren Rätsel […], welche die Körper- und Geisterwelt miteinander verbinden” (the solution to the immense puzzle which connects the physical and the spiritual worlds, 288). By distinguishing between the physical and spiritual worlds, Arndt demonstrates with this quotation an understanding of dualism; how-

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ever, by continuing to suggest that nature could provide a solution to this enigma it also implies a move towards a more monistic outlook. Such a belief, although far from ecocentric or even biocentric, is important for an environmental awareness as it shifts the emphasis exclusively away from mankind and recognises the importance and primacy of nature. Arndt’s main concern, however, remained focused on the benefits nature provided the German race. Its importance was clearly visible even to those who passed merely a cursory glance at the population: Wie die Natur das volle Leben und die volle Gestalt und Schönheit des Menschen immer erneut und ergänzt, kann derjenige noch alle Tage sehen, der sich das Menschengewimmel in den verschiedenen Ständen und Klassen ein wenig ansieht. (289) (How nature continually renews and supplements a full life, the physical stature and the beauty of mankind is evident everyday to those who, for a while, observe the throng of human beings in all their various estates and classes.)

Nature, “mit ihrer geheimen Urkraft” (with its hidden elemental force), was essential for both mind and body (89). It provided a general air of peacefulness and innocence, but its benefits were most clearly visible in those people who lived in closest contact with their natural surroundings. The inhabitants of the fields, woods and mountains almost resembled nature and, like nature, appeared capable of anything. Moreover, whereas the rural population appeared less rigid, those who lived “ein künstliches Leben” (an artificial life) or who lived in urban areas, encased behind city walls, appeared fixed on achieving certain goals (289). Although at first glance one might consider having clear intentions to be a virtue, this shortcoming harks back to Arndt’s earlier comment that he believed that the German race had become too fixated on success. This was particularly true of the urban inhabitants who were considered to be much more infatuated with success, money and material possessions than their rural counterparts. It was also a phenomenon which, according to Arndt, became more pronounced the further the distance between man and nature (ibid.). By this Arndt could have been referring to the actual distance the urbanites were from the rural areas, or he could equally have been commenting on the changes in the landscape, such as the establishment of new industries which were literally covering the land and soil.

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At the time Arndt was writing, the impact of developments such as urbanisation and industrialisation was still relatively small-scale, but Arndt, nevertheless, was perceptive to the transformation of the landscape and concerned for the repercussions these changes would have on the population. In some cities, for instance, the interaction between man and nature had already declined to such an extent that little of any consequence was achieved. Arndt had himself seen German cities wo der Natursinn mit dem allgemeinen Leben fast erstorben war, wo ebenso, wie der weiland so große und blühende Trieb des Lebens in veralteten Formeln und Gebräuchen erstarrt war und keine Tat und kein Werk mehr schaffen konnte, auch die Gesichter und Gestalten an der toten Zeit gleichsam versteint waren. (289) (Where the feeling for nature was almost dead; where likewise the erstwhile great and thriving drive for life was paralysed in antiquated formulae and customs, where no more work or tasks could be accomplished and where, at this fatal time, physical and facial features were also equally petrified.)

This stagnation was bad enough, but it was also fatal for the survival of the race. The ancient Romans and Greeks had already perished “unter ihren Bildern und Steinen” (under their art and architecture) because they had worshipped their own creations rather than those of God (ibid.). This threat, however, was not merely confined to history. Younger races also stood at the precipice of extinction because of their disregard for nature: “Auf einer ähnlichen, gefährlichen Grenze möchten auch einige neuere Völker stehen, welche der Natur nur zuweilen zu bedürfen scheinen” (Some younger races also stand at a similar, dangerous juncture because they appear to need nature only occasionally, 289-90). With this precarious situation in mind, he advised the younger generation to go out into the countryside and rediscover nature before it was too late: Darum hinaus in Feld und Wald, in Tal und Gebirg, ihr deutschen Jünglinge! Und erfrischet und erquicket euch Leib und Seele an dem ewigen, geheimnisvollen und wundersamen Gegenspiegel eures Gemütes und des Himmels! (290) (Therefore German youth go out into the fields and forests, out into the valleys and mountains! And renew and refresh body and soul from the eternal, mysterious, wonderful reflection of your character and the heavens!)

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Similarly, the Volk as a whole could alleviate the problems of everyday life by experiencing nature where they could breathe in the fresh air and recoup lost vitality; the “Trieb des Lebens und der Liebe” (the motivation for love and life, 290). For the rural inhabitants, who were more in tune with their natural surrounding, this relationship was intuitive. The residents of the towns and cities, however, must take heed of their artificial existence and alter their way of life to emulate that of their rural cousins. The alternative, in Arndt’s opinion, was catastrophic for a life devoid of contact with nature was extremely bleak: “Denn halb ist das Leben, dem die Natur fehlt, und muß zuletzt notwendig in Mattigkeit und Dürftigkeit oder in Starrheit und Sprödigkeit vergehen” (because a life devoid of nature is only half a life and must necessarily come to an end because of weakness and wretchedness or inflexibility and recalcitrance, ibid.). The survival of a powerful and respected German race, for Arndt, did not only rest on the younger generation who were “das Salz der Erde” (salt of the earth) but also on the fact that the whole population should remain in close contact with the natural environment (ibid.). Only through such contact could nature bestow upon the Volk her invigorating and rejuvenating powers which would enable them to lead successful and purposeful lives. 6. Der Flamersheimer Erbenwald In contrast to these observations about the landscape which were, on the whole, carried out at a national, and at times even on a global level, in his last article Arndt is activated by a concern for the destruction of a local forest. The article entitled ‘Der Flamersheimer Erbenwald’ specifically deals with the impending fate of a wooded area close to Bonn. Reminiscent of the start of his first article, Arndt again comments on man’s apparent struggle to manage the landscape in a suitable and beneficial manner by questioning whether mankind was capable of preserving or creating anything of worth (Arndt 1815: 347 and Dühr 1975: 418). This opening sentence sets the tone for the whole article as Arndt was already convinced that the impending sale and “Zerstückelung” (division) of the Erbenwald represented its “nahe Todesgeschick” (Dühr 1975: 418). However, even though he realised

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that the state could not prevent this calamity, he suggested that instead of selling plots of forestry to individuals, this forest, and forests in general, should be bought by the state and preserved in the form of a “Staatswälder” (state forest, 419). In this manner, their survival would be assured, and they would remain accessible to all. This was of such importance to him that he even believed the state should pursue this policy “um jeden Preis” (at any price, ibid.). Again, he recognised the woodlands’ importance in preserving the fertility of the land and maintaining a balanced climate (ibid.). He cited Sicily, as he had previously, as a country which had once been forested and which now lay barren whilst in Germany he mentioned the Eifel region as an area which was now denuded of its oak and beech. Furthermore, even in this short article, he still mentioned the forest’s importance to the Germans’ “Gesundheit und Stärke” (health and strength, ibid.). However, whilst on this occasion Arndt did not dwell on the connection between the Volk and the environment, his belief in the need to preserve the forests remained. He criticised the government for their apparent inattention to the seriousness of the problem and their apparent complacency. Instead of protecting the forests, they invested vast sums of money “für andere unbedeutende Dinge” (for other unimportant things), such as the railways which were not only easily replaced but also not threatened with destruction (420). As he had begun this short essay, Arndt ended on a pessimistic note believing that the current generation appeared only too willing to destroy the forest which he realised could never be replaced “wie Gott und Natur ihn schufen” (how God and nature created it, ibid.). It was perhaps timely that eight years after penning this article, Arndt died in 1860 in Bonn at the age of ninety-one. He did not survive to witness the further destruction of the environment which accompanied the intense period of industrialisation and urbanisation in the following decades, and which would have no doubt incensed him further. It could be argued that the few pages he did write on the subject of the environment did not amount to much in comparison with his other literary accomplishments. However, his thoughts on the importance of the German landscape were not only profound; they also helped to establish a framework for nature-based and nationalistic ideas which were used and expanded upon by other writers in the

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nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In conclusion, the particular landscape of Germany, according to Arndt defined Germany as a country and shaped a specific German race, both of which he felt were threatened with destruction at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He believed, however, that it was not so much industrialisation or urbanisation which were to blame for plunging the German race closer to catastrophe and ultimate destruction but the new social make-up of society; a shift towards a more commercial, capitalist outlook on life; and an increasing focus on money, profit and materialism. The solution was obvious. In order for Germany to regain her former status and glory, the population merely had to return to a simpler, more natural way of life, which was in harmony with the natural surroundings. More specifically, this meant preserving and restoring Germany’s forests and woodlands which made up the unique landscape of Germany, and, without which, he feared not only would Germany as a country cease to exist but ultimately so would the German Volk. This nationalistic view of the landscape did not mean, however, that Arndt completely lacked an understanding of environmental issues. He recognised the role the forests played in maintaining a balanced climate, the fertility of the soil, and in preventing soil erosion: knowledge which was, on the whole, confined to the scientific community early on in the nineteenth century. Moreover, he also demonstrated an apparent awareness of the problem of sustainability. However, whilst such thoughts are to be applauded, they constitute neither environmentalism nor ecologism per se as some have suggested. Aspects of Arndt’s thoughts share ideas common not only to environmentalism but also to ecologism. Nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to interpret his thoughts as exhibiting either of these beliefs in their entirety. Fundamentally, Arndt was actuated by his sense of nationalism and his desire to safeguard the German race. Bibliography Arndt, Ernst Moritz. s.d.a Geist der Zeit (ed. Heinrich Meisner) (Ausgewählte Werke 12). Leipzig: Hesses Verlag. —. s.d.b. Über den Bauernstand und über seine Stellvertretung im Staate 1815 (ed. Robert Geerds) (Ausgewählte Werke 14). Leipzig: Hesses Verlag.

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—. 1815. ‘Ein Wort über die Pflegung und Erhaltung der Forsten und der Bauern im Sinne einer höheren, d.h. menschlichen Gesetzgebung’ in Der Wächter 2(2-3): 346-402. Bramwell, Anna. 1984. ‘Ricardo Walther Darré – Was this man “Father of the Greens”?’ in History Today 34: 7-13. Dobson, Andrew. 1993. ‘Ecologism’ in Eatwell, Roger and Anthony Wright (eds) Contemporary Political Ideologies. London: Pinter: 216-38. —. 1995. Green Political Thought. London and New York: Routledge. Dühr, Albrecht. 1975. Ernst Moritz Arndt Briefe. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Grainger, Alan. 1990. The Threatening Desert: Controlling Desertification. London: Earthscan Publications. Hermand, Jost. 1991. Grüne Utopien in Deutschland: Zur Geschichte des ökologischen Bewußtseins. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Hughes, Michael. 1988. Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800-1945. London: Arnold. Lehmann, Albrecht. 1996. ‘Wald: Über seine Erforschung aus volkskundlichen Fachtradition’ in Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 92(1): 32-47. Middleton, Nick. 1991. Desertification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Neue Anthropologie 3-4:91. Pundt, Alfred G. 1968. Arndt and the Nationalist Awakening in Germany. New York: AMS Press. Radkau, Joachim. 1986. ‘Warum wurde die Gefährdung der Natur durch den Menschen nicht rechtzeitig erkannt? Naturkult und Angst vor Holznot um 1800’ in Lübbe, Hermann and Ströker, Elisabeth (eds) Ökologische Probleme im kulturellen Wandel. Germany: Wilhelm Fink/Ferdinand Schöningh: 47-78. Riordan, Colin. 1997. ‘Green Ideas in Germany: A Historical Survey’ in Riordan Colin (ed.) Green Thought in German Culture. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Cardiff: University of Wales Press: xi-41. Schama, Simon. 1995. Landscape and Memory. New York: Vintage Books. Sichelschmidt, Gustav. 1981. Ernst Moritz Arndt. Berlin: Stapp. Thomas, David, S. G. and Nicholas J. Middleton. 1994. Desertification: Exploding the Myth. Chichester and New York: John Wiley and Sons.

It was shown in the way they stepped in the woods: nature in Hermann Löns and Edward Thomas Simon Meacher Abstract: This essay compares the seldom studied prose writings of the contemporaries Hermann Löns and Edward Thomas. It aims firstly to analyze and compare the writers’ attitudes towards the interaction of nature and modernity, examining how they juxtaposed their yearning for escape into the countryside with the demands of everyday life. Secondly, the essay sheds light on continuities and contrasts in their respective representations of nature, finding a mutual fascination with birdlife, while highlighting Löns’ strong reliance on the scientific method of classification and antipathy towards the presence of other humans in the countryside on the one hand, and Thomas’ lyrical style and acceptance of humans as an active participant in nature on the other. Finally, the essay contains a reassessment of the writers’ ecological awareness.

1. Introduction The First World War robbed Germany and England of two literary figures – Hermann Löns and Edward Thomas – who both demonstrated an extraordinary passion for nature. While Löns has sometimes been referred to as a forefather of the modern-day ecological movement in Germany (Dupke 1994: 11), Edward Thomas, however, is not someone whom one immediately associates with the green movement. The lives of these men which took reasonably similar paths spanned the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. During this time of considerable socio-political upheaval, industrial progress, and urbanization, Löns and Thomas devoted their lives to spending time in, observing, and recording the many faces of nature in the written word, each leaving behind them a considerable body of essays, poetry, and novels, which have made an enduring contribution to ecological thought. The aim of this article is to

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examine prose writings by Löns and Thomas which shed some light on their attitudes towards the interaction between nature and modernity in the early 20th century. Beginning with Löns I subsequently introduce the writing of Thomas and reveal continuities and contrasts in their respective representations of nature. This will lead me to a reassessment of these two writers’ ecological awareness. 2. Hermann Löns 2.1. Nature’s chronicler Born in West Prussia in 1866, Löns was the son of a schoolteacher who, in 1884, moved his family to Münster. After completing his Abitur at the second attempt, he studied philosophy, mathematics and natural sciences during two spells in Münster, medicine at Greifswald, and zoology at Göttingen. He earnt his living as a journalist based in Hannover and Bückeburg and subsequently, after volunteering to join the army at the age of 48 in 1914 he was killed in action near Reims in France after serving for barely one month. In addition to his journalism, Löns was a writer of fiction, including four novels, notably Der Wehrwolf (1910), poetry, including Mein goldenes Buch (1901), and animal stories, perhaps the most famous being Mümmelmann (1909), an unsentimental depiction of the life of a hare written from the perspective of the animal itself. A deeply troubled and insecure, yet colourful figure, Löns was a loner for much of his youth and spent most of his time in the countryside, drawing and cataloguing his findings, building up a large collection of wild animals and birds on which he practiced taxidermy. Later he became an enthusiastic huntsman. A chequered adulthood saw Löns have brushes with the law and imprisonment, become an alcoholic and a serial womanizer. He was a man of many contradictions – although the beauty of wildlife is praised in much of his writing, when it came to hunting, for example, he could be quite ruthless in his pursuit of trophies if not blind to the lasting impact of this practice on the natural order, and he made no attempt to conceal his enjoyment of urban life. In a lively biography, Thomas Dupke has demonstrated how Löns’s adult personality was shaped by the conflicting demands and contradictions of a society experiencing the onset of modernity with its concomitant rapid and bewildering advancements in industrializa-

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tion, urbanization, science and technology. Whenever he felt unable to cope with life’s pressures he sought refuge in alcohol, love affairs, or in nature, to which he could devote himself unconditionally. In Mein grünes Buch (1901), for example, he appears to satisfy his lust by turning his attentions to a countryside scene: “It was love at first sight. I fell for her at once” (1994: 51)1. Löns derived his conception of nature from Charles Darwin’s belief in the genealogical interconnectedness of all species (although he had no time for Darwin as a biologist: biology was a science the pursuit of which Löns believed would only lead to the demystification of nature). He clearly favoured the evolutionist argument (in opposition to that of creationists, who followed the word of the Bible regarding the origin of man to the letter) that natural selection was the basis of the evolution of humankind. Social Darwinism, a concept of social progress extracted from Darwinist ideas about evolution, provided the basis for Löns’s perspective on nature as an eternal struggle between, but also a symbiosis of humankind and nature. He believed in the idea of an Urmensch living alongside and yet in competition with nature. As Dupke writes however, Löns realised that society would not evolve according to such principles and so he reserved his energies for the observation and recording of nature (1994: 98). Some of his writings were posthumously misappropriated by the Nazis, for whom he became something of an idol. In the immediate post-war years many West Germans, ignoring his politically suspect side, and the reasons as to why the Nazis were so easily able to employ his writing for their propaganda purposes, sought solace in Löns’s depictions of nature and wildlife, and these writings remain popular to this day. 2.2. Writing as nature preservationism Hermann Löns’s nature writing can be read as the practice of nature preservationism, reclaiming and protecting nature from the malign influences of modernity. This occurs in his work in two ways: firstly, he records and classifies the diversity of species to be found in the countryside, thus reclaiming the land for the benefits to be gained 1

All quotations are my translations from the German.

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from wandering and silent observation; secondly, his essays are often accounts of escape, demonstrating how flight into nature satisfies a personal need for pleasure and solitary experience. In essence, his approach is an anthropocentric one. Both the scientific classification of nature and regarding nature as a place for escape are strongly human-centred activities. In this essay I will cite various essays from Löns’s collections of nature writing which demonstrate his propensity for classification and for escape. These are taken from Mein braunes Buch (1906) (tales from the Lüneburger Heide), Mein buntes Buch (1913) (nature observations), and Mein grünes Buch (1901) (depictions of hunting). Mein buntes Buch is clearly written from the perspective of one who has spent an enormous amount of time observing flora and fauna, nature’s processes, and the effects of changing climatic and seasonal conditions. However, one rarely encounters the voice of a narrator in these essays. Only occasionally does Löns allude to the fact that he is lying prostrate in the undergrowth or sitting somewhere while observing nature. Such is his absorption in the natural world that he seems scarcely aware of his own presence. This is quite different to those essays relating his hunting experiences in which he is unmistakeably the narrator and nature seems largely ancillary to his actions and thoughts. In Mein buntes Buch and Mein braunes Buch, however, his energies are focused on representing, as vividly as possible, the activities of wildlife and those of birds in particular. In several of the essays in Mein buntes Buch Löns’s relationship with nature is, as it was in his childhood, one of classification. He seems intent on citing as many species of birds, their habitat and their songs as is possible. The essays thus convey a sense of impressive ecological diversity. As the classification which takes place focuses mainly on birds, one might deem this writing an exercise in ornithology. Indeed, the concentration on birds evokes the agenda of the Vogelschutz movement, the earliest and the largest conservation society to feed into the broader Naturschutz / Heimatschutz movement of early 20th century Germany campaigning against the aesthetic impact of industry and urbanization encroaching upon natural landscapes and habitats which was gathering momentum around the same time Löns was writing. In 1908 for example, the Bund für Vogelschutz helped persuade the Reichstag to update its bird

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protection laws. Löns himself avoided organized Naturschutz, and even mocked the efforts of one of the movement’s leaders, Hugo Conwentz, whom he envied for having had a successful career as a botanist. In his writings, Löns instead relies on accurate description to make the case for Vogelschutz acting as a force for nature preservation in the face of industrial progress. ‘Der Baumgarten’, for example, contains references to 40 different birds within a bare four and a half pages: it is a veritable celebration of the beauty of birdsong and the colour of their plumages. Moreover, the essay portrays how birds participate in an animated association with the plants of spring. The coaltit, for example, sings the hazel back into life, at which the blackbird feels moved to awaken the apricot trees (1995: 97). Jealous of this effect, the chaffinch attempts to sing the cherry and pear trees into bud. A similar process occurs in Mein grünes Buch when a northerly wind apparently has a disorientating and dispiriting effect on birds where “the lapwing forgot its impish flight and roguish call, the lark misplaced her song and the blackcock lost all desire to dance and play” (1994: 27). These pictures of enchanted nature venture into the realms of sentimentality, and Löns veers even further in this direction in his extolling of the redstart, although this tone is later dispelled when a sparrowhawk arrives – a predator which picks off some of the songbirds. Elsewhere the tone is yet more sobering, however, Löns the huntsman recounting how he intervenes in the survival of the fittest: “Their sharp beaks have plucked up the odd young hare or partridge. Now they will receive their punishment” (1994: 24). Moreover, while he refrains from shooting birds of prey such as the buzzard “who proudly draws arcs in the sky,” Löns has no qualms about allowing the buzzard the sole rights to their common prey: “I can’t allow him the grouse” (1994: 84). ‘Die Kirchhofsmauer’ by contrast, is another essay set in the spring, in which Löns describes an old wall which has become a home to many creatures, an ecosystem in its own right. Once a part of village fortifications, the wall has been claimed by nature. The charming scene of harmonious co-existence of the wall’s wildlife is eventually subverted by the image of a toad which “yanks the worm out of the earth and stuffs it into his mouth” (1995: 103). The essay ‘Der Überhälter’ addresses an ageing oak tree, the patriarch of the forest. Again, over 40 different birds are mentioned, so that this essay

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marks a further contribution to Vogelschutz. All of these birds interact with the oak tree in some way and are its friends (1995: 140). Each type of bird seeks out a part of the tree in which to sing, to nest or to attract a mate. Nevertheless, Löns is once again under no illusions about the cycle of nature and states that the tree is old and rotting and will one day be torn apart by a storm. Without mention of his own emotions at the sights and sounds he depicts, he dispassionately makes the case for the protection of natural habitats and diversity within, and respect for, nature. Writing as nature preservation relies heavily on Löns’s knowledge of, and ability to classify, flora and fauna. In citing many species of bird, their habitat and their songs, he conveys the diversity and beauty in nature, simply relaying the sights and sounds of a scene from nature about which we might otherwise never hear. Löns thus allows nature to speak for itself and therefore his readers hopefully to recognize the value of preserving it without his having to resort to moralizing. Spring is Löns’s favourite season: “the Lord of the forest” (1994: 47). In his essays he records ecological processes that people do not usually notice, or have forgotten to pay attention to and the essays ‘Goldene Heide’ and ‘Im weiten weissen Moore’ from Mein braunes Buch extend his appreciation of the seasons from spring, to autumn and winter, containing observations about the fauna and flora peculiar to these seasons. These are times, he claims in his part critical, part lamenting style, when most people do not make the effort to appreciate what nature has to offer, unlike Löns himself who recognizes every leaf and every feather. These essays map the changes in nature and demonstrate how nature is omnipresent and eternal. The order of essays in his books is largely random without apparent structure or progression. Perhaps this unwillingness to impose any structure or order on the book reflects a desire that nature remain out of reach of human knowledge. Löns preferred to steer a course clear of scientific theories of nature which he regarded as robbing nature of its mysteries before humankind. Indeed, a favourite saying of his was “rather a gap in science than in nature” (Dupke 1994: 96). His books are clearly not intended to be an exhaustive natural history and actually seem more akin to a photograph album, or a collection of snapshots taken at haphazard locations. Dupke states that Löns tried to mimic the camera with his writing (1994: 103), preserving images of

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nature in words. But although these essays are snapshots, they do not, like photographs, represent a moment frozen in time. The idea of recording is most evident in the first essay of the collection, ‘Der Waldrand’ which, by giving the reader the impression of standing at the edge of a forest, is an appropriate entrance into nature. In it Löns describes the course of a day from the rising, to the setting of the sun. Löns notes how the dawning of a new day affects more senses than merely his sight: “The air is soft and tastes like warm rain […] A strong odour rises from the disturbed soil” (1995: 87). This scene, I think, has more of an eternal quality than any photograph: a photograph cannot convey nature’s impact upon the senses of smell and taste to the viewer, in Löns’s words however, these sensory impressions seem to live on. It transpires that he has returned to an identical location on consecutive days in order to observe and record the effect of changing meteorological conditions on patterns of behaviour in wildlife. Whereas on one day the skies are clear, on the next day they are hazy. In response to this the yellowhammer “tries to gather his song together; yesterday he wouldn’t make the effort” (Ibid.). Löns, unlike the casual visitor to the countryside, has the time, inclination and the patience to remain silent and still in one place. He notices things that others do not, or which they take for granted. His writing alerts us to them and to the pleasure to be gained in stopping to take heed of them. But it does so in essays such as this one without castigating the public at large for their ignorance. The same cannot be said for some of his other essays. 2.3. Löns and the pastoral Another notable characteristic of Löns’s essays is the theme of escape, which pervades most of his writing. This tendency corresponds with the first of the five categories of pastoralism as suggested by Roger Sales, the five “R’s”: refuge, reflection, rescue, requiem, and reconstruction. As Sales puts it, refuge constitutes “the desire for escape, pure and simple” (1983: 15). Löns’s nature writing may, in this sense, then, be justifiably termed pastoral literature. Löns often writes of how his mood, even his health, suffering from the urban surroundings, improves once he has put distance between himself and civilization. In ‘In der Jagdbude’ in Mein grünes Buch for example, he

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writes “I had a migraine when we met up at the station” (1994: 121). Then, he contrasts (rather chauvinistically) his suffering with the happier, more relaxed state he finds himself in once he is out in the countryside: “In the town I have a stuffy nose, migraines like a schoolmistress and nerves like a fashionable lady. None of this bothers me here” (1994: 122). In Mein grünes Buch Löns also wrote “When I’m hunting I seek out the wilderness. I don’t want to hear a person or a car, I don’t want to see or hear any trace of culture” (1994: 57). Of course, absolute silence is required both for the successful pursuit of prey while hunting, and also for the close observation of natural phenomena. But Löns’s preference for peace is arguably more an expression of world-weariness, as I intend to show. Two selections from Mein braunes Buch also epitomize his escapist tendencies in a fashion which blends experience of the countryside with adventures of the imagination. In the short story ‘Jürn’, for example, he disguises himself as the eponymous shepherd – another means of escaping – and elevates the life of one native to the Heide to a status superior to that of town dwellers who lack the knowledge of one who spends all his time in the countryside. In ‘Die Furt’, another example of his escapist tendency, the power of the imagination when it is inspired by the beauty of nature leads Löns to envision himself as the King of Avalon, the mythical last resting place of King Arthur. In venturing into the countryside Löns was never able to fully escape neither from the times in which he was living nor from the legacy of past human activity. Here and there are the traces of modernity (in the form of evidence of industrial progress), be it a quarry from which a nearby town gained its building sand, references to peat working, mountain tourism or mass deforestation of which the Lüneburger Heide – a virtual wilderness created by human hand – provides prime evidence. The railway, which Löns negatively associates with having a headache, is further stigmatized in ‘Der Heidweg’ where the whistle of the Hamburg to Hannover express train sounds in the distance. He delights in being far away from the railway and contrasts the transience of periods of human civilization and technological endeavours with the eternal qualities of nature: “How far away we are! But the north-easterly wind is laughing; how many cultures has he seen bloom and decay. Stone Age, Bronze Age, iron and steel, everything is transitory” (1995: 51-52).

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It is perhaps in expressing his desire for escape that the contradictions of Löns’s personality are reflected most prominently. Taking a possessive stance with respect to enjoyment of the countryside, his criticism of others’ ignorance of, and failure to fully appreciate nature, sees him adopt a finger wagging approach which sits uncomfortably with his desire for solitary experience of nature, and the implicit claim made by his writing for nature conservation. In ‘Das Genist’, he describes the flotsam left behind when a stream, swelled by rainwater, eventually recedes. He criticizes the failure of most people to walk indifferently past this flotsam without wondering as to its significance. The English Romantic William Blake wrote in the poem “Auguries of Innocence” about seeing the world in a grain of sand. Equally, for Löns, the flotsam is a source of wonderment in which it seems the bounty and omnipresence of nature can be found, if only people would stop to contemplate it: “If they bent down to take up a handful of flotsam, to examine it and consider everything that constitutes it, they would be amazed by the variety of life that is hidden inside it” (1995: 92-93). But Löns doesn’t need to say this for he has already listed the contents of the flotsam in intricate detail. Moreover, elsewhere in Mein buntes Buch he is content to let nature speak for itself. In the above example, conversely, his claim for attention to be paid to nature appears forced. It is an instance of Löns chastising others for their failure to interact with nature in the same fashion as him. This happens in various ways. In ‘Der Baumgarten’ for example, he repeatedly mocks the simplistic reactions of passersby to the interaction of birds and plants I referred to earlier (1995: 97), while in ‘Die Heide’ he accuses townspeople of turning unfaithful towards the heath once the summer high season comes to an end. Successive paragraphs contain references to the lack of knowledge or negligence of others: “They didn’t know”; “They don’t know anything”; “They don’t realise”; “people in the town have no idea” (1995: 110-14). At the end of this essay Löns succumbs to a tendency to lecture those living in urban areas. If they knew of the splendour to be found on the heath he says, they would not spend their leisure time in beer gardens but in discovering the Heide. Löns contradicts his own argument that more people should venture out to enjoy the countryside, however, for he clearly takes pleasure in the absence of others: “Only seldom does a human set foot in

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the jumble of needles, roots, fungi and moss. […] And I like it here” (1994: 93). Löns, as Raymond Dominick states, insisted that humans should tread lightly on the Earth (1992: 32). In Mein grünes Buch he notes how he walks “very quietly and carefully […] And suddenly exhaling greatly, I realise that I have been holding my breath the entire way through the forest” (1994: 43). He does show awareness of the potential for ecological degradation: in an essay about the Brocken in the Harz mountains, for example, one finds remarks about soil erosion, the result of mass nature tourism. Nevertheless, Löns appears to suggest, that only he is capable of treading lightly. He argues that what attracts him to the mountain, despite the fact that so many tourists can be found there, is that only a few truly know the mountain. In short, he rejoices in the fact that he can experience nature there in private and be rewarded for doing so: “Lady solitude” looks kindly upon the lone wanderer and “shows him the secrets of the mountain” (1995: 131). Where before he lamented the failure of others to recognize the beauty of nature in a handful of river flotsam, here he seems pleased that “the great throng of the Brocken visitors will never discover its secret life” (1995: 134). At other times, perhaps frustrated with life, he admits to being tired of other people’s company: absolute solitude in nature is what he craves. 3. Edward Thomas 3.1. Lyrical countryman A powerful urge for escape also exercised Edward Thomas. Thomas was born twelve years after Löns in 1878, in London. Like Löns he also signed up to fight in the First World War and was killed at Arras on Easter Monday in 1917. Part Welsh, part English, Thomas spent his youth in the capital, and his happiest times were spent wandering across London’s commons or, when visiting relatives, through the Wiltshire countryside in the footsteps of his idol, the nature writer Richard Jefferies. Thomas’ interests also numbered collecting insects and bird’s eggs, fishing, and observing wildlife. After reading history at Oxford university, a period during which he spent many hours walking through the Oxfordshire landscape to counter intense feelings of melancholy, Thomas began a career as a freelance writer and journalist, again, like Löns had done before him, but struggled to

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make a living. In addition to books and essays about the countryside he wrote critical studies, folk tales and book reviews. A first collection of nature observations, entitled The Woodland Life (1897), was published while he was still a student. They demonstrated how the countryside and in particular, the life of birds, were the source of private joy (another similarity with Löns). Since his boyhood Thomas had often embarked on journeys into nature (both imaginative wanderings and physical excursions) in order to escape from the realities of life. Again, the pastoral urge for refuge is evident here. A shy and self-effacing type, Thomas was later driven to the brink of suicide by feelings of despair and could only find temporary respite from such emotions when walking through nature. As a schoolboy Thomas would read books by Jefferies rather than partake in playground games. Then, as a journalist he was commissioned to write books and articles that required him to go on long and solitary walking tours, thus meeting his need for isolation, and, conversely, providing a soothing distraction from his sense of psychological estrangement. In The Heart of England (1906) Thomas demonstrated how he was, like Löns before him, strongly influenced by the conflicting demands of modern society. Celebrating the Golden Age of an England which was about to disappear forever – the late Victorian England of Richard Jefferies – Thomas created a pastoral work but was sufficiently objective to imbue his writing with a healthy scepticism. He queried the truthfulness of the pastoral vision he chose to chronicle. This ability to reflect on the passing of time is what the critic Andrew Motion has called a “recognisably modern sensibility” (1980: 11). Thomas is best known in Great Britain for his poetry, most of which he wrote in the last two years of his life. The poem is commonly held to be his ideal medium. His prose output, by comparison, is regarded unfavourably in some quarters. Andrew Motion deems it “a wasteful sacrifice of his time and talent” (1980: 30). This criticism appears to reinforce the point made by Jonathan Bate in The Song of the Earth that within the field of literary studies nature writing is deemed to be an unliterary form (2000: 55). The truth of the matter is, however, that in representing the factual reality of nature, nature writing is the closest thing to authentic environmental literature that we have at our disposal. Thomas’ nature essays record the many changing faces of the landscape and the seasons, and the

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peculiarities of wildlife, and convey a strong impression of the age in which he lived. As with Löns, his approach to writing about nature is essentially human-centred, although as will be seen, this is less pronounced than in the case of his German counterpart. Thomas’ prose clearly deserves a better fate than to be dismissed as a mere appendage to his poetry (nearly all of his poems can be found in embryonic form as prose pieces), and, as the publication of several critical editions has demonstrated, it is accepted as being important in its own right. In the following section of this essay therefore, I will examine a selection of Thomas’ prose and highlight what I think are interesting parallels and discontinuities between these essays and those of Löns. By doing so I hope to be able to arrive at some idea of these writers’ collective contribution to ecological thought. 3.2. Nature and humans in partnership A first point is that Thomas’s nature essays have a more lyrical quality than Löns’s, blending close observation with “reverie, imaginative recreation, and lightly disguised spiritual autobiography” (Hooker 1996: 56). They avoid the German’s tendency to list and classify and move away from his attempts to record a scene from nature as faithfully as possible and instead take into account the author’s thoughts and impressions of what he sees in nature. What comes to the fore in Thomas’ writing is his interest in birds and his desire to escape. In contrast to Löns, finding solace in nature is, for Thomas, not dependent on avoiding contact with others. Where Löns was unambiguous about his desire for solitary experience of the countryside, Thomas conceives of humankind as a partner in nature, as an active participant in nature, and just as capable of working hand in hand with nonhuman nature as it is of harming it. His is a markedly different concept of nature, then, which points to a more holistic and therefore greener perspective. A piece like “A Touch of Winter” reveals the importance of birds to Thomas although the near-enchanted scenery familiar to Löns’s writing is replaced here by the account of more surprising, and slightly disturbing, sights. The essay concludes with a scene which might be said to allude to the harnessing and cruel abuse of nature by humankind: “From some point not far distant comes a song that is rarely

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heard in December. These sweet though melancholy notes are unmistakeably the chaffinch’s. We are disappointed to find the handsome pink-breasted bird prisoned in a cage hanging against the farmstead wall” (1977: 132). Continuing the theme of the estrangement of humankind from birds, Thomas describes in “Salisbury Plain” how “Pewits wheeled over[head] with creaking wings and protests against the existence of man” (1977: 48). Conversely, humans are also seen to be capable of showing respect and appreciation for birds. In a parallel with Löns’s depiction of a huntsman who, moved by a spiritual identification with nature, recognizes when there is a time to spare wildlife, in “The Poacher” Thomas writes this of an acquaintance: “Birds of prey he would never shoot, even to show his skill. Jackdaws were always spared; he used to say that there was ‘a bit of God’ in that bird” (1977: 98). There is a sense, then, in which it can be said that Thomas’s prose connects unconsciously with the Vogelschutz movement of the early 20th century that also motivated Löns. A further similarity between the two writers is how their nature essays record their mutual desire to escape. “An Old Wood” is, for Thomas, a place where he can find “a feeling of ease and seclusion” (1977: 61). “One Green Field,” a chapter from Thomas’ pastoral work The Heart of England, tells of its author seeking ultimate happiness, and believing himself to coming close to finding it, away from the troubled reality of everyday life, wandering on his own through the countryside: I have long thought that I should recognize happiness could I ever achieve it. It would be health, or at least unthwarted intensity of sensual and mental life, in the midst of beautiful and astonishing things. […] The shadow of it I seem to see every day in entering a little idle field in a sternly luxuriant country (1932: 85).

