2015

Try to imagine a society-or even an individual human being-that does not require some form of interaction with the natural world in order to exist. At the moment, I am reading Sharman Apt Russell's Hunger: An Unnatural History (2005), and she speaks in her opening chapter about certain individuals-eccentrics, desperately overweight individuals, and even "hunger artists" who perform by abstaining from food-who have avoided eating for extraordinary periods of time. An American magician, for instance, had himself suspended in a six-foot by six-foot by three-foot box near the Tower Bridge in London, England, for 44 days without food in 2003. But did this "entertainer," David Blaine, go without water? Without air? And what about the 465-pound Scottish man, known to the public simply as "A.B.," who fasted for 13 months in the mid-1960s in order to lose 276 pounds? Even during this long period of hunger, Mr. A.B. relied upon the planet, upon nature, for his very survival. All human beings throughout history have relied upon their relationship with nature in order to exist. The problem, some might say, is that many of our cultures have either come to take nature for granted or have, as the ecological literary critic, or "ecocritic," Simon Estok, has written, developed an adversarial attitude towards nature, believing that human success and comfort require us to dominate and exploit nature rather than to live in a kind of symbiotic, or cooperative, relationship with the non-human world. Estok refers to this antagonism towards nature as "ecophobia" and argues that it is an essential condition of many contemporary societies, a condition that we may need to overcome if humans are to continue living on this planet well into the future. What I have begun to describe above is a kind of paradox, a strange and ironic situation by which we know that we all need nature; yet, for some peculiar reason we humans like to think of ourselves as being free from the encumbrances of physical

Bazyaft,, 2023

The main concern of Ecocriticism is to explore the relationship between literature and the physical environment. It analyzes the nature of expressions made in literary texts about nature and external environment. At its core, it is a reflexive study of literary texts, which foster anthropocentric power-based narratives. This paper describes the philosophical, ethical and political epistemology of Ecocriticism. In the Philosophical section, the arguments of Spinoza and Bacon are used, while in the Ethical section, the philosophies of Erne Naees are elaborated. In the political context, two sub-schools of Ecocriticism have been interpreted, Ecofeminism and postcolonial environmentalism. This is intended to show that the spread of Ecocriticism discussions in various academic and intellectual dimensions is not only an affirmation of its multidisciplinary approach. But also an argument for Ecocriticism to be a stable field of knowledge and literary Criticism.

The Future of Ecocriticism: New Horizons, 2011

JAST: Journal of American Studies of Turkey, 2009

The larger system is the biosphere, and the subsystem is the economy. The economy is geared for growth…whereas the parent system doesn't grow. It remains the same size. So as the economy grows…it encroaches upon the biosphere, and this is the fundamental cost… Herman Daly I went to the land of sagebrush, towering pine trees, and clear blue skies, in 2010, to spend my sabbatical year in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno, which has the major graduate program in the U.S. devoted to Literature and Environment. 1 In the future, when I look back to this year, I will remember it as a meaningful time that gave me a unique opportunity to explore the dedicated literary activities of American ecocritics in saving the planet from ongoing environmental injustices. I will also remember it as the time when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and blighted the Earth, devastating the Gulf of Mexico. Paradoxes akin to my own experience are frequently recast in American environmental writing: on the one hand, an attitude of dominion over the land, and on the other, the strong attitude of the committed writers and the

The title of Steven Vogel's book is, of course, a play on Aldo Leopold's famous " Thinking like a Mountain. " The provocative title is part of the central aim of the book: to reorient environmental thinking away from nature as normative foundation and toward a practical engagement with our socially created, lived environment. The book explicitly rejects the obscurantism and mysticism of some environmentalist thinking, and offers a thorough-going materialist and dialectical account of the lived environment. It largely succeeds in making the case for reorienting our thinking, despite some criticisms I will offer in the second half of the review. The basic critical thesis of the book is that the concept of nature is not coherent, especially as a normative foundation for environmental thought. For, " nature " either means that which is not supernatural, in which case, human beings and their activities are included in the concept, or " nature " refers to those elements of the environment that have gone unshaped by human activities, in which case, we are literally talking about nothing, or at least nothing that has much relevance to thinking about what humans ought to do and ought not to do. The alternative, descriptively, to relying on a concept of nature to motivate environmental protection is a literal social constructionism; we materially create the world in which we live through our social practices. In the largely alienated form of this practice of building our world, we do not self-consciously decide what is valuable, but rather allow what is valuable to emerge as a side-effect of other forces like those of the market. Our current relationship with our built environment is alienated because we generally treat it as though it were a product of some natural force out of our control. But it is, in fact, largely the product of human activity and —at least potentially— human choice. The alternative normative basis for this view, then, rests on our standing as the linguistic (social) creatures par excellence. Vogel adopts a version of deliberative democracy: what is valuable is what all those concerned would agree is valuable under conditions in which the only force recognized is, as Habermas might say, the force of the better argument; the solution to our alienation from the environment is to take responsibility for our built environment both physically and politically. A compelling feature of Vogel's argument is his challenge to assumptions about " nature " that one finds in both environmental philosophy and in more popular environmental writing like that of Bill McKibben. This challenge takes up the first chapter, and is developed throughout the rest of the text. In advancing his argument, Vogel addresses much of the biocentric environmental literature, though he also engages critically with thinkers from outside this camp. Chapter 2 and 3 survey the history of Western philosophy with an eye toward clarifying both the epistemological and the physical respects in which the environment is socially constructed. This discussion reflects the Hegelian-Marxist roots of Vogel's project by arguing that environmental philosophy must come to terms with our active role in the construction of our natural environment. This involves both our conceptualizations and our physical structuring of the world through our practice. Chapter 4 gives the first clear practical implication of Vogel's view, while also setting the stage for titular chapter, " Thinking like a Mall. " Since the dualism between artifact and nature cannot be maintained, many arguments regarding the desirability of restored environments or problems

