On Eco-Criticism

For those of you who don’t know me, and I’m assuming that might constitute a majority of people who read this, I’m not the hugest fan of eco-criticism; I don’t think I hate it, but, then again, I think it is a bit odd – a square peg in a round hole of literary criticism, if you will.  Now before we get started, don’t get my wrong; I have many colleagues who are into eco-criticism, all of whom are extremely intelligent folks (the top two who come to mind are my dear friends Steve Zelt and MP Jones), and all of whom shed some interesting light on literature. For some reason, though, I just haven’t been able to get into it or take it overly seriously.  However, I think I might start thinking about it differently – and, perhaps – I don’t claim to know what you think, not for the reasons you might think.

Right now I’m half watching Real Time with Bill Maher. The special guest tonight, Bill McKibben, is an environmentalist activist who attended school at Harvard. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Lyndhurst Fellow, and fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, among others – not to mention he has honorary degrees from Marlboro, Colgate, and NYU, etc. The reason I bring this up is because I’m watching in horror at the way he is being treated. He is one of the leading minds in environmental activism (his publishing record is a testament to that claim) and Bill Maher’s panel is not taking him seriously.  

Now, you might think to yourselves, “what exactly does this have to do with eco-criticism in literature?” I realize that the connection may be a bit tenuous; however, I think that people need to take seriously what certain specialized people, people such as Bill McKibben, have to say about the environment. McKibben talked extensively about the insane weather we’ve been experiencing on a global level, only to be met with doubt and pejorative quips.

The truth is, scientists and activists are trained to analyze a myriad of data, and the derivations of said data are not flippant claims – they are hypotheses that, through intensive testing and peer-peer review, become theories (Richard Dawkins says we ought to look at, I believe, the second O.E.D. definition of theory when we look at this word; in fact, the word could very well be “theorem”). Said theories create a framework by which we understand the world.

Now the question I would like to ask is this: what exactly is it that the layman knows that the scientist and environmental activist do not? I would suggest that they know nothing in comparison. With that being said, I will now talk about eco-criticism.

Although the people who study eco-criticism tend to be well-educated liberals, I know that the entire readership of eco-critical papers is not limited to said group. Because of this – I apologize if this is not, though I believe it is – fact, I believe eco-criticism serves an invaluable purpose. People ought to be exposed to the issues of the environment; and, if we can further educate the already educated, we can better arm an elite populace of minds to better combat the ever-growing presence of scientific doubt – and, through this action, we may be able to better address environmental issues, even if we are not scientists.

So, for those of you out there studying eco-criticism, keep on keeping on. And for those of you (like myself, admittedly) who may not take eco-criticism seriously, I urge you to look at its utility. It is not the theory of choice I’d go to first – I’m more of a formalist and new-critic, actually – but I now see that it does, in fact, serve a potentially crucial role in the academic world. The environment is all we have, folks; and, for all you Romantics, it makes Wordsworth turn over in his grave when you fuck with it.