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).

 

308 Video Essay about Place and Ecology

Hey, check this out. A recent project that was turned into me. I thought it would be useful/worth considering for our class and especially the reading for this week.

Meet your Meat

Meet your meat is a PETA slogan that has been in use for years; it seems to have resonated with me because I kept thinking of it when viewing Food Inc., reading the excerpt from Omnivore's Dilemma, and Schnieder's essay on Slow Food, "Good, Clean, Fair." However, these texts remove some of the dramatization that alienates others considering how to act on the issue. Again though, the radical acts of PETA (and other environmentalists) have been instrumental to some of the progress and acceptance of perspectives like Pollan's, Kenner's, and Schnieder's. Groups like them bring hard issues to the surface.

The texts by Schnieder and Pollan fill in some gaps from Food, Inc. that I found particularly helpful to my inquiries. The details about feeding cows rendered animal fat and ignoring the instincts we have to keep food and fecal matter apart were very powerful in Pollan's excerpt--I can't wait to read that book.

Teaching the slow food philosophy was an interesting detail in Schnieder's essay. I though the example of Alice Waters showing Petrini the effectiveness of "school vegetable gardens" Can anyone really complain about teaching young students about vegetable gardening? Many probably would complain, but the connection to our health and longevity as a species cannot be denied. Furthermore, growing something with your own two hands alleviates depressive thoughts and emotions, as well as gives you a sense of appreciation for what you have and your abilities to support local sustainability.

Another more important quote from Petrini about the interconnectedness of food, culture, health, ecology and thinking:

I also like how this quote about the new gastronomy ties the readings together. Perhaps this is a new aim for food and culture programming on television; demonstrating sustainability and fine food working together and really emphasizing the origins of the dish's components.

 Has our food culture gone out of control because of financial exigencies?

If it were only that simple . . . 

Considering Omnivore's Dilemma, I am curious about what Pollan is saying about the details of how the federal farm bill should be considered a food bill. What does that entail?

The trope of the feedlot as a city is such a good metaphor that it is quite literal in many ways. The subsidization of corn and the fossil fuel need to generate and transport it is harrowing. Can we change this behavior or is out culture too resistant? I was near a pig feedlot in South Carolina a few years ago and the stench of sulphur and cesspits was ubiquitous and nauseating. Our culture hides this stuff away and it is something hard to support when you are informed.

Green Culture Wars

So what is the best way to be an agent of  sustainable lifestyle?

After reading Marilyn Cooper's "Environmental Rhetoric in the Age of Hegemonic Politics: Earth First! and the Nature Conservancy," I felt like I was partly being given an overview (a limited one at best) of environmental organizations that vary in radicality, and I felt like I was partly given an endorsement of the Nature Conservancy. The example of Earth First! (the only example!) was a horrible essay/article, probably one of their worst, about cattle grazing on park lands that completely relied on assumptions and did not have much credibility as it paints the government and ranchers as evil tyrants, over and over, without civility. So first, I just want you to compare the Web sites of Earth First! and the Nature Conservancy in order to see that EF! has more to say than diatribes about cow shit blighting the landscape.

Earth First!

Nature Conservancy

Cooper argues, "if Deep Ecology is not challenged at the philisophical level, the number of environmentalists committed to ecotage is likely to grow" (249).  I agree with her concern, but she does little to emphasize what is valuable in the Earth First! organization. David Foreman, the founder of Earth First! mentions that the organization is about civil disobedience and taking alternative approaches to ecological preservation. I do not agree with armed confrontations and violence to achieve environmental conscience and sustainability in our civilization, but that is not the whole of Earth First! and I doubt the entire organization supports violent action for environmental stewardship. If Cooper spent more time on diverse examples from the two organizations, rather than her stab at credibility in her account of Gramsci's radical democratic theory, I think she would have been much more credible and her article would be profoundly more effective. Nonetheless, I praise her for taking a stand and trying to converse about sustainable sustainability in the world. 