1997

Nature no longer runs the Earth. We do. It is our choice what happens from here (Lynas, 2011, 8).

Environmental Values, 2016

If we are to assess whether our attitudes towards nature are morally, aesthetically or in any other way appropriate or inappropriate, then we will need to know what those attitudes are. Drawing on the works of Katie McShane, Alan Holland and Christine Swanton, I challenge the common assumption that to love, respect, honour, cherish or adopt any other sort of pro-attitude towards any natural X simply is to value X in some way and to some degree. Depending on how one interprets ‘value’, that assumption is, I contend, either false or vacuous. I argue that to assess the appropriateness of a person’s pro-attitudes towards a natural entity one must in some cases appeal to the concepts of status and/or bond, and not just that of value. To develop my argument, I appeal to the works of two nature writers – Robert Macfarlane and J. A. Baker.

It is well-known fact that 21 st century world in which we reside in is more of capitalism and everything is being visualized in terms of yielding capital without keeping in view its drastic consequences or other changes that it is making in our everyday life. Therefore, domination of capitalism has smoothened the way for consumerism in the society. Production in this constructive variety has caused havoc in this universe because whatever man is generating has nearly the modern industrial effect on the environment. So, the capacity of capitalistic economy always tries to maintain the market of monopoly by neglectingthe ecological concerns which he thinks are trivial, without knowing its cause and effect on this planet. This act has not only adversely affected humanity but other species too whose rights man has curbed down from centuries. Therefore, it has become clear that 21 st century human being has virtually neglected the ecological aspect of the things created by God as he submitted his will to the modern industrial developments and hardly exchanges anything towards other issues, whether it is humanism, animalism or the talk about other species including trees etc. Hence, by neglecting their individuality, culture, history and identity he forgot that the cosmos in which he lives in has a specific purpose. In this relation environmental aspects in literature have always been neglected and so far no specific heed has been given whether literature does speak about the ecological issues or not and is literature a remedy to fight with all the ecological issues that we are caught in? Thus, this paper highlightshow ecocriticism is emerging as a new literary phenomenon of 21 st century to highlight the environmental concerns discussed in literary texts and how ecocriticism is a way ahead for 21 st century people to pay heed towards the ecological issues so that anthropocentric attitude could be changed into ecocentric attribute to save this sinking boat. Full Length Paper Ecocriticism though new field in the academic discipline has its roots in 1970 but it got evolved during 1990s, therefore, is a new area to be studied within the praxis of ecology. In order to highlight the need and importance of ecocriticism scholars are still engaged in defining the scope and aims of the subject. Cheryll Glotfelty, one of the pioneers in the field, has defined ecocriticism as ―the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment,‖ and Laurence Buell says that this study must be ―conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis.‖ David Mazel declares it is the analysis of literature ―as though nature mattered.‖ Therefore, argued that it cannot be performed without a keen understanding of the environmental crises of modern times and thus must inform personal and political actions; it is, in a sense, a form of activism. Many critics also emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of the enquiry, which is informed by ecological science, politics, ethics, women's studies, Native American studies, and history, among other academic fields. Ecocriticism a term was coined by William Rueckert in 1978 has changed the concept of reading literature in terms of showing its concerns towards the environment. Rueckert has shown

This paper discusses normative appeals to naturalness in ecocentric environmental ethics. First, it demonstrates the resemblance between these appeals, as they are framed in ecocentric moral thinking and classical naturalistic ethical theories such as stoicism and Aristotelian ethics. It goes on to consider two objections to which this resemblance seemingly renders ecocentrism vulnerable: the naturalistic fallacy objection and the natural evils objection. The paper argues that raising the naturalistic fallacy objection against ecocentrism conflates an issue of normative ethics with a metaethical one. The issue of whether something can be good because it is natural is distinct from the issue of whether value concepts can be reduced to concepts referring to natural properties. The paper then defends ecocentrism from the natural evils objection, which argues that what is natural cannot be good because too many harmful events occur in the natural world. That objection conflates two ways of saying that something is valuable. What it shows is that natural events are sometimes bad for humans, whereas ecocentrism holds that nature is valuable independently of its goodness for human beings. It has been argued that this nonanthropocentric stance gives rise to the further objection that ecocentrism is committed to sacrificing human life and well-being when doing so is required to maintain ecosystems in a healthy state. The paper responds to this concern by emphasizing both the prima facie nature of ecocentric duties as they are understood by prominent ecocentrists, and the convergence between the good of humans and that of ecosystems.