A joint feature of both Löns’s and Thomas’ nature essays is the celebration of country life. Thomas’ essay “A Man of the Woods” echoes Löns’s ‘Jürn’, for in both pieces a country dweller is apparently accorded a superior status to the rest of humanity: “The power of [his] eyes is genius, or instinct; their characteristic is that they realize everything in their sweep, noting details which ordinary vision would not appreciate or be conscious of” (1977: 108). This tendency surfaces again in “The Poacher,” where the eponymous poacher shows “infinite tact” in dealing and communing with nature.

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This is “shown in the way he stepped in the woods, in the way he laid his ear to the bare ground” (1977: 97). I demonstrated earlier how Löns repeatedly castigates others for not having a detailed knowledge of nature, or at the very least for being ignorant of its beauty. Thomas on the other hand takes a more relaxed approach to addressing the shortcomings of humankind’s understanding of the natural world. He sees it as advantageous that humans stand to learn a great deal from spending time in the countryside, seeing it as positively beneficial that “faultless observers” such as his poacher “hand down nothing to posterity, since it leaves us free to feel ourselves discoverers” (Ibid.). Judging by his essays, the very thought of encouraging the public to partake in nature in this way would have horrified Löns. Thomas’s concept of nature is an altogether more inclusive one, however. His belief that humankind were citizens of the earth is demonstrated by frequent references to the presence of human and industrial activity (whereas Löns largely shunned mentioning it, or where he did, it was couched in pejorative terms). Typical of Thomas’ approach to nature representation in his prose is the essay “Flowers of Frost,” in which he demonstrates that it is not necessary to distance oneself far from human presence in order to see the beauty of nature – as Löns’s writing appears to imply – but that this can be encountered close by, on the boundary between urban and rural landscapes: The frost has been heavy, and the fields between the road and the woods are pure white without a seam. No footmark has touched the solitude, and it looks as if no one ever would cross it and enter the dark wood that is guarded so fairily. Nowhere is this inviolate look of the frosted woods more memorable than on the outskirts of London when the lamps on an open road are still glimmering and men are hurrying towards their trains (1977: 137).

It should be noted, however, that Thomas is also given to expressing conflicting emotions with regard to the interaction of modern life with nature in his essays. In “Surrey,” for example, Thomas looks forward to a time when “Nature will absorb London” (1977: 70). The city, he says, will not endure forever, and will not be able to withstand the efforts of nature to reclaim it for itself: “I like to see the preliminaries of this toil where Nature tries her hand at mossing the factory roof” (1977: 71). Furthermore, in “Chalk Pits” Thomas takes pleasure in

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nature’s reappropriation of once industrialized parts of the landscape. This is not some gleeful celebration of a vengeful act of nature, however. Thomas acknowledges the role played by humankind in reshaping the landscape and reminds us that humans and nature can work in partnership, as here in the creation of copses – islands of woodland ‘redeveloped’ by nature where gravel or chalk were once quarried. He declares that it is “consoling to remember how much of the pleasantness of English country is due to men, by chance or design” (Ibid.). Thomas seems to have been reconciled to the fact that humans will spoil nature, but he realized too that this need not always be an irredeemable sin. Hermann Löns did acknowledge the role played by humankind in creating the Lüneburger Heide as a result of deforestation. But in contrast to him, Thomas takes pleasure in the shared experience of such copses by wild- and human life without a hint of the meanness that characterizes Löns’s attitude towards the presence of others in the countryside. Thomas’ poem “The Chalk Pit,” based on the essay of the same name, sums up perfectly his views on the co-existence of humankind and nature and their shared ability to inspire awe: “Here, in fact, is nothing at all / Except a silent place that once rang loud, / And trees and us – imperfect friends, we men / And trees since time began” (1997: 52). 4. Conclusion: The legacy of Löns and Thomas Thomas’ prose is largely out of print and, it would follow, less often read. By contrast, Löns’s prose remains widely available. Its persistent appeal is perhaps explained in that readers can empathize with the struggle he faced to balance the forces of modernity with tradition. Those reading his work in our times are collectively expressing their will to escape from evidence of ecological crisis by turning to representations of largely unspoilt nature. They are themselves indulging in pastoralism: nostalgia for a time when life seemed less troubled. This contrast can, I would venture, be attributed to the greater levels of interest in Germany, on public and cultural levels, for environmental issues. Löns’s prose does have certain characteristics that one might deem ecological. His insistence that humans tread lightly upon the Earth, and his anti-modernist tendency (however sceptically one may regard it) are both traits that contribute to the agenda of modern-day

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ecologism. Nevertheless, what arguably overshadows this is the fact that Löns’s essays are expressions of the man’s individualistic desire to seek refuge, spending time alone in nature. Moreover, Löns adopts a fundamentalist position with regard to human’s place in nature: once he is ensconced within the countryside he is loathe to share it. His writing speaks more to humankind’s escapist yearnings than it does to the ecological crisis. Though biographies bear witness to Thomas’s similar tendency to go in search of refuge in the countryside, this desire is less pronounced in his writing than it is in Löns’s. Indeed, his prose, where a holistic and more pragmatic concept of nature is discernible, speaks of kinship with wild- and human life. He envisaged humankind’s role on this planet in such a way that reminds us of ecological notions of citizenship, and of partnership with nature. His nature is comprised of both urban and rural landscapes that are influenced and shaped by nonhuman and human activity. It seems to me then, that of the two writers I have studied here, it is Edward Thomas whose work has the more legitimate claim to infer on its author the title of a forefather of the modern-day green movement. Bibliography Bate, Jonathan. 2000. The Song of the Earth. London: Picador. Cooke, William. 1970. Edward Thomas: A Critical Biography. London: Faber. Dominick, Raymond H. 1992. The Environmental Movement in Germany. Prophets and Pioneers, 1871-1971. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Dupke, Thomas. 1994. Hermann Löns: Mythos und Wirklichkeit. Eine Biographie. Hildesheim: Claassen. Gant, Roland (ed.). 1977. Edward Thomas on the Countryside. A Selection of his Prose and Verse. London: Faber. Hooker, Jeremy. 1996. Writers in a Landscape. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Löns, Hermann. 1994. Mein grünes Buch. Jagdschilderungen. Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein. [First Edition Hannover: Schaper 1901.] —. 1995. Mein braunes Buch. Heidegeschichten / Mein buntes Buch. Beobachtungen in der Natur. Hanover and Hamelin: Adolf Sponholtz. [First edition Mein braunes Buch. Hannover: Ad. Sponholtz 1906. First edition Mein buntes Buch. Hannover: Sponholtz 1913.] Longley, Edna (ed.). 1981. A Language Not To Be Betrayed. Selected Prose of Edward Thomas. Manchester: Carcanet. Motion, Andrew. 1980. The Poetry of Edward Thomas. London: Routledge. Thomas, Edward. 1997. Selected Poems (ed. William Cooke). London: Dent.

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—. 1981. Edward Thomas. Selected Poems and Prose (ed. David Wright). Harmondsworth: Penguin. —. 1932. The Heart of England (ed. Eric Fitch Daglish). London: Dent.

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The aesthetic appreciation of nature as a reaction to dictatorship: disjunction and dissidence in the Inner Emigration Katharine Griffiths Abstract: The term “Inner Emigration” invariably elicits a response. While some insist that the idea of resistance by authors whom the National Socialists tolerated is oxymoronic, others staunchly defend them as subversive forces who deliberately and with dedication sought to counteract the entrenchment of Nazi values. Dissidence itself, to complicate matters, has been variously interpreted, with many critics questioning the value of texts which, as a result of the political situation, were forced to be oblique. While camouflage techniques such as the setting of a novel in a remote time and/or place and the use of complex metaphor are well documented, the use of nature in the expression of dissidence is an area which merits further consideration. As an integral concern in Germany within the remit of history, culture and identity, nature was well suited to eluding censorship, and yet through the exploration of ideas such as the simple life, the verkehrte Welt and the concept of subjectivity in relation to political power, some authors of the Inner Emigration constructed a challenge to the Nazi self-conception of omnipotence and to the thoughtless adoption of the Party’s values. Such achievements are recognised almost universally in the context of explicit dissidence, and this paper examines the extent to which they are valid claims within the Inner Emigration’s literary application of nature.

1. Introduction Nature has without doubt played an important role in a diverse range of literature for hundreds of years. The representation of nature is well documented, as indeed is the struggle for resistance during the Nazi era. However, the idea that nature could be used in the literature written in Germany between 1933 and 1945 as an expression of dissidence remains unexplored, and it is this which the article will examine: to what extent can nature be seen as an important narrative instrument in the articulation of dissidence in novels of the Inner

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Emigration? I shall explore this with reference to three works: Ernst Wiechert’s Das einfache Leben (The Simple Life), Ernst Jünger’s Auf den Marmorklippen (On the Marble Cliffs), and Werner Bergengruen’s Der Großtyrann und das Gericht (The Tyrant and the Court ). Since expressions of dissent could only be published with a considerable degree of ambiguity (indeed, this has often been described as its trademark, a fact which, ironically, allowed the Nazis to misuse such texts as propaganda [Stoehr 2001: 151-3]) authors were forced to be innovative in the adoption of means by which to subvert the strict rules of censorship. Among these are the choice of remote situations in terms of place and time (i.e. texts set in an unspecified or unidentifiable region and/or period of history), and the adoption of complex metaphors enabling authors to communicate to those readers who were aware of potential messages between the lines the complexity of meaning embodied in a supposedly apolitical tale. One crucial aspect which has been largely overlooked is the representation of nature in these texts. Given that this is an area which is not only historically central to the conception of German identity, but which was also appropriated and abused by National Socialist propaganda, an understanding of the authors’ use of nature is crucial to an understanding of these texts as dissident or subversive. They provide an easy target for critics determined to negate the effect and/or intention of their authors, however, in considering the role of nature in the texts it is possible to identify a challenge to Nazism’s totalitarian claims. I shall focus in this article on three main aspects of the use of nature as dissident: the idea of the simple life, the verkehrte Welt topos, and the concept of subjectivity in relation to political power. In The Margins of Dictatorship, Matthew Philpotts (2003: 143-66) addresses the problematic concept of resistance, the diverse interpretations of which are seen to depend on the authors’ intentions and the often paradoxical effects of the texts, the level of adherence to official norms – ideological, aesthetic and discursive, and the sociopolitical scales of “resistance” behaviour, for example, risk, legality, attitude, scope and the texts’ comparative public or private nature. The author’s preferred model is the one proposed by Ian Kershaw in The Nazi Dictatorship (1985: 170-1). This is a model visualised in concentric circles: a small core of “resistance” is separated by a broad band from the next category of “opposition” and encircled by the most

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common condition of “dissent”. In this model, “resistance” is understood as “organised attempts to work against the regime with the conscious aim of undermining it or planning for the moment of its demise.” “Opposition” includes “many forms of actions with limited aims, not directed against Nazism as a system and at times deriving from individuals or groups at least partially sympathetic towards the regime and its ideology.” “Dissent” covers “passive ‘oppositional’ feeling which did not necessarily result in any action, and the voicing of attitudes often spontaneous, at all critical of any aspect of Nazism.” A further model of resistance which is applicable to my texts underlines the difference between Widerstand and Resistenz; the former reflects the more traditional idea of resistance in denoting acts of resistance, while the latter is derived from medical terminology and refers to an attempt to preserve or induce immunity from corruption. It is this model which I shall particularly focus on in my analysis of the following texts. In this article I shall consider three authors of the so-called Inner Emigration. This is a controversial and well documented term, which has been applied to various, potentially contradictory, approaches. These are identified by Brekle (1985: 37) as “Flucht nach innen, in die Innerlichkeit”(flight within oneself, to introspection ), as “passiver Widerstand, […] geistige Opposition”(passive resistance, […] spiritual opposition), as “geistige Distanzierung von faschistischer Politik bzw. Kulturpolitik durch Schreiben nichtfaschistischer Werke”(spiritual distancing from Fascist politics or cultural politics through writing non-Fascist works), and as an “Oberbegriff für alle Schattierungen nichtfaschistischer Werke, einschließlich der aktiven Widerstandsliteratur”(an umbrella term for all grades of non-Fascist works, including actively resistant literature). For the purposes of this article I am taking it to mean those authors who remained in Germany between 1933 and 1945, many of whom produced texts which have been perceived as an attempt to be dissident or subversive.

2. Das einfache Leben Ernst Wiechert’s Das einfache Leben (1939) follows Thomas, a sailor who, disillusioned with corrupt society in the aftermath of war and

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confronted with life’s perceived meaninglessness, sets off from the city aspiring to become grounded “wie ein Stein auf dem Grund” (like a stone on the seabed, 133). Respect for and closeness to nature are an essential component of the protagonist’s search for the titled simple life, which will enable him to withstand the pressure to conform to post-war society’s corrupt norms, and to expose its deeply flawed ideological basis, enabling some readers to apply such scrutiny to the National Socialist systems of power. Though Wiechert has been criticised for “Flucht in eine sentimentale […] Innerlichkeit”(flight to sentimental introspection, Kunisch 1970: 715), his protagonist is deliberately not subject to the “politische Passivität des deutschen Bürgertums”(political passivity of the German bourgeoisie ) which the author supposedly fostered, and this accusation is countered again in the speeches which led to his arrest and in which he challenged his audience “sich nicht verführen zu lassen, nur Glanz und Glück zu sehen, wo so viel Leid sich heimlich an uns wendet. Und niemals sich dahin bringen zu lassen, zu schweigen, wenn das Gewissen ihnen zu reden befiehlt” (not to let ourselves be tempted to see just splendour and happiness where so much suffering is lurking ready to cry out to us. And never to let ourselves be persuaded to remain silent when our consciences command us to speak, Wiechert 1945: 14). Nature is absolutely crucial to this process. It is conceived as a Gaia figure with the capacity to heal and guide the protagonist and, more importantly, the world he has left behind: “die Natur hat tausend Wege und Kräfte. Sie wird auch die ‘alten Maßstäbe’ besiegen”(Nature has a thousand means and strengths. It will conquer the old norms too, Wiechert 1946: 295). The narrator acknowledges nature as holding the key to what Thomas is seeking: Indessen wuchs das Gesicht der Wälder immer näher und deutlicher in ihm auf, und es war ihm, als sei dort eigentlich erst das verborgen, was den Sinn der Landschaft ausmache und dazu auch das, was zu suchen er ausgezogen sei. (31) (Meanwhile, the face of the woods grew ever closer and clearer within him, and it seemed as though here at last was concealed the meaning of the landscape and in addition that for which he had begun his search.)

His search for a holistic order and understanding of life includes all of creation; basing his own morality on nature’s inherent innocence, he seeks as a manifestation of a just God figure a law in which “alle

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Sterne und Tiere gleich [sind], alle Menschen und Bäume, und der Aldebaran ist nicht mehr als der Hecht, den ich morgen fange. Beide enden, wenn es Zeit ist” (all stars and animals are equal, all trees and people, and the Aldebaran is [worth] no more than the pike which I shall catch tomorrow. Both expire when the time is right, 240). Incorruptible and un-self-conscious, the nature which the narrator portrays stands in stark contrast to the scenes in the city. References to nature continuing independent of and oblivious to humanity are frequent. Perhaps most striking is the description of the burning house in which the forester’s wife committed suicide: despite the grief which characterised her life and death, the fire is described as not only beautiful but also peaceful, “ruhig,” the flames are like “tausend Sterne” (a thousand stars) and the water “Leuchtfontänen” (fountains of light, 248). Indeed, nature is portrayed as cyclical but unchanging, with the creations of modernity imposed onto the landscape but powerless to change it in its quintessence: da sie fast alle ohne Hintergrund vor dem leeren Himmelsraum standen, so trugen die Felder in aller Kargheit ein Gesicht des Stolzes, als lägen sie noch da wie zu Beginn der Schöpfung und niemals sei anderes als Wind oder Regen oder eine kühle Sonne über sie hingegangen. (31) (since they almost all stood without any background, against the blank sky, the fields, in all their meagreness, wore an expression of pride, as though they had lain thus since the beginning of Creation and nothing but wind or rain or a cool sun had passed over them.)

It is this constancy which exposes the subjectivity of power, and the protagonist’s demonstration of his society’s lack of permanence and influence in the greater scheme of things can be extended to the understanding that any power is subjective and limited, an idea which, for the readers who were able to draw that parallel, belittles the totalitarian claims of the Nazi regime. Allied to this recognition of the limitations of human control is the criticism of an instrumentalised understanding and use of nature. One of the protagonist’s achievements is his recognition of nature as valuable in its own right, independent of usefulness: “Er lernte langsam, was ihm das Größte schien: die Natur, ja den Makrokosmos als etwas Zweckloses zu betrachten” (He learned gradually what seemed to him the greatest thing: to regard nature, yes, the

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macrocosm, as something without purpose, 282). A criticism of a modern society which is prepared to use and abuse its environment and its citizens, this aspect of the text can be seen to point to the National Socialist allocation of ideological meaning to essentially unconnected concepts, such as the demonising of a nomadic existence and glorification of a connection to the soil implied by the Blut und Boden values and concomitant condemnation of the entire Jewish population. It is this subjectivity which Thomas aims to eliminate in his own life. He devotes himself to work, seeing it as constant, objective and undeniably existent: “Gott mochte viel sein, oder er mochte ein Traum sein, aber der Schweiß der Stirne war kein Traum” (God might be a lot or he might be a dream, but the sweat on his brow was no dream, 110). Because of his location, nature cannot help but be an integral part of his work, which is defined by the seasons. When his input is superfluous, he still turns to nature for guidance, studying botany with the conviction that “das Geschaute, unter den Linsen des Mikroskops etwa, war noch größer als das Gedachte” (what was observed, under the lens of the microscope, for instance, was even greater than what was thought , 282). The protagonist’s newfound harmony retrospectively throws the situation of the city he has left into relief. Society’s metaphorical sickness is expressed in terms of nature both as illness, “Das Land ist wie ein kranker Wald” (The country is like an ailing forest, 80), and as lack of vitality, “Das alte Glück war kein Glück mehr, ein welker Strauß stand da, und man ging um ihn herum, sah, daß es nicht an Wasser fehlte, nicht an Sonne, und doch blieb er welk” (The old happiness was no longer happiness; a limp bouquet stood there, and people walked around it, seeing that it did not lack water, nor sun, and yet it remained limp, 64). Metaphors related to harvest are striking in the discrepancy created between the images traditionally associated with growth and the reality: “heisere Stimmen schrien die Ernte des Tages aus, die Kurse, die Morde, die Streiks, die Revolutionen” (hoarse voices screeched the day’s harvest, the stocks and shares, the murders, the strikes, the revolutions, 18) and: andere Gesichter tauchten auf, verhärmte, verdorbene, verwüstete. Es war, als schlinge der Zug die Ernte der letzten Jahre in sich hinein, zu dürren Garben hastig gebunden: Mütter, die vor sich hin wie auf Gräber starrten, auf eingesun-

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kene und verfallene Kreuze; Kinder, die für eine gestohlene Stunde beim Haß oder beim Laster zu Gast gewesen waren; Fremde, die auf schmutzige Blätter unleserliche Zeichen malten; und Krüppel, viele Krüppel, die Blutzeugen der großen Opferung, die stumpf oder voll Haß auf die Gesunden blickten; denen man gesagt hatte, daß sie Helden seien, und die in den Blicken der anderen nun zu lesen glaubten, daß man sie für arme Narren hielt, ein unbequemes Heer, das nun mitzuschleppen war auf dem Wege zu einem neuen Ziel. (15) (other faces emerged, haggard, deformed, desolate. It was as though the train were gorging the harvest of the preceding years, hastily bound into meagre sheaves: mothers staring into space as if looking at graves, at sunken and derelict crosses; children who had spent a snatched hour as the guests of hatred or vice; foreigners painting illegible symbols on dirty pages; and cripples, many cripples, the martyrs of the great sacrifice, looking dully or with hatred at the healthy; those who had been told that they were heroes and who thought they read in the glances of the others that they were seen as poor fools, an uncomfortable army to be hauled along on the path towards a new goal.)

The sense of being at odds with one’s natural habitat is conveyed in the description of people as like “tote Fische hinter Glaswänden”(dead fish behind glass walls, 15). Indeed, place takes on a symbolic quality, reflecting the events and atmosphere connected with it: “Er bog in eine der Nebenstraßen ein, die wie ein unendlicher Schacht in eine ferne Wüste zu laufen schien. Ein grünlicher Mond hing über den Dächern, fragwürdig wie alles Licht in dieser Stadt” (He turned into one of the side streets, which seemed to run like an endless chute into a distant desert. A greenish moon hung above the roofs, dubious like all light in this town, 16). The protagonist identifies in the city „die Sehnsucht, zu vielen solchen Gesichtern zu finden, zu einer schutzgebenden Masse, in der [er] untertauchen konnte, geborgen in der Namenlosigkeit” (the longing to find his way to many such faces, to a protective mass in which he could immerse himself, secure in his namelessness, 15) and is confronted by a friend’s disparagement in response to humanity’s many tools of escapism: “Ach, was hat der Mensch alles erfunden, um über das Wachsein hinwegzukommen! Götter und Künste, Kriege und Arbeit, Puppen und Maschinen” (Oh, how many things people have invented to escape their waking moments! Gods and art, wars and work, dolls and machines, 108). While it is ostensibly post-war German society which is the object of criticism in the work, much of the narrative is highly applicable to the situation of the Third Reich. These statements were insufficient to necessitate censorship but can

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be read as an injunction to individual responsibility and awareness as well as defending the text itself against charges of escapism. One of the inherent problems of literature of the Inner Emigration is the perceived marginality of its influence, which, though asserted in individual testimonies, is difficult to prove on a large scale. If Thomas’ life represents the situation of the Inner Emigration in attempting dissidence towards the reigning power at some level, the effect of which is contested, the narrator’s analysis of the protagonist’s influence can be seen as significant. This perspective conveys the marginality of Thomas’ influence through the increasing dismissal of his son, who is representative of modernity; yet distanced though Thomas is physically and ideologically from the object of his criticism, the narrator does not contest his assertion that “Die stillen Leben sind wie die Steine. Sie wachsen in der Tiefe, und niemand weiß von ihnen. Aber einmal werden die großen Dome aus ihnen gebaut” (The quiet lives are like stones. They grow in the depths and nobody knows about them. But one day great cathedrals will be built from them, 222) and his faith: daß immer der einzelne beginnen müsse, ehe viele aufbrechen dürften, und daß erst aus der unendlichen Mühe Weniger und Hingegebener ein Wort oder eine Tat reifen könne, so wie der Wein nicht aus einer Traube fließe, sondern erst aus der gehäuften Kelter. (198) (that an individual always had to begin before many people could set off, and that only from the unlimited effort of a few devotees could a word or an action mature, just as wine does not flow from the grape but from the filled press.)

Though Thomas is unlikely to have the opportunity to challenge directly the exponents of the values he criticises, his conviction that his way of life will enable action on another’s part suggests an affirmation of individual responsibility typical of Philpotts’ conception of Resistenz. These final two quotations are emblematic of the role of nature in the text: the understanding of living according to one’s beliefs, including the need for dissent, is consistently expressed in terms relating to nature, and it is through nature that the author is able to subvert the claims of the Nazi ideology, albeit on a small scale: by identifying the subjectivity inherent in any ideology, and by conveying the values related to a simple life as opposed to the verkehrte Welt in which he was writing.

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3. Auf den Marmorklippen Ernst Jünger’s Auf den Marmorklippen (1939) relates the lives of two brothers living physically and spiritually separate from the corruption which is rife beneath their home on the marble cliffs. The brothers are dedicated to botany, which they regard as protection from the evil encroaching upon them from the woodland stronghold of the tyrannical Oberförster (head forester). Nature provides a subject framework into which criticism of the abuse of power can be woven, and is thus invaluable in enabling the author to comment on the encroachment of an increasingly unnatural situation and to assert the individual’s role in resisting nihilism and passivity. In a world which is being turned upside down, both within the text and in the Nazi Germany in which the text was produced, the idea of stability was destined to be controversial. It is precisely this which the National Socialists regarded as stultifying and which they, and the parallel character of the head forester, sought to destroy. We are told early in the text that nature has traditionally enabled stability in a social and political context. Until the Oberförster arrived, life had remained largely unchanged for years. The fertility of the soil had had a mellowing effect on potentially troublesome newcomers, and local people’s identity was defined by their proximity to and dependence on the soil and its associated traditions: planting and making offerings to gods to enable successful harvests, for example. In the text’s present, however, the world has been turned on its head. People are rendered prey, in a possible allusion to the concentration camps, or referred to as “Menschenjäger” (hunters of men, Jünger 2001: 116) in a grotesque parody of the biblical ‘fishers of men’. This state of bestiality and confusion is expressed linguistically in the description of what is hideously far from the natural order of the world with terms which are traditionally perceived as natural, for example: “So blühten dunkle Konsulenten auf, die vor den Schranken das Unrecht schützten, und in den kleinen Hafenschenken nisteten die Bünde sich offen ein” (Thus dark consulants blossomed which prevented any restraint of injustice, and in the small harbour taverns the gangs nestled openly, 39). The chaos and immorality are emphasised in the association of nature, which the brothers regard as

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inherently incorruptible, with the atrocities perpetrated by humanity: on either side of the “Schinderhütte”(flayers’ huts) are bushes which they took to be laurel plants but which on closer inspection have leaves which are “gelb gescheckt, wie man sie in Fleischerläden sieht” (brindled yellow, as they are in butchers’ shops, 82). Though appropriated by many of the characters in the text, nature is used by the narrator to expose the disjunction between the heile Welt (sound world) image associated with places of beauty and the reality: the flies swarming around a body “schwirren wie in ein Bienenhaus” (buzzing like in a beehive), and the bird of prey awaiting the opportunity to eat is accompanying this butcher’s ‘work’ “so wie der Rabe dem Pfluge folgt” (just as the raven follows the plough, 83). This reflects an aspiration of many dissident authors in the Third Reich: to appeal to people’s recognition of the gulf between life as it was and life according to propaganda. The characters’ approach to life can be identified in their relationship with nature. The Oberförster despises “den Pflug, das Korn, die Rebe und die gezähmten Tiere […] die lichte Siedlung und das offene Herz”(the plough, the corn, the vine and the tame animals […] the bright settlement and the open heart ) and appreciates nature only in its propensity for subverting order: Ihm ging das Herz erst auf, wenn auf den Trümmern der Städte Moos und Efeu grünten und wenn in den geborstenen Kreuzgewölben der Dome die Fledermaus im Mondschein flatterte. Die letzten seiner großen Bäume sollten die Wurzeln an den Ufern der Marina baden, und über ihren Kronen sollte der Silberreiher auf den Schwarzstorch treffen, der aus den Eichenschlägen zum Sumpfe flog. Es sollten in der dunklen Weinbergerde die Eber mit den Hauern wühlen, und auf den Klosterteichen sollten die Biber kreisen, wenn auf verborgenen Pfaden das Wild zur Dämmerung in starken Rudeln an die Tränke zog. Und an den Rändern, wo die Bäume im Sumpf nicht Wurzel schlugen, sollte im frühen Jahr die Schnepfe streichen und spät im Herbst die Drossel an die rote Beet gehen. (49) (His heart was gladdened only when moss and ivy thrived on the rubble of the towns and when bats flitted about the bristling spires of the cross vaults in the moonlight. The last of his great trees should bathe their roots at the harbour edge and above their crowns the egrets should strike the black stork as it flew from the oak grove to the marsh. The boar should dig his tusks into the dark soil of the vineyards, and the beavers should circle the monastery’s ponds, while at twilight, on hidden trails, great packs of game animals drank from the troughs. And at the boundaries, in the marshy ground where no trees put down root, in spring snipes should swoop and in autumn the song thrush dig up the beetroot.)

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The brothers’ predilection for ordering and cataloguing nature can be seen as a response to this. The earnestness which they bring to this task is demonstrated by their striving for accuracy in language and understanding as well as botany. Their attention to detail is maintained not only within the secure environment of their home, but also in the presence of the horror which they experience on discovering the site of a terrible massacre during their search for a particular plant, at which point they return to complete their notes. As the violence increases, reality appears questionable, “beginnt zu flackern wie eine Leuchte in böser Wetterluft” (begins to flicker like a lamp in the air of an approaching storm, 85), and sense of place is confused: “Es schien uns nämlich nicht allein, daß draußen die Feuerwürmer ihr Wesen trieben, sondern als ob zugleich das Land sich in der Form verändere – als ob sich seine Wirklichkeit vermindere” (It seemed to us not only that the fireworms [bandits] were up to their tricks out there, but as though at the same time the very form of the countryside was changing, its reality was diminishing, 74). The brothers’ commitment to botany can be understood as a commitment to reality: not the corrupt reality encouraged by the Oberförster, but the enduring truth of what exists separate from a loaded ideology. This aim is further demonstrated in their perceived connection with Linnaeus: by aligning themselves with a long tradition of study and awareness, the brothers refute the current barbarism as supposedly a continuation of the Germanic closeness to the soil and thus expose the tyrant’s myths as just such, a narrative technique, as identified in Wiechert’s work, which cannot help but lead to speculation as to the validity of the ‘truths’, exposed as subjective, of Blut und Boden, race and the like relied on by the National Socialist dictatorship. This connection with and commitment to reality has come under fire from critics who charge Jünger with the aestheticisation of violence and destruction (Schelle 1970: 67-81). The narrator’s focus on the beauty, rather than causes and outcomes, of the fires around the cliffs and his perception of gunshots as music may be regarded as a substitute for active resistance consistent with their commitment “allein durch reine Geistesmacht zu widerstehen” (to resist through the pure power of the mind alone, Jünger 1946: 66). However, the narrator’s description of his youth as characterised by the pursuit of

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intense experience, a state which inevitably leads to violence, suggests that their appreciation of nature on an aesthetic level represents a connection with life’s “Übermut” (abundant joy) and “wilde Fülle” (rampant abundance, 10) without the associated destruction, a groundedness which is also demonstrated by their participation in their community’s festivals and battles. Indeed, the brothers’ awareness and appreciation of life and goodness is declared vital in resisting the nihilism and passivity practiced and advocated by the Oberförster: Es liegt im Blick des Auges, der sich erkennend und ohne niedere Blendung auf die Dinge richtet, eine große Kraft. Er nährt sich von der Schöpfung auf besondere Weise, und hierin liegt allein die Macht der Wissenschaft. So fühlten wir, wie selbst das schwache Blümlein in seiner Form und Bildung, die unverwelklich sind, uns stärkte, dem Hauche der Verwesung zu widerstehen. (86) (In a look cast upon things with recognition and without being dazzled by base concerns there lies great power. It gains nourishment from creation in a special way, and herein lies the power of scholarship. Thus we felt how even a fragile flower strengthened us, through its never-fading form, to resist the breath of decay.)

