Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of ... - Skidmore College

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Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology Author(s): Dana Phillips Source: New Literary History, Vol. 30, No. 3, Ecocriticism (Summer, 1999), pp. 577-602 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057556 Accessed: 14/01/2010 13:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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Ecocriticism,

Literary

Theory,

and the Truth of Ecology Dana Phillips I. Literary Theory

and the Truth of Ecology

his classic Eco Umberto 1975 essay "Travels in Hyperreality," still waiting for a good answer after twenty-five years: asks a question the truth of ecology lie?"1 The last word of this "Where does one more can mean its than but is scarcely ambiguity thing; question in the Eco spirit. That spirit was and seems very much coincidental, strangely moved by a visit to the San Diego Zoo, famous for its animal in accord with the strictest ecological rectitude. Of habitats designed and a theme park, where the course, the Zoo is both a living museum resident grizzly bear at the time of Eco's visit was known not as Ursus as "Chester." The San less dauntingly horribilis but much Diego Zoo thus to disperse of hyperreality the atmosphere did nothing through which Eco made his way during his American travels. In fact, it heightened that so Eco had to wonder: one if in of the and shrines nation's atmosphere, seems obscure, to ecology the truth of ecology then where is that truth located? And how should we react when we find ecology present but into a lie, as seems to be the case at the San Diego Zoo, given its made

In

and its conflicted natural yet man-made alle apparently labyrinths, to science and the entertainment both Eco giance suggests industry? nature of the Zoo is a definitive that the double instance of how our desire for the real can give rise to the hyperreal, to a culture in which imitations are the dominant form of reality. As his essay makes clear, the is not just a bad idea or the product of a lapse in taste, but a hyperreal cultural condition. You cannot full-blown the hyperreal escape by more be could than authentic things wishing they are. It is too to be dealt with that way. substantial The paradox of the hyperreal is that while it is not quite real, neither is it unreal. This paradox is particularly frustrating with regard to the truth and the potential untruth of ecology. Discovering the truth of ecology is a lot more difficult than its popularizers have led us to believe, both because of the obscuring well: (1) Nature

New Literary History,

reasons effects of hyperreality, and for two additional is complex; is thoroughly (2) Nature implicated

1999, 30: 577-602

as in

578

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

in nature. By virtue of my culture, and culture is thoroughly implicated own disciplinary the this all raises for me are these: training, questions in so far as that truth is addressed what is the truth of ecology by literature? How well does literature address that truth? These questions a new of English by ecocriticism, have begun to be asked in departments the blas? attitude toward the variety of critical thinking which opposes I share their negative in literary studies. While natural world predominant I this blas? about doubt whether the ecocritics' preferred attitude, feelings counter

to

it?a

the

nature

of

of

renewal

at

realism,

a response,

is all that powerful

based the

and

representation

least

nature

where

is concerned?

as it is on some dubious

ideas about

nature.

of

representation

I would

to the ecocritical like, then, to add a third question agenda, a question lie in literature? Eco: does the truth of ecology inspired by Umberto one concerns is of the chief of literary The nature of representation of is else ecocritics but the theory theory, something preponderance dislike about current literary studies. Many of them do not want its help. in part because

is unfortunate,

This

its

and

excesses

rumored

a

were

about

complaints feature

central

of

theory

literary neoconservative

the cultural debates of the 1980s and early 1990s. alarm over theory in a new and the have been they sounding Although run a different risk of being labeled reaction ecocritics the also register, the neoconservatives. with ary and getting They claim to be lumped on behalf of tradition, of which not however, they are often speaking, 1980s and 1990s neo critical, but on behalf of nature. And unlike conservatives, they are not suspicious of theory's political implications, an interest in or of its attack on canonical Western literature; politically, rhetoric

the

during

by

The

poststructuralism, and

already

inadequate.

understandable,

volatile,

quite

even

nature

that

common

The

impatience the

considering

of

is

by

culture.

of postmodernism, sharing the same feeling of

of ecocritics hubris

They

canon

are bothered,

tenet

that

conviction

the

and

is constructed

of nature is a basic and other forms of theory

the

radical,

like to see changed.