As you can see in the EF! Web site, there is a lot more going on than eco-terror and uncivil disobedience. It is markedly much less business looking than the NC Web site, and it focuses on broader, more global issues than NC, which is in ways myopically focused on US ecosystems that turn profits. The links, Dangerous spread of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Bear Mountain Development, Vancouver Island, BC, Mountaintop Mining, Hemp, Recycling Styrofoam

Alternative Energy and Run Your Car on Veggie Oil  all seem much more associated with civil disobedience and nonviolent action/discourse than the brief example that is given by Cooper. I just want to expand or perspectives here because Cooper's exposition is limited and misleading I believe. 

Look at the top of the post at the enviro-fascist parody, you will see that and a whole other string of negative depictions of environmentalists when you search "envieronmentalist" on 

Google images

 What does this reveal about Google and its sponsors? Is there anything dialectic about their depiction of enviromentalists?

 Is there anything, but stereotypes here? I felt like I was listening to Glenn Beck describe environmentalists.

 Cooper references Gramsci stating, "leadership is the winning of power through building an intellectual and moral consensus, the establishment of hegemony" (241). She seems to align Nature Conservancy with this statement and Earth First! with "domination is the naked exercise of power, the use of law or armed forces to liquidate . . . opposing groups" (241). I hope to challenge that alignment and associated stereotypes that are rampant about environmentalists in general, but also those about Earth First! that Cooper perpetuates in her article. If you take the time to look closely at Earth First! they are actually providing education about sustainability that does not advocate enviro-fascism and uncivil disobedience. 

Maybe Earth First! can re-shape their identity and work more with eco-satire, aligning their identity with hegemony and proving they are not a bunch of blood thirsty tree huggers, 10K strong. Unfortunately, stereotypes are what many Americans complacently lap up from the spoon. Cooper states, "the problem with the environmental movement lies not in the lack of agreement over how to pursue the goal of protecting biodiversity but rather in the absence of 'healthy interaction between the more radical groups and the mainstream groups'" (256). Do you think Cooper reinforces this or damages it?

 

Heise, Eco-Discourse, and Imag(in)ing the Earth

First, I'd like to say that I am a sci-fi enthusiast and I have never heard of Le Guin's World 4470. The book sounds great and I love the idea of "'wide-range bioempathic receptivity.'" I hope to get to it this summer after I read P.K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which equally piqued my interest after reading Buell last week. If you have an interest in imagining the Earth via fiction, then I suggest you read Dawn by Octavia Butler. In her book, Aliens come and salvage Earth (and humanity) after a nuclear confrontation that kills nearly every human on the planet. What is relevant and interesting to our reading of Heise is that the Oankali (Aliens in the book) ships are organic, living organisms. Perhaps Butler was influenced by Buckminster Fuller's Spaceship Earth allegory from 1963? While one could argue that Butler was primarily concerned with hierarchy in human cultures in the book, I think her demonstration of an organic ship of which every living thing on it was interconnected demonstrates an eco-criticism that prompts readers to evaluate their connection (and imagined disconnections) with the suffering and health of other living things, as well as Earth as a whole "sentient superorganism"

An interesting concept discussed in Heise's piece is the sense of Spaceship Earth, whatever allegory we use, can find itself "in a complex conjunction with darker visions of global collapse or conspiracy on the one hand and with the call to return to local environments and communities as a way of overcoming the modern alienation from nature on the other" (20-21).  This connects with Buell's discussion of place and space because how we encompass the earth and all its organisms takes the shape of problematic ideologies (How do we be and let be?).  Heise comments that "the environmentalist emphasis on restoring individuals' sense of place while it might function as one useful tool among others for environmentally oriented arguments becomes a visionary dead end if it is understood as a founding ideological principle" (21). Does this give us a sense of apprehension when ascribing ideology to place, especially since the EJ movement is clearly linked to ideologies about culture and people?

So should we read Heise as backing off of "the recuperation of a sense of place" as Buell may invite and re shaping our stance to understand how places and processes are interrelated and how our activities affect this connection (ow, that hurts my brain . . . )

What impact does Google Earth and Kilma's installation at the Whitney have on our sense of Spaceship Earth? Does it make Earth more of a thing to be consumed? Is this an illusion of connectivity? How much of what is represented on the application is anthropocentric? Ecocentric?