The author himself acknowledges the “Einheit von Schönheit, Hoheit und Gefahr” (unity of beauty, majesty and danger, 37), and Scholdt argues “daß gerade […] das Ästhetische ganz bewußt als Gegengewicht zum Chaotischen im politischen Bereich gesetzt wurde bzw. werden sollte und damit Ordnungsfunktion besitzt” (that precisely the aesthetic was used, or intended, as a deliberate counter to the chaotic element within the realm of politics and thus possesses the capacity to provide order, 1979: 562). The brothers’ declaration can be seen as an injunction to readers to recognise the importance of resistance encapsulated in Philpotts’ term Resistenz: though large-scale change may not be a possible outcome of such an approach, maintaining immunity from Nazi corruption implicates immunity from passivity and resignation. In this interpretation I disagree with Ritchie Robertson, who describes the narrator as engaging in “exact yet loveless botanical studies” which are “disturbingly similar to the cold, god-like detachment with which the barbarians look down on peaceful civilisation” (Watanabe-O’Kelly 1997: 386). The frequent charge of escapism brought against Jünger cannot be ignored. I have argued that Auf den Marmorklippen represents in many ways an alternative to passivity and resignation, in particular by

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highlighting the continuities of life represented through nature and the resulting subjectivity and limitation associated with any tool of power, and by acknowledging the strength inherent in a dedication to awareness on both a factual and aesthetic level. Seen in this light, the accusations of escapism seem to miss the point. The narrator does not idealise the brothers’ response to corruption, confessing that there are days when they retreat, overwhelmed, into their hermitage, nor does the author propose this lifestyle as a viable solution on a large scale. If by being true to oneself, one can remain to some degree immune to surrounding evil (as Philpotts proposes), the brothers’ approach must be validated. This is not a pacifist text - Belovar’s resistance with weapons is portrayed in a positive light – but it does make the case for a code of behaviour which remains true to one’s own beliefs, and the message of empowerment runs through it that “keine Reue bringt das Versäumte zurück” (no amount of regret can recreate missed opportunities, Jünger 2001: 5). 4. Der Großtyrann und das Gericht Like many works of the Inner Emigration, Werner Bergengruen’s Der Großtyrann und das Gericht (1935) is set in a remote and unspecified time and place. A simultaneous unravelling of a murder and the folly of the ruling tyrant, the text relies on a multitude of conceptions of nature. As in the previous texts, nature is vital in exposing corruption and proposing an alternative, and in highlighting the subjectivity of the ruling power and its ideology. Perhaps more than in the other texts it considers the link between morality and nature, and the potential challenge to the existing order embodied in an awareness and appreciation of life and the conviction to oppose corruption, as both Widerstand and Resistenz. In the following analysis, I shall argue that the various constructs of nature are paramount in establishing the text’s identity as a potentially subversive work. Of the three, this is the first text in which nature plays an identifiable role alongside the characters rather than being a foil for their experiences, an ‘other’ opposed to the self. Throughout the text, the weather, in particular the wind, maintains an ominous presence and is blamed for the chaos occurring in the town:

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In places where there is no explicit narrative comment, a description of the weather often functions to explain a character’s thoughts and motivations, for example, the confirmation of the superintendent’s self-destructive rejection of nature: “Eine wunderbare Frische strömte besänftigend ins Zimmer. Auch Nespoli konnte sich ihrer Einwirkung nicht völlig entziehen” (A wonderful freshness streamed soothingly into the room. Even Nespoli could not completely evade its influence, 83). While the tyrant claims the weather has no influence over him, this narrative voice would disagree: upon recognition of his mistakes, the weather changes, and the resolution of the confusion is echoed by the refreshing power of the cool air rushing into the “dürr gewordene Stadt” (the now barren town, 290). The exposure of lack of awareness is a key element of the text in representing dissent. The tyrant’s power is based on his ability to understand and manipulate his subjects, realising, for example, that Nespoli’s self-worth is inextricably bound up with his identity as a ‘hunter’, and that Don Luca’s Achilles heel is his tendency to become confused when faced with a challenge to his faith, which he understands at a holistic and intuitive level. The chaos which he instigates is possible because of the unquestioning acceptance of what the townspeople believe to be true and their unwillingness to question the status quo – he: wurde vom einfachen Volke geliebt wie fast jeder Gewaltherrscher; indem nämlich die geringen Leute nicht die Frage stellen, ob er ihrem Lose eine Besserung gebracht habe, sondern sich freudig daran genügen lassen, daß jemand da ist, welcher den Herrenstand bedrückt (77).

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(was loved by the ordinary people as is almost every tyrant, i.e. in that the humble folk did not ask whether he had improved their lot, but rather contented themselves with the fact that somebody was there to oppress the ruling classes).

When the murderer is finally revealed as the tyrant, Nespoli responds with frustration: “Ich habe es gewußt […]. Aber ich habe es nicht zu wissen gewagt” (I knew it […]. But I did not dare to know it, 307). This can be read as an imperative sapere aude, a statement which is highly significant if read in the context of the Third Reich. Daring to acknowledge the truth of the situation, the priorities of the Nazi ideology and the atrocities of persecution, was a prerequisite for any attempt at resistance, and given how difficult it was, an achievement in itself. If awareness alone cannot be construed as resistance, inducing greater awareness was a potential key to involving powers able to resist. It is an awareness of and closeness to nature which enables Sperone, the hermit and hero of the text, to find a way to end the chaos and corruption in sacrificing his life. Sperone aspires to a way of life which reflects the natural world’s essential incorruptibility, describing the woods and mountains “welche ja von keiner Schuld wissen. Ihre Schuld freilich haben auch sie, denn sie müssen ja teilnehmen an der Schuld alles Erschaffenen, aber sie wissen es nicht, und so wird es ihnen nicht zugerechnet” (which know no sin. They too, of course, are sinful, since they must share in the sin of all of creation, but they are unaware of it and so it is not ascribed to them, 221). Seeking courage for his sacrifice, he turns to the natural environment, and it is to the woods and Sperone’s garden, described as a holy place, which Diomede is drawn in his wish to understand the hermit: “was könnte ich von [Antonio] zu erfahren hoffen, das mehr Gewicht hätte als diese Örtlichkeit unter den Bäumen? ” (what could I hope to learn from Antonio which would carry more weight than this place beneath the trees?, 283). Nature not in its own right but as representation of God is the force which enables Don Luca, the priest, to resist corruption. His garden is vital to him as an individual and in nurturing his faith. Filled with wonder for the bees he keeps, observes and catalogues, and for the plants, butterflies and beetles which he collects, he “hatte Neigung, Gottes Größe im Winzigen zu bestaunen” (was inclined to marvel at God’s greatness as it appeared in tiny beings, 146). The power of his

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faith in the interdependence of spirituality and nature is such that when the tyrant’s manipulation leads him to believe he has broken faith with God, he sees his failure mirrored in his ailing fig tree, and interprets the death of a beautiful caterpillar crushed beneath the tyrant’s boot as threatening his conviction of the world’s intrinsic goodness, as the loss of “ein Unterpfand dafür […], daß jene Klarheit und Eindeutigkeit aller Weltendinge, an die er geglaubt hatte, ihren unverstörten Fortbestand behaupteten” (a guarantee that that clarity and unambiguity of everything in the world in which he had believed would continue its existence undisturbed, 152). The tyrant’s lack of awareness of nature is indicative of his flawed character. He regards the natural world as a featureless space in which to escape the realities of everyday life, going hunting not in order to spend time in a natural environment, but in pursuit of the “vollkommene Einsamkeit, in welcher er sich dort oben behagte” (perfect solitude in which he existed up there,119), and spending time outside invariably absorbed in a new project to create another building and thus transform the landscape. The description of the environment this creates emphasises the idea that natural environments are inherently purer than anything manmade: Die Begebnisse glichen dem kunstreichen Graben- und Stollenbau, wie er stattfindet zwischen Belagerern und Belagerten […] Auf jeden Stollen der Belagerer wird augenblicks mit dem Vortreiben eines Widerstollens aus der Festung geantwortet, und es geschieht endlich eine vollkommene Unterwühlung des geduldigen Erdbodens. Das kunstreiche Mit- und Widereinandersein zahlloser Laufgänge schafft zuletzt eine gänzliche Verwirrung (243). (The event resembled the artificial construction of ditches and tunnels found between besieger and besieged […] Every tunnel built by the besieger is answered with the advance of an enemy tunnel from the fortress until finally the result is the total excavation of the patient earth. In the end, the artificial cooperation and conflict of countless tunnels creates complete confusion.)

Indeed, it is through nature that the tyrant’s weakness is expressed. His love of building reflects not only his desire to control and dominate nature as he does his subjects, but also the hope: daß mich auf sehr lange Zeit etwas Gewisseres überlebe, als es die Aufzeichnungen der Geschichtsschreiber und die mündlichen Erzählungen der Menschen sind; nämlich etwas, das faßbar sei auch für das Auge desjenigen, der

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vielleicht nie meinen Namen hören wird (227). (that something more substantial will outlive me into the far distant future than historians’ records and people’s oral tales, namely something which will be comprehensible to the eyes of those who will perhaps never hear my name).

Thus while Sperone and Don Luca derive strength and courage from their understanding of the natural world, the tyrant relies on the creation of manmade structures to ward off his fear of death: “Des Großtyrannen Kopf duckte sich ein wenig in den Schultern, wie eines Menschen, der mit einem Schauder an den Tod denkt. ‘Es ist etwas Grauenhaftes, daß wir sterben müssen’, sagte er flüsternd” (The tyrant’s head cowered a little as someone’s would on thinking with a shudder about death. ‘It is a terrible thing that we must die’, he said under his breath, 71). Such fallibility denounces the myth of omnipotence which the tyrant has founded and contains, as in the other texts, a challenge to the similar claims of National Socialism, while the courage to oppose the ruling power is powerfully portrayed in Don Luca’s and Sperone’s actions and words, exemplified by Sperone’s conviction that: “es ist von Zeit zu Zeit notwendig, daß jemand um des Volkes willen aus freien Stücken ein Leiden auf sich nimmt” (From time to time it is necessary for someone to take suffering upon himself of his own free will for the sake of the people, 81). However, while it is easy to focus on the magnitude of a sacrifice like Sperone’s, the value of a commitment to a just way of life should not be ignored, and a tension between Wesen (being) and Tat (action) is implicit in the text. The Großtyrann sees action as a reflection of strength and as necessary to uphold his claim to power. His beliefs are clear in his instruction to Nespoli in the search for the murderer: “Ob du nun das Richtige tust oder nicht – handle. Es ist ja nicht daran das meiste gelegen, daß ein Mensch das Richtige tue, sondern daran, daß, was er tut, ihn zu Kräften nötige, die er zuvor nicht gehabt hat” (Whether you do the right thing or not – act. It matters less that a person does the right thing than that what he does compels him to strengths which he previously lacked, 78). This fuels Nespoli’s frantic search for “einen Täter. ‘Und wenn ich ihn aus der Erde scharren sollte’” (a culprit. Even if I have to claw him out of the ground, 83) in a grotesque parody of creation. When Sperone threatens to exercise control, over the town and over himself, the tyrant condemns him for

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taking the easy path rather than the life of piety which would, he believes, be harmless to his reign. Sperone’s confession does indeed disrupt the chaos: Die Nachricht von Sperones Selbstanschuldigung durchlief die Stadt ebenso schnell, wie alle vorangegangenen Gerüchte und Neuigkeiten es getan hatten. Doch unterschied sie sich von diesen merkwürdig in ihrer Wirkung, indem sie nicht gleich ihnen eine verwickelte Reihe von Entschlüssen, Gegenplänen, Vorstößen und Anerbietungen zur Folge hatte. Vielmehr führte sie, was Bemühungen solcher Art angeht, einen plötzlichen Stillstand herauf. (257) (The news of Sperone’s confession spread through the town as quickly as all preceding rumours and news had. However, it differed noticeably from these in its effect, in that it did not, like them, result in an intricate series of decisions, counter-plans, ventures and offers of help. Rather, it instigated, for such an endeavour, an arresting standstill.)

However, it is not Sperone’s action but his beliefs, his love for his fellow human beings and his commitment to goodness, which finally render the tyrant speechless and tearful and inspire Nespoli to challenge the status quo: Nespoli durchlief es glühend wie die Ahnung vom Dasein einer anderen Welt, einer Welt außerhalb all jener Ursachen und Folgen, an welche er geglaubt hatte, und doch in jeder von ihnen gegenwärtig, einer Welt ohne Vorbehalte. Es widerfuhr ihm ein plötzliches Auffluten aller seiner Seelenkräfte, und er fühlte, daß er alle seine künftigen Jahre hindurch werde die Hand ausstrecken müssen nach etwas, das er sich nicht zu deuten noch zu nennen wusste. (315-6) (It blazed through Nespoli like the premonition of another world, a world outside all of those causes and effects in which he had believed, and yet present within each of them, a world lacking any reservation. A sudden flood of all his spiritual and mental powers came over him, and he felt that through all the coming years he would have to stretch out his hand towards something which he could neither interpret nor name.)

In fact, Sperone’s Resistenz, his attempt at immunity from corruption, was at the root of both belief and action, and the tyrant’s resulting instruction to his subjects to return home in order to examine their consciences and put their lives in order betrays a striking shift towards an individual responsibility which by necessity lessens the total claim of any dictator. The complexity of interpretation regarding what constitutes action, by literary creations as well as by authors, is

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apparent in Paslick’s belief that even Sperone’s sacrifice is passive (1973: 71). 5. Conclusion Many critics see the writers of the Inner Emigration as inferior to those who went into exile by virtue of their decreased capacity to express explicit criticism of the regime. In this text, the question of active versus passive resistance comes to the fore, revealing passive resistance to be anything but passive. Not only can such an oppositional text be seen to inspire more active resistance, as is the case with Wiechert, nature functions as a measure of morality and awareness which I make a case for as communicating with dedicated readers at a level which, if recognised, could not be condemned by censorship. Bergengruen himself states that: alle, die nicht von der braunen Pest angesteckt oder doch nur mit leichteren Teilinfektionen behaftet waren, verstanden es sofort. Die ernstlich Erkrankten aber lasen und lobten es, ohne eine Empfindung dafür zu haben, daß hier über all das zu Gericht gesessen wurde, was sie selber verkörperten und zugleich im Licht einer überirdischen Verklärung erblickten. (1961: 10-6) (everyone who was not infected with the brown plague or was only afflicted with a partial infection understood it immediately. Those who were seriously ill, though, read and praised it without being able to sense that in it everything which they embodied and at the same time perceived in the light of a celestial transfiguration was being judged.)

He thereby acknowledges the “Feinhörigkeit” (powers of perception towards subtleties) not only of anti-fascist but also of non-fascist readers, who were a particularly important audience, since they were easy to influence, whether pro or contra National Socialism. While the presence of nature in a text, particularly at this point of German history, easily leads to its categorisation as escapist, idyllic nature writing, I would argue that nature plays a crucial part in the expression of subversiveness and Resistenz by some authors of the Inner Emigration. Viewed on a scale from ‘resistance’ to ‘collaboration’ (defined by Philpotts as “organised, public, and global in its support for the aims of the regime”), it is clear that literature written and published under the Nazi regime cannot be as explicitly critical of National Socialism as that published outside its influence, in exile or

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after the Second World War. Thus it seems short-sighted to rely on this comparison in establishing the extent of dissidence in Inner Emigration texts. In this article I have outlined a conception of Resistenz which values the attempt to maintain immunity from corruption, which exposes the subjectivity of emotive concepts such as the blood and soil myth, and which presents, in the einfaches Leben, an alternative to the verkehrte Welt represented in these texts and implicitly applied to the conditions in Nazi Germany. Such aims are recognised almost universally in the case of explicitly dissident literature and my thesis is that they can, and should, be valued in their representation through nature.

Bibliography Bergengruen, Werner. 1949. Der Großtyrann und das Gericht. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. —. 1961. Rückblick auf einen Roman. Mainz: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. Brekle, Wolfgang. 1985. Schriftsteller im antifaschistischen Widerstand 1933-1945 in Deutschland. Berlin: Aufbau. Gutmann, Helmut J. 1987. ‘Politische Parabel und mythisches Modell’ in Colloquia Germanica 20: 57. Jünger, Ernst. 2001. Auf den Marmorklippen. Munich: Ullstein. Kershaw, Ian. 1985. The Nazi Dictatorship. London: E. Arnold. Kunisch, Hermann. 1970. Handbuch der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur. Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung. Paslick, Robert H. 1973. ‘The Tempter’ in Neophilologus 57: 71. Philpotts, Matthew. 2003. The Margins of Dictatorship: Assent and Dissent in the Work of Günter Eich and Bertolt Brecht. Bern: Peter Lang. Schelle, Hansjörg. 1970. Ernst Jüngers ‘Marmor-Klippen’: Eine kritische Interpretation. Leiden: Brill. Scholdt, Günter. 1979. ‘Gescheitert an den Marmorklippen’ in Zeitschrift für deutsche Philolgie 98: 562. Stoehr, Ingo R. 2001. German Literature of the Twentieth Century. Vol. 10. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen (ed.). 1997. The Cambridge History of German Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiechert, Ernst. 1945. Der Dichter und die Zeit: Rede, gehalten am 16. April im Auditorium Maximum der Universität München. Zurich: Artemis. —. 1946. Das einfache Leben. Munich: K. Desch. —. 1979. Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 2. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

From egocentrism to ecocentrism: nature and morality in German writing in the 1980s Axel Goodbody Abstract: In the late 1970s, the focus of the German environmental movement shifted away from specific, practical issues to a more general critique of modern civilisation, and a radical, holist eco-philosophy emerged. Alongside myth, religiosity and aesthetics, the moral dimension of ecologism came to the fore. Three prose works from the first half of the 1980s, Die Rättin, Kassandra and Moos, are examined here as case studies of the contribution of creative writing to public debate on the ethics of our relationship with nature. Their authors, Günter Grass, Christa Wolf and Klaus Modick adopt standpoints representative of significant constituencies in the environmental movement: humanist anthropocentrism, cultural feminism and New Age pantheism. However, they go beyond mere statement of these positions by reflecting on their role as writers and inscribing awareness of the impossibility of simple solutions in their fictional narratives.

1. The transformation of environmentalism into a moral imperative in the 1980s Towards the end of the 1970s, the environmental movement in Germany entered a second phase. The most visible change was that towards institutionalisation and parliamentarisation. The grass-roots activism of the Citizens’ Initiatives with their relatively informal structures was superseded by delegation of action to ecologically oriented political groupings, first at the Land level, and nationally in 1980, with the founding of the Green Party. At the same time, the scenarios of environmental apocalypse outlined over the previous decade in the writings of Barry Commoner and Paul Ehrlich, and subjected to scientific modelling in the MIT study The Limits to Growth, were revived. On the one hand, this stemmed from the prospect of a nuclear war as a result of the so-called ‘dual-track’

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NATO decision of 1979, and the stationing of US medium-range missiles on German soil. On the other, the discovery of forest dieback and its origin in acid rain brought recognition of a dramatic new threat to the environment. This structural change in the environmental movement and its new thematic focuses were accompanied by a shift in the underlying approach to ecological concerns. The first phase of environmentalism in Germany had been principally occupied with practical problems and their solution, for instance limiting the health and security risks associated with nuclear technology and reducing resource consumption and pollution, or, on the local level, with blocking major construction projects which encroached on the countryside. Wary of association with ideologically tainted traditions of nature conservation, environmental writers and journalists foregrounded rational arguments and the scientific evidence in support of their case. The shift to a holist position at the end of the decade brought environmentalism closer to traditional critiques of modernity present in Romanticism and the turn-of-the-century Life Reform Movement.1 The part played in the motivation of activists by hitherto unfashionable, subjective factors was increasingly acknowledged. An ecological philosophy calling for a radical change in our way of life began to emerge which drew on myth and religious feeling alongside scientific findings, and sought to combine rational arguments with intuition. The emergence of Deep Ecology and the reappearance of myth and (New Age) religiosity in the early 1980s have been discussed elsewhere.2 My concern here is with the moral dimension of ecologism which now came to the fore. Ecology advanced in the course of the 1970s from an obscure sub-category of biology to a key discipline primarily concerned with the human impact on the environment, and hence with questions relevant to the very survival of humanity. Human ecology was, in the words of Carl Amery, a leading German environmental thinker at the time, a pivotal ‘lead science’, in 1

Lebensreformbewegung (Life Reform Movement) is a convenient umbrella term for the plethora of independent popular initiatives which sprang up at the end of the nineteenth century, promoting reform schools, communal living, housing reform, vegetarianism, abstinence from alcohol, natural healing and nudism. 2 See Hesse and Wiebe 1988, Dominick 1992, Hermand 1992, Christmann 1997, Thompson 1997 and Theobald 2003.

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which all others were grounded (Amery 1976: 36f.). Behaving in a way that was environmentally friendly (or sustainable, to use the slogan of the next decade) came to be regarded as synonymous with moral probity. A flood of publications on environmental ethics was prompted by the need to elaborate the principles on which environmental protection and medical ethics were based. Among the most influential of these in Germany was Hans Jonas’s Das Prinzip Verantwortung (The Principle of Responsibility, Jonas 1979). In an explicit rebuttal of the Marxist utopia envisaged in Ernst Bloch’s Prinzip Hoffnung (The Principle of Hope, 1959), Jonas demands acceptance of a responsibility for nature grounded in an ethic of humility and awe (Jonas 1979: 8 and 55). He calls for the adoption of ‘fear’ as a heuristic position – not, that is, a fear hindering action, but one spurring on to it (8 and 391f.). Jonas reformulates the Kantian categorical imperative (‘Act as if the maxim of your action was to become through your will a universal law of nature’3) in an environmental variant: ‘Act in such a way that the effects of your actions are compatible with a permanence of genuine human life on Earth’; or, put negatively: ‘Act in such a way that the effects of your actions do not impact destructively on the future possibility of such life’; or simply: ‘Do not endanger the conditions for the continuance of humanity on Earth indefinitely’; or, again in the positive sense: ‘Embrace in your present choice the future integrity of humanity as a co-object of your wishes’. (Jonas 1979: 36)

The necessary change in behaviour will not be possible without a degree of voluntary asceticism, he warns (263-5). Jonas’ principal argument for nature protection is the teleological one, i.e. that we should attribute intrinsic value to nature because it pursues a purpose. This is, however, problematic (see for instance Krebs 1997: 352-5 and 364), and at one point Jonas himself acknowledges it may ultimately be impossible to justify protecting nature without recourse to intuitive, religious feeling: The question is whether it is possible to have an ethic powerful enough to rein in the extreme forces which we possess today and find ourselves practically com3

All translations are my own – Axel Goodbody.

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Other contributions to environmental ethics at the time included Klaus-Michael Meyer-Abich’s Wege zum Frieden mit der Natur (Ways to A Peace With Nature, 1984) and Manon Maren-Grisebach’s Philosophie der Grünen (Philosophy of the Greens, 1982). MeyerAbich explored links with Goethe’s “zarte Empirie” (delicate empiricism) and alternative form of science, while the holistic philosophies expounded by Maren-Grisebach and others drew on a wide range of sources, including Zen Buddhism and the beliefs and practices of Naturvölker (premodern societies) such as Native Americans. The legendary land ethic speech of the Suquamish Chief Seattle (Seattle 1992), was, for instance, circulated in popular editions in alternative bookshops and health food shops. Published repeatedly from 1976 onwards, under differing titles, with the text often accompanied by photos of beautiful landscapes or scenes of environmental damage, it served as an inspiration for songs, prayers, films and educational radio programmes. Its problematic status as a historical document, purporting to be the statement of a 19th-century prophet of ecologist sentiment (see Kaiser 1987), did not prevent its imagery, symbolism and phrasing from capturing the public imagination. It expressed the thoughts and feelings of a generation concerning the sacredness of the earth and the potential participation of humanity in the greater community of all being. However, it should be noted that this development did not go unopposed. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, for instance, took environmentalists to task for their political naivety and their conflation of theory with Weltanschauung in a perceptive (but, viewed in retrospect, politically misguided) article written in 1973. Though he criticised the West German Left for their blinkered dismissal of the environmental crisis as a mere product of capitalism, and of prognoses of doom as a bourgeois fetish, he wrote sceptically of ecology: “All in all, the new scientific discipline has been credited with a totality of importance which it simply cannot live up to” (Enzensberger 1973: 1f.).

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Ten years later, Ludwig Trepl noted in the same journal (Kursbuch), in a similarly critical vein, that people were less likely to think of ecology as an academic discipline or a career choice than as a matter of faith or political conviction. (Trepl 1983: 6). For a large and growing proportion of the population, ecology was now a focus for hopes previously aligned with words like ‘Paradise’ and ‘Communism’, and held out the prospect of a kind of human redemption. (ibid.) Trepl described how rational arguments concerned with securing the future of humankind had gradually been displaced by reflections on a qualitatively new relationship with nature free of domination. (24) Frustration with the defensive character of most ecological utopias grounded on sparing and efficient use of natural resources, recycling and appropriate waste disposal had led to the positing of an intrinsic worth in nature. Some called for its treatment with respect, even awe, others for its endowment with rights equivalent to those of human beings (23). Nature had become a norm (“The movement understands Ecology as a normative science concerned not only with establishing how things are, but also with laying down how they should be,” 23), and Trepl pointed out such ‘biologism’, taking nature’s laws as a model for human society and its processes as a yardstick for human behaviour, was just as likely to be reactionary (e.g. in völkisch and Nazi ideology) as it was to be emancipatory (e.g. in Rousseau and the minds of contemporary environmentalists). Literature, which has traditionally been concerned with questions of the meaning of life and moral behaviour, participated on this debate on nature, and, without relinquishing their artistic autonomy or reducing their habitual concern with complexity and ambiguity to onedimensional meaning or simple arguments, major and minor writers of fiction played a role in formulating ideas, structures of feeling and perceptions of problems, and influencing public opinion. Three prose works published between 1983 and 1986 are examined here: I ask what positions they reflect and how they present and adapt them, what strategies they resort to in order to persuade readers to change their views, what dimensions of irony or ambiguity their environmental message is qualified by, and what overall contribution they have made to the public understanding of nature, progress and the future of humankind. Günter Grass’s Die Rättin and Christa Wolf’s Kassandra

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are obvious choices, inasmuch as they are major works by authors with an international reputation. (They have been translated into English as The Rat and Cassandra respectively.) Klaus Modick’s Moos, which is shorter and slighter, is included here because it exemplifies another significant strand of thought in the German environmental movement. All three are concerned in one way or other with two things. First, they critique contemporary society with arguments ultimately derived from Rousseau and the tradition of cultural criticism, and more recently developed by Weber, Horkheimer and Adorno and other 20thcentury critics of modernity. These concern the domination of an instrumental approach to nature, the rationalisation and accelerated tempo of modern life, the disempowering and alienation of the individual, and the corrupting effect of material wealth. Grass, Wolf and Modick lament the consumption, pollution and destruction of the environment, and identify egocentrism, materialism and powerseeking as among their principal factors. And secondly, they formulate visions of a nature-oriented alternative, subordinating individual self-realisation to the good of the community and responsibility to future generations – in a simple, natural way of life involving a degree of renunciation. 2. Günter Grass, Die Rättin It is difficult to summarise the content of Günter Grass’ novel Die Rättin, the longest and most ambitious German work of environmental prose fiction. The book addresses a compendium of themes in six principal narrative strands and further subsidiary ones, which are held together by the reflections of the narrator and his dialogue with the she-rat in the title. The principal theme is the possibility of nuclear war between the superpowers and the annihilation of human life on Earth. The rat asserts this has already happened, leaving the narrator encircling the Earth in a space capsule as sole survivor, while the narrator desperately denies this, and claims it is not too late for humanity to change its ways. The first narrative embedded in this framework is the story of five women who set out on a boat to measure the number of jellyfish at selected points around the Baltic, as part of a study of marine pollu-

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tion. Their research project is, however, interrupted by participation in an animal rights demonstration in the Swedish port of Visby, and overtaken by a quest for the lost city of Vineta, a version of the Atlantis myth to which Grass gives a feminist twist. A second, satirical narrative is concerned with forest dieback. Grass adapts the story of Hänsel and Gretel, inventing an amusing, if tragic, tale of rebellion against the erosion of their home, the German forest, by characters from the Grimms’ fairy tales. Behind the façade of Romantic conceptions of the German forest he exposes a cornucopia of rubbish, poisons, scrapped cars, factory chimneys and acid rain. However, his primary interest is in the impact of the loss of the forests on the German psyche. The unconscious, intuitive, and creative side of human culture, he infers, is under threat. A third narrative strand is concerned with the art forger Lothar Malskat, whose ‘restoration’ of the Gothic murals in the bomb-damaged cathedral in Lübeck in the 1950s becomes an emblem of the deception and dishonesty on which Grass sees the two postwar German states as founded. The fourth narrative complex reintroduces Oskar Matzerath, the protagonist of Grass’ first novel Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1959). Now aged sixty and a wealthy media magnate, Oskar travels to his childhood home in Poland to attend his grandmother’s one hundred and seventh birthday celebrations. He intervenes repeatedly in the narrator’s plans, demanding changes to the above narratives if he is to produce films of them. Two further narratives are discussed by Oskar and the narrator. The first is a version of the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and the second a story involving a race of Ratmen, the results of a Swedish experiment in genetic engineering, and their fortunes in a posthuman era after the nuclear conflagration. Grass’ novel opens with the narrator celebrating Christmas in 1983 – that annual occasion when the yawning gap between spiritual expectation and its degeneration into an orgy of consumption and sentimental self-satisfaction is most apparent (Grass 1997: 8f.). His anxieties about the future are intensified by awareness he is standing on the brink of ‘Orwell’s Year’, i.e. 1984. The autobiographical narrator’s feelings of awkwardness and embarrassment at the superfluity of material goods in modern society are later developed into a sustained critique of the complacent affluence, egoistic arrogance and consumer-orientation in contemporary society. Two of Grass’s narra-

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tives are particularly relevant here, the story “The Grimms’ Forests” and that based on the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In both, young people break with the older generation, repudiating a way of life which is satirically summed up in the first in the gluttony of the German Chancellor, who constantly devours cream cakes. The Chancellor’s children, Hänsel and Gretel, expose the hypocrisy of their parents’ cult of Romantic nature, and run away into the forest. In Grass’ variant on the Pied Piper story the children of Hamelin are not kidnapped by the piper in revenge for not being paid, but punks, who leave their homes of their own will. Feared and rejected by their materialistic, emotionally empty parents, they leave home, accompanied by their pet rats, to live a new life embracing sensuality and the feelings. The central theme of the book is the three-fold course of humanity’s self-destruction. The first form this takes, pollution of the environment, can itself be broken down into three components, each of which finds expression in one of Grass’ narratives: solid waste disposal, water pollution, and forest dieback as a consequence of atmospheric pollution. Preaching from the top of a mountain of rubbish (an allusion to Jean Paul’s nihilist “Proclamation of the dead Christ from the top of the world that there is no God” from the novel Siebenkäs, written in 1818), the she-rat expounds a vision of landscapes of litter and toxic waste. This is matched by Grass’ depiction of the Baltic, a sea on whose shores he grew up, and which plays a central role in his writing, as poisoned with mercury and lead and choked with seaweed as a consequence of pollution with nutrients (22). The increased incidence of jellyfish (specifically aurelia aurita) serves as an indicator of eutrophication (167f.). But it is the consequences of atmospheric pollution to which Grass attaches the greatest importance. The dying forests represent an act of human self-destruction. For as places associated with imagination, wonder and fear, with cultural tradition in general, and fairy-tales (those crucial elements in the formulation of collective memory with a special potential to do justice to human reality) in particular, they are reservoirs of symbolic resistance to instrumentalisation (see 354). The loss of imagination endangers our ability to see reality in all its contradictory dimensions. The forests are spaces essential to our selfunderstanding and to the richness of our experience (120, 354). With