contention

theory's

constructedness

belatedness

be

also would

ecocritics

something though,

can

world

natural

the

is

representation

with

regard

always

to theory

is

nature-as-culturally-con

dislike of theory among ecocritics structed claim. Still, the prevailing not only with theory but of impatience often seems like an expression is to in traffic which with any intellectual abstractions, activity entailing some bite and force. with intellectual say any activity philosophical after all, albeit in its own way. Ecocriticism may be reactionary has antitheoretical spirit of ecocriticism use an a of fresh air?to breath laudable, expression entirely In a 1995 article in The New York is overdetermined. which in this context the formal debut of this new kind Times Magazine, Jay Parini celebrated To

seemed

some

observers

the

ECOCRITICISM,

AND

THEORY,

579

ECOLOGY

held that summer at Colorado State and of critique at a conference would-be He hundred included. several attended ecocritics, myself by a of ecocriticism it the that "marks provenance by suggesting explained it also signals a dismissal of return to activism and social responsibility; From a literary aspect, itmarks a re theory's more solipsistic tendencies. of rocks, trees and with realism, with the actual universe engagement is the wilderness of signs."2 This description rivers that lies behind on what he learned in inter effusive, but accurate: Parini is reporting of ecocriticism, views with well-known practitioners John including and Lawrence Buell of Harvard University, Elder of Middlebury College whose work I address below. One of the most traits of ecocritical rhetoric is echoed by interesting of the jargon of ecology and environmentalism Parini: its merger with, the jargon of literary theory. "The wilderness of signs" ironically enough, with which many theorists would be perfecdy comfortable. is a metaphor Ecocritics with such a metaphor, but they ought to be less comfortable like to treat literary, ecological, and environmental concepts vaguely as if they were exactiy the same in their similar in their rough oudines of language, poetic details. Thus the complexity in particular, language is seen as expressive of or even determined of nature. the by complexity texts of Ecocritical then analysis literary proceeds haphazardly, by means out of borrowed terms: words of fuzzy concepts fashioned like "ecosys tem,"

"organism,"

and

"wilderness"

are

used

metaphorically,

with

no

of their metaphorical status, as if literary, ecological, acknowledgment were a lot more of and environmental than ways speaking compatible as and if their differences could be overlooked. are, they safely English department

colleagues

who

do

not

use

the

same

metaphors,

those

who

see no

connections between "the wilderness of important or decisive and of scorn. wilderness the become the of And signs" pines, yet objects there are a number of assumptions that ecocritics share with their more aware theoretical but less environmentally chief among colleagues, them

assumptions

about

the

ontological

gulf

between

culture

and

and the metaphysics of representation to required supposedly to that After ecocritics have been school. But all, bridge gulf. graduate they often treat literary theory as if it were a noxious weed that must be more it overwhelms before native and greener forms of suppressed a so new not The result much is kind of untheoretical speech. blessedly as it is a discourse discourse up here and there by some propped distincdy shaky theory. There in their own gardens than are, then, more weeds growing ecocritics have supposed. The contradictions of their antitheoretical are already evident in Glen A. Love's 1990 article "Revaluing polemic Nature: Toward An Ecological Criticism." Love was one of the first to nature,

580

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

the new

trend, and in his article complains bitterly about how are. What he remiss members of English departments environmentally not in all has is of his mind, however, really only "the colleagues, over fashionable critics and theorists" who prefer "ego-consciousness" identify

Love

"eco-consciousness." to

kind

the

ignores

ego-consciousness,

that

fact

either.

For

theory many

has

not

been

theorists

very

of

the

and

the ego?that is, the poststructuralist persuasions, postmodern as not an if "dead" effective historical too, constructed, "subject"?is or interest. Excessive agent and object of critical ego-consciousness to is of But recall the Parini's least term, "solipsism," theory's dangers. to Love, for whom then this sort of detail does not matter very much than fighting words. After a tide "theory" and "theorists" are no more of he envisions battle "realist and other and ecocriticism, theory turning nihilism."3 To discourse which values unity rising over post-structuralist on to from the ecocritical what has the Love say subject, judge not does entail an of "dismissal" Parini's term) literary theory (again, a as of of it demonization "nihilism." understanding theory, only to ignore the recent ecocritics Even more negligently, have tended of

history

to

and

ecology,

assume

that

its

of

representation

nature

has

truth?it has. They often appeal to the an of scientific they then exploit authority which authority ecology, a as for moral sanction their own dis and rhetorically philosophical as and for does he Love when course, "unity" implies that it is an plumps

been more

successful

It

value.