Concepts from Ecocriticism and Writing for an Endangered World

What I found most interesting in comparing Buell and Garrard is the extension of the apocalyptic genre from Garrard in Buell's "Toxic Discourse." This makes it a more social concern and the apocalyptic is placed within "everyone's backyard." This is reinforced by the Silko and Berry readings in that they challenge readers to make the most mundane landscapes "the center of the world" by demonstrating the dignity of marginalized "spaces" and demonstrating the interconnectedness of living things.


While Buell was mostly theory on the matter, what he chose to present had a clear purpose: to get his audience to think about how the ecological safety of places can be determined by class. This is apparent in reference to Wideman about the town of Homewood near Pittsburgh. Wideman makes a run down socio-economic disadvantaged area sympathetic, worthy of renewal, and beautiful. I thought of Wideman many times when reading Silko's essay.

Greg Garrard's Synthesis of Ecocritical Approaches

Garrard's Critical Approach - 

Garrard leaves us with the notion to 

associate the ecocriticism of the future with Eden's inflection of the Earth: attuned to environmental justice, but not dismissive of the claims of commerce and technology; shaped by knowledge of long term environmental problems, but wary of apocalypticism; informed by artistic as well as scientific insight; and committed to the preservation of the biological diversity of the planet for all its inhabitants. (182)  

 

After  taking his audience through the history of positions on ecocriticism, such as Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, and Social Ecology, how pastoral discourse (classical, romantic and American) has been used to reconcile anthropocentric and ecocentric attitudes, as well as presenting cultural constructions of wilderness, dwelling, and the apocolypse, Garrard attempts to form a synthesis of both ecocentric and anthropocentric exigencies while also giving his audience a thorough background on the history of eco-discourse.

The ways we can use this text as we go forward in the course will probably unfold as we go on, but I can see how we can use it a a reference for future texts to peruse and interrogate (i.e., Silent Spring, Erin Brockovich, On Deadly Ground, Davion, Descartes, etc.). I am especially interested in how apocalyptic discourse and Judeo-Christian perceptions have shaped how we relate to and justify the exploitation of animals, habitats and resources. Furthermore, the image of Earth from the Apollo and it's effect on the ecocentric/anthropocentric split is interesting material for discussion and inquiry--just what effect has that had on how humans perceive the longevity of Earth and our species? Does the image make us feel that the fate of the world is out of our hands and all ecocentric exigencies are pointless?

I must say the last chapter had me thinking of Andrew Revkin's Web site "Dot Earth." He has a video of a camera looking upon Earth from space. My cultural influences move me to read the image as romanticizing and dignifying the Earth, asking me to use my strength to preserve it along with its biodiversity. However, my cultural influence is as varied as the 6 billion others who share this planet.

DOT EARTH

BEGINNINGS: POLLUTION (1-15)

• Moral cases for ecological and anthropological reconciliation in competition with scientific or logical cases.
  

The rhetoric of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962). 

Peter Coates - "Disempowering postmodernist logic"

• He considers the issue of environmental threats being "socially constructed and culturally defined" (14).

POSITIONS (16-32)

Deep Ecology

“Deep Ecology identifies the anthropocentric dualism humanity/nature as the ultimate source of anti-ecological beliefs and practices” (23). 

Concerned with how "Anthropocentric Managerialism" is in conflict with "Ecocentric promise" (23). 

Ecofeminism

As in the anthropocentric dualism that is criticized by Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism “also blames the androcentric dualism man/woman” (23).

“Women have been associated with nature, the material, the emotional, and the particular, while men have been associated with culture, the nonmaterial, the rational, and the abstract” (Davion qtd. in Garrard 23).    

“The desire to reverse the androcentric priority of reason over emotion leads to a striking anti-scientism” (24).   

Descartes – his philosophy was influential in the cultural body/mind split

“he saw animals as radically different from, and inferior to, humans. They were bodies without minds, effectively machines” (25).  

Val Plumwood – Critiqued “the gendered reason/nature dualism”

Social Ecology and Eco-Marxism (Social Ecologists)

Concerned with power of globalization and impact on communities working for sustainability. Reminds me of farm co-ops and local food subscriptions (28-30).