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the destruction of the forests, the fairy-tale characters are reduced to caricatures of themselves, compulsively repeating their actions. Modernity’s second path towards self-annihilation has been through the development of weapons systems and dangerous technologies. Reflecting on the possibility of an accidental triggering of the nuclear missiles already stationed in East and West, whose upgrading was so bitterly opposed in Germany at the time of writing, and on the dangerous potential of genetic engineering, Grass suggests humankind has taken upon itself an unprecedented degree of control of nature, without recognising the responsibilities associated with it. The final self-induced threat to our existence as a species, over-population, features particularly towards the end of the book, in Grass’ scenario of a posthuman society of Ratmen, where shortages lead to starvation and repression. Grass’ narratives explore the viability of two main alternatives. The first is liberal environmentalism. Grass satirises the well-meant but ineffective efforts of Land and Federal governments to initiate reform in the story of the Grimm brothers, who he makes Minister for the Environment and Secretary of State in charge of forests. Used as an alibi by the real powers in society, the classical triad of industry, military and church, but blocked in their efforts to bring about any real change, such as an end to economic growth, they are briefly galvanised into action when the fairy-tale characters kidnap the Chancellor. Grass’ presentation of their brief heyday, at the helm of a state governed along ecological principles, is deeply ironic. The country is literally ‘greened’: the cooling towers of nuclear power stations, tanks and fighter aircraft are smothered in moss and lichen, while plants break down walls and devour files in government offices (356). This idyll of a world without factory chimneys, whose population is first bemused, then relaxes into an easier tempo of life, collapses when the church and academia are bribed. The forest only survives as a fiction projected into the past. The second alternative explored in the novel, feminism, is reflected in the approach of the five women on board the Neue Ilsebill, researching pollution in the Baltic, and cultivating non-material pleasures. Their knitting is an image for patient fact-collecting and argument, tireless effort and determined common sense (and as such a reflection of Grass’s understanding of his efforts as an author). But the

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hopes which Grass had placed in the women’s movement in his earlier novel Der Butt (The Flounder, 1977) have evaporated. Their patient counting of jellyfish is abandoned, first for the excitement of participation a violent animal rights demonstration, and again when the captain Damroka abandons the research schedule in order to pursue a myth. She changes course to seek out the legendary city of Vineta, sunk beneath the waves off the coast of the island of Rügen. This prototypic matriarchal society free of domination (328), referred to at one point as “Feminal-City” (442), is dismissed by Grass as an illusion. It proves to have long since succumbed to the temptations of affluence, abandoned justice and equality, and been overrun by rats (97, 282). Grass here critiques unrealistic harmonious visions of adherents of the women’s and environmental movements. Alongside these alternatives, which he regards as doomed to failure, Grass explores two further ways of reintegrating mind and body, intellect and instinct, in an age ruled despotically by instrumental reason. The first of these is the story of the punk children of Hamelin. These socially marginalised and discriminated young people take rats, a similarly reviled and excluded species, as pets, and dress like them. The young women make love with the rats, and produce rathuman children. But the experiment in alternatives to contemporary society ends badly: their advent in Vineta marks a turning point from which time onwards lust for materialism and luxury prevail again. Grass provides a variant on this narrative in the tale of the Ratmen, who are also called “Manippels” and “Watson-Cricks.” These creatures, which are about three feet high, and walk upright, but have rat faces, are the product of an attempt to correct and improve on nature by creating a symbiosis of rat and man. The new society they establish as sole quasi-human survivors after the rest of humankind has been wiped out by nuclear warfare, is initially promising. They fuse human intellect with animal instinct, and human individuality with the solidarity of rats as a collective – more specifically, their readiness to sacrifice themselves to ensure the survival of the species. However, it soon becomes apparent that Grass is equally sceptical about this approach to the solution of the problems of humanity. The Ratmen reveal all the greed, avarice, violence and power-seeking of humans (433). Initially enlightened rulers over the rats, they become

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increasingly degenerate, and repeat the pattern of human exploitation and oppression, only to be finally defeated and annihilated. Grass thus shows no faith in either science and technology or the protesting, potentially revolutionary forces in society to provide alternatives. The mistakes of the past are repeated. It is only the rats themselves who survive, living in an agrarian society and worshipping a fertility goddess – a scenario of little comfort to humans. When Die Rättin came out, the critics found fault with it above all on two counts: it was criticised as overly didactic, and Grass’ seeming pessimism was considered unjustified and unhelpful. The charge of excessive didacticism is not entirely unjustified, given the many passages describing environmental pollution throughout the novel. Grass also refers to his literary aims several times in the book quite openly as furthering the Kantian project of Enlightenment. His literary strategy is, however, as he put it in a television interview shortly after the publication of the novel, a conscious use of shock tactics. Confronting readers with their worst nightmares, he seeks to shake them out of their lethargy. His book is only marginally concerned to inform, and seeks rather to remind us of uncomfortable facts we suppress knowledge of in everyday life: above all, that millions are starving in the Third World and modern society is bent on a course of self-annihilation: It is a state of unconsciousness, of suppression. If literature can help remind us of these things and make us remember them, that is a function I approve of. (Grass 1993: 345)

Die Rättin, with its provocative depiction of humanity, through the mouth of the rat, as “Starving gluttons,” “stupid know-it-alls,” “pious hypocrites! Exploiters! Unnatural and therefore cruel” (32), is a moral appeal to readers not to close their eyes to the future in comfort and consumption, but to live naturally and modestly, practise caution and gentleness in our dealings with nature. “Once educated,” Grass writes in one of the poems interspersed throughout the novel: the human race should freely, yes, freely, determine its destiny and, free from its shackles, learn to guide nature cautiously, as cautiously as possible, away from chaos. (181)

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The bluntness of this message has meant that less obtrusive qualities of the book have been overlooked. The subtlety with which Grass links his narratives and the reticence of his authorial judgement on the paradoxically juxtaposed and shifting standpoints represented by the ambivalent figures in the book, which have confused many readers, are an expression of the author’s determination to avoid trivialising complex issues. Grass’ quest for a middle way between facile optimism and disempowering pessimism leads him to choose a weak narrator, who loses control of the action to the optimistic Oskar Matzerath and the pessimistic rat in turn. Like Oskar, the narrator is seeking to enlighten and persuade the public, but he knows he must avoid the pact with technology and commerce present in Oskar’s “Post-Futurum” video productions. For Oskar actively promotes a world dominated by the media and computers, in which people become prefabricated “Smurfs” (the four-fingered plastic Japanese toys which flooded Western markets in the early 1980s). He jokes that our every possible future action can be anticipated by microprocessors (303), and effectively contributes to the process whereby our roles in life are rehearsed in thousands upon thousands of films, and implicated in trivial stories (299). In this sense Oskar epitomises Grass’ concern that originally valuable enlightenment impulses can become agents depriving us of our individuality and free will (98). Similarly, there is an extent to which the narrator, and also the author, identify with the she-rat. They share her wish to publicise the truth of our situation, the danger of self-annihilation, and the perversion of Enlightenment reason and progress. But Grass does not share the rat’s cynical rejection of all human reason, or its interpretation of science and technology in general as hybris. Neither Oskar, the technology-oriented proponent of a shining future for humanity with echoes of Ernst Bloch (e.g. 437), nor the rat, the nihilistic prophet of doom (who occasionally echoes Nietzsche), represents in themselves a credible or acceptable position. 3. Christa Wolf, Kassandra Christa Wolf lived and wrote in the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s, but she was also a major player on the West German literary scene, and a

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key contributor to the intellectual tradition of Enlightenment rationality, critical realism and democratic socialism which dominated in the postwar decades. She held the prestigious Frankfurt University Chair in Poetics in 1982, and received major West as well as East German literary awards. Her book Kassandra in particular, an imaginative retelling of the fall of Troy, raised issues and suggested explanations which aroused wide public interest in Western Europe and America. Kassandra reflects on the origins of violence and misogyny in Western culture, and interprets the environmental crisis and the danger of nuclear self-destruction at the turn of the 1980s as the consequence of a suppression of women and our own naturalness (including our bodies) which lies at the heart of modern civilisation. Wolf’s account of the Trojan war distinguishes between the violent company of the Greeks, led by “Achilles the Beast” (standing for Western European imperialism), and the repressive complacency of the court in Troy (Soviet bloc socialism). Between the two, she sketches a utopian third way, free of the aggression of the Greeks and the defensive rigidity of the Trojans. Outside the walls of the city, she envisions a community of the underclass and social outcasts living in caves on the banks of the river Scamandros, at the foot of Mount Ida. Wolf retells the story of the priestess Cassandra, whose prophecies of the fall of her father Priam’s city went unheeded, in the form of an interior monologue, which ends with her arrival in Mycenae as a slave. It is preceded by four lectures which she delivered at the University of Frankfurt. In these (particularly in the third lecture, a diary of her work on the Kassandra project), she reflects on technology, civilisation and our relationship with nature. Was there ever a chance modern culture might have developed differently, she asks. Can we still change it, or is that just “an admittedly necessary, but completely unrealistic endeavour” (Wolf 1983: 144)? What might help us resist the forces of destruction? The first lecture opens with a description of a trip she made to Greece in 1980. Wolf expresses feelings of anger, fear, horror, guilt and shame in the face of the “barbarism of modernity” (30). The modern city of Athens is characterised by crowding, hectic activity, aggression, materialism and pollution, the ancient Aulis is deformed out of all recognition by industry, Eleusis ruined by its oil refinery.

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The archeologists of a future age will shake their heads at the hybris of our sprawling cities, in which it is impossible to live without destroying the environment, motivated as we are by “power, wealth and megalomania” (96f.). Auschwitz and Dachau are the true products of our modern “anaesthesis of feelings and ant-like incessant activity” (145). Like the human eye, modern civilisation has a blind spot: its drive towards self-destruction (53). Cassandra’s capture symbolises the end of matriarchy and its subjection to a brutal, self-destructive Mycenean civilisation in which nature is destroyed by culture (99). The pattern is being repeated in Wolf’s own day, as Eastern Europe is brought down by the “united Achaean monarchies, whose wealth is derived from conquering and pillaging” (117). Wolf suggests there is a direct link in historical time between the decline of the matriarchal Minoan culture in Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean and the fall of Troy at the hands of the rapacious Greeks (58f., 133). She cites Arthur Evans’s account of Minoan culture as an age of peaceful productivity, in which individuals united in a harmonious, religiously centred community. This may be a Romantic dream rather than the historical truth of life in Crete prior to 1200 BC. However, the vision of a state which granted women equality and freedom as priests and artists corresponds to the author’s “buried hopes of a Promised Land” (86). Wolf describes the young men and women practising resistance to the Megamachine of modernity (Mumford) today as successors of the historically marginalised Cretan women. In Kassandra, they are represented by the women of the Scamandros community, and by a minority of men who support them, above all Cassandra’s lover Aeneas and his ancient father Anchises, the spiritus rector of the group, who teaches them to “dream with both feet on the ground” (339). Patriarchal politics and European civilisation are grounded in the “hierarchical male reality principle’” (143f.), which analyses, dominates, and strips nature of its complexity (98f., 177). The “lifedenying myth” of the male scientific approach (113) excludes women, as a result of which women (and nature) are guiltily feared (99). In the place of such dualism, and the separation of body, soul and intellect (114), Wolf envisions not a militant feminist alternative, but a reconciliation of the male and the female (108), and a partnership

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between humankind and nature, treating the latter as a subject. The Scamandros community, living in a “counter-world” to the stone city, one of luxurious vegetation (249) and natural beauty (336), practices friendship and tolerance, humour and creativity. Their “unfettered existence” (336), despite poverty, in a paradoxical “gap in time” (328) during the very years of the Trojan war (336f.), is a valuable social “experiment” (339). Nature is revered by the women in the form of the Great Mother Cybele, the goddess of the forces of renewal in nature in the cycle of death and rebirth, (219, 325f.), and respected by Anchises, who serves as a model for our relationship with nature: “He never felled a tree without first addressing it at length, without first ensuring it would live on by taking seeds or a cutting which he buried in the earth. He knew everything there was to know about wood and trees” (295). In her working diary, Wolf dreams of living a similar life of everyday sensual pleasure and cultural activities, in which people cook and eat, tell stories and dance together, and in which planting and harvesting provide direct contact with nature. She treasures the “infinite nuances of green” (141) of the countryside outside the window of her summerhouse in Mecklenburg as an emblem of the richness of life. Wolf casts herself as a Cassandra, prophesying disaster, and destined not to be believed because otherwise people would have to change their way of life (140). However, her Cassandra is a figure who survives her ordeals and gains in insight, wisdom and inner independence. Like Grass, she thus balances optimism against pessimism, and leaves open whether humankind will ultimately learn, change and survive. Kassandra is at the same time an experiment in a new kind of writing, an écriture féminine, employing open forms, intertextuality and associative links rather than conventional male logic and linear progression. Wolf mobilises myth and subjectivity in order to urge women and men to change their lives and work towards a safer future for humanity. With her conviction that literature, and especially women’s writing (146), has a part to play in the effort to save humanity, as a medium countering the coldness of modern life (140), and a repository of unrealised utopian aspirations (117), she made a contribution to the German feminist, environmental and peace movements which attracted international attention.

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4. Klaus Modick, Moos Modick’s novella is more ecocentric in its critique of the “ignorant arrogance of [human] rationalism” (Modick 1996: 15). In an introductory frame narrative, we are told the text we are about to read is a manuscript which the botanist Professor Lukas Ohlburg, author of a definitive taxonomy of tropical flora, was working on at the time of his death. On retirement, Ohlburg, who was unmarried, moved to a house in rural Ostfriesland where he had spent the summer holidays as a child. Here his relationship with nature underwent a profound change. His father, he reflects, had belonged to a generation which believed in the supremacy of reason and domination of nature. He had spent his life fighting “greenery” and “wild growth” (36), and had his sons scrub the moss from the paving around the house at the beginning of each visit. While he is not incapable of appreciating natural beauty, or insensitive to the attraction of the natural, in a world increasingly structured by rational, utilitarian purposes, he is obsessed with order, and this obsession leads him to fetishise nature as wilderness, constrained and kept “pure” (63f.) within strictly delineated boundaries. In the face of death, his fear of natural processes turns to panic and silent helplessness (38). Ohlburg’s own professional preoccupation with naming things is, as he comes to recognise, also a way of keeping them under control (38 and 40). He determines to make amends by writing a “Critique of Botanical Terminology and Nomenclature,” which will show how the supposedly neutral and objective Linnaean classification of species contributes in reality to our alienation from nature through its abstraction. However, what is conceived initially as a contribution to academic debate takes form as an intimate poetic diary. His notes are from the outset subjective and associative, working with images rather than concepts. He remarks that it is as if nature were beginning to write through him (34). Story-telling, as he later comments (85f.), answers the questions science cannot answer, not just the what, but also the how and why. His final abandonment of academic discourse is reflected in his change of the title to “Moss” (5 and 9). Ohlburg’s musings on the possibility of an alternative way of science, fusing natural science with art, draw directly on Goethe. The phrase “zärtliche Wissenschaft” (tender science, 119) echoes Goethe’s

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“zarte Empirie” (sensitive empiricism, a term from the novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre), and “Naturanschauung” (contemplative observance of nature, 120) harkens back to Goethe’s “anschauende Urteilskraft” (judgement on the basis of observation). He rejects “modern science’s self-imposed anaesthesis of the sphere of perception” (28), and calls for consideration of the sensual impact on the observer. Ohlburg’s revered teacher, an ecologist called Mandelbaum, had spoken of life as a magic synthesis incapable of purely scientific explanation (55). (The name recalls both Professor Robert Mandelkow, whose seminars on Goethe Modick attended as a student, and Benoît Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry.) While Modick’s holist conception of nature is primarily indebted to Goethe, the story also owes much to the metaphysics and literature of German Romanticism. This can be illustrated in three ways. First of all, Modick revives the idea of a language of nature associated with Romantic pantheism (18 and 34). Nature is not necessarily divine, but it is a subject which speaks. And he hints it is matched by a corresponding human, poetic language, one which “does not explain, but wonders” (52) and affords insight into the appearance and sound of things. Names for plants which have evolved naturally are surrounded by mimetic force fields, they express the “material and spiritual reality of their environment” (41). Secondly, death is conceived of as a metamorphosis. The unexpected event on which the novella hinges is Ohlburg’s death. In the frame narrative at the beginning we learn his body is found, after he has died from a heart attack, in curious circumstances: the house is in an orderly state, but all the windows have been left open, allowing damp to invade it. Patches of moss are found everywhere – on the floor, between the papers on Ohlburg’s desk, on the pillow on his bed, and on his clothes and beard. Indeed, his mouth, nose and eyes are covered in moss. His appearance is, however, calm and serene (7), that of a man who has become one with the whole of being, gently relinquishing individual identity in order to return to the great chain of life (108). The idea of death as a return to nature is anticipated in the motto, which is taken from Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s mid-nineteenthcentury poem “Im Moose” (“In the Moss”). Death is a “sanftes nach unten gezogenwerden” (“a gently being drawn down”)‚ a “gelassen

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werden” (13) in both senses of the phrase: “being let be,” and “becoming calm.” Modick alludes to a series of cultural parallels: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Greek, Egyptian, Indian and Nordic myths of the origins of human beings in trees and their transformation into plants (79), and folk belief (108). Plant life is the equivalent of being dead or as yet unborn, and metamorphosis into moss the ultimate return to a life in the here and now, predating the acquisition of individual identity (118). The logical precondition, that human and plant life on the planet are complementary parts of a cosmic whole, is hinted at in microcosm/ macrocosm analogies, for instance in a dream of Ohlburg’s in which ecological cycles are mysteriously identified with blood circulation in the human body. Finally, Ohlburg is described by his brother, half-humorously, as a “hermit” (83). The hermit has featured in German literature over the centuries as a figure withdrawing from society to achieve a deeper understanding of life through solitary contemplation, living humbly and nourishing himself with roots and berries or garden produce. (See Fitzell 1961). The Romantics secularised and idealised hermits as spiritual companions to their protagonists, who sought in nature the values they failed to find in society, and found healing and calm in reunion with the eternal spirit. Modick’s strange depiction of the “Vermoosung” (“mossing over”) of Ohlburg’s body (8) appears to have been inspired by the figure of the “Waldvater” (“old man of the woods”) in Justinus Kerner’s novella Die Heimatlosen (The Homeless – see Kerner 2003, 16f.). Modick’s interest in Goethe’s conception of nature is typical of the early 1980s: the Swiss writer Adolf Muschg published a collection of essays on the subject, and Hanns Cibulka’s fictional diaries (the best known being Swantow, 1982) constitute an East German literary parallel. Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich and others were, as mentioned above, reviving Goethean concepts. These developments must be seen in the context of public interest in the holistic alternatives to classical science put forward at the time by the ecological systems theorist Frederic Vester and the New Age physicist Fritjof Capra. Moos is, however, distinguished by the author’s knowledge of literary writing on nature in the Classic-Romantic period, when empirical science had not yet been fully separated from either speculative nature philosophy or creative writing. Modick evokes the thinking in analogies which

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Goethe and the Romantics had themselves revived from Neoplatonism and early modern scientists such as Paracelsus, and alludes to many myths pointing to an integration of humankind in nature. The text is also characterised by a satisfying coherence of structure and imagery. The story, which operates, like Christa Wolf’s, with a network of intertextuality, is structured in circular rather than linear patterns. Ohlburg’s death as a return to nature is anticipated in his return to his childhood home and to the intimacy with nature and the sense of timelessness he had experienced as a child. Colour symbolism is unobtrusively used, blues and greens being associated with for nature, and red with the sphere of civilisation. Two motifs acquire particular importance, water and moss. Water, described as the source of all life, is associated (for instance when Ohlburg is bathing) with weightlessness, timelessness, and a feeling of oneness with nature (20 and 69). Erotic experience, a foretaste of the greater union with nature in death, is associated with both water (128) and moss (122f. and 134). Moss is the central symbol of the novella. Primeval, in that it developed out of the earliest plants to colonise the land, and reverted to reproducing in water, and self-sufficient, in that it can survive drought and revive in the rain, it is a model for the survival of humanity through adaptation (22). The ability of certain mosses to act as radioactive sinks (106) makes it also a true creature of Gaia, and an emblem of the gentle power of nature to repair the damage resulting from human activity, and preserve life on the planet. 5. Conclusion Günter Grass, whose political convictions lie somewhere between the Social Democratic and Green Parties, adopts what may be described as a liberal humanist position. His apocalyptic novel Die Rättin dramatises a raft of rational-scientific arguments for a radical change in our use of technology and our relationship with nature. It explores future scenarios in a series of interwoven narratives and raises the spectre of failure of attempts to reform. It marked the culmination of a decade of environmental concern expressed in his speeches, essays and, to a lesser extent, fiction (Der Butt and Kopfgeburten [Headbirths, or, The Germans are Dying Out, 1980]).

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Christa Wolf sketches an alternative to the course of modern civilisation in a matriarchal community living on the outskirts of Troy, pursuing peaceful creative activities. Kassandra develops a comprehensive socialist feminist critique of Western civilisation. Our version of modernity, the author argues, is heading for self-destruction. Its root causes lie in suppression of the female approach to life, and one-sided pursuit of the intrinsically aggressive, technologicallyoriented, male approach. Klaus Modick’s novella Moos differs from Grass’s and Wolf’s works in not being concerned with either the nuclear issue or other immediate threats to the future of the human species. However, this story of a botanist who abandons the scientific-instrumental relationship with nature in order to live (and die) in solitary harmony with it also expounds an environmental ethic and an aesthetic which appealed to many contemporaries. Moos exemplifies a holistic conception of nature recognisably indebted to Goethe, and explores the possibility of a union with nature akin to that found in the Romantic writing. Like life in Wolf’s Scamandros community, Ohlburg’s attempt to live in a symbiosis with nature promises sensual fulfilment rather than ascetic renunciation. However, it is a solitary pursuit, leading the individual to withdraw from society, and represents a fantasy rather than a solution to the problems of modern society. In the framing narrative, which presents the tale as a manuscript which the sceptical author is only offering his readers out of a sense of duty to the deceased, Modick skilfully employs a traditional literary strategy calculated to encourage readers to suspend their disbelief. His approach is nevertheless noticeably less didactic, more ironic and playful than that of Grass or Wolf. From standpoints of liberal humanist anthropocentrism, cultural feminism and New Age pantheism, these three writers contributed, each in their own way, to public debate in Germany. United in their concern for ‘female’, neglected and suppressed approaches to life, they sought to elaborate a new environmental ethic, and reflected at the same time on the potential of creative writing to foster awareness of the (environmental) crisis of modern civilisation. Since the 1980s, the seriousness with which Grass and Wolf (and in a different way even Modick) approach the environment as a moral issue has become rarer in German literature. In an age tired of eco-pessimism and shrill

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apocalyptic predictions which show little sign of materialising (at least in Northern Europe, and in the short term), most writers have either turned away from the theme or treated it with greater detachment. Perhaps ironic detachment is an appropriate response to the widening gap between our increasingly sophisticated knowledge of the damage we are doing to the environment (for instance through carbon dioxide emissions and over-fishing), and our want of will to make the necessary radical changes in our way of life. Overt environmental commitment is still to be found in the novels of the Swiss satirist Franz Hohler (Der neue Berg [The New Mountain, 1989]; Die Steinflut [The Stone Flood, 1998]), and in eco-thrillers such as Bernhard Kegel’s Wenzels Pilz (Wenzel’s Mushroom, 1997) and Frank Schätzing’s recent bestseller Der Schwarm (The Swarm, 2004), but the contemporary fiction scene is characterised rather by more oblique commentaries on our relationship with the natural environment such as John von Düffel’s Vom Wasser (Of Water, 1998), Karen Duve’s Regenroman (Rain, 1999), Günter Seuren’s Die Krötenküsser (The Toad Kissers, 2000), and Christoph Ransmayr’s provocatively bleak scenarios of the demise of humanity at the hand of nature in Die letzte Welt (The Last World, 1988) and Morbus Kitahara (The Dog King, 1997). Bibliography Capra, Fritjof. 1991. Wendezeit. Bausteine für ein neues Weltbild. Munich: dtv. Christmann, Gabriele B. 1997. Ökologische Moral. Zur kommunikativen Konstruktion und Rekonstruktion umweltschützerischer Moralvorstellungen. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitätsverlag. Dominick, Raymond H. 1992. The Environmental Movement in Germany. Prophets and Pioneers, 1871-1971. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. 1973. ‘Zur Kritik der politischen Ökologie’ in Kursbuch 33: 1-42. Fitzell, John. 1961. The Hermit in German Literature (From Lessing to Eichendorff). Chapel Hill, Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. Grass, Günter. 1993 ‘Mir träumte, ich müßte Abschied nehmen’ in Gespräche (Werkausgabe Vol. 10). Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand: 342-68. —. 1997. Die Rättin, ed. Neuhaus, Volker (Werkausgabe Vol. 11), Göttingen: Steidl. [First edition Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand 1986.]

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Hermand, Jost. 1992. Grüne Utopien in Deutschland. Zur Geschichte des ökologischen Bewußtseins, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. Hesse, Gunter and Wiebe, Hans-Hermann (eds). 1988. Die Grünen und die Religion. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum. Jonas, Hans. 1979. Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kaiser, Rudolf. 1987. ‘Chief Seattle’s Speech(es): American Origins and European Reception’ in Swann, Brian and Krupat, Arnold (eds). Recovering the World. Essays on Native American Literature. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press: 497-536. Kerner, Justinus. 2003. Die Heimatlosen. Mit einem Nachwort und Materialien zum Text, ed. Margot Buchholz. Weissach im Taunus: Alkyon. Krebs, Angelika. 1997. ‘Naturethik im Überblick’ in Krebs, Angelika (ed.). Naturethik. Grundtexte der gegenwärtigen tier-und ökoethischen Diskussion. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 337-79. Maren-Grisebach, Manon. 1982. Philosophie der Grünen. Munich and Vienna: Olzog. Meyer-Abich, Klaus-Michael. 1984. Wege zum Frieden mit der Natur – Praktische Naturphilosophie für die Umweltpolitik. Munich: Hanser. Modick, Klaus. 1996. Moos. Novelle. Oldenburg: Isensee. [First edition Zurich: Haffmans 1984.] Seattle, Chief. 1992. Die Erde gehört uns nicht. Die Botschaft des Indianerhäuptlings Chief Seattle. Hamburg: Carlsen. Sieferle, Rolf Peter. 1984. Fortschrittsfeinde? Opposition gegen Technik und Industrie von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Hanser. Theobald, Werner. 2003. Mythos Natur. Die geistigen Grundlagen der Umweltbewegung. Darmstadt: Wisenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Thompson, Peter. 1997. ‘New Age Mysticism, Postmodernism and Human Liberation’ in Riordan, Colin (ed.) Green Thought in German Culture. Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Cardiff: University of Wales Press: 107-24. Trepl, Ludwig. 1983. ‘Ökologie – eine grüne Literaturwissenschaft? Über Grenzen und Perspektiven einer modischen Disziplin’ in Kursbuch 74: 6-27. Wolf, Christa. 1983. Kassandra. Vier Vorlesungen. Eine Erzählung. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau.

ETHICS OF NATURE

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Grounding anotherness and answerability through allonational ecoliterature formations Patrick D. Murphy Abstract: Grounded in the Bakhtinian-based concepts of anotherness and answerability and the green critical theory of Robyn Eckersley, this essay argues that political organizations and communities have responded to the limitations of the contemporary nation state by developing a variety of ethically progressive allonational formations – alternatives to the nation states – reflecting Eckersley’s principle of affectedness. These are represented in a wide range of ecoliterature. This literature in turn encourages the further development of an ecologically sensitive allonational consciousness among readers.

1. Introduction The dialogical concepts of answerability and anotherness provide a way of talking about how various movements within nature-oriented literatures ground their action and ground their readers in ethically referential situations. They do so without presuming that nonfiction equals fact and that facts are required for writing about nature. Thus the equation of nature writing = nonfiction = fact = truth that formed the dominant mode of literary criticism that privileged the nonfiction natural history essay over all other literary modes in the early years of American ecocriticism is cast aside for a recognition of the multivalent textual displays of the search for better ecologically ethical understanding. Also, we find the casting aside of perhaps the most profound symbol of realism, the nation-state, as authors turn to transnational, bioregional, localist, new agrarian, and futurist sites and locations for the settings, contexts, and political placement of the ethical conflicts they narrate in which allegiance to, and betrayal of, habitat, place, and environment take center stage.

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But are these thought-experiment literary alternatives to the nation state just that, imaginative fictions, self-referential verbal constructs; or, do they indeed ground their readers in a specific ethically referential position of having to examine the role of the nation state in relation to environmental issues and environmental justice? And, in particular, to what degree do these literary works align themselves with, provide alternatives to, or push forward contemporary philosophical and political thinking about the future of the state in contemporary green political theory? The best way to consider answers to these questions is to combine the Bakhtinian-based concepts of anotherness and answerability in relation to literary allonational formations in conjunction with the most advanced thinking about ecological democracy, which, at the moment, is represented by the newly published work of Robyn Eckersley. 2. Anotherness and answerability The concepts of anotherness and answerability are initially derived from Mikhail Bakhtin’s early essay, Toward a Philosophy of the Act (1993). There Bakhtin emphasizes at the outset the “once occurrent event of being,” which he understand as the actual plane of existence upon which each of our thoughts and actions occurs as a deed performed once and only once by a unique individual. And while he defines these deeds of thought and action in a radically individualistic way, he does not define them in a solipsistic way. Rather, these unique events – such as a person’s decision to eat meat or go vegetarian at lunch today, perhaps to skip the mad cow lurking in the menu – do not occur in isolation from other unique events but in solidarity with them through ‘the objective unity of a domain of culture’. The individual fear about tainted food is linked with a government policy, is linked with cultural taboos regarding cannibalism, is linked with a social network that has or has not debated bovine growth hormone (bgh), cloning, or genetically modified organism (gmo) food processing. In this larger domain of culture my unique and once occurrent actions taken on the ethical responsibility of answerability. And in the cultural domain of environmental ethics that answerability must necessarily involve both human and nonhuman actants, must necessarily involve

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other entities that have their own unique once occurrent event of being, whether they enjoy volitional behaviour or not. Many writers have perceived this answerability in the domain of culture as obligating their characters and themselves to entertain alternatives to the nation state and, at times, to rebuke those readers who imagine the human world only in terms of nation states and who accept the limitations on answerability that the environmental instrumentalism of their respective governments would place on them. The United States nation state, for instance, tells us that we must accept the use of depleted uranium on the battlefield and the practice field without regard to its long term environmental impact on noncombatants, both human and nonhuman. For some, answerability requires that we protest such weaponry for its environmental contamination and that we also protest the military occupation of native peoples’ lands where so much military practice degrades the inhabitability of those environments. Such native writers as Simon Ortiz in the U.S. southwest and Haunani-Kay Trask in Hawai’i have written eloquent poems of military protest precisely along these lines. For environmental ethics answerability must extend beyond moral considerability for humans to encompass other entities. And here we get to the concept of otherness. But I quickly want to step beyond that concept of the Other. I want instead to think about the concept of anotherness, based on the Another – not the Alien and not the Stranger, but the brother, the cousin, the sister, and not just the human ones, but all the creatures with whom we share the planet. In this postmodern period of globalization, that sharing is becoming increasingly destructive, self-destructive, and excessively consumptive. The domain of culture is one largely dominated throughout the realm of the new world order by the propaganda of nation states using continuous growth economic models to guide national political, economic, and military policy. If that claim is descriptively accurate in its larger outline, then literature that presents allonational formations necessarily stands at the forefront of a contestatory international environmental literature by offering alternatives to the business-asusual models accepted as realpolitik (for earlier discussions of these ideas, see Murphy 1995; Murphy 1998).