"ecological"

than?in

is not,

not

The

anymore.

historian

environmental

of unity, Donald Worster notes that the ideal of the ecosystem as amodel in recent ecological has been supplanted "of order and equilibrium," theory

by

colors,

"the

idea

be regarded

"should

changing

unceasing

barrage

of

the

lowly

as a landscape

continually of

through perturbations."4

"Nature,"

'patch.'"

of patches time

and

Worster

of all sizes, space,

Worster's

reports,

textures,

responding characterization

and to an of

theory is supported by a similar sketch of the subject by ecological indetermin B. who writes that the "new ecology emphasizes Hagen, Joel It constant that and then, ism, instability, appears, ecology change."5 of development for human leaves us "with no model society to emu late."6 Ecology today thus might be said to be more like poststructuralism recent

and

less

like

the

sort

of

values-rich,

restorative,

and

recuperative

have a knack for it to be. Ecocritics imagined are to since acknowl do bound this they irony, something overlooking a seem little hollow. make discourse it would their celebratory edging is than Love's of ecology much more A misprision thorough-going assumes the Earth. Elder in for Elder's evident, Imagining example, John of both of the world" is a phenomenon that "the inextricable wholeness as and poetic is, just go about ecologists ecological import.7 That

discourse

ecocritics

have

AND

THEORY,

ECOCRITICISM,

581

ECOLOGY

"the inextricable wholeness" of particular ecosystems, documenting same verse. in about that that is not all. wholeness But go poets praising a Elder "becomes manifestation of and writes, "Poetry," landscape climate,

just

as

are we

pressure and ecosystem? and

climate,

in

the

flora

ecosystem's

and

fauna

are."8

How

much

to put on the "just as" of Elder's analogy between poem Does he mean that poetry tends to be about landscape the

same

manner

that

an

flora

ecosystem's

and

fauna

that are, in some loose sense, "about" the same things? Or does he mean are a and climate of of deterministic and its landscape region's poetry flora and fauna, too: that the relationship land between and poetry, like the relationship between flora and fauna, and scape and climate, is also a causal one? Regrettably, Elder seems to landscape and climate, in its stronger form. intend the analogy between poem and ecosystem He does not appear to be bothered in his inherent by the determinism according

analogy, poet's

address.

On

to which this

account,

the poet's all

poets

subject matter must

be

is given

regionalists

by

the

because

are poets. That such is not the case seems only too only regionalists obvious; literary history and natural history are, in this respect, disjoint. not a "manifestation" is of anything, apart from the conscious Poetry and unconscious decisions of poets, and the structural and motivations aesthetic effects of the genres and languages in which they write. To suppose otherwise Elder's analogy

is occult.

as well as literary grounds. is faulty on scientific the the organismal Earth, he conflates Throughout concept of Imagining the ecological with that of the ecosystem. The organismal community was discredited as long ago as 1935, when A. G. Tansley concept the landmark article in which the concept of the "ecosystem" published was first put forward. Tansley intended to be understood the ecosystem not as organistic, as but The organismal mechanistic.9 of the concept to Elder because him with it provides community appeals an like something objective correlative for his concept of poetry in a way that the concept of the ecosystem does not. Elder simply runs the two as follows: concepts together. He characterizes contemporary ecology "The science of ecology confirms of natural process: the indivisibility each feature of a landscape must be understood to the with reference whole, just as the habits of each creature reflect, and depend upon, the of life around it" {IE 150). What Elder does not seem to community realize is that the science of ecology has not been able to confirm "the of natural process." Since the 1960s, ecology has had to indivisibility divest itself, one after another, of vague concepts of this sort, of which the classic example is "everything to everything is connected else." Such not have to amenable scientific however confirmation, concepts proved for be affirmation. ripe they may poetic ecological

