Research Abstract: Searching for Sustainability in Early American Literature

[Blake's Abstract # 5]

Philippon, Daniel J. “Is Early American Environmental Writing Sustainable? A Response to Timothy Sweet.” Early American Literature 45.2 (2010): 417-23. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 30 June 2011.

Daniel J. Philippon says issues which Timothy Sweet raises in his article “Projecting Early American Environmental Writing” and his book American Georgics: Economy and Environment in Early American Literature deserve more critical attention because exploring ways in which humans and nonhumans can work together towards a sustainable future is increasingly relevant.  Critical studies of nonhuman nature is now accepted and expected among academics addressing cultural concerns.  Also, addressing environmental concerns from an academic perspective is relevant because a lack of sustainable living practices damages the environment and prospects for human and nonhuman survival.

Philipon identifies Sweet’s central concerns as determining what early American literature can add to ecocriticism and discovering how early American paradigms can help the ecocritical cause today.  Philippon argues that the humanities—including studies of early American literature—are as important to the ecocritical cause as the sciences because human behavior and beliefs are at the root of the damage to the environment; therefore, to truly find solutions to our environmental problems we must examine ourselves, our definition of “human,” and ultimately change our behaviors.  Looking back at early American writing is valuable to ecocritics because they can study trends in human behavior towards the environment and beliefs about nature over time and across the space of geography. 

Philipon notes that Sweet purposes a georgic focus, as opposed to a pastoral focus, for ecocritical analysis of early American texts in order to expose the fact that our economic system relies on ecological capabilities for its success.  However, Philipon cautions against prioritizing the economic oriented environment because it creates a hierarchy, which reduces the importance of noneconomic nature.  In this light, a georgic orientation seems reductive because all elements of sustainability must be addressed; in addition to economic concerns, social and ecological ones must be addressed as well.  For example, asking who are the labors working on the land and who else is affected by this labor can be one way of investigating economic justice perspectives.  Asking what role religious arguments for sustainability have in the ecocritical cause further necessarily complicate the georgic perspective by engaging with Puritan and Quaker philosophy. 

 While Sweet says that exploring the reoccurrence of beliefs about nature throughout history is important, Philipon adds that addressing the changing context in which these similar ideas are presented in is vital.  For example, technology is a contextual factor that must be taken into account when examining attitudes about nature because it not only transmits these beliefs but shapes them.  Technology is even valuable to the ecocritical because it can aid in the transmission of solutions for sustainable living.  In conclusion, Philipon admits that if Americans do still operate from a colonial paradigm, like Sweet believes, then ecocritical analysis of early American texts can reveal much about our current eco-economic relationships.  

Conference Paper Proposal

[Jay Jay]

Conference Paper Proposal:

Madam Knight’s Journey: Bad Rivers, Spangled Skies & Terrifying Darkness

This paper will function as an exploration of Sarah Kemble Knight’s The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York through an ecofeminist lens by examining the representation of human and nonhuman in the text.  Specifically, I will investigate the relationships forged by Knight between human and nonhuman entities through her use of language and metaphor, which has the power to render the entity as subject or object.  Vivid descriptions of urban and rural landscapes are provided by Knight, as well as numerous interactions with people she encounters during her five day journey between Boston and New Haven.  I am interested in whether or not the binary of human and nonhuman remains static, or changes with each encounter during the journey.  A sense of fluidity could indicate Knight’s willingness to view her relationship with the landscape as subject-to-subject, rather than subject-to-object.  

Ecofeminism explores the connection between the degradation of nature and the domination of women, and the consequences of patriarchy artificially linking the two entities.  By examining the manner in which Knight represents human (particularly other women, Native Americans, and African American slaves) and the nonhuman environment, I hope to locate moments of resistance to patriarchal ideology by Knight.  However, I suspect I will find Knight more often than not upholding, and even participating in, the degradation of both nature and the domination of people of color based on their economic, class, and racial status.  If certain humans are described as objects rather than subjects, can a connection be found to landscape as subject too?

While this paper utilizes ecofeminist literary criticism, which is a branch of ecofeminism, it still adheres to the call to action inherent in ecofeminism.  By applying ecofeminism to an early American text that has secured its place in the canon, I am arguing that it can withstand multiple interpretational lenses.  If Knight’s journal can provide critics and readers with another scholarly perspective not previously explored, then perhaps other texts from the same time period can do the same.  Additionally, Knight’s journal is available in a scholarly anthology, making it easily available (and affordable) for the college classroom.

My intervention in the current scholarly discourse about Knight’s journal does not disagree or contradict previous scholarship; on the contrary, borrowing a phrase from Annette Kolodny, it is a turning of the lens that can only add, not detract, to the conversation.  Scholarship regarding Knight’s journal does not yet include the landscape or the environment as an entity in its own right, nor does it explore the connections between women and nature.  Ecological literary criticism and ecofeminist criticism are growing fields, and this paper is an experiment to see how well an early American text withstands an ecofeminist reading without falling into the trap of ascribing feminist or ecological motivations to Knight.

Weekly Reading Response #7

[Jay Jay]

Murphy, Patrick D.  Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques.  Albany: State U of New York P, 1995.  Print.

Chapters Read:

• “Let the Survivors of Contact Speak: In the Canon and in the Classroom”
• “The Present Is to Nature as the Past Is to Culture as the Future Is to Agency”
• “Simply Uncontrollable, Or Steaming Open the Envelope of Ideology”

I sincerely enjoyed reading the chapter “Let the Survivors of Contact Speak: In the Canon and in the Classroom” because of its call to action: include rather than exclude Native American voices in both the nature writing canon and the American literature canon, especially women Native American writers.  This call to action fits in perfectly with the transformation aspect of ecofeminism, as inclusion of Native American women’s voices could transform the canon in beneficial ways.  In an earlier chapter, Murphy examined the failure of the anthology The Norton Book of Nature Writing (1990) to capture a diversity of writers.  This chapter extends that criticism to two other anthologies: On Nature (1987) and This Incomperable Lande (1991), and also includes The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (1991).  I want to include a quote from Murphy that I found exhilarating:

The effect of The Idea of Wilderness and This Incomperable Lande is to create the impression that Indians have nothing to say on their own, except in ‘mythic narratives,’ and that they are saying and writing nothing today, literary or otherwise, and this I would label literary genocide. (127)

Exciting, right?  I thought so, because it’s true.  To systematically silence, degrade, and exclude an entire culture simply because the academy and its editors don’t agree with the culture’s approach to writing, style, genres, etc. is inexcusable.  It’s wrong, and frankly, it’s nausea inducing.  I expect better from the academy, and so should you all.

Murphy mentions The Native American Authors Distribution Project, which is available online here: nativeauthors.com.  On the front page of their site is an important idea: “Don’t just learn about Native Americans, learn from them!”  I have to admit I’ve been exposed to very little Native American poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc. in the classroom as an undergraduate, but my graduate experience has been more positive.  Still, there is room for improvement.