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Arjun Appadurai writes that We need to think ourselves beyond the nation. … But most writers who have asserted or implied that we need to think postnationally have not asked exactly what emergent social forms compel us to do so, or in what way. (1996: 158)

He claims that we see today in identity politics an effort to generate nationalism based on non-territorial principles of solidarity that necessarily rely on cultural constructions of ethnicities and counterethnicities because of the strongly diasporic character of much contemporary global population flows (1996: 165). Such efforts would generate a stateless or multi-state nationalism, but it is doubtful that such an entity could hold people’s allegiance for long without some homeland or territory to picture, to visit, to desire. In that regard, Masao Miyoshi views recent efforts at nationalism and ethnic separatism as “brute” response to the expansion of Transnational Corporations that are coming to dominate the economic world order (1993: 744). These TNCs are particularly troubling to Miyoshi because they no longer have any interests in or allegiances to a particular territory on the planet, national or otherwise, and thus are wholly irresponsible ecologically (1993: 748). At the same time, a nationalism divorced from situated knowledge, local culture, and any history of responsibility or stewardship of local ecologies could end up equally irresponsible in terms of long range commitments to sustainability and any form of ecological restoration or conservation. 3. Eckersley, transnationalism, and the possibility of a green state In early 2004, about the time of the Muenster conference, where I presented a rudimentary version of this essay, MIT Press published The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (2004) by Robyn Eckersley, which represents some of the most advanced thinking on the notion of the ‘green state’ from the position of green critical theory. It is noteworthy that the two key terms in her subtitle are ‘Democracy’ and ‘Sovereignty’, because ecotheory, environmentalism, environmental justice, and ecopolitics have all called in various ways for radically extending the concept of democracy to embrace entities beyond the human in political deliberations and have all called for the debunking of the myth of sovereignty, a concept

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defined in relation to the nation and the state at the Treaty of Westphalia, signed coincidentally enough in Muenster about three hundred fifty years ago. As J. F. Rischard, The World Bank’s Vice President for Europe, observes, the theories of the nation-state based on the establishment of absolute rule within the borders of a given state as decreed by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia presumed that the borders of the nation-state could contain not only a political system but also under it an economic system and an environmental system. But, Rischard points out that the new world economy “is creating an economic system that straddles . . . borders” (2002: 46). Increasingly the economy takes place across borders and, as we have seen with the rise of the World Trade Organization (WTO), is adjudicated multilaterally. And, Global warming, regional water shortages, and other stresses accompanying the population increase also dilute the nation-state’s mastery over its own environmental system. So do AIDS and drug-resistant tuberculosis, diseases that respect no boundaries and sweep through the world at a faster rate than before. (2002: 46)

That has certainly been the case with SARS. In other words, the concept of absolute or complete control of activities within a set of borders outlined on a map is being increasingly revealed as an illusion that fails to enable states to meet the needs of their people, their economies, and their ecosystems, much of all three of which they increasingly share with other states. While Eckersley speaks out strongly against turning our backs on the state as a potential agent of positive change in human environmental behaviour, she is quick to decouple the ‘state’ from the ‘nation’. In her introduction, Eckersley explicitly states that her theories of the green state are not based on a nation state but rather on a “transnational, democratic green state” (2004: 2). She, in fact, devotes an entire chapter to the issue of “the Transnational State” (Chapter 7). This transnationalism arises from her recognition that, for the state to play a positive role in regard to the global environment, it must function as an ecological steward and facilitator of transboundary democracy rather than a selfish actor jealously protecting its territory and ignoring or discounting the needs of foreign lands. Such a normative ideal poses a fundamental challenge to

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Eckersley identifies in relation to her own theorizing what constitutes the strongest justification for taking seriously the role of environmental literature in encouraging new ways of thinking about government and social organization in the minds of its readers: the role of imagination – thinking what ‘could be otherwise’ – should not be discounted. As [Andrew] Vincent also points out, ‘We should also realize that to innovate in State theory is potentially to change the character of our social existence.’ (2004: 4)

And as we look at the allonational formations imagined in environmental literature in comparison with Eckersley’s state theory, we will see repeatedly that the novelists, poets, and literary essayists have already imagined and described both the steps toward a green democratic state and various versions of such a state in operation. But why do we find both political theorists and environment writers entertaining alternatives to the nation state as a necessary transition in political sovereignty in order to realize specific and general environmental goals? First of all, nation states by definition are organized around the alleged homogeneity of a group of people within a given territory. And, as we have seen in the history of Europe as well as in the Manifest Destiny policy of the United States, it is the appeal to the unity of the people that is frequently used as a justification for the expansion of territorial boundaries or the annexation of another state. In some cases, the other human inhabitants of a territory are either annihilated to make room for the expansion of the nation, or restricted to a small portion of the annexed territory. In other cases, the subject people are defined as having once been a part of the greater nation and are brought back into the field through military conquest or political negotiation, with their cultural divergences from this alleged greater nation then suppressed. When subject peoples then appeal to their own separate national identity as a basis for resistance to their subjugation, extermination, or territorial restriction, they end up appealing to the same fundamental concepts that the invading state has used to justify its expansion.

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4. Allonational formations As Eckersley notes, it is increasingly the case that nation states do not have the human homogeneity necessary to maintain the racial, religious, and even linguistic myths on which they have been based, and a new kind of patriotism is needed in which there is a sense of shared membership (2004: 182). Although territorial in basis, this new kind of patriotism, to have a progressive environmental potential, must take a fundamentally different approach to the territory of its inhabitation than has been the approach of the modern nation state. Land, not as the father, not as a frozen, demarcated setting or mere backdrop for the human drama, or as a resource base for capital accumulation, but land as the ground of an entity, an ecosystem or set of ecosystems, a portion of the earth as ecosystem, with which we interact along with all of the other biota residing in specific places must become the basis for a state in which political relationships incorporate all of the actants and entities of a territory, not just the human. A green state, perforce, must be more comprehensive in its orientation and representation than one based on the nation can possibly be. To the degree that any such green state must have human relationships built on the basis of communities and community interaction, their variability, permutations, and diversity must be taken into account, evolved, and recognized. As Eckersley claims, National communities are only one kind of community and they are under increasing strain from the processes of globalization. If nations are imaginary communities based on abstract rather than embodied social bonds, then there seems to be no good reason for denying the significance of other kinds of imaginary communities that come into being in response to common problems that transcend national boundaries or simply in response to human suffering or ecological degradation wherever it may occur in the world. (2004: 185).

In many instances, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) represent types of networking communities, which span vast territories, or which focus on segments of territories. Water affinity groups, for instance, dedicated to supporting struggles for clean water, wild rivers, and aquaculture communities around the world can form networks and alliances with each other that represent a type of global community

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based on shared interests, concerns, and objectives. The Indigenous Environmental Network is an excellent example of what we might call an intentional community in which disparate groups are linked by fundamental commonalities and threats, regardless of the local territories of inhabitation, but who, through their commonalities of inhabitory practices, feel a sense of shared identification and common bonds. Along these lines, Rischard sees the formation of global issues networks as a key civil society structure necessary to function multilaterally in order to exert pressure on states to respond less hierarchically and more laterally to pressing environmental crises worldwide. These groups, then, would be fundamentally transnational in their orientation. Such networks represent a progressive response to what Miyoshi perceives as the growing domination of TNCs. We see a resurgence and historical continuation of territorial solidarity smaller than the nation state, along community lines and more recently along explicitly articulated bioregional lines, and solidarities larger than nation states along international NGO and transnational allegiances that challenge the environmental exploitation justified within national boundaries by appeals to energy self-sufficiency, national security, and the denial of answerability for pollution that circulates from within but beyond national borders (see Kuehls 1996). These larger than nation and transnational formations, like the smaller than nation ones, maintain territorial identifications that generate loyalty to specific, concrete locations that are defined by a sense of shared threats and shared interests based on both a sense of answerability and a sense of anotherness. Such sensibilities constitute the diametrical opposite of the fundamental fears and privileges that undergird national identity because, as Thom Kuehls notes in Beyond Sovereign Territory (1996), The problem […] lies not with the size of sovereign territories, but with the concept of sovereignty itself. Ecopolitics forces an engagement with a host of questions that challenge the otherwise unproblematic presentation of the space of sovereignty, (1996: xi)

which is currently formulated as the borders of the nation state. Challenges to the nation state, and its TNC competitors, as a political entity organizing cultural change and cultural conservation can thus come from the development in the political arena of

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materially anchored entities larger than and smaller than the nation state as a an organization. For example, as we have seen in Rio, Seattle, and elsewhere, environmental alliances are being formed that are as equally transnational in scope as corporations, but maintain their loyalty and answerability to real environments in specific locations. In response to the WTO, we are seeing the gradual development of what may one day be known as the WEO, the World Ecological Organization, formed not through mergers but through alliances and affiliations. Such a WEO would become the allonational opposite of the WTO, one that would continuously make the representation of nonhuman anothers a part of its fundamental answerability. It then comes as no surprise that Eckersley calls for the formation of both a World Environment Council and a World Environment Court (2004: 239). 5. Literary representations of allonational formations Literary works have already been published that point to such ecologically answerable transnational formations and resistance to WTO regulations, such as Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange (1997) and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars [1993, 1995, 1997]). Other literatures that I would place under the same category consist of literary representations of cultural, political, and economic formations that ignore, repudiate, or consistently transgress national boundaries in order to maintain the integrity of historically established peoples and groups whose environmentally located inhabitation pre-existed national boundaries, or people who have come to rely on traversing established boundaries for their contemporary existence. Writing by and about indigenous or native peoples around the world constitute the bulk of such literature. For example, Leslie Marmon Silko’s sprawling novel, Almanac of the Dead (1992), links the rebellions in the Chiapas region of Mexico with the resistance to oppression of people of colour in the United States, who in turn at novel’s end link up with environmental activists to assault the U. S. government on multiple fronts. Silko ends the novel by presenting to her readers a vision of large political alliances that unite groups and organizations across tribal, national, and racial lines, such that longstanding ethnic peoples and various recently

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evolved micro-cultures can work toward common ecological goals. Thus, in opposition to the reactionary neoethnicism that Miyoshi decries, Silko posits a recognition of anotherness on the part of a variety of characters from different ethnicities and nationalities who unite around a common ground of answerability for the fate of the earth. In Yaqui Deer Songs, Maso Bwikam (1987), Larry Evers and Felipe Molina show a different kind of transnational anti-nationalism in a nonfiction work that discusses the cross-border interaction of Yaqui Indian communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. They take the deer songs that unite the various Yaqui communities in ceremony and ritual and define their culture’s relationship with the natural world as the focus of their discussion of Yaqui survival as a people. These deer songs function within ritual as displays of both anotherness and answerability in relation to the deer and the other animals with whom the Yaqui interact, many of whom serve as food. And Linda Hogan, working on native relations across the U.S.-Canada border in her novel, Solar Storms (1995), shows the fallacy of sovereignty that Kuehls critiques. Hogan demonstrates how the lives of native peoples on both sides of the border are affected by the destruction of First Nation lands by Hydro Quebec’s enormous rerouting of rivers and flooding of huge tracts of land in the name of electricity generation – electricity that is mostly sold to the U.S. And she does so through depicting the lives of female characters who accept both answerability and anotherness as part and parcel of their daily interaction with the rest of the world. Most of the environmental responses to the limitations of the nation state and TNCs have come not at the transnational level but at sub-national/sub-state, regional and local levels. Mitchell Thomashow in Ecological Identity (1995) grounds his environmental education on the concept of the commons. The commons, in his teaching and writing, functions as an allonational formation because it requires his students and his readers to define their moral obligations and to critique their own daily behaviours in relation to various levels of community affiliation, from the very local to the global, insisting that they thing beyond the illusion of absolute political, ethnic, and cultural boundaries. Thus, the commons functions simultaneously as a type of bioregional situated space for local identification and affiliation, and

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as a type of transnational relationship for global ecological citizenship. Eckersley’s theorizing supports this simultaneity of identification, giving priority to the local, in order to provide the experiential basis for the appreciation of the global, when she writes that Without knowledge of and attachment to particular persons or particular places and species, it is hard to understand how one might be moved to defend the interests of persons, places, and species in general. Local social and ecological attachments provide the basis for sympathetic solidarity with others; they are ontologically prior to any ethical and political struggle for universal environmental justice. (2004: 190)

Likewise, for Thomashow, community is key to all other affiliations and identifications, and in support of his argument, he quotes Václav Havel’s concern for how a nation can become a community in the contemporary world (1995: 92, 98). Ecological identity, then, becomes the foundation for local and global citizenship in the forthcoming age of the green state (Thomashow 1995: 99). Gary Snyder makes the point that “small cultures” within larger nation states are not only arguing for cultural authenticity and the right to exist, but also from the maintenance of the skills and practices that belong with local economies and that enable them to operate in a sustainable manner, via their own specialized, local forms of knowledge, over the centuries. (1990: 13)

Part of the flip side of the transnational formation of larger alliances is the bioregional movement of small intentional communities. There is a very narrow definition of bioregional that defines it as a selfconsciously articulated political movement within the U.S., Australia, and other countries, marked by bioregional congresses and political parties. There is also a looser sense of the term that understands bioregional as a regional commitment to place and social organization based on natural conditions and formations. With the looser definition, we find that much of the contemporary writing about new agrarianism is bioregional and localist in emphasis, such as the writing of Wendell Berry, who focuses on the specific problems of the survival of family farming in Kentucky in particular and the rural South in general. He tackles these issues in essays, novels and short stories, and poems. Particularly pertinent here would be his collections of essays, The Unsettling of America (1997), Home

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Economics (1987), What Are People For? (1990) and Another Turn of the Crank (1995). Like many other writers focussed on agrarian concerns, such as Wes Jackson, Berry shows a strong sense of answerability but a relatively weak sense of anotherness, as embodied in his particular stewardship model detailed in The Gift of Good Land (1981). In Becoming Native To This Place (1996), however, Jackson argues that Becoming native to this place means that the creatures we bring with us – our domesticated creatures – must become native, too […]. Our interdependency has now become so complete that, if proprietorship is the subject, we must acknowledge that in some respects they own us […]. we must acknowledge that our domesticated creatures are descendants of wild things that were shaped in an ecological context not of our making when we found them […]. We must think in terms of different relationships […]. (1996: 98-99).

Bessie Head, writing several decades ago, portrays a new kind of agrarian community in the just-independent Botswana of the 1960s. Through her depiction of the village of Golema Mmidi, in When Rain Clouds Gather (1995), Head thematically states that inhabitation in a Botswana existing on the border of South Africa, surviving in a postcolonial world, and struggling in a global economy, requires the establishment of new techniques of sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry, the development of new gender and family relationships, and the generation of new traditions and customs. Fortunately for Makhaya, the novel’s protagonist, he has landed in a progressive village established around an experimental farm, which has attracted individuals from all over Botswana who are ready to break with the negative aspects of tradition and forge a new life on the land. Head makes it clear that the people of this village cannot rely exclusively on traditional cultural beliefs and values in order to build a viable new community. The new villagers must overcome traditional prejudices not only against women but also against so-called “inferior” tribes who actually demonstrate better sense about the selection of agricultural crops in relation to soil quality and rainfall. As one might expect, then, anotherness first has to be extended to other human beings outside of tribal affiliations and in contradiction to hierarchies and prejudices reinforced by colonial ideology. At the same time, the animal husbandry model Head extols would lead to a reduction in

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suffering of the cattle that constitute a mainstay of the local economy, but traditionally have been subjected to misery and starvation by the inability of nomadic herding practices to mitigate cycles of drought. In the narrower sense of the term, we can look at the writing of Gary Snyder, particularly his prose work from the 1980s and 1990s. His most spectacular essay on this subject would have to be “Coming into the Watershed”. As Snyder states explicitly in that essay, bioregionalism as a political practice “would be a small step toward the deconstruction of America as a superpower into seven or eight natural nations – none of which ha[s] a budget big enough to support missiles” (1996: 227). Further, Snyder contends that “The city, not the nation-state, is the proper locus of an economy, and then that city is always to be understood as being one with the hinterland” (1996: 233). Freeman House, a friend and ally of Snyder, demonstrates this kind of bioregional environmental and political activism in his memoir, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species (1999), which describes the multi-decade process of forging a new microculture in northern California along the Mattole River watershed centred around the restoration of wild salmon runs. For both Snyder and House and other bioregionalists, such as the contributors to Home! A Bioregional Reader (1990), the key features of this kind of anti-national bioregional politics is an emphasis on human inhabitation based on the carrying capacity and sustainability of the land base in terms of food production. They are concerned with the daunting task of reducing the ecological footprints of contemporary societies. Both Snyder and House extend their attention not only to answerability but also to anotherness, seeing the other animals of their region as mutual inhabitants with whom we share an interdependency that requires respect and consideration in terms of a high appreciation of long term affectedness. As Snyder observes, Human beings who are planning on living together in the same place will wish to include the non-human in their sense of community. This also is new, to say our community does not end at the human boundaries; we are in a community with certain trees, plants, birds, animals. The conversation is with the whole thing. That’s community political life. (1990: 18).

Richard Manning in Inside Passage (2001) takes up House’s concerns and places them in a larger framework of analysing the bioregional

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and indigenous movements of the watersheds of the North American Pacific Northwest from the Columbia River dividing Oregon and Washington states and British Columbia up to the Alaskan border. Manning in each chapter looks at a different watershed and the issues of coevolution, biodiversity preservation and stimulation, and local sustainable economies. For Manning and the various informants who speak through his essays in this volume, national governments cannot address any of those issues. First, they do not recognize that “Economy is a subset of the environment” (2001: 15). Second, they support and propagate industrialism, which, in the case of agriculture in both the United States and Canada, generates monocultural farming, and, as Manning notes, “Nature abhors a monoculture” (2001: 16). Third, “Nature,” not governments, “show us that there are limits, and this is the fundamental limit from which all others are derived” (2001: 19). For many of the communities that Manning explores in Inside Passage, answerability based on a clear sense of long term affectedness is integral to their systemic thinking about watershed and bioregional communities; for some, particularly Native American communities, that answerability includes a historic and revitalized sense of anotherness, which other peoples who are seeking to become reinhabitory are adopting. 6. Allonational formations and the ethic of affectedness Many European critical theorists might be quick to warn American theorists that such concepts as the commons and bioregionalism can be, and are, deployed by both progressive and reactionary forces. To insure that identification with the commons as a foundation for global citizenship will further the goals of a movement toward progressive green states, Eckersley is careful to posit that the principle of belongingness, both in individual emotional identification and in domestic and international legislation and litigation, must be accompanied by the principle of affectedness (2004: 193). Here, without using the terms, Eckersley invokes both answerability and anotherness as requisite principles of ethical political behaviour. The principle of affectedness requires that all of those entities, human and nonhuman, affected by political and economic decisions made by human communities need to be taken into account before policies are imple-

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mented and actions are taken. The weakest version of this probably is the existing legal practice of the filing of environmental impact reports. But Eckersley and numerous other environmental thinkers and writers would radically expand the moral considerability of affectedness and the ways in which those affected would have a voice in decision making. For Eckersley, many nonhuman others are not capable of giving approval or consent to proposed norms; however, proceeding as if they were is one mechanism that enables human agents to consider the well-being of nonhuman interests in ways that go beyond their service to humans. […] the relevant moral community must be understood as the affected community or community at risk, tied together not by common passports, nationality, blood line, ethnicity, or religion but by the potential to be harmed by the particular proposal, and not necessarily all in the same way or to the same degree. (2004: 112-3)

Along these lines, Snyder proposed in the 1970s that there ought to be mechanisms for a whale to make a speech before the U.S. Congress, for the other creatures who are affected by human actions to be able to have their interests represented in political decision making. This participation, via human spokespersons, goes beyond the notion of legal standing first outlined by Christopher Stone. Snyder has more recently reiterated this idea in 1992 in “A Village Council of All Beings”. Building on the ideas of Australians Joanna Macy and John Seed, Snyder calls for a political formation that includes anotherness as a foundational structure of government: “Imagine a village that includes its trees and birds, its sheep, goats, cows, and yaks, and the wild animals of the high pastures […] as members of the community. The village councils, then, would in some sense give all these creatures voice. They would provide space for all” (1996: 79-80). In The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993), an ecofeminist novel set in California in the near future, Starhawk embodies this very idea in the local government she describes. The Council Hall of the San Francisco Bay Area is envisioned as a regional government that has radically extended democratic representation so that various nonhuman entities have their spokespersons participating in political deliberations. The healer Madrone reflects on the time five years earlier when Council participants realized that a weakness of their organization was revealed in the fact that “The animals, the plants, the

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waters had no voice in Council, and yet every decision should take them into account” (1993: 46). In response, they developed four seats at Council to represent the “Four sacred Things,” the four elements: White Deer for the earth, Hawk for the air, Coyote for fire and Salmon for water. For each a human sits masked in trance with the duty to represent the interests of the entities of each element. While some might be quick to note that this utopian format still contains the reality that human beings are speaking for nature, such a practice would be a radical step beyond the anthropocentrism and androcentrism of current governmental bodies (on the issue of humans speaking for/as nature, see Murphy 1995, Armbruster 1998). 7. Conclusion The conflict of whether or not environmentally ethical political, cultural and economic formations can be developed within the framework of the existing geopolitical reality of nation states, or if such development requires the dismantling of that geopolitical reality and its replacement with formations that are simultaneously post-national, transnational, and local, can be seen in the focus of two American environmental magazines: Orion and Wild Earth. Orion tends to focus on the playing out of environmental issues within the context of U.S. national interests, political structures, and American culture. Articles treating U.S. laws and freedoms focus on readers as ‘Americans’, as when David Orr writes about constitutional quality of life guarantees. In contrast, Wild Earth takes a bioregional and continental approach that is both localist and transnational as indicated by its manifesto that links environmental actions across the U.S., Canadian and Mexican borders. Both magazines play valuable educational roles, but in terms of developing allonational potential and consciousness, Wild Earth generally has more to contribute. Whether we are talking about environmental magazines, literary nonfiction, poetry, or novels, literature that constructs and imagines allonational formations necessarily reflects and encourages expectations on the part of authors and readers that people and places need not be run by governments in the ways that they are run today. Their depictions of anotherness and answerability generate a cognitive dissonance with the existing status quo of the instrumentalist nation state

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that will affect not only the way readers think about the world, but to some extent, no matter how discretely minute, will also affect the way they act in the world. Bibliography Armbruster, Karla. 1998. ‘“Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight”: A Call for Boundary Crossing in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism’ in Gaard, Greta, and Patrick D. Murphy (eds) Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 97-122. Andruss, Van, et al. (eds). 1990. Home! A Bioregional Reader. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, M. M. 1993. Toward a Philosophy of the Act (tr. Vadim Liapunov) eds Liapunov and Michael Holquist. Austin, University of Texas Press. Berry, Wendell. 1995. Another Turn of the Crank. Washington, DC: Counterpoint. —. 1981. The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural. San Francisco: North Point Press. —. 1987. Home Economics. San Francisco: North Point Press. —. 1997. The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. —. 1990. What are People For? San Francisco: North Point Press. Eckersley, Robyn. 2004. The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Evers, Larry and Felipe Molina. 1987. Yaqui Deer Songs: Maso Bwikam: A Native American Poetry. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Head, Bessie. 1995. When Rain Clouds Gather. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Hogan, Linda. 1995. Solar Storms. New York: Scribner. House, Freeman. 1999. Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species. Boston: Beacon. Jackson, Wes. 1996. Becoming Native to This Place. Washington, DC: Counterpoint. Kuehls, Thom. 1996. Beyond Sovereign Territory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Manning, Richard. 2001. Inside Passage: A Journey Beyond Borders. Washington, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books. Miyoshi, Masao. 1993. ‘A Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationalism and the Decline of the Nation-State’ in Critical Inquiry 19: 726-51. Murphy, Patrick D. 1998. ‘Anotherness and Inhabitation in Recent Multicultural Literature’ in Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammels (eds) Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism & Literature London. Zed Books: 40-52. —. Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Orion. January/February 2004. Ortiz, Simon. 1992. Woven Stone. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Rischard, J.F. 2002. High Noon: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them. New York: Basic Books. Robinson, Kim Stanley. 1997. Blue Mars. New York: Bantam. —. 1995. Green Mars. New York: Bantam. —. 1993. Red Mars. New York: Bantam. Silko, Leslie Marmon. 1992. Almanac of the Dead. New York: Penguin. Snyder, Gary. 1996. A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint. —. 1990. ‘Regenerate Culture!’ in Christopher Plant and Judith Plant (eds) Turtle Talk: Voices for a Sustainable Future. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers. Stone, Christopher. 1996. Should Trees Have Standing? 25th Anniversary Edition. Dobbs Ferry: Oceania Publications. Starhawk. 1993. The Fifth Sacred Thing. New York: Bantam. Thomashow, Mitchell. 1995. Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Trask, Haunani-Kay. 1999. Light in the Crevice Never Seen. Corvallis: Calyx. Wild Earth. Winter 2002-2003. Yamashita, Karen Tei. 1997. Tropic of Orange. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press.

Ecology as moral stand(s): environmental ethics, Western moral philosophy, and the problem of the Other Thomas Claviez Abstract: Independent of the discursive regimes that inform the disciplines involved in the debate about the protection of our environment, the question arises upon what preexisting or yet-to-be established moral-philosophical frameworks the normative demand to preserve nature can be based. The well-known Manichean distinction between an ecocentric vs an anthropocentric ethics is partly misleading, inasmuch as even an ecocentric ethics would have to be based on an anthropocentric discourse in order to be formulated or promoted. Most of the traditional Western moral philosophies imply a concept of justice based upon notions of sameness and reciprocity – two aspects that certainly do not characterize men’s relation to nature. The only system of ethics to date that takes into account the radical otherness that nature constitutes is Emmanuel Levinas’ “Ethics of Otherness,” whose usefulness for an environmental ethics this essay sets out to assess.

1. Nature as Other: The impossibility of an ecocentric ethics The smallest common normative denominator that probably informs all ecological thinking – from literature to biology – is arguably that of preservation. What specific form such preservation might take, or what strategies ought to be taken to achieve it – active intervention into certain biospheres, or non-intervention, pragmatic action, scientific research, or consciousness-raising – are already questions open to dispute. No matter what strategy or discipline is preferred, the question for all of them remains: On what axiological basis can a prescription (such as the prescription to preserve nature) be formulated? Any norm – any “ought” – has to refer to a certain moral, or rather, ethical stance that we take. But what claim can nature lay on us to induce us to preserve it for its own sake? This question touches

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upon the whole debate about anthropocentric versus ecocentric ecology; a debate that has been staged extensively in diverse journals, and that fills whole anthologies in the meantime.1 I am afraid that we have reached a point where the survival of the human species could be achieved almost without what we call “nature”, i.e. our organic, nonhuman environment – an assumption on which any anthropocentric approach of preservation is based in the last consequence. If, however, we aim at more than just the survival of man – and a sad survival this would be – we will have to find a way to relate to nature on another than a scientific or purely instrumental basis: an ethical one. I venture to say that the distinction between an anthropocentric and an ecocentric ethics of environment is a precarious, if not mistaken one. Even if we account for an environmental ethics in ecocentric terms, we have to explain, legitimize, or simply “sell” this ethics to other humans. That is, even if we put the interests of nature in its entirety (and not only those of the human species) at the center of our concerns and try to formulate them, we will by necessity have to do so in human terms – provided we are not content to preaching it in and to the desert. The preservation of the planet and nature will entail a consensus as to the worth of its preservation among humans. Consequently, even an ecocentric environmental ethics demands that it be communicated in “anthropocentric” ways. And here is where the central problem enters: How can we conceive of an ethics toward something/someone that is non-human? Not only are all Western moral philosophies to date based upon the distinction between the human and the non-human, be they of an Aristotelian, Kantian or utilitarian variety. All of these paradigms, moreover, are based on qualities that we as humans and qua humans share: the desire for a good life, reason, our own interests, or, in the version of Bentham, in our ability to suffer.2

1

The most important contributions of this debate are collected in Cheryll Glotfelty/Harold Fromm (eds) 1996, and J. Baird Callicott/Michael P. Nelson (eds) 1998. 2 Cf. Aristotle 1941; Kant 1964a, Bentham 1907: 311. However, it needs to be pointed out here that Jacques Derrida, commenting upon Bentham's question "Can they suffer?", insists that to pose this question changes the entire register of the relationship between man and animal, inasmuch as this question does not refer to

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The list of qualities that allegedly separate us from both animate and inanimate nature is even longer than that: Our abilities to love, to talk, to reflect, to plan, to dress, have all been drawn upon to distinguish us from animals, plants, microbes, and stones. These distinctions all point to what is different from us, that is, what makes us other than nature, or rather, what makes nature our “other”. This insistence on the difference and otherness of human beings in contradistinction to nature and the environment is by no means selfevident and historically universal. Earlier and contemporary other cultures certainly have not so ardently subscribed to and pursued this dichotomy between man and nature or subject and object. So-called “primitive” societies, informed by a mythical, or mythopoetic, worldview, rather emphasize aspects that connect humans and non-humans in a holistic, if hierarchized, cosmology; a cosmology that entails what now is considered a pre- or non-scientific perspective on the relation between man and nature.3 Buddhism and Native American mythologies might serve as an example here, to the latter of which I will return below. Notwithstanding the wide-spread desires to turn the wheel of historical developments back, its seems impossible to simply return to those societal forms and those cultural norms again, although some fictional experiments in this regard do exist. These attempts – first developed in the romantic philosophies of Schlegel, Schelling, and others, and connected with projects such as an “unconscious poetry” and a Golden Age, unspoiled by reason’s interventions, circumventing the subject-object dichotomy, and tapping the mythological roots of the origins of human existence – have been considered a “failure”; a failure that results from the impossibility to consciously and intentionally return to a pre-reflective stage, and that results in turn in late Romanticism’s irony to express this paradox. However, the tendency to blur the radical distinctions between man and nature, “us” and “them”, the same and the other, still characterizes many more recent approaches within ecology and environmentalism. It is neither my intention nor possible to enumerate all the diverse paths taken in this regard in the meantime. It seems safe to say, some kind of ability but, on the contrary, to the question"can they not be able?" (Derrida 2002: 396; emphasis in the original.) 3 Cf. Cassirer 1955; Hübner, 1985.