582

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

it counts as science tends to be a lot more reductive Ecology when than Elder allows. If things were truly "inextricably" or indivisibly whole, less any ecology. Thus many of the there would be no science, much core concepts of ecology once notable for their expansiveness have in recent

years

been

cut

down

to size,

made

more

particular,

or

abandoned

It now appears that even the ecosystem concept may not be altogether. is primarily a valid biologically.10 But valid concept or not, an ecosystem never and therefore could be the theoretical that somehow entity, reality even of is if that the underwrites poetry, poetry good old-fashioned, of "organic" sort. Elder's attempt to found his hermeneutic on what he takes to be bedrock seems truths thus ecological even quixotic. He writes that "culture too may be understood mistaken, it is the field of relationship between and, as organisms organically: a own in its But assertion this such, right" (IE 169). complex organism supposedly wholeness

can be organisms, that humans the difficulty and their overlooks can produce culture without itself interactions culture, being an organ is crucial?without culture like an organism. ism and?this itself being the organic of the ecological argument concept Tansley's against a in of the similar logic. Even and favor followed ecosystem community or ecosystems if literary form and the form of ecological communities as it is to imagine in what, precisely, such a similarity so as to have be broad would little similarity might a It would be coincidence. just significance. diagnostic In their flight from literary theory, ecocritics have ignored an inconve nient fact: a considerable body of what has to be called "theory" must be one can speak sensibly about ecology. Good at the before least, surveyed, do not and a receptive attitude while out hiking or canoeing intentions a read does enable one to make ecological judgments. good Enjoying a not make one a literary critic. It should follow, then, that enjoying or in one's enthusiasm about and read canoeing sharing hiking good realities are lecture or print does not make one an ecocritic. Ecological not necessarily more obvious than literary values, and they may be? less so most of the time. It is unfortunate, are?much then, probably to date to spend their efforts in have elected ecocritics that many were

similar?hard

consist?that

with the issues raised for them by their disgrundement addressing a little conceived and "ecology" bearing theory celebrating spuriously name. to to that has notice which One the science resemblance goes by has come in the form of that a lot of work calling itself "ecocriticism" preliminary,

exploratory,

accusatory,

hortatory,

and

celebratory

essays.11

to write have made sustained attempts in defining this his work has been most important ecocritically. a a close examination now turn of to to want I of field study, emerging in order to give the reader as clear a recent book by Lawrence Buell,

Only

a few

literary Because

scholars

THEORY,

ECOCRITICISM,

AND

583

ECOLOGY

I will close current state of play in ecocriticism. picture as possible of the to the A Field Guide a Peterson's of with discussion Birds, a Roger Tory as and Buell of and defined ecocriticism critical discussion by practiced a own as in of its ecocriticism intended others, but nonetheless piece right.

II. The Claims

of Realism

to lay the The Environmental attempts Imagination aware and to of for texts, literary environmentally readings groundwork in take that the research ecocritical the program might suggest shape of of nineteenth and those works the future. As a wide-ranging survey should find of American literature that ecocritics twentieth-century a treat Buell's is valuable book. The Environmental interest, Imagination on ment he and has of his subject matter the verges encyclopedic, a to and about his about Thoreau, say specialty, things interesting diverse group of other writers, too, including Susan Fenimore Cooper, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, and Leslie Marmon Silko. the book's virtues as a survey of a neglected aspect of literary Despite not The the I do that resolves think Environmental history, Imagination can is That of ecocriticism. that be theoretical imbroglio something Lawrence

Buell's

if one approaches the lingering literary theory without treatment of it His towards Buell still feels. theory initially suspicion seems less hostile he is than that of many of his ecocritical colleagues; some to at He there consideration. that least, argues willing, give theory some of the basic analytical premises is a need "to refine and reevaluate used by 'trained' readers of literature," and that "an inquiry into the forces us to question the premises of literary environmental imagination done

only

its resources

to expose the limitations of literature's insists that such will enable even-handedness representations." to break through the force field of formalist self-containment ecocritics which for so long cut texts off from the world, while avoiding the plunge into the universe of "intractable textuality" contemporary literary theory runs the risk of fence-straddling, but approach posits.12 This balanced Buell adopts it in a principled way. theory while

using

Buell

The

principle

"Environmental

to which praxis"

he appeals most is the

solvent

engendered by a conflicted paradoxes texts. Buell writes: "'Ecocriticism' might the relation commitment

between literature to environmental

commitment

to environmental

that

strongly allows

is not a literary one.