Martin Heidegger –

“among the most profound critiques of industrial modernity because it combines a poetic awe before the earth’s being with a savage deconstruction of the death denying project of world mastery that we are taught to call progress” (30).

(counter-culture—to unlearn values ingrained by cultural forces)**Indeed culture is not all a bed of roses.

Ø  Was "an enthusiastic Nazi" (32).

Ø  We are Sheppards of the being.

PASTORAL – Said to be entrenched in Western Tradition, but problematic for environmentalism

(Classical, Romantic, and American)

Classical Pastoral precedes the perception of a general crisis in human ecology by thousands of years

Ø  Hellenistic Greece realized great scale urbanization (312-260). Distinctions in poetry about town and country, and past and present.

Ø  Christianity produced a dualism between humans and nature (secular political reasons) Thom Carew's "To Saxham" about animals willingly coming to the slaughter to serve man.

Ø   

Romantic Pastoral (at a time of mass urbanization making the contrast for people immense). Featured "modern advertisements for wholewheat bread featuring idyllic, rolling fields of grain in the sunshine . . ." with Ruddy farmers and classical music in the background (34).

American Pastoral takes on imagery and rhetoric suited to issues in America.

Silent Spring – Rachel Carson (1962)

Regarding the pesticides used by humans, especially DDT, and how they affect birds.

Pastoral in America:

Hemmingway and Faulkner have a more patriarchal attitude toward a feminized nature.

. . .  but then Walden comes (Thoreau and Emerson), who have a more Taoist approach to nature, letting it take its course and observing it.

WILDERNESS

The wilderness was seen as a threat to agrarians working the land for food. Wilderness meant land of beasts

Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology and Zen Buddhist, Gary Snyder, seeks to bring "the great Mother back to life in a postmodern world"

David Robinson – He cites Snyder's promotion of a new cultural ethic of the wild" (82).

1. The necessities of a commitment to the potentialities and limits of place

2. Wild as the best teacher for humanity

3. The wild as sacred

4. Use of wild as a guide for diverse and democratic society

Human civ is the locus of chaos while nature is free self-organization (the wild sustains civ. too).

APOCOLYPSE

Ø  Apocalyptic narratives since 3K years ago.

Ø  1200 BCE – Iranian Poet Zoroaster

Ø  Major influence (methods) on environmental discourse

Ø  Both responds to and creates crisis

*Only if we see a future in the earth are we likely to take responsibility for it.

DWELLING

Ø  We have explored the claim that Judeo-Christian monotheism has provided modern Euro civ. with ecologically damaging attitudes (Apocalyptic visions)

Ø  Biblical justification for exploitation of wild and wildlife

Ø  The Ecological Indian – in harmony with dwellings

*A society bound by a spiritual nature philosophy holds no guarantee of ecological well-being, the powers at be hold the access and use of natural resources (135).

ANIMALS

Ø  Jeremy Bentham – Humans share the capacity to suffer with animals

Ø  The Utilitarian "principle of equality" (137).

Ø  "We are rarely enjoined to prevent the suffering of wild animals (road-kill dilemma) because our moral responsibility principally applies to the animals we use for food, transport and companionship" (149).

Ø  Zoo as a place to distort our perception of animals, and to assert neocolonial power. –feel-good eco-activism to protect endangered species.

Ø  Wildlife programming – overemphasis on violence and sex – how does this restrict our understanding of animals?

Ø  Flipper (1963) – empathy for dolphins – new tuna fishing standards.

*Issue of Genetically Engineered Organisms – biopiracy

FUTURES: EARTH

"The Planet on the Table" by Wallace Stevens *-reminds me of dot earth by Andrew Revkin

Ø  1969, view of Earth from moon circulated and its impact on people.

Ø  Jean Baudrillard – we have simulated worlds which now function to supplant the real world

Ø  For Gaia to support life, the geenhouse effect must be regulated (173).

*Key Challenges for the future – reconciling ecocriticism and globalization

*Gaia – unpredeictability of nature, but it does self-maintain equilibrium