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however, that all those attempts to reduce or even dissolve the boundaries and gaps separating humankind from its non-human other – on the basis of relationality, reciprocity, mutual interdependence, or shared characteristics of linguistic resources, language, consciousness, or suffering – are designed to create a common ground upon which to base a prescriptive position such as that of preservation. The aim is to dissolve the binary structures that, from a deconstructive perspective, have haunted Western metaphysics since its inception. The problem with these structural binaries is that they constitute not only a syllogistic (i.e., descriptive) distinction, but an axiological (i.e., prescriptive) one as well. The locus classicus of this position may be (fittingly) found in Derrida’s Positions: Therefore we must proceed using a double gesture, according to a unity that is both systematic and in and of itself divided, a double writing, that is, a writing that is in and of itself multiple, what I called, in “La double séance,” a double science. On the one hand, we must traverse a phase of overturning. To do justice to this necessity is to recognize that in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand. To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment. To overlook this phase of overturning is to forget the conflictual and subordinating structure of opposition. Therefore one might proceed too quickly to a neutralization that in practice would leave the previous field untouched, leaving one no hold on the previous opposition, thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively. (Derrida 1981: 41)

The “phase of overturning” that Derrida alludes to here aptly describes the tendency I have sketched above, characterized by the dissolution of “classical philosophical oppositions” in order to achieve “a peaceful coexistence of a vis-á-vis.” Moreover, Derrida points here toward the folding of axiological and logical aspects that turn such oppositions into “violent hierarchies” and “conflictual and subordinating structures.” Such an argument suggests that overcoming the logical binaries almost “automatically” results in the overcoming of axiological binaries, which form the core of the problem. Quite surprisingly, though, Derrida abstains from any further comment upon the connection between the two spheres of the logical and the axiological; nor, for that matter, does he explain how one pole can “logically” dominate the other. The categorically presupposed

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interrelation between the logical and the axiological sphere is, however, by no means self-evident. Thus other philosophers so distinct in their approach as Jean-François Lyotard and Jürgen Habermas have, from within a Kantian tradition, insisted upon the strict separation of those two realms or, in Lyotard’s terminology, language-games.4 The question that arises out of this problematic is whether the peaceful coexistence of the vis-à-vis is to be achieved by a reduction of the gap of otherness that separates the respective poles (that is, by an overcoming of their difference), or whether, on the contrary, difference and otherness have to be acknowledged in order to “overturn” their hierarchical structure. This question also has some relevance to our question at hand, as the main focus of contemporary approaches toward an environmental ethics is doubtlessly on the former option. However, what makes the problem of an environmental ethics even more troublesome is the fact that not only our ethics (those, at least, available in our Western metaphysical universe) are based on the dichotomy of human sameness vs. nature’s otherness, but that this distinction, in turn, leads to an even larger dilemma: That nature by definition does not share our ethics. The question then is: Can we extend an ethics toward a realm where the values and norms that inform such an ethics are nonexistent? Even in the sphere of inter-human relationships this would already pose a problem: We are all too familiar with the offenses committed against what we consider to be human rights by cultures that do not subscribe to the moral traditions we have inherited from Enlightenment. But things turn out to be even more difficult when we expand ethical conceptions to a realm where not only no concept of human rights exists, but no ethical concepts whatsoever: I think it is quite save to say that a panther, a mosquito, a fern or a rock do not share our ethical concerns, do not even have the slightest idea of what morality or ethics as we define them could possibly mean.5 That is, even if nature may be a system based on balance – a term which has acquired a highly charged ethical connotation in the debate – with the 4

Cf. Habermas 1982: 245; Lyotard 1999: 65-6. As Neil Evernden so succinctly puts it: "[T]he idea of extending an ethical system presupposes the existence of creatures that can participate in such a system, and here is that the problems arise. Animals cannot even be consulted about ethical guidelines, much less be expected to appreciate or adhere to them" (Evernden 1992: 100). 5

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exception of humans no other part or particle of this system does carry the concept of balance around in its brain. In contrast, mankind, the only instance capable of having this idea and, moreover, to reflect upon it, has a pedigree that attests to the fact that this capability for reflection has rather served to destroy this very balance. There is, consequently, no use to debate this otherness away; we have to acknowledge it, no matter how hard we try to dissolve binary structures of otherness in order to establish areas of sameness or reciprocity. But how could one conceive of, let alone communicate, an ethics that extends to a realm so “other” that it doesn’t even know about ethics, let alone human norms usually connected with it such as “Thou shalt not kill”? Even Bentham’s central moral yardstick – the ability to suffer – that appears to go farthest toward an inclusion of non-human beings into an ethical system, excludes vegetable and nonanimate objects. Kant’s notion of respect [Achtung] is based upon the category of reason, which in turn leads to the distinction of being either a means toward an end – which is roughly what most humans take non-human nature to be – or an end in oneself, which Kant considers rational human beings to be.6 And although Aristotle grounds his notion of the good life on a telos that he sees at work in all of nature, the capability of reflection upon what such a good life may be is what makes human beings the one species to which the category of an ethics of the good life can be applied.7 Two questions consequently arise from what we have said so far: 1) How could such an ethics – an ethics, that is, that were to take the factor of radical otherness into account – be envisaged? Do we have an ethico-philosophical model at hand that provides such an ethics?

6

Kant writes: “To judge by reason alone, man has no duties except to men (himself or others), for his duty to any subject at all is the moral constraint by his will. Accordingly, a subject who constrains must, first, be a person; and he must, secondly, be given as an object of experience, because he is to influence the purpose of a man's will; and such an influence can occur only in the relationship of two existing beings [...]. Since in all our experience we are acquainted with no being which might be capable of obligation (active or passive) except man, man can therefore have no duty to any being other than man” (Kant 1964b: 105). 7 Aristotle comments upon the relationship between human and non-human beings in his works De Anima und De Motu Animalum. On a discussion as to how his “biological” view affects his ethics, cf. Nussbaum 1986: 264ff.

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2) If such a model existed, how does it relate to the categories of literature and science? 2. Levinas’ ethics of the Other As to the first question: Yes, such a model does exist, although its application in respect to non-human beings proves rather problematic. It is the concept of ethics as first philosophy, an ethics of the face-toface (or vis-à-vis) that the Jewish-French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has developed in his oeuvre.8 Levinas’ “philosophy” – and why in his case the term has to be put in quotation marks will become clear in a minute – offers a way out of the dilemma of the mutual exclusiveness of the ethical and otherness. This is due to the fact that he considers our obligation toward the “Other” – which, let me remind you, in the context of his philosophy is a human other – as arising out of a moment of confrontation (of the face-to-face) that precedes all knowledge about this other. His ethics is based on the presumption that in applying and projecting categories of my own, circumscribed and subjective, knowledge or experience on the other, I commit an act of violence toward this other: an “imperialism of the same”, as he terms it (Levinas 1969: 87). In reducing the Other’s otherness to sameness, to what I assume he or she allegedly shares with me (reason, the ability to suffer, freedom of will, or a notion of a good life), I subject him or her to my own apparatus of categories. In so doing, I reduce him or her to an economy of reciprocity, compatibility, and mutuality, and in the process am destroying what is unique, incommensurable, and exceptional about the Other. Contrary to the “truth” that any knowledge of him or her may provide, there exists the Other’s truth, which is at the same time another truth: a truth beyond any epistemological or ontological categorization, a truth not to be captured by rational, scientific categories of distanced objectivity or empirical observation. This other truth, which is an ethical truth, is communicated by the Other’s face, which puts my projections into question: 8

Levinas’ two most important books are Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1969) and Otherwise Than Being (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press 1981).

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The face of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image it leaves me, the idea existing to my own measure and to the measure of its ideatum – the adequate idea. It does not manifest itself by these qualities, but [...] it expresses itself. The face brings a notion of truth which, in contradistinction to contemporary ontology, is not the disclosure of an impersonal Neuter, but expression: the existent breaks through all the envelopings and generalities of Being to spread out in its “form” the totality of its “content”, finally abolishing the distinction between form and content. (Levinas 1969: 51)

The radicality of his concept of Otherness becomes apparent in another passage of Totality and Infinity: The Other is not other with a relative alterity as are, in comparison, even ultimate species, which mutually exclude each other but still have their place within the community of a genus [...]. The alterity of the Other does not depend on any quality that would distinguish him from me, for a distinction of this nature would precisely imply between us that community of genus which already nullifies alterity [...]. The Other remains infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign; his face in which his epiphany is produced and which appeals to me breaks with the world that can be common to us [...]. (Levinas 1969: 194)

Levinas’ concept of ethics challenges our traditional views of ethics and justice (be they utilitarian, Aristotelian, or Kantian), which are based on notions of equality, reciprocity, and universality. The confrontation between me and the Other is not the confrontation of two equivalent, and equally free, persons. The Other, as Levinas conceives it, looks both down upon and up to me: It looks down upon me as it masters me with its obligation “Thou shalt not kill!”, but at the same time obliges me as a being that needs my help. The Other, then, does not meet me as a free – and in its freedom, equivalent – person. On the contrary, it reduces and challenges my own self-hood and freedom with the obligation that it imposes upon me, an obligation that, according to Levinas, I can never fulfill, never live up to. And he adds that this obligation exists no matter if the Other feels or fulfills the same obligation toward me. Here, again, our endeared notions of moral reciprocity are replaced by an irreciprocity that characterizes Levinas’ concept of the ethical encounter. It is only after this epiphanic moment of the face-to-face that communication, exchange, understanding, and knowledge can set in; that an apparatus and an economy of sameness develops and can be applied that makes justice

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as we know it conceivable. Justice, let me remind you, is classically allegorized by the figure of “Justizia”; a figure which is both blind (that is, it does not recognize difference, let alone the face of the Other) and which holds scales in her hand, which symbolize justice as being based on reciprocity and equivalence. One could argue that this turning around of the tables, the reestablishment of a hierarchy “the other way around”, could count as a “tactical” revaluation whose necessity Derrida so emphatically insists upon. But this is by no means the case. Levinas’ revaluation unveils the concepts of sameness and reciprocity to be as much tainted by potential “violent hierarchies” as Derrida considers the binary oppositions to be. His concept of ethics as first philosophy establishes the rehierarchization to the advantage of the Other as by no means a tactical or strategic maneuver, but as the non-deducible, unconditional condition of any mode of ethics. I have been able here to provide but a rather sketchy overview of what is indeed a very intricate and highly complex philosophical argument that Levinas develops in his two seminal works Totality and Infinity and Otherwise Than Being. However, it not only seems that such an approach seems to severely challenge our traditional views of ethics. It still remains to be shown how such an ethics applies to our question at hand: the preservation of our planet. I hope that one thing, however, has become sufficiently clear. What a Levinasian ethics of otherness – although he restricts his approach to the realm of the human – offers is that it opens up the possibility to circumvent the dilemma I have sketched above: the apparently inextricable connection of ethics with sameness. It allows us to conceive of an ethical relation that does not depend upon knowledge, reciprocity, equivalence, or use-value. I am aware, however, that the concept of “otherness” is a troublesome one, in that “otherness” is exactly what not only moral philosophy, but also science strives to overcome and eliminate in the process of “making known” and of acquiring knowledge. Let me point out, however, that in referring to Levinas’ ethics of the Other I do not want to introduce any esoteric realm “beyond” science, an irrational concept that evades scientific argument or makes it superfluous. Although Levinas’ philosophy presents an amalgamation of syllogistic argument and Hebrew religious tradition, his conclusion in regard to

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an ethics based upon a non-violent hierarchy of the Other over me seems, in my view, philosophically irrefutable. The moment has come to point out that an ethics based of the very paradigms of knowledge, reason, and equality faces some severe problems and entails – even if only applied to the interhuman realm, but especially so as far as our relation to non-human nature in concerned – some dangers that we have become aware of in the last thirty or forty years. Levinas’ ethics as “first philosophy” argues that the ethical moment necessarily has to precede aspects and systems of knowledge, of objectivity, scientific calculation, even of metaphysics itself. Only then can the threatening consequences of disinterested and distanced analysis be contained. Such consequences can be felt both in disciplines where the objects of inquiry are human beings, as in the social sciences, and the ones where non-human beings are concerned, as in the natural sciences. All of this is not meant to say that scientific analysis is inherently unethical; it is meant to say, however, that if we completely ignore our ethical responsibilities toward our environment – responsibilities that precede any scientific inquiry – we make reason a cold piece of steel in the hand of immoral (or rather, amoral) machines completely detached from our natural environment. 3. A dog’s world? We have, however, left one important question out so far: Can a Levinasian ethics be “applied” to nature, to the environment, or to non-human beings? After all, to restrict his ethics to the realm of the human would simply mean to reintroduce the binary opposition between the human and the non-human. The one person who has tried to extend a Levinasian framework to questions of ecology is the English philosopher John Llewelyn. In his remarkable essay “Am I Obsessed by Bobby (Humanism of the Other Animal)”, Llewelyn reflects upon the question whether Levinas term Autrui – the Other – is strictly a personal pronoun, or if can also refer to non-human beings like, say, a dog (Llewelyn 1991). The name Bobby refers to a dog that Levinas mentions in an essay called “Nom d’un chien ou droit naturel” (The Name of a Dog or Natural Right). This dog repeatedly came into a Nazi prison camp where Levinas and other Jewish prisoners were held as if they were non-human beings themselves. In

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stark contrast to the brutality of the overseers of the camp – indeed more beast-like than any animal – the dog greeted them with a wagging tail and a friendly bark. Levinas ironically calls this dog the last Kantian in Nazi Germany, and ponders on the question whether, its beastly “stupidity” notwithstanding, this dog is not the only “humane” being left in the camp. But the dog, as both Levinas and Llewelyn remind us, if a Kantian, is lacking the brain to universalize. And, as Llewelyn points out: Bobby is without logos and that is why he is without ethics. Therefore he is without Kantian ethics; and so he is without Levinasian ethics, since the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas is analogous to the ethics of Immanuel Kant in that each ethics is an ethics with a God within the limits of reason alone, but without a dog or any other beast, except indirectly, if we are to judge by reason alone. (Llewelyn 1991: 236)

Two problems arise at this point: Firstly, it would seem that it is exactly the dog’s incapability to universalize that would predispose it to avoid the leveling pitfalls of universalization that Levinas focuses upon. Secondly, to claim, as Llewelyn does, an analogy between Levinas’ and Kant’s ethics in that both are “ethics with a God within the limits of reason alone” is to erase the very difference between a Kantian universalism of reason and a Levinasian ethics of particularity and otherness, and thus the uniqueness of Levinas’ philosophy itself.9 Llewelyn, however, insists on this parallel between Levinas and Kant: We can be under an obligation only to a being with whom we can be, as we say, face to face. In the very human world of Immanuel Kant, the other man is the only being with whom I come face to face. So too in the very human world of Emmanuel Levinas [...]. Just as Kant maintains that I can have obligations only to a being that has, or (to cover the infantile and senile) is of the kind that can have, obligations, so Levinas seems to imply that I can have responsibilities only toward beings capable of having responsibilities. (Llewelyn 1991: 237)

9 It is also to ignore a long-standing debate within moral philosophy about the degree in which a Kantian ethics mediately or immediately made Auschwitz possible – something that I venture to say a Levinasian ethics could not possibly be charged with. On this debate, cf. Arendt 1982; MacIntyre 1966: 192ff.; Siebers 1992: 113ff.

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Just why Levinas “seems to imply” this remains unclear, since Llewelyn’s conclusion radically contradicts Levinas’ insistence on the irreciprocity of any ethical encounter, in which, as he repeatedly insists, it is completely irrelevant for me if the Other has or takes on the obligation that I have toward him/her (or it). Moreover, since having responsibilities means to be able to rationally reflect upon this obligation, we are, as the first quote by Llewelyn suggests, back in the realm of reason. But nowhere does Levinas say that this obligation toward the Other is created, or becomes binding, through my reflecting upon it. Quite the contrary: Levinas repeatedly insists that my responsibility for the Other is nothing I could assume or intend, but one that obliges me before I am able to reflect upon it, let alone to accept – or, for that matter, to reject – it.10 The crucial question that remains is: Do animals have a “face”, an expressive face, moreover, which would allow for the ethical moment of the face-to-face in the sense of Levinas? Although most interpreters of Levinas read this term metaphorically, as regards our question one is also tempted to read it literally: I am quite sure that hardly anyone of us eating his or her steak would be able, if face to face with a cow, to kill it in order to provide for this steak; and a lot of people using perfumes and pharmaceutics would not be able or willing to themselves conduct the experiments allegedly necessary to obtain them, face to face with cats, monkeys, dogs, or even laboratory rats.11 Thus the decisive difference between us and non-human beings is not captured in the question: “Can they talk?” but rather in the one “Can they read?” This they cannot – but we can; we have to accept this one crucial difference. However, we do not have to accept that this difference – or any other one – relieves us from taking an ethical stance. Quite the contrary: it obliges us even the more. The passivity of reading and seeing, of decoding the Other’s face, comes closer to the passiveness of responsibility in the Levinasian sense than the

10

Cf. Levinas 1969: 219; Levinas 1981: 15, 54. As we have managed to hide the phenomenon of human death behind the walls of senior homes and clinics, we hide the death of animals behind those of industrialized slaughterhouses and high-security laboratories. And every one of those faces surely says the same: “Thou shalt not kill!” Or, as a popular saying has it: “Once you meet it, you can’t eat it.”

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activity of reflection.12 And it is at this point that I would like to back to the question that I raised at the beginning of this essay. 4. Representation, sublimity, or ‘letting-be’ Is your mouth not finding itself slowly without names? There where once words were... Rainer Maria Rilke

If what I have said so far is valid, then the question which mode of representation is better suited to express our responsibility toward our environment appears in a different light. Not only the mode of production – that is, representation – has to be taken into account, but also the mode of perception. Surely both cannot be considered in isolation of each other, but have to be analyzed in their interaction. As far as the aspect of otherness goes, both play a decisive role in this interaction. How, for example, do facts and symbols relate to otherness? Can radical otherness be communicated by either one? Is it communicable at all? Can it be hermeneutically deciphered? If otherness is what, according to Levinas, precedes communication, then both symbols and facts, as part and parcel of different discursive systems of communication, would seem to necessarily come after and, to a certain degree, “betray” the immediacy of the ethical moment of the face to face. Levinas’ commentaries on the problem of representation and perception of the face to face are rather vague and scattered, and the fact that most of his philosophy evinces a rather anthropocentric quality doesn’t make things easier. In his book The Middle Voice of Ecological Conscience, Llewelyn tries to combine the philosophies of Heidegger and Levinas through what he 12

This passivity, alas, becomes more and more impossible due to the reasons I have outlined above. We have closed away this non-human world of experimenting, slaughtering, and dying; consequently, we have hardly left any opportunity to see nature in its otherness, unmanipulated by aspects of human notions of beauty, use, or human recreation. I am well aware that the concept of an unmanipulated nature is highly problematic, and has been extensively discussed. What I am driving at here is not any romantic notion of an edenic, unspoiled nature, but a perspective on it that is not informed by either purely aesthetic (that is, contemplative) or exclusively instrumental (that is, exploitative) regards.

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calls a “Chiasmic Reading of Responsibility in the Neighborhood of Levinas, Heidegger, and Others”.13 Two concepts that feature prominently in his analysis are the “holy” and the “sublime”. The first one, as Llewelyn puts it echoing Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin, means “pure”, and beauty as a mode of representation is pure since “it respects the distinctness of the partners that belong to the holy” (Llewelyn 1991b: 118; emphasis mine).14 However, Heidegger’s concept of beauty is not, as it traditionally is, distinguished from the sublime. The sublime, however, would seem to be a rather unlikely candidate for the mode of ethical representation we seek, since, as we know from Kant, it serves to overcome the threatening aspects of otherness in order to reinstall the reign of human reason. The problem is that, as Llewelyn remarks, “the holy cannot remain an a priori category of knowledge without its being domesticated by man as Kant and Schiller domesticate the sublime” (Llewelyn 1991b: 184). Thus the question arises if an “undomesticated sublime” is possible; and I would argue that the respect for “the distinctness of the partners that belong to the holy” acknowledges the Other’s otherness and strives to exclude the very mechanisms of overcoming the threat caused by experiencing the Other. As a kind of “modified” but not yet entirely “domesticated” sublime, Heidegger’s “pure beauty” features some striking similarities to Levinas’ epiphany of the face-to-face. In the Kantian sublime, the integrity of the self is put into question in a first step, only to then reappropriate otherness into the sway of reason or sameness. In Levinas’ view, this reappropriation is necessary as well, since it is through this appropriation that reason, communication, and even justice are made possible. However, something of the irreciprocity of the encounter, and the resulting disintegration of the self that characterizes the ethical moment is (or rather, ought to be) saved even after the work of reason sets in. Kant, in contrast, cannot allow for any other God beside reason. Nor can he allow for an ethics that is conceptually pre-rational, although one could argue that, by introducing his own concept of the sublime, he opens a fissure in the wall of reason that surrounds his philosophy. Kant attempts to seal this 13

Thus the subtitle of Llewelyn 1991b. To “respect the distinctness of the partners that belong to the holy” is to acknowledge the partners’ otherness, and to be neither threatened by it or to try to overcome it by making them “my same”.

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fissure, as in a retaliating move reason reasserts itself in that, through the sublime experience “the mind can make felt the sublimity of its destination, in comparison with nature itself” (Kant 2000: 126).15 The crisis that manifests itself in the “momentary checking of the vital powers” (Kant 2000: 102) through an aspect of nature (an aspect, moreover, that threatens to deny nature’s purposiveness, which is a central tenet for Kant’s philosophy), is thus averted. In its Kantian version, one could argue, the sublime replays in a nutshell the historical drama of men’s appropriation of nature. Although the “dissatisfaction” and the feelings of uneasiness and terror arise, reason finally carries the victory, and all threatening alterity (viz, nature’s threatening aspects and its partial lack of purpose) is subsumed under it. To avoid such an “imperial sublime”, as Adorno terms the Kantian variety, one would have to conceive of a mode of the sublime in which the traces of obligation, irreciprocity, and the disintegration of the self are kept alive; where the otherness, the unimaginable, is not completely subjected to the all-embracing power of reason, and the Other’s face subjugated in the process; where, to use the vocabulary I have introduced above, the passivity of seeing/reading is not completely blotted out by the activity of reflection and appropriation. In order to open up such a possibility, Llewelyn refers to the following quote by Heidegger: “We tend to think of face to face encounter exclusively as a relation between human beings […]. Yet being face to face with another has a more distant origin; it originates in the distance where earth and sky, the god and man reach one another” (Heidegger 1971: 103). The distance where earth and sky, the god and man reach each other is, in Heidegger’s term, the “Geviert”, which strongly resonates with mythopoetic world-views familiar from Native American culture. Our attitude toward such a face-to-face encounter between the human and the non-human should be characterized by what Llewelyn, referring again to Heidegger, calls “letting-be” (Gelassenheit) that accompanies the experience of “pure beauty”: “Our task is to cease all overcoming, and leave metaphysics to itself” (Heidegger 1972: 24). This, however, should not be mixed up with the 15

I would like to add that the German original reads “even above nature”, and not “in comparison with nature”.

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classic notion of contemplation; Heidegger still moves within the framework of the numinous or holy, and not that of Kantian beauty. Such a “relaxed” attitude toward something holy points, as I see it, toward an alternative form of the sublime; a mode of representation which, in its postmodern, Lyotardian connotation of representing the unrepresentable (which is the Other), avoids the “lashing back” of reason that characterizes the Kantian sublime.16 It is interesting to note that representations of nature in mythopoetically informed literature such as Native American novels often lack the alleged terror that an overpowering nature (which Kant designates as “dynamic sublime”) cannot but raise in a spectator – the very terror which instigates reason’s “striking back”. As I have noted elsewhere, Western myth theory in all its varieties has repeatedly (and misleadingly) reduced myth exclusively to a primitive strategy of overcoming terror – which, consequently, turns myth comfortably into science’s primitive predecessor to be replaced by science’s more efficient and powerful means.17 Llewelyn’s strategy to draw upon a concept such as Heidegger’s “Geviert”, however – with all its mythical overtones and analogies I have pointed out above – has to ignore Levinas’ allergy against myth and modes of the mythopoetic. Although Levinas is one of very few philosophers to envisage man’s relation to nature not exclusively or mainly in terms of the tragic – after all, he claims that “[t]he morality of ‘earthly nourishments’ is the first morality, the first abnegation” (Levinas 1969: 13)18 – he strongly objects against all forms or attempts to retreat to a mythic world view: The renaissance of mythology, the promotion of myth into the rank of a superior way of thinking through laicistic thinkers, the fight going on in the religious realm about what recently has been called the spiritualization of dogma and moral, do 16

However, one would have to qualify this borrowing from Lyotard‘s terminology, since his concept of the sublime as an attempt to represent the unrepresentable is based upon the simultaneity of mutually incompatible language games and thus ignores the narrative component of the Kantian sublime that I have outlined above. 17 Cf. Claviez 2000: 178ff. 18 In the same work, however, he links the concept of enjoyment to an economy of “making same”: “the essence of enjoyment: an energy that is other, recognized as other, recognized, we will see, as sustaining the very act that is directed upon it, becomes, in enjoyment, my energy, my strength, me” (Levinas 1969: 110/1).

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not prove an expansion of reason, but simply a return to the mentality of the primitive. A nostalgia that might be explained by the inadequacies of technical reason and by the catastrophes resulting from it. But cannot the culture growing out of monotheism not answer to this crisis – namely through an orientation free from the horrors of myth, of the bewilderment that these instigate in the mind, and the cruelties that they perpetuate in the behavior they cause? (Levinas 1969: 71)

The aversion that he harbors against attempts to “return to the mentality of the primitive”, however, by no means simply grows out of a belief in Enlightenment’s achievements, as his admittance to the catastrophes resulting from technical reason makes sufficiently clear. He considers myth – and, in fact, all of art which he considers to be but a prolongation of myth – to suggest and indeed to stage an economy of participation that obscures, rather than acknowledges, otherness, by suggesting a plasticity than immures the Other into an icon: Art brings into the world the obscurity of fate, but it especially brings the irresponsibility that charms as a lightness and grace. It frees. To make or to appreciate a novel and a picture is to no longer have to conceive, is to renounce the effort of science, philosophy, and action [...]. Magic, recognized everywhere as the devil’s part, enjoys an incomprehensible tolerance in poetry [...] evil powers are conjured by filling the world with idols which have mouths but do not speak [...]. This is not the disinterestedness of contemplation but of irresponsibility. The poet exiles himself from the city [...]. There is something wicked and egoist and cowardly in artistic enjoyment .(Levinas 1998: 12)

And, one would have to add, in mythic enjoyment, too, as in his view myth is the Godfather of all aesthetic artifacts. Regrettably, Levinas’ purely negative view of myth as an expression of the relation between man and nature characterized exclusively by “horror” and “bewilderment” joins the chorus of Western myth theories that I have outlined above. Such a perspective simply cannot conceive of a mythopoetic or “aesthetic” relation to nature based upon a “letting be”; a “pure beauty” that can neither be reduced to pure contemplation or knocked down to the imperial mode of appropriation that characterizes the Kantian sublime. If the encounter with otherness is conceived in the Heideggerian sense as partnership that respects the distinctness embodied in the holy (that is, a non-threatening form of otherness). The Other thus loses part of the

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radicality it acquires in Levinas’ ethics. However, much might in turn be gained. Although the word “partnership” would seem to connote some degree of reciprocity, it need not necessarily be exclusively conceived of in terms of mutuality or sameness. Within it, otherness still retains its place, to be acknowledged before it is known, as knowledge strips the Other of his/her/its otherness. Moreover, faced with something holy, one can never be sure whether the holy reciprocally acknowledges the viewer as well; here is where the entire tradition of sacrificing to different Gods sets in. To simply leave out or ignore the aspect of otherness, on the other hand, might have some unfortunate consequences; or, to put it in Derrida’s almost poetical terms, to “proceed too quickly to a neutralization that in practice would leave the previous field untouched, leaving one no hold on the previous opposition, thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively”. An environmental ethics that openly confronts the problem of otherness, then, still remains to be written. If reason tells us that we should preserve nature, the prescriptive term “should” in this formulation cannot, according to Levinas, be deduced from reason but has to precede it. The fact that both such an ethics and myth partake in the realm of the “pre-rational” might serve as a starting point to reconsider their mutual interpenetration; the reservations with which both have met should alert us to the fact that a step behind the rational is always to be taken with utter cautiousness. An ethics conceived as first philosophy might be said to leave, as Heidegger puts it, “metaphysics to itself”, although Levinas would be the first to warn us that his brand of ethics cannot be considered in isolation from, and independent of, metaphysics. If literary modes of representation that are based upon such an ethics partake of the mythopoetic, this need not necessarily be considered “retro” or nostalgic; such modes might rather point toward the limits of Enlightenment reason, and especially to an ideologically distorted and drastically reductive concept of myth and mythology that enlightened philosophy (and Levinas himself) still adhere to. Contrary to Kant’s assumption, then, nature may well have “purposeless” aspects; or rather, purposes other than those that serve humankind. Such a kind of otherness, however, need not by necessity be conceived of as exclusively threatening. If, as Hans-Georg Gadamer claims, being, to be understood, needs language (Gadamer

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1994, 421), then it might be time to become attuned to the language of otherness, before we are faced with a Silent Spring as described so powerfully by Rachel Carson. A modified concept of the sublime may be able to provide such language – if we are willing to bear the trauma of otherness without immediately striking back with that ambivalent pharmakon called reason. Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. 1982. Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aristotle. 1941. Nichomachean Ethic. The Basic Works of Aristotle (ed. Richard McKeon) New York: Random House. Bentham, Jeremy. 1907. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Callicott, J. Baird and Michael P. Nelson (eds). 1998. The Great New Wilderness Debate. Athens: The University of Georgia Press. Cassirer, Ernst. 1955. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms Vol. 2: Mythical Thought. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Claviez, Thomas. 2000. ‘Narrating Environmental Ethics: N. Scott Momaday and Walter Benjamin’ in T. Claviez and M. Moss (eds). Mirror Writing (Re-) Constructions of Native American Identity. Glienicke and Madison: Galda + Wilch: 171-92. Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Positions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. —. 2002. ‘The Animal That Therefore I am (More to Follow).’ Critical Inquiry 28: 369-418. Evernden, Neil. 1992. The Social Creation of Nature. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1994. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum. Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds). 1996. The Ecocriticism Reader. Athens: The University of Georgia Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1982. ‘A Reply to my Critics’ in John B. Thompson and David Held (eds). Habermas – Critical Debates. Cambridge: MIT Press: 234-47. Heidegger, Martin. 1971. ‘The Nature of Language’ in Heidegger, Martin On the Way to Language. New York: Harper and Row: 99-115. —. 1972. Time and Being. New York: Harper and Row. Hübner, Kurt. 1985. Die Wahrheit des Mythos [The Truth of Myth]. München: Beck. Kant, Immanuel. 1964a. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. New York: Harper & Row. —. 1964b. The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. —. 2000. Critique of Judgment. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

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—. 1981. Otherwise Than Being. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. —. 1998. Collected Philosophical Papers. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Llewelyn, John. 1991a. ‘Am I Obsessed by Bobby?’ in Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (eds). Re-Reading Levinas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 23445. —. 1991b. The Middle Voice of Ecological Conscience. London: MacMillan. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1999. The Postmodern Condition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1966. A Short History of Ethics. New York: Collier. Nussbaum, Martha. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siebers, Tobin. 1992. Morals and Stories. New York: Columbia University Press.

Where do your borders lie? Reflections on the semiotical ethics of nature Timo Maran Abstract: Ethical aspects of culture–nature relations are an essential part of environmental studies, having been most thoroughly studied in environmental ethics. This approach can be complemented by a fresh perspective provided by semiotics of nature. According to the biosemiotic theory, sign processes take place not only in human culture but also everywhere in nature. Proceeding from this view, the present article discusses ethical aspects of communicative relations between the human subject and his/her surrounding environment that abounds with all kinds of other living creatures. By using Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt and the definition of sign given by Charles Sanders Peirce, it is argued that in sign processes the human subject and the object of nature become joined into an inseparable unit of meaning. In the course of such interactions the human subject is changed and therefore also every sensation, cognition or contemplation about nature should then be carefully considered. By demonstrating the direct connection between personal identity and ethical issues through sign processes, such approach holds considerable ethical potential.

Nature is out there. It grows, swims, flies and multiplies in diverse ways irrespective of our cultural meanings and conventions. Also, by exceeding the limits of our cognition both in time and space, it never fully responds to our attempts to comprehend it. But in its otherness and strangeness nature is unavoidably attractive and dreadful, and in both ways hard to ignore. Isn’t this otherness the very reason why we turn to nature in the first place – to encounter what is different? This despite the fact that the difference we encounter may fill us not only with a sense of wonder, astonishment or surprise, but also with bewilderment or even fear. And yet, when we have returned to the safety within our cultural borders, we may discover that there’s something we have brought along with us, or rather — that something has changed in us ourselves. It may be just a fresh and vivid memory

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or some sudden understanding, but it may also be a deep ethical awareness rising from the encounter. There is a personal experience of this kind that I would like to share. At the age of twelve, I was deeply fascinated with aquatic life. Spending a holiday at our summer cottage in Western Estonia, I once caught a monstrous creature with six legs and an upward tail who had been slowly moving around on the bottom of an old pond. I kept it in a glass jar and fed it with scraps of raw meat. But one morning the strange-looking creature was gone and on the edge of the jar there sat the most beautiful sky-blue dragonfly I had ever seen. I was astonished. I took the dragonfly very carefully with both hands to carry it back and set free near its home pond. But the shore was muddy and slippery and all of a sudden I fell. When I got up, the beauty was gone and instead there was a pile of broken wings, deformed limbs and loose body segments. The dragonfly was changed and I was changed; the dragonfly was gone and yet, I am still carrying it with me. The present article is in many ways a distant reverberation to this story of the dragonfly. A later attempt to understand this past encounter with nature, as well as other similar cases of human experience; their role in the task of being human and being with nature. The amazement at the influence of such experiences, at the longevity of the respective memories and, as a result, the questioning of the borders between a human and his/her living environment. The suspicion of ethical theories, which either construct an impassable barrier between the moral subject and the object under ethical consideration or state the existence of some universal theoretical category that could be taken as a basis for attributing value to all living beings. Most ethical theories, either anthropocentric or biocentric, fail to recognise the role of direct relations established between a human subject and natural phenomena in a given nature experience. My intention here is to contribute to the rehabilitation of such relations, to show their fundamental role for our subjective realities and representational practices. From there it may be possible to arrive at a certain ethic perspective, which states that every interaction between a human subject and an object of nature is relevant because of the established semiotic connections and their consequences. Besides this central focus of the present article, some additional principles of the

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semiotical ethics of nature are introduced, which synthesise and summarise the views of Charles S. Peirce, Jakob von Uexküll, Augusto Ponzio, Susan Petrilli, Morten Tønnessen and many others who have initiated, developed or contributed to this particular approach.1 This task in its entirety cannot be fulfilled without applying an academic paradigm, which allows us to see human and non-human animals on similar terms and the relations between them as mutually significant. The views which meet these requirements by regarding the relations in and between nature and culture foremost as relations of meaning can be found from semiotic theories; more specifically from those semiotic paradigms which study semiotic processes in nature (biosemiotics) and between nature and human culture (ecosemiotics). 1. Outlines of the semiotics of nature A fundamental theoretical postulate of biosemiotics is the synchrony of semiotic processes and the process of life. This view has been expressed in various forms by many different scholars. For instance, the system theoretician Howard Pattee emphasises the necessity of semiosic regulation for the evolution of living systems. “Life originated with semiotic controls. Semiotic controls require measurement, memory, and selection, none of which are functionally describable by physical laws that, unlike semiotic systems, are based on energy, time, and rates of change” (Pattee 1997: 9). Winfried Nöth studies the question of semiotic threshold, which indicates the simplest level of organisation where semiotic processes can still occur (Nöth 2000). He shows that besides drawing the line between human culture and nature as was done in 1976 by Umberto Eco, the author of the concept of semiotic threshold, there exist also other possibilities – for instance those proceeding from the pansemiotic view of Charles S.