ecocritics

to undo

the

texts and

readers of succinctiy be defined as study of and environment conducted in a spirit of to the "spirit of praxis."13 Appealing world

of

praxis" allows Buell

to reject out of hand

584

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HISTORY

as either unhelpful or harmful, or both. In notions theoretical a seems to be this way, he disposes of what for critics of the shibboleth of rep and postmodern "The conception poststructuralist persuasions: as an ideological nature resented "becomes screen," Buell writes, certain

if it is used to portray the green world as nothing more than or to Much such social better fantasy projective allegory." reject "typical of academic results of a metropolitan-based criticism," and enterprise a sense of the "experiential or referential instead seek to recover or With referential of literature. the "experiential aspects" aspects" of

unfruitful

literature

in mind,

one

can

treat

literary

texts

not

as

detractions

from

to our interaction with the natural world: "Vision but as contributions can correlate not with dominance but with receptivity, and knowledge with ecocentrism," Buell writes. And he adds: "Contemporary literary it hard to see this side of the story?and thus theory, however, makes the prospect of environmental of awakening from reorientation, more to it the metropolitan than needs be" dream, (El 430n20, unlikely 36,82). our capacity for intimate acquaintance is right to emphasize Buell

makes

with nature, over and against the tendency of some theorists to assume the efforts of natural the entire otherness of nature and to question about that otherness. But though it may be science to learn something on disjunction true that "the emphasis text and world seems between to me a at to not it all is how clear overblown," "spirit of commitment to is what has sufficient environmental theory join together praxis" that theory induces (El 84). The dissociation put asunder supposedly so to not the How cured. does be may easily "spirit of commitment on link the the ecocritics with of environmental up part practice praxis" of environmental activists and working ecologists? Or is Buell speaking case the "spirit of commit in which here only of ecocritical practice, or more Are in the unenviable the ecocritics ment" is, less, "praxis"? on of those in who are better of efforts other the fields cheering position activ environmental able to engage directly?that is, professionally?in If ecocriticism of ecological then ism and the production so, knowledge? would seem to be just another variety of academic agitprop.14 I do not think that this is all there is to Buell's position: he ismaking can a much stronger claim. For him, literature and literary criticism in and in "environmental propria persona. praxis" directly participate he is not just Here one notices a break or pivot point in his argument: more than "an ideological screen," saying that nature itself is something a or a "projective fantasy with which one has social allegory," proposition as described in no trouble that nature is suggesting agreeing.15 He texts at also and in is texts certain least is often, sometimes, quite literary than "an ideological screen," a "projective fantasy or something more

ECOCRITICISM,

AND

THEORY,

585

ECOLOGY

should give one pause: it seems at social allegory." And this proposition are basic to the fact that ideology, odds with fantasy, and allegory are or not always the products of faulty style literature. They "homocen as the projec tric" and "egocentric" values, nor can they be dismissed tions of critics who have read too much theory. Buell, however, claims that the nature

and the nature in literature make it possible o/literature to environmental to work in "a spirit of commitment to do so without irrelevance of fretting about the possible

for ecocritics

praxis," and their professional

behavior.

Buell taps the vein of not just realism but runs throughout ecocriticism. Its realism-cum seems a to sort of rescue ecocriticism often be positivism explains why to nature?to mission: both nonfictional and fictional the references habits of animals, the round of the seasons, the folkways of farmers, the sense of place, and the like?are characterized by ecocritics as sweeping a in the of obfuscation (counter) revolutionary away (re)estab theory of realistic lishment Because literary priorities. literary theory made seem doubtful, those priorities Buell is eager to like other ecocritics this claim, By making outright positivism which

expose

own

theory's

and

shortcomings

overreachings.

Thus

one

gets

the

The Environmental that Buell has feeling reading Imagination a in embraced to Delilah-like in order of shear it its fashion, theory one can This is when he that the utilize strength. suggests implied some of its "premises." "resources" of literary theory while questioning to rejecting That seems to amount the "premises" of theory, such as the claim that a text can have no direct it with the world relationship some while of the abstruse of flavor theoretical represents, retaining rhetoric and even some of the intellectual theorists have framework while

constructed.

needs a rationale that will enable Buell, I believe ecocriticism the "resources" of literary theory while retaining some respect the force of theory's "premises," for it is surely the case that the

Unlike it to use for

"premises"

of

are

theory

its

"resources."

