What is Ecocomposition Anyway?

Blog on Cooper's "Ecology of Writing" --go comment, I know you want to. 

From Cooper's "Ecology of Writing" she cites Stanley Fish who says, "readers are guided by interpretive strategies, that these strategies are constitutive of interpretive communities, and that the strategies originate with writers" (365). Such strategies, Cooper argues, are "part of the mental equipment of writers and readers" and such equipment requires our examination to understand communicative environments.

Dr. Stanley Fish - Professor of Law at Florida International University

As in David Orr's commencement address in 1990 to Arkansas College, he demonstrates the environment of academic discourse at AC, and arguably most higher ed institutions in the country. The interpretive communities of the academic college are much like German education at the beginning of the 20th century.  German education (in Wiesel's words) "'emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciouness, answers instead of questions . . . '" (qtd. in Orr 1). Looking at colleges as environments allows us to see what is advantageous, as well as what might be limiting or dangerous in said environment, as well as what other discourse environments can do to help improve that environment and influence thought diversity and awareness.

 

David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics. He is also a James Marsh Professor at large at the University of Vermont (Oberlin Web page).

This is evident in Orr's discussion of success. he says that our notions of success in our culture are warped and ill-conceived without much consideration of longevity and sustainability. he says that the planet "needs people who live well in their places" (see Owens' "Eutopia" on page 31 of Ecocomposition), and "people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane" (Orr 4). It is exactly this idea of success that defines the different environments of a college and a sustainable living movement and requires an ecocomposition approach to writing.

Ecocomposition can politicize and polarize a classroom, which is not the major point I think any of the authors are making on this reading list, although they do warn of it at varying degrees. What the point is overall I believe, is that we need to begin to view discourse communities as unique and specialized, but weak in that their perspectives are limited, myopic, and even self-serving and self-righteous. It is not just the business schools driven by The Art of War in teaching "success" in capitalism, but also the academics flying into distant cities to present papers and talks without really examining how their behavior affects places, people, and ecologies of local to global scope (Weisser and Dobrin 28). Citing Youngstown, Ohio where Orr grew up, he said that manufacturing corporations left that town disheveled because the "bottom line" ursurps "unemployment, crime, higher divorce rates, alcoholism, child abuse, lost savings, and wrecked lives" in what our culture values most (Orr 5). One last example, my favorite of Orr's, is how ecocomposition can help us see how limited our "worldy" views are that colleges and universities grant us in the United States. Orr argues, "no student should graduate without understanding how to analyze resource flows and without the opportunity to participate in real solutions to real problems" (Orr 6). The main point of Ecocomposition is that it is a realization that writing communities have limits, limits we shouldn't bind ourselves within as participants in the world.  

 Success, a fleeting term from discourse community to discourse community?

According to Weisser and Dobrin,

ecocomposition is an area of study which, at its core, places ecological thinking and composition in dialogue with one another in order to both consider the ecological properties of written discourse, and the ways in which ecologies, environments, locations, places, and natures are discursively affected . . . ecocomposition is about relationships . . . it is about the production of written discourse and the relationship to those places it encounters. (2)

Ultimately, I see ecocomposition as a useful way to teach discourse and demonstrate the importance of dialectical and critical thinking in the world at large today. Ecocomposition helps students understand how to step back and look at discourse as of a cultural phenomena, as potentially biased, and as one of many perspectives on issues of importance. Ecocomposition helps us realize that there are many locations of thought and value, and that is a wonderful argument for advocates of critical thinking. However, given its limitations, ecocomposition can politicize the classroom if not defined properly to students. As with the term environmentalist, many biases and prejudices are embedded in ecology, and hence ecocomposition. While it can apply to issues of sustainability, it is also more importantly applies to issues of location in not only physical space, but also the metaphysical space of discourse communities and the environmental factors that influence them.

Furthermore, we can alienate students with ecocomposition in assignments. In Derek Owens' outline of seven assignments, he demonstrates ways to write ecocomposition that doesn't stop at the Thoreauian place portrait, but delves into ecocomposition exigencies like "Eutopia," "Neighborhood Histories," "Tribal Testimonies," and "Future Scenarios" to name some examples (W and D 30-34). Such discourse opportunities extend participation to not only privileged narratives about pristine landscapes, but also to sites of cultural wealth that are not natural wonders in the sense of an outdoor documentary, but natural wonders of perspective, community, and people that can help us connect our fragmented ecologies of discourse across cities, states, nations, and the globe. As Killingsworth and Krajicek state, "some of our students in ecocomposition lack sufficient alienation or critical distance, just as we and our heroes may well lack sufficient socialization" (W and D 54).