1

Dialogism is the central principle of semioethics and thus also my own thinking in this direction has become possible only thanks to the contributions of all kindred spirits. For contributions to the present paper in particular, either in personal discussions or in correspondence, I am grateful to Kalevi Kull, Susan Petrilli, Kadri Tüür, Louise Westling and especially to Elin Sütiste.

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Peirce.2 The Danish biochemist and semiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer states that the simplest entity with full semiotic competence is a single cell (Hoffmeyer 1995). According to Hoffmeyer, a cell is a selfreferential semiotic system, which contains digital type of information in DNA and analogue information in other cellular structures. In order for living process to take place, recurrent processes of translation and regulation between digital codes of memory and analogue codes of behaviour are needed (Hoffmeyer, Emmeche 1991). Thomas A. Sebeok, who has contributed greatly to the systematisation of the diversity of views in the semiotics of nature, claims that the realms of the science of signs and of the science of life coincide to a large degree (cf. Sebeok 1991: 151-158). In his words, “a full understanding of the dynamics of semiosis … may, in the last analysis, turn out to be no less than the definition of life” (Sebeok 1989: 26). Taking into consideration the differences between the structures of the subjective realities, i.e. Umwelten3 of different living organisms, and the ways they use signs, he suggests that branches of biosemiotics should be distinguished according to the main biological taxa (Sebeok 1991: 91-94, cf. Kull 2003). Thus, besides anthroposemiotics, the specific issues of zoosemiotics (Sebeok 1986, 1990), phytosemiotics (Krampen 1981; Kull 2000), mycosemiotics, microsemiotics (Ji 2002), as well as endosemiotics (Uexküll, Geigges, Herrmann 1993) have been raised in the contemporary semiotic literature.4 Biosemiotics, which sees semiotic and communicative processes as an indispensable part of living nature, forms also the ground for studying relations between human and non-human animals as relations of meaning in such a way that the characteristics of both sides are 2

According to Charles S. Peirce, semiotic phenomena are not limited by human language or even by communication processes of living nature, but have much wider occurrence. He advocates semiotic totality: “Universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs” (CP 5.448, fn.) 3 The concept of Umwelt is employed in this article in the sense Jakob von Uexküll used it, as “the part of the environment of a subject that it selects with its speciesspecific sense organs according to its organisation and its biological needs” (Uexküll Thure 1982: 87). 4 More detailed information about biosemiotics can be found from many thematic issues of semiotic journals such as Semiotica 127-1/4 (1999); Tartu Semiotic Library 3 (2002); Sign System Studies 30.1 (2002); Zeitschrift für Semiotik 8-3 (1986).

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considered. This, however, does not mean that animal communication systems are approached with the same theoretical premises as human language. Sebeok (1995: 9-10) has pointed out that language as defined by the existence of syntactic structures is the universal attribute of hominids and that the usage of the concept of language with reference to the communication of non-human animals is metaphoric: “As far as zoosemiotic processes are known to-date, no evidence of syntactic structures has been found, not even in any of the alloprimates” (11). The absence of language, nevertheless, does not mean that there exist no other possibilities for interacting in and between different species. In humans, for instance, various types of interaction without verbal language are described by studies of nonverbal communication (cf. Hinde 1975; Poyatos 2002). It is also known that nonverbal communication between humans and domesticated animals can be very elaborate and rich in nuance on both sides (Fleischer 1993). Thus, the possibilities for meaning relations in and between species are not necessarily limited by the existence of language or even by the existence of a common sign system. Kalevi Kull and Peeter Torop have explained biological communication using the term biotranslation for translation between Umwelten of different biological organisms. According to their definition, translation “means that some signs in one Umwelt are put into a correspondence with some signs in another Umwelt. … For it to be possible for translation to occur, there must be a certain connection, or overlapping, between the Umwelten” (Kull, Torop 2003: 318). They illustrate such translation across species with an example of two bird species Parus cristatus and Parus montanus translating each other’s alarm calls into their respective species-specific sign systems and Umwelten. In order to use the notion of translation, however, the involvement of two corresponding sign systems is needed, because “translation is a transmission of meaning from one sign system to another” (320). But even the existence of corresponding sign systems is not an indispensable premise for all semiotic interactions in nature. In many cases it is enough if the participants can perceive and become aware of each other’s characteristic features and if this awareness is relevant due to some functional relations. When such situation is constant or recurrent enough to make learning and adapting possible in the

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ontogenetic and evolutional perspective, complex sign displays and series of communicative acts will develop. Elegant examples of such communication where participants belong to different species and do not share the same sign system are provided by various protective adaptations such as biological mimicry and warning coloration (Maran 2001). In a mimicry situation, the mimic and the dupe both display signs and act in response to the signs they have perceived in the other – even though their behaviour is not mediated or regulated by common understanding. It is rather that in accordance with their sense organs, ecological interactions and Umwelten, they attribute meanings such as food, danger or enemy to particular features or behavioural acts of the other. Meaning processes between organisms and their surrounding environments were considered to be the main organising principle of nature by Jakob von Uexküll, the Baltic-German biologist whose works have greatly influenced also contemporary biosemiotics. “[Animals] never enter into relationships with neutral objects”, he wrote. “Each animal moves within its habitat and confronts a number of objects, with which it has a narrower or wider relationship. […] Through every relationship the neutral object is transformed into a meaning-carrier, the meaning of which is imprinted upon it by a subject” (Uexküll Jakob 1982: 27-28). Accordingly, every animal lives in its subjective world, or Umwelt, as Uexküll called it. “Each Umwelt forms a closed unit in itself, which is governed, in all its parts, by the meaning it has for the subject” (30). From that foundation, Jakob von Uexküll went further by claiming that there are meaningful correspondences between Umwelten and body structures of different beings in the nature. Uexküll wrote: “The properties of the animal and the properties of its fellow actors harmonise in every case like point and counterpoint of a polyphonic choir” (69). “The flower is a collection of counterpoints that act upon the bee; its form-shaping melody is rich in themes and has contributed to the shaping of the bee, and vice versa” (71-72). Thus, in Jakob von Uexküll’s approach, meaning processes are foregrounded as a link between the organism and its environment, which forms the basis for the development of physical structures as well as ecological relationships.

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Regarding ethical approaches to nature, the Uexküllian perspective raises the question about the necessity to take into account also meaning relations both between the organism and its environment as well as between different organisms. According to Uexküll, living beings are inseparable from their Umwelten, forming thus a single unit described as a “bio-ontological monad” by Morten Tønnessen (2003: 289). Postulating the unity of organism and its Umwelt, the first principle of the semiotical ethics of nature could be formulated as follows: Meaning is the organising principle of nature and therefore also the ethics of nature should privilege meaning relations in nature. Organism + its environment + meaning relations between them form the indivisible basic object of the ethics of nature. Indeed, if the contentment and suffering of living beings are not something arising only by and in themselves but are at least to some extent connected with the processes by which meanings are gained or imprinted, then the corresponding semiotic processes should also be taken into consideration by the ethics of nature. One can become persuaded of the practical importance of this view by looking at cases where it is neither the direct slaughter of animals nor the destruction of their living environment but the interference with their communication practices, navigating in the environment, and other interpretative processes that becomes catastrophic. For instance, some whale species are believed to be endangered due to the disturbance inflicted to their senses and communicative abilities by signals used in naval communication (Erbe, Farmer 1998). Semiotic relations of humans with the rest of nature are much more diverse and complex than in any other species. Objects of nature may become significant for their aesthetic or symbolic value, but they may also act as catalysts by inspiring or astonishing us and thus triggering a chain of fresh thoughts and acts in us. Comparable views have been developed in the religious philosophy of Martin Buber who speaks about becoming aware as an act of perception when someone or something says something to the subject. According to Buber, this saying is not so much caused by any describable feature of the observed object but is rather a result of a particular instance of interaction. In the course of the moment of acceptance, something enters into the subject’s life, becoming thus a sign to him/her (Buber 2002: 11). Buber does not restrict this type of perception to human

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communication: “It by no means needs to be a man of whom I become aware. It can be an animal, a plant, a stone” (12). Differently from other species we carry with us thoughts, cognitions, and conceptions about nature and its processes. Some of them have developed through engagement (in the form of observation, communication, or activity) with above-mentioned semiotic processes in nature and are therefore also in good correspondence with the latter. Others are rather theoretical constructs, born within the self-centredness of human culture and then later attributed to the natural world (cf. Kull 1998: 355-357). The necessity for describing and studying these and other types of meanings and semiotic processes between nature and culture has led to the emergence of ecosemiotic studies. According to Kalevi Kull, Ecosemiotics can be defined as the semiotics of relationships between nature and culture. This includes research on the semiotic aspects of the place and role of nature for humans, i.e. what is and what has been the meaning of nature for us, humans, how and in what extent we communicate with nature. Ecosemiotics deals with the semiosis going on between a human and its ecosystem, or a human in one’s ecosystem (350).

For describing the semiotic processes between nature and human culture, ecosemiotics can rely on various classical concepts of semiotics such as the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic dimensions of semiosis; message and context; content and form; iconic, indexical and symbolic signs; dialogism, and so forth. It can also apply theoretical tools more specific to the object of study such as the notion of the relatedness of mind and contexts (Bateson 1980; Bateson 2000); the concepts of Umwelt and functional cycle which binds all living beings with their environment by meaning relations (Uexküll Jakob 1982); the distinction between different ways in which nature is involved in semiotic processes (Kull 1998); the questions of boundaries in culture (Lotman 2000), and others.5 Compared to many other disciplines concerned with culture-nature relations such as ethnology, anthropology, environmental aesthetics or 5

Information about the theoretical framework of ecosemiotics and specific topics can be found in thematic issues of semiotic journals such as Zeitschrift für Semiotik 15-1/2 (1993), Zeitschrift für Semiotik 18-1 (1996), Sign System Studies 29.1 (2001).

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even ecocriticism, ecosemiotics seems to have a certain advantage. The scope of ecosemiotics is not limited with human representational practises as its main objects of study are semiotic processes, which, according to biosemiotic views, take place both within and outside human culture and cross our imaginary borders of culture easily in both directions. By recognising the existence of semiotic processes in nature, ecosemiotics can also at least partly avoid participating in the age-old debate about the possibilities of knowing what is out there in nature. That is so because according to this particular semiotic view we are not only cultural but also biological creatures who can easily relate to semiotic activities of non-human living beings. We are able to translate between the biological and the cultural within ourselves and this grants us also access into non-human world. To the study of nature writing, for instance, ecosemiotics can contribute by analysing how particular semiotic processes in nature are depicted in nature essays, or rather, how the participation in these processes has influenced the author in his/her descriptions of nature. The German semiotician Winfried Nöth also regards ecosemiotics as bridging the gap between semiotics of culture and semiotics of nature: Culture is involved since the way humans interpret their natural environment is determined by models developed in cultural history. Nature is involved not only since our own natural environment is the object of ecosemiotic research, but also since the orientation of organisms in prehuman life equally involves environmental semioses (Nöth 2001: 71).

Nöth’s description is also applicable to the complex relations between culture as a historically developed web of meanings and signs and a single individual as an interpreter. Conventions, convictions and the respective interpretations are indeed culture-based and in this sense, general; however, the processes of semiosis by which interpretations are carried out, are always performed by a particular individual in particular circumstances. These relations between the particular and the general become especially important in the communication between humans and nature since the perceptual engagement with the non-human world is always personal.

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2. Towards the semiotical ethics of nature – the human subject in its environment The ethics of nature or environmental ethics as an independent discipline began to develop in the late sixties in the wave of rising environmental consciousness in Western thinking.6 The attempts to build the ethics of nature, however, were and to some extent still are burdened with issues of classical ethics and moral theories that focus mostly on ethical relations between humans. By regarding nature with its beings as a possible new object of ethics, great effort was made at the time to find arguments in favour of incorporating nature into the hitherto exclusively human moral community. These attempts were most conspicuous among extensionalist theories where previous criteria such as cognition, intellect and the ability to make moral decisions, that were employed for determining objects of ethics, were now replaced with more general properties such as mental life in the form of perceptions, memories, emotions etc (Regan 1983) or sentiency and an ability to feel pain with the corresponding interest to avoid it (Singer 1993). This enabled also the non-human animals – even as distant from us as reptiles or fishes – to become included in the moral community. A very different approach was introduced by the intrinsic value theorists like Baird Callicot, Holmes Rolston III, Paul Taylor and others who searched for alternative grounds to express the value of nature (Callicot 1989, Rolston 1975, Taylor 1986, see also Leopold 1991). By emphasising ecological complexity, creativity, ability to self-organise, and other intrinsic properties of an organism or natural communities they claimed that nature has value in itself, independent of human considerations (Nash 1989: 147-158). The question about the right criteria for valuing nature has to a large extent remained the central debate of environmental ethics until today. The solutions proposed to this issue have contributed substantially to the primary distinction in environmental ethics, the differentiation between anthropocentric and biocentric theories (Hattingh 1999: 69). However, from the semiotic point of view it 6

An extensive overview of the historical roots and predecessors of environmental ethics in Anglo-American culture is given by Roderick F. Nash (1989).

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seems that the quest for finding the criteria for valuing nature may itself be somewhat encumbered with the legacy of the dualistic and anthropocentric worldview. This is so because the search for the criterion of nature’s value presupposes that: 1. that the decision about the value of nature can be made solely on the basis of logical reasoning; 2. that humans as moral subjects are sufficiently independent from their object of ethical concern, i.e. nature or its elements, that they can make such a decision in the first place. Thus the often unconscious assumption is that humans are altogether in the position to make decisions about the value of nature as well as to carry these out — from whence it follows that such decisions are also presumed not to have any direct and immediate consequences for the human subject. That is to say that the moral decisions in themselves are not considered to embody significant change.7 These assumptions can be critically analysed in the light of a central postulate of ecological thinking, everything is connected to everything else, by looking for ecological consequences of ethical decisions that could influence the human subject directly.8 But the criticism arising from ecological paradigm seems to be refutable quite easily. Ecological cycles and moral decisions take place on very different time-scales and thus there can be hardly any immediate feedback from forces of nature, which might influence the human subject when making decisions concerning nature. The picture, however, appears rather different when we look at the interactions between humans and nature, including ethical decisions, first of all as meaning or sign processes. According to the definition given by Charles S. Peirce, the sign is “a triple connection of sign [representamen], thing signified, cognition produced in the mind” (CP 1.372) and thus it is in the nature of sign to bind the object and the 7

One can surely find exceptions among moral theories of nature, which argue that a human being has certain obligations toward the rest of nature not because of nature’s intrinsic value or possible consequences of the actions performed by the human being, but rather because of his/her own moral disposition. However, also approaches arising from virtue ethics tend to isolate the human being from his/her surroundings by emphasising the human being’s inner qualities instead of the changing relationships with the environment. 8 This well-known maxim has been formulated in this wording by Barry Commoner, a publicist and professor of plant physiology at Washington University (Commoner 1971: 29)

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subject into an inseparable unit of meaning. The Peircean threecomponent sign is irreducible and therefore it becomes very difficult to determine the boundaries between a subject and its environment as an object with which the subject has sign-relations. Looking at the communication between humans and nature from this viewpoint, we can understand that in every sensation, cognition or contemplation of nature, the subject (the human being) and the object (nature) become indissolubly intertwined.9 In the course of every such interaction, the human subject is also changed or altered and therefore his/her position as a decision-maker cannot be neutral by any means. The observation of von Uexküll that there are no neutral relationships suits well to describe also our own interwovenness with the world. Consequently, from this particular semiotic viewpoint, it is only in relative terms that we can speak of a human subject and his/her environment — the two entities, which, at least partly, become existent through meaning-relations between them.10 The process of becoming a sign actualised by any perception, appreciation, cognition, moral decision, judgement and so forth in regard to environment gives birth to a new and larger unit of meaning, which exceeds, embraces and defines both the human subject and the environment as the object. By treating the subject in the spirit of Charles S. Peirce as a category emerging in the processes of sign formation, Susan Petrilli explains: As a developing sign, the subject emerges as a dialogical and relational being, as an open subject, in becoming in the intrapersonal and interpersonal interrelationship with other signs and other subjects. The boundaries of the subject-sign are not defined once and for all, but can only be defined in and through dialogic encounters with other signs and other subjects (Petrilli 2004: 75).

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This argument conforms also to the views of Gregory Bateson (2000: 412-5) according to whom communication with or about environment both requires and entails some redundancy of information or predictability and thereby also brings along adjusting into that particular environment. “If … we say that a message has ‘meaning’ or is ‘about’ some referent, what we mean is that there is a larger universe of relevance consisting of message-plus-referent, and that redundancy or pattern or predictability is introduced into this universe by the message” (413). 10 An overview of different semiotic aspects of human identity can be found in Thomas Sebeok's essay “The semiotic self revisited” (Sebeok 1991: 41-8).

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Thus Peircean semiotics becomes important in understanding one’s own ethical relations with natural environment as it explains that human essence is not something isolated and detached from its surrounding environment, but is instead a manifold composition of connections and relations, incorporating both external and internal phenomena. By accepting the self-description that defines us not by opposition but by complementarity with respect to our environment and other living beings, our ethical awareness could rise remarkably. By seeing ourselves as Homo semioticus – the sign-using human – we would understand that environment plays an essential role for us as the basis upon which our subjective worlds of meanings are constituted. First, the variety of possible meaning relations we can create or participate in is to a certain degree in accordance with the properties and qualities of the environment. And secondly, the meaning relations themselves that we have with our environment and that manifest in our attitudes, considerations and valuations are not to be seen as something insignificant and unsubstantial, but as part of the very essence of our being. 11 Just as in the Peircean sign the object is always present in some particular aspect of interpretation, so also any act of valuation of an object of nature will engage us with that particular object of nature in that particular aspect of valuation. To formulate it even more explicitly: the object of nature evaluated becomes a part of what the subject is through that particular act of valuation. From here it is possible to derive the second thesis of the present article: Every known relation between a human being as an ethical subject and nature as an object is also a sign/meaning relation. This means that every perception, cognition and representation of the natural world becomes an irreducible part of the subjective world of the ethical subject in the very moment it emerges. From this viewpoint, the ethical appreciation of nature is selfevident due to the acknowledgement of our inherent interwovenness 11

Seeing ourselves as intertwined with our environments, surroundings and contexts by meaning relations should also lead us to consider our fellow humans on the same premises. As shown by Morten Tønnessen, this in its turn may bring along the need to consider ethically also higher semiotic structures, such as habitats, populations, cultures, with which other subjects are related (Tønnessen 2003: 291-2).

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with our environment through meaning relations. However, by being subject to further changes and dynamics, the possible roles of the meaning relations in our subjective world are not determined in any present moment. Therefore it is also impossible to predict which meanings will gain a more substantial role in the future, either on personal or on cultural level. According to Juri Lotman’s theory of cultural semiotics, the relationships between the centre and the periphery of a cultural sphere are always dynamic and interchanging (Lotman 2000). It may well happen that some peripheral associations in culture, which are not considered worth any special attention, will acquire the status of a symbol and gain a far more important position in the future. Concerning nature and environment, an example of this kind is provided by Estonian recent history when during the Soviet regime rural lifestyle, nature-relatedness and folklore obtained a highly symbolic value as an opposition to the official ideology of industrial progress and urbanisation.12 On a personal level as well it is difficult to know beforehand which meanings we will later use to identify ourselves, or which experiences will become our companions as memories and will thus follow us for years. The only thing that may be known for sure is that the moment we enter into semiotic relations with any object, including any object of nature, we open the door of creation in ourselves. The semiotic approach to the ethics of nature as presented here could be grouped with anthropocentric ethical approaches inasmuch as it derives its ethical stance from redefining the position of the first person. However, there is one crucial difference compared with most anthropocentric approaches, which are quite often held responsible for fostering utilisation and contamination of natural environment. Such theories that regard nature and its elements as objects in themselves allow for the possibility to use nature as a resource for increasing the well-being of humans regardless of the resultant changes in nature. But as soon as meaning relations are also taken into account, every possible usage of nature turns out to be first a change in meanings and as such, requires careful consideration.

12

This process is also well reflected in the representations and role of local nature in Estonian literature (Maran, Tüür 2001: 8).

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Emphasising the role of meaning relations that we create with our environment and fellow beings instead of valuing them only as objects in themselves also prevents us from manipulating our environment and fellow beings in order to ensure us a safer or more pleasurable state of affairs in the future. If we tried to do so, our intention to manipulate would unavoidably become part of the meaning relations with them and thus also part of our future self. By meanings and evaluations given and standpoints taken with regard to an object of nature, our subjective world is changed and therefore, every object of nature we face should be valued as a possible piece from what the mosaic we call I is composed of. 3. Notes on dialogism, semioethics, and human culture Semiotic methodology has been used in environmental ethics and in eco-criticism so far mostly for analysing and criticising our ways of language use with respect to our attitudes toward nature. There exist, however, also other ways for enriching the ethics of nature with views derived from semiotics or linguistics. A considerable possibility is to use the concept of dialogism to describe the interactions between humans and nature by elaborating on the works of classical scholars such as Mikhail Bakhtin (McDowell 1996), Emmanuel Lévinas or Martin Buber (Friskics 2001). The dialogic nature of sign-relations is also emphasised in Peircean semiotics. In his pragmatic philosophy, Peirce speaks not only about the dialogism of interpersonal relations between people of a society but stresses also the inherently dialogic nature of an individual. “Thinking always proceeds in the form of a dialogue - a dialogue between different phases of the ego” (CP 4.6). This aspect of Peircean semiotics is pointed out by Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio and taken up as a foundation for their comprehensive project of semioethics (Petrilli, Ponzio 2001; Petrilli 2003; Ponzio 2003; Petrilli 2004). By drawing also on the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Lévinas, Thomas A. Sebeok and Victoria Welby, semioethics aims to be a semiotic criticism of globalising and homogenising communication of the modern era. Semioethics rests on a deep understanding that healthy semiosic relations require diversity and difference – the existence of the other

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in its own right. Without the existence of the other in all its strangeness and uniqueness there cannot develop any real dialogical, reciprocal and symbiotic relationships; nor can there be responsibility, compassion, or care for the other, i.e. characteristics which are commonly considered to make us human. Thus, according to Petrilli, the right for the other should be recognised as the basis for all human rights (Petrilli 2004: 84). This otherness is not limited to a human other; it may also be the other in the human if to follow the writings of Charles S. Peirce or Victoria Welby, or the nonhuman other if to follow the views of global semiotics as expressed by Thomas A. Sebeok. The third principle of semiotical ethics of nature, based largely on the works of Augusto Ponzio and Susan Petrilli, could then be expressed as follows: We live together and in relation with other semiotic subjects. By being able to create meaningfully organised subjective worlds of their own which may be rather different from ours, they hold the position to address us, to question us and to enter into dialogic relations with us. These relations are essential for making us human. Semiosic relationships with non-human others, as they are described for instance by biosemiotics, present us a possibility to express ourselves in various ways that are not possible in the language-based human communication. The possibility for communication and social relations seems to be the main reason for the great number of non-human animals living with us as pets also in the highly urban areas (Hoff et al. 1999, 651-652). But what is even more remarkable is that other living beings who construe their own Umwelten as subjects are also in the position to take the leading role in communication by addressing or challenging us and thus enriching our being in the world. Such bi-directional interactions with nonhuman nature have lasted throughout the evolution of human species and should therefore be a rather natural aspect of our lives. As it is expressed in a most sensitive manner by David Abram: Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in the subtle interactions with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob

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our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human" (Abram 1997: 22).

The need for the other is also emphasised in the later phenomenological tradition: “The body asks for something other than the body-thing or than its relations with itself. It is in circuit with others” (Merleau-Ponty 2003: 225). In his last works Merleau-Ponty came quite close to the contemporary ecosemiotic approach by emphasising that there are different structures in the human being, some of which allow us to communicate with the non-human world. “By the nature in us, we can know Nature, and reciprocally it is from ourselves that living beings and even space speak to us” (206). By the nature in us, we can know nature. But there is also culture in us and no conscious encounter with the natural world could take place without our cultural conventions and meanings being involved. Therefore, no ethical theory can be successful if it focuses only on the relationship between an individual and his/her environment. But what are the possibilities to describe the relations between human culture and nature from the semiotic point of view? Should they be presumed to be immanently and unavoidably conflicting as it is so often considered in various paradigms? The same viewpoint can be seen to haunt also semiotics, for example in the one-sided treatments of culture-nature communication as in claims that through recognition, description and understanding, nature is changed by culture — but the simultaneous changes in culture brought about by the same instance of communication are left underestimated (cf. Kull 1998: 352-353). However, semiotics can also provide a strong basis for such views that emphasise the mutuality and dialogism of nature-culture relations. For instance, Charles S. Peirce has described the relations between a man in his perceptual and bodily particularity and language-based culture as another form of dialogue in the course of which coherence and knowledge should increase. “Perception is the possibility for acquiring information, of meaning more… the word means nothing which some man has not made it to mean… [but] man can think only by means of words or other external symbols… In fact, therefore, men and words reciprocally educate each other” (CP 7.587, cf. CP 5.313). Consequently, it seems that the role of the human subject is foremost to mediate between the meanings of nature and the meanings of

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culture, which itself could be understood as a quest for ethics. The success of the dialogue between nature and culture, taking place with our participation, depends on the ability of culture to be receptive enough to manifestations of particularity both in natural environment as well as in human experience. Thus, for describing culture from the position expressed in the present article, the bio-regionalist approach becomes relevant. By perception and physical activity, meaning relations tend to be established foremost with one’s closest surroundings, the local environment, and therefore it is natural that our common understandings and corresponding uses of language also tend to become adapted to the place where we live. The British anthropologist Tim Ingold has described this relationship in the following words: A way of speaking is, in itself, a way of living in the land. Far from serving as a common currency for the exchange of otherwise private mental representations, language celebrates an embodied knowledge of the world that is already shared thanks to people’s mutual involvement in the tasks of habitation. It is not, then, language per se that ensures the continuity of tradition. Rather, it is the tradition of living in the land that ensures the continuity of language (Ingold 2002: 147).

From this particular semiotic point of view, we may thus regard a culture still identified by some geographic location as connected with its natural environment by countless meaning-relations which have cumulated throughout the whole history of semiotic processes. Side by side with landmarks of globalised culture we may also find many elements which are so tightly connected with the respective local natural phenomena that if nature is damaged, also culture will be impoverished. Nature literature is the perfect example here. In nature literature, an author combines his/her immediate perceptual and bodily experience of specific natural surroundings with cultural knowledge – e.g. scientific data, traditional wisdom or environmental philosophy (Maran, Tüür 2001). Furthermore, readers, who have their own immediate experiences of nature, interpret nature essays in relation to their own personal cognition. Thus, from the ecosemiotic point of view, it does not seem appropriate to regard nature writing as a unitary object of study, but rather as being connected to another text, which is hidden in the rhythms, patterns and structures of nature and is also read from there. If the textuality of wilderness described in nature

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essays is destroyed, also the written texts will become at least partly voiceless. 4. Conclusions Semiotics of nature emphasises the role of meaning processes, both in nature as well as in relations between nature and culture, thus opening up some original aspects of study. By regarding the human personal interactions with and evaluations of nature foremost as sign processes, it is possible to show that every sensation, cognition or contemplation of nature should be considered important as an emerging fragment of the human subject. By postulating a direct connection between identity and issues of ethics, such approach holds remarkable ethical potential. At the same time, the semiotic approach unavoidably leads to a redefinition of subjective identity. Besides pointing out the interwovenness of the subject with its environment by meaning connections, this can also be accomplished by emphasising the importance of dialogic relations between subjects as it is done by the semioethic approach. These changes should encourage us also to review the relations between the human individual and his/her culture. Virtual and textual meanings of culture can be sufficiently diverse and interrelated to constitute a sphere of their own comparable to Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt, the sphere of organismic and bodily meaning relations associated with the subject. In such case, the human being may then be seen as standing in between culture and nature attempting to establish at least some coherence between these two spheres of meanings. For an individual, the participation in the dialogue between these different spheres of meanings provides a fertile ground for the development of new understandings and comprehensions. The natural world and the cultural knowledge both around and within us intertwine and influence each other in peculiar and often unexpected ways — of which the present article itself is an odd proof in its subtle linking of my writing and the encounter with the dragonfly almost twenty years ago. The necessity not to limit our sphere of attention only by the textuality of human culture but to remain open also to the meanings of nature, applies to us not only as living beings but also as

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researchers trying to understand the different aspects of culture-nature relations. The basic claim of the present article has been that any encounter with an object of nature engages us with that particular object through the established interpretations. This viewpoint entails yet another aspect. Without immediate experiences where a human being is physically present in nature and uses his/her own senses, there cannot occur any immediate interpretation, including any immediate ethical interpretation, of nature. There may exist a mass of secondary interpretations, of thoughts about thoughts about nature, but the very essence of ethical behaviour, the moment when a human finds a wounded songbird and decides to help it, is forgotten. Bibliography Abram, David. 1997. The Spell of the Sensuous. Perception and Language in a MoreThan-Human World. New York: Vintage Books. [First edition New York: Pantheon Books 1996.] Bateson, Gregory. 1980. Mind and Nature. A Necessary Unity. Toronto: Bantam Books. [First edition New York: Dutton 1979.] —. 2000. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. [First edition London : Intertext Books 1972.] Buber, Martin. 2002. ‘Dialogue’ in Between Man and Man (tr. Roland Gregor-Smith). London: Routledge: 1-45. [First edition London: Kegan Paul 1947.] Callicot, J. Baird. 1989. In Defence of the Land Ethic. Essays in Environmental Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Commoner, Barry. 1971. The Closing Circle. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Erbe, Christine and David M. Farmer. 1998. ‘Masked Hearing Thresholds of a Beluga Whale (Delphinapterus leucas) in Icebreaker Noise’ in Deep Sea Research. Part II in Topical Studies in Oceanography 45(7): 1373-88. Fleischer, Michael. 1993. ‘Kommunikation zwischen Mensch und Hund’ in Zeitschrift für Semiotik 15(1-2): 23-40. Friskics, Scott. 2001. ‘Dialogical Relations with Nature’ in Environmental Ethics 23: 391-410. Hattingh, Johan P. 1999. ‘Finding Creativity in the Diversity of Environmental Ethics’ in Growing Together. Proceedings of the Annual Conference and Workshops of the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa. Grahamstown: Rhodes University: 50-78. On line at: http://www.sun.ac.za/ philosophy/cae/ environmental/jphNRFartikels/ (consulted 05.05.2004). Hinde, Robert A. (ed.). 1975. Non-Verbal Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [First edition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1972.]