Unfortunately,

adopting

such

a

rationale means letting go of, or at least relaxing one's grip on, the central claim of Buell's book. This is the claim that ecocriticism should a sense of the "experiential focus on recovering or referential aspects" of literature. By pressing that claim, Buell like other ecocritics falls prey to the false hope that there is some beyond of literature, call it nature or or

wilderness

ecological

or

community

ecosystem

or

environment,

where

deliverance from the constraints of culture, that particularly constraint known as "theory," might be found. Do not get me wrong: I think there is a beyond of literature. There is, for example, nature. I just think that nature cannot deliver one from the constraints of culture, any

more

than

culture

can

deliver

one

from

the

constraints

of

nature.

586

NEW

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HISTORY

or referential Buell means What by "the experiential aspects" of literature are its realistic aspects, and in The Environmental Imagination he often calls for a return to realism both in the literature of nature and in that literature. The most important context among critics interested for Buell's

of realism

embrace

has always been

conducted often

values?values

natural

is the study of American literature, which in a spirit of advocacy of democratic and as

regarded

identical?over

and

the

against

and values of its European artificial counterpart true of the study of the American This is especially Renais forerunner. in which Buell is most expert, when sance, the pre-Civil War period writers cared about values were the ones American democratic/natural and

hierarchical

the most.

Nature and

themselves

in these writers'

centrally

figured their

Buell's

Thus

country.

to

attempt

of

imagination put

nature

once

more at the top of the cultural docket might be seen as the restatement of a very old and familiar theme.16 He tries to generate an account of the of a national from within the confines environmental imagination as it so happens, of its special relationship literature long ago convinced, to nature. He recognizes has always been based on a that this conviction view

reductive

of

therefore

project

of

consequences

"America-as-nature"

involves filling the

(El

15).

out the details

"America-as-nature"

Buell's

own

and working

expansive

out

the true

vision.17

if a new or a To return to the most important point at issue, Iwonder realism with regard to nature would be as restorative of clarity texts limits itself to reading realistic thinks. If ecocriticism an to be reduced its role, may umpire's realistically, practitioners of a painted trillium or a live oak to see if a given description squinting and lively. I have read ecocritical tree is itself well-painted essays that to little more amount than this kind of referee work. Literary realism can seem inert and even the sharpest description privileges description, or if it does not occur in a narrative context heightened by philosophical recovered as Buell

psychological selves

be

or political

"realistic"

to have

or scientific some

real

interests, urgency.18

which In other

need

not

cultural

them arenas

a surfeit of nature has produced the pursuit of realism in the depiction of kitsch. The best example of this is that school of wildlife art running to depictions deer and of leaping whitetail of heavily-antlered mosdy nature lover with a flat, fishy eye. at art and the bass gazing largemouth realist. the eye of the dogmatic The latter is an eye not unlike is a creed seems of the that realism It also literary variety likely a for the unsuited aesthetic outworn, production nineteenth-century of art at the turn of the millennium. and the understanding Literary realism has always been oriented more toward the social?that is, toward toward the natural world. Realism the artificial?than is, in fact, a "metropolitan"

form,

defined

in American

literature

by the New York

THEORY,

ECOCRITICISM,

and Boston want

to

novels

promote

AND

of James, Howells, environmental

587

ECOLOGY

and Wharton.19

literature

in

the

Do ecocritics

retrograde

and

really poten

terms of realism? The result can only be a middle tially contradictory brow literature of nature informed only by middle-class values, and too nature is like that much contemporary writing already. of literature notbe Buell, Iwant to urge that the "ecocentrism" to hinge on how well literature represents the natural world. understood is usually much weaker than visual representation, Verbal representation of scientific the importance for one thing; that iswhy scientists discount and prefer whenever their ideas using they can to express writing, and new tech differential equations, graphs, charts, tables, diagrams, For another, it seems to me that this way of putting the case nologies. Unlike