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Hoff, Gerald L., Jane Brawley and Kaye Johnson. 1999. ‘Companion Animal Issues and the Physician’ in Southern Medical Journal 92(7): 651-9. Hoffmeyer, Jesper. 1995. ‘The Swarming Cyberspace of the Body’ in Cybernetics and Human Knowing 3(1): 1-10. Hoffmeyer, Jesper, Claus Emmeche. 1991. ‘Code-duality and the Semiotics of Nature’ in Anderson, Myrdene and Floyd Merrell (eds) On Semiotic Modelling. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter: 117-66. Ingold, Tim. 2002. The Perception of the Environment. Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. [First edition London: Routledge 2000.] Ji, Sungchul. 2002. ‘Microsemiotics of DNA’ in Semiotica 138(1/4): 15-42. Krampen, Martin. 1981. ‘Phytosemiotics’ in Semiotica 36(3/4): 187-209. Kull, Kalevi. 1998. ‘Semiotic Ecology: Different Natures in the Semiosphere’ in Sign Systems Studies 26: 344-371. —. 2000. ‘An Introduction to Phytosemiotics: Semiotic Botany and Vegetative Sign Systems’ in Sign Systems Studies 28: 326-350. —. 2003. ‘Thomas A. Sebeok and Biology: Building Biosemiotics’ in Cybernetics and Human Knowing 10(1): 47–60. Kull, Kalevi and Peeter Torop. 2003. ‘Biotranslation: Translation Between Umwelten’ in Petrilli, Susan (ed.) Translation Translation. Amsterdam: Rodopi: 313-28. Leopold, Aldo. 1991. A Sand County Almanac. With Essays on Conservation from Round River. New York: Ballantine Books. [First edition New York: Oxford University Press 1949.] Lotman, Juri M. 2000. Universe of the Mind. A Semiotic Theory of Culture (tr. Ann Shukman). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [First edition London: Tauris 1990.] Maran, Timo. 2001. ‘Mimicry: Towards a Semiotic Understanding of Nature’ in Sign System Studies 29(1): 325–39. Maran, Timo and Kadri Tüür. 2002. ‘On Estonian Nature Writing’ in Estonian Literary Magazine 13: 4-10. McDowell, Michael J. 1996. ‘The Bakhtinian Road to Ecological Insight’ in Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm (eds) The Ecocriticism Reader. Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press: 371-91. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2003. Nature. Course Notes from the Collège de France (tr. Robert Vallier). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Nash, Roderick F. 1989. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Nöth, Winfried. 2000. ‘Umberto Eco’s Semiotic Threshold’ in Sign System Studies 28: 49-61. —. 2001. ‘Ecosemiotics and the Semiotics of Nature’ in Sign System Studies 29(1): 71-81. Pattee, Howard H. 1997. ‘The Physics of Symbols and the Evolution of Semiotic Controls’ in Coombs, Michael and Mark Sulcoski (eds) Control Mechanisms for Complex Systems. Albuqerque: University of New Mexico Press: 9-25. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1994. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Electronic version (Folio Bound Views), vols. 1–6, Hartshorne, Charles and Paul

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Weiss (eds), vols. 7–8, Burks, Arthur W. (ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [referred to as CP.] Petrilli, Susan. 2003. ‘Modeling, Dialogue, and Globality: Biosemiotics and Semiotics of Self. 2. Biosemiotics, Semiotics of Self, and Semioethics.’ in Sign System Studies 31(1): 65-107. —. 2004. ‘Semioethics, Subjectivity, and Communication: For the Humanism of Otherness’ in Semiotica 148(1/4): 69-91. Petrilli, Susan and Augusto Ponzio. 2001. ‘Bioethics, Semiotics of Life, and Global Communication’ in Sign System Studies 29(1): 263-75. Ponzio, Augusto. 2003. ‘Modeling, Dialogue, and Globality: Biosemiotics and Semiotics of Self. 1. Semiosis, Modeling, and Dialogism’ in Sign System Studies 31(1): 25-63. Poyatos, Ferdinando. 2002. Nonverbal Communication across Disciplines. Volume 1: Culture, Sensory Interaction, Speech, Conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Regan Tom. 1983. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rolston, Holmes III. 1975. ‘Is there an Ecological Ethic?’ in Ethics: An International Journal of Social and Political Philosophy 85: 93-109. Sebeok, Thomas A. 1986. ‘‘Talking’ with Animals: Zoosemiotics Explained’ in Deely, John, Borroke Williams and Felicia E. Kruse (eds) Frontiers in Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 76-82. —. 1989. The Sign & Its Masters. Lanham: University Press of America. [First edition Austin: University of Texas Press 1979.] —. 1990. Essays in Zoosemiotics (Monograph Series of the Toronto Semiotic Circle 5). Toronto: Victoria College in the University of Toronto. —. 1991. A Sign Is just a Sign. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —. 1995. ‘Semiotics and the Biological Sciences: Initial Conditions’ in Discussion Papers No. 17. Collegium Budapest/Institute for Advanced Study. On line at: http://www.colbud.hu/publications/discussionpaper.shtml. Singer, Peter. 1993. Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [First edition Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979.] Taylor, Paul. W. 1986. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tønnessen, Morten. 2003. ‘Umwelt Ethics’ in Sign System Studies 31(1): 281-99. Uexküll, Jakob von. 1982a. ‘Theory of Meaning’ in Semiotica 42(1): 25-82. Uexküll, Thure von. 1982b. ‘Glossary’ in Semiotica 42(1): 83-7. Uexküll, Thure von, Werner Geigges and Jörg M. Herrmann. 1993. ‘Endosemiosis’ in Semiotica 96(1/2): 5-51.

Notes on contributors Hannes Bergthaller is assistant professor at National Taipei University of Technology and adjunct lecturer at Tamkang University in Taiwan, where he teaches English and American literature. He is currently completing his book Populäre Ökologie: Zu Literatur und Geschichte der modernen Umweltbewegung in den USA and has articles forthcoming on Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, the relation between American Studies and ecocriticism, and the relevance of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory for the latter. He is a founding member of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and the Environment, on whose advisory board he also serves. Beatrix Busse teaches English linguistics at the Department of English at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. She studied English and History at Osnabrück and Keele (UK) and was a visiting researcher in Birmingham (UK), Stratford (UK), and Lancaster (UK). Her scholarly interest include the history of English, historical pragmatics, Shakespeare studies, stylistics, narratology, ecolinguistics as well as e-learning and e-teaching. Her doctoral dissertation, which she completed in 2004, is an investigation into Shakespeare’s use of vocatives. One of her current research projects is on speech, writing and thought presentation in 19th century English texts. Thomas Claviez teaches American Culture at the John F. KennedyInstitute for North American Studies, Free University Berlin. The author of Grenzfälle: Mythos – Ideologie – American Studies (Trier: wvt, 1998) und aEsTHetICS: Moral Imagination from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to House Made of Dawn (Lebanon: University Press of New England, forthcoming), he also co-edited "Mirror Writing": (Re-) Constructions of Native American Identity, (Glienicke/Cambridge: Galda + Wilch Verlag, 2000). In addition to essays on the New Historicism, American studies, the American sublime, and literary theory, he published essays on environmental ethics as well as on the

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intersections of pragmatism, critical theory, and ecological genealogies in American culture. Caroline Delph was awarded a first-class BA(Hons) degree in German from the University of Wales, Bangor in 1998. She studied for a Master of Letters at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne which focused on the history of German environmentalism. Currently she is completing her PhD, which was fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, investigating the relationship between nationalism, conservatism and green ideas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Christine Gerhardt is an Assistant Professor at the University of Dortmund, Germany, where she teaches 19th and 20th century American literature and culture. Her main research interests include ecocriticism, American Romanticism, African American literature, and Southern literature. She has published a monograph on representations of the Reconstruction era in American novels (2002), her articles have appeared in Profession, the Mississippi Quarterly, and the Forum for Modern Language Studies. She is currently working on a book about the ecological implications of Walt Whitman’s and Emily Dickinson’s poetry in the context of America’s 19th century debates about nature and nation. Catrin Gersdorf currently teaches American literature at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Free University Berlin. Her research interests include American narrative literature (19th century to the present), theories of space and landscape, science fiction / speculative fiction, gender and queer theory, and culinary culture. The author of The Poetics and Politics of the Desert: Landscape and the (Re-) Construction of America (forthcoming), her publications include essays on Kathy Acker, Paul Auster, Djuna Barnes, Kim Stanley Robinson, Nathanael West, as well as American landscape painting and photography. She also co-edited essay collections on gender and queer theory, and Natur-Kultur-Text: Beiträge zu Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft (2005).

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Axel Goodbody is Reader in German Studies at the University of Bath, UK, where he teaches German and European literature and film. His thesis on Romantic and 20th century German nature poetry was published as Natursprache (1984), and he has since written and edited papers and books on GDR literature, German emigres in Britain, and cultural representations of nature in modern Germany. He was one of the founders of the UK branch of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, and was elected first President of the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment in 2004. He is currently co-director of a research project on ‘Nature and Environment in Modern German Literature’, and is writing a book about Man, Nature and Technology in 20th-century German Literature. Christa Grewe-Volpp teaches American literature and culture at the University of Mannheim. Her research focuses on ecocriticism and ecofeminism, on the concepts of history and memory, on minority writers, and on American poetry. She published “Natural Spaces Mapped by Human Minds”: Ökokritische und ökofeministische Analysen zeitgenössischer amerikanischer Romane (2004), a book on ecocritical and ecofeminist analyses of contemporary American writers. She is also the author of a book on Gary Snyder (Das Naturbild im Werk von Gary Snyder) and the co-editor of a cultural and literary study on food and literature (Erlesenes Essen). Katharine Griffiths studied initially at Lincoln College, Oxford before embarking on a PhD at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Her current research focuses on the role of nature in the literature of a variety of exile and Inner Emigration authors during the Third Reich, namely Werner Bergengruen, Lion Feuchtwanger, Ernst Jünger, Klaus Mann, Anna Seghers and Ernst Wiechert. The research challenges the assumption that the representation of nature in literature written in such extreme circumstances is necessarily apolitical and even escapist, examining the ways in which nature can be seen as an expression of dissidence.

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Simone Birgitt Hartmann earned a dual master’s degree in English / American Studies and Business Administration / International Management. Currently, she works as a managing consultant while, at the same time, being a Ph.D. candidate in Canadian Literature at the University of Mannheim, Germany. She has spent extensive periods of study, research and teaching at various US-American and Canadian universities and has received numerous scholarships and academic awards for her doctoral research. Her particular fields of interest include ecocriticism, environmental justice and ecofeminist theory, contemporary North American ecofiction, and intercultural studies. As a managing consultant, she specializes in human resources management, talent and organizational change as well as public relations and marketing. Ursula K. Heise teaches English & Comparative Literature at Stanford University, with a focus on contemporary literature of Europe and the Americas. She specializes in ecocriticism, literature and science, and literature and new media. Her book Chronoschisms: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism appeared from Cambridge University Press in 1997. She is currently completing a book entitled Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Christian Krug teaches English literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He has published a monograph on the popular theatre of the Romantic age (Das Eigene im Fremden: Orientalsimen im britischen Melodrama, 1790-1840). He has just finished a project on the interactive structures of digital texts, funded by the German research community,and has written various essays on contemporary films and computer games. His current research interest is the representation of violence in modern and postmodern media. Andrew Liston was educated at the University of Durham, in England, where he read German and French as an undergraduate. During his studies there he spent one year abroad at the Humboldt University in Berlin. After graduating in 2001, he returned to Scotland to write a Ph.D. thesis on German-Swiss ecological prose at St. Anderws University. Since completion of the thesis in September

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2004, he has taught English language and literature at Justus Liebig Universität, Giessen. Timo Maran holds a B.Sc. in zoology (University of Tartu, Estonia) and a M.A. and a PhD in semiotics and culture studies (University of Tartu, Estonia). His thesis, defended in 2005, is entitled “Mimicry as a Communication Semiotic Phenomenon”. Currently he is working as a researcher at the Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu. His research interests include the theory of biological mimicry, imitation, deception, animal communication, nature-culture relations, nature writing and ecosemiotics. The author of Gardens and gardening: An ecosemiotic view (2004), Mimesis as a phenomenon of semiotic communication (2003), Ecosemiotic basis of locality (2002), Mimicry: Towards a semiotic understanding of nature (2001), he also co-edited Eesti looduskultuur [Estonian Culture of Nature] (2005) and Tekst ja loodus [Text and Nature] (2000). Sylvia Mayer teaches American literature and culture at the English Department of Münster University, Germany. Her fields of research are ecologically oriented literary and cultural studies, American narrative texts of the 19th and 20th century, African American literature, and early American drama. Her publications include monographs on Toni Morrison’s novels and on the environmental ethical dimension of New England Regionalist Writing 1865 – 1918. She is also editor of Restoring the Connection to the Natural World: Essays on the African American Environmental Imagination (2003), and coeditor of Natur-Kultur-Text: Beiträge zu Ökologie und Literaturwissenschaft (2005). Simon Meacher studied German literature at the University of Wales, Swansea, and at the University of Exeter, where he completed a PhD on “The Aestheticization of Green Ideas in German Literature of the 1980s and 1990s”. Moving to the University of Newcastle in 2002, he joined a major AHRB/AHRC-funded research project entitled “Nature and Environment in Modern German Literature” as a Research Associate working alongside Professor Colin Riordan and Dr Axel Goodbody. He has also published research on Peter Haertling and Siegfried Lenz, and, in addition to continuing to pursue his interest in

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Notes on contributors

European environmental literature and politics he is the current Treasurer of ASLE-UK. Patrick D. Murphy, Professor of English at the University of Central Florida, is founding editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, author of Literature, Nature, and Other, Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature, and other books, as well as editor of various collections, including The Literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook. He is currently working on a study of nature in the contemporary American novel, editing a transnational ecocritical theory volume with contributors from around the world, and studying the relationhip of hurricanes, hubris, and American culture. Among other classes he teaches literature courses on environmental fiction, American nature literature, and a composition course on the energy crisis and global warming. Tonia L. Payne received her Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York in 1999. Currently, she is applying for tenure as an assistant professor in the English department at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, located on Long Island. Among her scholarly publications are “‘Home Is a Place Where You Have Never Been’: Connections with the Other in Ursula Le Guin’s Fiction,” in AUMLA: The Journal of the Australian Universities Language and Literature Association and “Becoming (An)Other: Ursula Le Guin’s Fiction and the Othered Reader,” in JASAT (Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas). Her poem, “Prairie,” was published in California Quarterly. Irena Ragaišien÷ is Associate Professor at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. She received her Ph.D. in literature from the University of Bergen, Norway, in 2000. Since then, she has taught at the Department of English Philology, Vytautas Magnus University. Research interests cover American studies, gender studies, comparative literature, literary translation, and ecocriticism. She has published on revisionist strategies in women‘s poetry and fiction, comparative literature, and literary translation. Among her critical publications are “Nature as Context: The Representation of

Notes on contributors

483

Ambiguities and (Mis)-Identifications in the Writing of Sylvia Plath” (2004), “Desire, Dream and Reality: The New Woman in A Saloonkeeper‘s Daughter” (2005). Her current research is in comparative literature and ecocriticism. Colin Riordan has been Professor of German at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, since 1998. He began his career with a PhD on Uwe Johnson, on whom he has published a book and several articles. He went on to broaden his interests in the post-war period and in literature and National Socialism, especially the ‘inner emigration’. In 1997, as a lecturer in Swansea, he edited a volume entitled Green Thought in German Culture (Cardiff: University of Wales Press). Since then he has published widely on post-war German literature and on nature and the environment in the works of Timm, Sebald, Johnson and others. Louise Westling is Professor of English at the University of Oregon. She was one of the founding members of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment and its President in 1998. Publications include Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens: The Fiction of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor; The Green Breast of the New World: Landscape, Gender, and American Fiction; and numerous articles on landscape imagery in fiction, environmental justice literature, and ecocritical theory. Hubert Zapf is Professor of American Literature at the University of Augsburg. He has published on Anglo-American narrative literature, drama, literary history, literary theory, and, more recently, on literary and cultural ecology. He is co-editor of Anglia. Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie. Publications include Das Drama in der abstrakten Gesellschaft. Zur Theorie und Struktur des modernen englischen Dramas (1988), Kurze Geschichte der anglo-amerikanischen Literaturtheorie (2nd ed. 1996), and Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie. Zur kulturellen Funktion imaginativer Texte an Beispielen des amerikanischen Romans (2002). He edited Amerikanische Literaturgeschichte (the revised 2nd. ed. 2004 includes a chapter on ecocriti-cism) and coedited two volumes of Theorien der Literatur. Grundlagen und Perspektiven. (2003; 2005).

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Index

A Abbey, Edward 14, 84, 168-170; Fn. 14, 163, Abram, David 34, 39, 470-71 Adorno, Theodor W. 18, 60, 398, 449; Fn. 60 Agassiz, Louis 157, 217 Amery, Carl 394-95 Appadurai, Arjun 420; Fn. 183 Arendt, Hannah Fn. 445 Aristotle 170, 440; Fn 436, 440 Armbruster, Karla 10, 12, 89, 91, 107, 292, 432; Fn. 212 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 316, 321, 331-54 Ashcroft, Bill 99, 213 Assmann, Aleida and Jan 169 Atwood, Margaret 87, 90, 98-102, 106, 111, 112, 120-27

B Bacon, Francis 115 Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 137, 417, 418, 469 Baranauskas, Antanas 297 Barnard, George Grey 264 Barry, Peter 9-10 Barthes, Roland 266-67, 271 Bartram, William 26 Bate, Jonathan 14, 57, 365 Bateson, Gregory 14-16, 19, 57-58, 462; Fn. 466 Beck, Ulrich 177, 179-81, 196, 198, 203 Benjamin, Walter 303 Bentham, Jeremy 436, 440; Fn. 436 Bergengruen, Werner 374, 385-91 Berry, Wendell 427-28 Bhabha, Homi Fn. 101 Birkerts, Sven 292 Blake, William 232, 363 Bloch, Ernst 19, 395, 404; Fn.19

Blumenberg, Hans 155, 171 Boeschenstein, Hermann 318 Böhme, Gernot 14-15, 17-19 Bohr, Niels 35 Bramwell, Anna 333 Brecht, Bertolt 187 Brekle, Wolfgang 375 Brorson, Stuart 260, 262 Brown, Roger 136, 145; Fn. 137 Bruchac, Joseph Fn. 211 Bruner, Jerome 160, 166, 169-70 Buber, Martin 136-37, 461, 469; Fn. 137 Buell, Frederick 181-82, 203 Buell, Lawrence 11, 77, 81-82, 84, 88, 90, 106, 155-68, 216-17; Fn 104, 215 Bühler, Karl 149 Bullard, Robert D. 97 Bunkse, Edmunds V. Fn. 300 Byerly, Alison 255, 267; Fn. 262 Byron, Lord George Gordon 264

C Callicot, Baird 464; Fn. 436 Campbell, SueEllen 73 Canclini, Néstor García Fn.183 Cantrell, Carole 40 Capra, Fritjof 410 Carroll, Joseph 73 Carson, Rachel 160, 163, 169, 453 Cassirer, Ernst Fn. 437 Certeau, Michel de 191 Chamisso, Adelbert von 315 Chief Seattle 396 Chopin, Kate 60 Cibulka, Hanns 410 Clements, Frederic 72 Cohen, Michael P. 77; Fn. 28 Commoner, Barry 60, 393, Fn. 465

486

Index

Connor, Steven 173 Conrad, Joseph 193 Conway, Jill Ker 111 Conwentz, Hugo 359 Cook, Thomas 266 Coupe, Laurence 10, 11-12, 14, 96, 97 Cuomo, Christine 118 Cutter, Susan 189

D d’Eaubonne, Françoise 117 Damasio, Antonio 234-35 Danys, Milda 295; Fn. 293 Darré, Richard Walther 333 Darwin, Charles 25, 27, 217, 357 Davion, Victoria 119 Davoliūte, Violeta 297 Dawkins, Richard 35 De Waal, Franz 29 Deleuze, Gilles 28; Fn. 183 Derrida, Jacques 25, 28-32, 38, 438, 443; Fn. 436, 437 Déscartes, René 28, 114, 115, 234 Devall, Bill 165 Dewey, John 25, 28, 33, 44 Di Chiro, Giovanna 91, 106; Fn. 97, 104 Dick, Philip K. 250-51, 254 Dickinson, Emily 478 Dillard, Annie 84 Dobson, Andrew Fn. 342 Dominick, Raymond 364; Fn. 394 Donelaitis, Kristijonas 297 Douthwaite, John 132, 135, 136, 140; Fn. 131, 135 Drabble, Margaret 302 Droste-Hülshoff, Annette von 409 Düffel, John von 413 Dupke, Thomas 355, 356, 357, 360 Duve, Karen 413

E Eagles, P.F.J. 250 Eckersley, Robyn 417, 418, 420- 23, 425, 427, 430-31

Eco, Umberto 457 Ehrenfeld, David 229, 230, 231, 244 Ehrlich, Paul 393 Eidintas, Alfonsas Fn. 295, 308 Einstein, Albert 26, 33, 35 Elder, John 298 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 9, 26, 150, 156; Fn. 209 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus 396 Erdrich, Louise 27 Evans, Arthur 406 Evernden, Neil Fn. 113, 439 Evers, Larry 426 Eysel, Karin 184; Fn. 190 Ezergaikis, Inita 296

F Faulkner, William 80, 194 Featherstone, Mike Fn. 183 Fennell, David Fn. 250 Fill, Alwin 131, 133, 134, 147, 149 Finke, Peter 58, 61 Fletcher, Angus Fn. 209 Folsom, Ed 211, 213-14, 218, 221, 222 Foucault, Michel 61 Fowler, Roger Fn. 131, 135 Frankenberg, Ruth 213 Franklin, Benjamin 163 Freud, Sigmund 54 Friedberg, Anne 266-67 Fritzell, Peter 79 Fromm, Harold 10, 11; Fn. 436 Frye, Northrop 90, 307 Fukuyama, Francis Fn. 29 Fussell, Paul 249, 268

G Gaard, Greta 94-95 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 452-53 Gagarin, Yuri Fn. 188 Galilei, Galileo 115 Geisel, Theodore (Dr. Seuss) 155- 75 Gilpin, William 263 Ginsberg, Allen 60 Giuliani, Rudy 262

487

Index Glacken, Clarence J. 304; Fn. 298 Glendinning, Chellis 231-32, 247 Gliddon, George R. 217 Glotfelty, Cheryll 10, 11, 27, 71, 87-88; Fn. 292, 436 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 314, 315, 324, 396, 408-12 Gorbachev, Mikhail 178 Gras, Vernon 49 Grass, Günter 393, 397-404, 407, 411-12 Griffiths, Gareth 99 Guattari, Félix 28; Fn. 183 Gubaryev, Vladimir 182

H Habermas, Jürgen 439 Haeckel, Ernst 15, 341; Fn. 133 Halberstam, Judith Fn. 29 Hall, Colin Fn. 264 Hall, Stuart 213; Fn. 299 Halliday, Michael A. 131, 132, 134, 135, 137, 141-43, 147, 150 Haraway, Donna 25, 28, 29, 71, 74-76, 78, 89 Hardy, Thomas 27 Harvey, David Fn. 183 Havel, Václav 427 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 62, 64, 65 Hayles, N. Katherine 29, 71, 74-76, 236 Head, Bessie 428 Head, Dominic Fn. 73 Heidegger, Martin 28, 31, 32-33, 38, 57, 282, 447- 452 Heise, Ursula K. 72 Heisenberg, Werner 35 Heller, Arno 98, 100 Herbert, Bruce 256 Herder, Johann Gottfried 336 Hermand, Jost 345, 346-47; Fn. 394 Herwig, Henriette 276, 277 Hesse, Hermann 324-29 Hogan, Linda 27, 426 Hohler, Franz 413 Hölderlin, Friedrich 448

Hollis, Carroll 216; Fn. 214 Horkheimer, Max 398 House, Freeman 429 Hübner, Kurt Fn. 437 Hulme, T.E. 293 Hume, David Fn. 171 Husserl, Edmund 28, 32, 34 Hutcheon, Linda 92, 99, 102

I Immermann, Karl 314-15 Ingold, Tim 472 Irigaray, Luce Fn. 101 Iser, Wolfgang 60, 166

J Jackson, Wes 428 Jacobs, Jürgen 283 Jameson, Fredric 134 Jefferies, Richard 364, 365 Jefferson, Thomas 26 Johnson, Mark 44, 138 Johnson, Uwe 483 Jolly, Allison 29 Jonas, Hans 395-96 Jung, Matthias 134 Jünger, Ernst 374, 381, 383-85, 479

K Kaelber, Lutz 253 Kairiūkštyt÷, Natalija 295 Kant, Immanuel 18, 234, 440, 445, 448-50, 452; Fn. 60, 436 Kavolis, Vytautas 297 Keats, John 60 Kegel, Bernhard 413 Keller, Gottfried 315, 318-20 Keniston, Kenneth 111 Kenny, Maurice 210 Kepler, Johannes 115 Kern, Robert 11, 71, 88 Kerner, Justinus 315-16, 319-20, 410 Kerridge, Richard 10, 11, 12 Kershaw, Ian 374

488

Index

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie 225; Fn. 209 King, Thomas 87, 90, 98, 102-04, 106 King, Ynestra 93; Fn. 94 Koch, Ed 262 Kolodny, Annette 26, 80, 83 Kraus, Eric 231 Krebs, Angelika 142, 148, 395 Krech, Shepard 105, 220 Kristeva, Julia Fn. 101 Kroeber, Karl 55, 232, 234, 238 Kubilius, Vytautas 293, 295 Kuehls, Thom 424, 426 Kugel, Seth 263 Kull, Kalevi 458, 459, 462, 471; Fn. 457 Kunisch, Hermann 376

L Lakoff, George 44, 138; Fn. 141 Le Guin, Ursula K. 229-247, 482 Leakey, Richard 287 Leopold, Aldo 160, 169, 464 Leutenegger, Gertrud 275-287 Levinas, Emmanuel 435, 441-48, 450-52 Lewontin, Richard 36 Lingus, Alfonso 29, 36, 37; Fn. 32 Link, Jürgen 65 Livingston, Ira Fn. 29 Llewelyn, John 444-50 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 216, 308 Löns, Hermann 355-70 Lopez, Barry 80, 81 Love, Glen 26, 71, 73 Lovelock, James 35 Lynch, Kevin 304 Lyotard, Jean-François 25, 28, 29, 439; Fn. 56, 171, 450

M MacCool, S.F. 250 MacIntyre, Alasdair Fn. 445 Macy, Joanna 431

Maironis, Jonas 297 Mandelbrot, Benoît 409 Mandelkow, Robert 409 Mani, Lata 213 Manning, Richard 429, 430 Maren-Grisebach, Manon 396 Margulis, Lynn 36, 37 Marx, Leo 26, 111, 298 Massey, Doreen Fn. 183 Maturana, Humberto 76 Mazel, David 91; Fn. 87 Melville, Herman 62 Merchant, Carolyn 78, 118-19, 122, 168-69 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 25, 28, 32, 33, 34-35, 38- 42, 44, 471 Merwin, W.S. Fn. 211 Meyer-Abich, Klaus-Michael 396, 410 Miller, Rand 269, 270 Miller, Rand and Robin 269 Mirandola, Pico della 28 Mitchell, Don Fn. 297 Miyoshi, Masao 420, 424, 426 Modick, Klaus 393, 398, 408-10, 412 Molina, Felipe 426 Montaigne, Michel de 30, 37, 146 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat 336 Moore-Gilbert, Bart 213 Morrison, Toni 63, 64, 481 Motion, Andrew 365 Muir, John 26, 261 Müller-Oberhäuser, Gabriele 140 Mumford, Lewis 163, 261, 406 Murphy, Patrick 94, 95, 98, 100, 102, 106, 210, 419, 432; Fn. 101, 212 Muschg, Adolf 410

N Næss, Arne 276-77, 284; Fn. 286 Nietzsche, Friedrich 56, 404 Nöth, Winfried 457, 463 Nott, Josiah 217 Nye, David Fn. 292

489

Index

O O’Brien, Susie 92, 96, 99 Olmsted, Frederick Law 261 Orr, David 432 Ortiz, Simon 27, 60, 419 Øverland, Orm 308-09; Fn. 293 Ovid 54, 410

P Paracelsus 411 Parini, Jay 73 Paškevičiūt÷, Danut÷ 291-309 Pattee, Howard 457 Paul, Jean 400 Pease, Donald 82, 83 Peirce, Charles S. 455, 457-58, 465-66, 469-71 Petrilli, Susan 457, 466, 469, 470 Phillips, Dana 14, 158 Philpotts, Matthew 374, 380, 384, 385, 391 Plato 25, 114, 234, 313 Plumwood, Val 92, 93, 94, 96, 101, 113-14, 117, 119, 120, 121, 144, 146; Fn. 142 Pohl, Frederik 182 Polo, Marco 250 Ponzio, Augusto 457, 469, 470

R Raabe, Wilhelm 321-25 Radkau, Joachim 343-44 Ransmayr, Christoph 413 Ricoeur, Paul 160, 166, 170 Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich 316, 317, 321; Fn. 332 Rilke, Rainer Maria 447 Rischard, J.F. 421, 424 Robertson, Ritchie 384 Robinson, Kim Stanley 425, 478 Rockefeller, John D. 261, 262, 264, 265 Rolston, Holmes, III 464 Romaine, Paul 262

Romein, Jan 52 Rommelspacher, Thomas 313, 324 Roosevelt, Theodore 309 Rosaldo, Renato 82 Rose, Stephen 36 Rosendale, Steven Fn. 292 Roth, Philip 145 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 397, 398 Rudorff, Ernst 321; Fn. 332 Rueckert, William 26 Ruether, Rosemary Radford 53 Rummens, Joanna Anneke Fn. 299 Rushdie, Salman 299

S Sales, Roger 361 Sammells, Neil 10, 11, 12 Sauer, Carl 296; Fn. 297 Schama, Simon 332 Schätzing, Frank 413 Schelling, Friedrich 437 Scherenberg, Christian Friedrich 317 Schiller, Friedrich 448 Schlegel, Friedrich 437 Scott, Sir Walter 265 Sebeok, Thomas A. 458, 459, 469, 470; Fn. 466 Seed, John 431 Seuren, Günter 413 Shakespeare, William 131-33, 135, 136, 141-42, 147, 149- 50; Fn. 137, 138, 143 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 60 Shepard, Paul 28 Siebers, Tobin Fn. 445 Sieferle, Rolf Peter 313 Šilbajoris, Rimvydas 291, 297, 304 Silko, Leslie Marmon 27, 425-26 Sinclair, Upton Fn. 292 Sitter-Liver, Beat 276, 284 Smith, Greg Fn. 271 Smith, Henry Nash 26 Smuts, Barbara 29, 37-38 Snyder, Gary 28, 57, 103, 169, 204, 230-31, 427, 429, 431, 479; Fn. 163 Socrates 57

490

Index

Soper, Kate 14-15, 16-17, 19, 74, 91; Fn. 73, 113 Spence, Mark D. 221 Spencer, Kathleen L. 242-43 Spivak, Gayatri 101 Stevens, Wallace 133 Stone, Christopher 431 Strain., Ellen Fn. 254, 257 Strasser, Peter 173 Suleiman, Susan Rubin 298 Sze, Julie 93, 97

T Tacitus 332, 336, 347 Taylor, Paul 464 Thiele, Leslie 160 Thomas, Edward 355-70 Thomashow, Mitchell 426, 427 Thoreau, Henry David 9, 26, 27, 84, 156, 157, 167, 261; Fn. 209 Tichi, Cecilia Fn. 209 Tiffin, Helen 99 Tomlinson, John 177; Fn. 183 Tønnessen, Morton 457, 461; Fn. 467 Toolan, Michael Fn. 131, 134, 135, 136, 139 Torop, Peeter 459 Trask, Haunani-Kay 419 Trepl, Ludwig 397 Trudgill, Peter 132 Tryon, Sir William 261

U Uexküll, Jacob von 455, 457, 460-61 462, 466, 473; Fn. 458 Ulman, H. Lewis 257, 269, 270 Urry, John 267, 268; Fn. 253, 254, 255, 258

V Vaughan, Virginia M. and Alden T. 143, 144, 145, 146, 148 Vester, Frederic 410 Vincent, Andrew 422

Virilio, Paul 249, 257, 268; Fn. 258 Voros, Gyorgyi 133 Voznesenskaya, Julia 182

W Wallace, Kathleen R. 10, 12, 89, 91, 133, 154, 272, 292; Fn. 212 Warren, Karen 93, 117; Fn. 114, 118 Watts, Richard 132 Weber, Max 398 Welby, Victoria 469, 470 Westling, Louise 12, 82; Fn. 457 White, Hayden 160, 167 White, Lynn 114-15 Whitman, Walt 58-60, 209-26, 478 Wiechert, Ernst 374-376, 383, 391 Wilson, Edward O. 35, 62, 279; Fn. 52 Wilson, Elizabeth 303, 304-05, 306 Wohmann, Gabriele 177, 182-84, 194-98, 200-04 Wolf, Christa 177, 182, 183, 187, 191, 193, 194, 201-04, 286, 393, 397, 398, 404-07, 411, 412; Fn. 184, 188, 190 Wolfe, Cary 25, 29, 39 Woolf, Virginia 25, 26, 40-43, 194 Wordsworth, William 9, 58, 60

Y Yaeger, Patricia 101 Yamashita, Karen Tei 425

Z Zabytko, Irene 182