sooner or later falls apart, just as it is said to do by the skeptics of modern and literary theory alike. Pointing out that the predictions of philosophy such skeptics are "overblown" does no good, since that result is one with it is often which their whole comfortable; they are entirely point. are not moderates. to be overblown, to Radical intend Skeptics critiques blow things apart: to deconstruct them. to the author of Some of these worries and reservations have occurred The Environmental Imagination, which helps to explain why, in the chapter the Environment," he makes entitled his case for the "Representing in such an odd way.20 Buell's version of the value of literary realism realistic representational which he borrows from

scenario the notion involves of ad?quation, the French poet Francis Ponge. Buell comes to nature indirectly, by way of Sherman Paul's book on American Ponge For as Paul Love the World. describes "a of writing, ad?quation literary that respects the thing and lets it stand forth. Ad?quation is equivalence not to be confused with correspondence: It is not a symbolic mode but an to the thing itself."21 Paul activity in words that is literally comparable as an to understands skirt the edges of realism-as attempt ad?quation without it. into The notion of "a literary correspondence lapsing that the and lets it stands forth," however, respects equivalence thing seems too indeterminate, and vaguely Heideggerian, overly metaphorical, is very vague indeed. Paul's further qualification which of ad?quation as "an activity in words that is literally comparable to the thing itself is still a bit murky, largely because when Paul says that "an activity in words" is to the thing itself," all he means by "literally" is that "literally comparable in the "activity in words" to "the thing itself." He can, fact, compare you does not mean that the activity is a literal representation of the thing. its more this second definition is somewhat than murk, Despite helpful the first. What Paul cites, as an example description

is actually

suggesting becomes entirely clear when he of ad?quation, a passage from Thoreau's Cape Cod, a of rolling breakers composed a of series of rolling periods:

588

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

a variety of literary Paul understands the ad?quation is impressionism. as a sort of in imitation of the which the mimesis concept entailing not at in certain the formal inheres present necessarily object qualities or to level of the individual word, clause. Paul, phrase, According content, ad?quation transpires when form becomes thereby freeing what is usually regarded as content from the gloomier prospects of referential seem inadequate. Ad?quation gives you some itmight specificity, wherein sense of the gist of the thing, without about itself overmuch concerning the itself. giving you thing Buell makes different hay of the concept, which he says he finds too But his own gloss on ad?quation is, I think, more idealistic (E/464n31). than Paul's, not less. Impressionism, neutral with regard to representation. relatively of its implications impressionistic ad?quation

it could

idealistic

into

concept

an

armature

a more

of

be

is argued, has to drain to turn the

So Buell in order form

traditional

of

realism.

He

that writes that adequate involve "verbalizations literary representations are not replicas but equivalents of the world of objects, such that writing in some measure the abyss that inevitably yawns between bridges on This the concept of the and (?7 98). gloss object-world" language ad?quation

traces

bears

a

of

of

theory

lurking

some

correspondence,

as well as thing Paul specifically rejects. And Buell shifts Paul's grammar a feature of a his meaning. and qualitative general "Equivalence," a more in Paul's account, becomes certain kind of literary performance in Buell's: it becomes substantive and specific feature of "verbalization" the "equivalent" and the between The distinction the "equivalent." is a nice

"replica"

it?below. words

are

Of

one,

course,

and

it may As

near-synonyms.

I will

try

to

it cash

give

be no distinction for

"the

abyss

that

value?to

"measure"

at all, given

that the two

yawns

inevitably

between

so dear language and the object-world," why does Buell credit this idea, to wants The to those theories whose he challenge? thought "premises" in touch with language, and by extension, that we can be systematically is with nature, with culture, and out of touch with "the object-world," mistakes the one that has broad currency in ecocritical and it circles, character language

of is

both essentially

culture

and

nature.

representational,

Once however,

one

accepts mistake

this

that

our seems

a it, ecocritics spend their time trying to bridge Having made rift that does not exist. This last assertion will seem startling to some readers. All I care to say in defense of it here is that I am persuaded by and like Richard Rorty, Daniel Dennett, of philosophers the arguments inevitable.

to the effect that traditional philosophical worries about Ian Hacking, the world ultimately make no sense the ability of language to represent in the light of our evolutionary history and our scientific practices. The are bound to take seriously, along latter are two things I think ecocritics

THEORY,

ECOCRITICISM,

AND

589

ECOLOGY

with the sort of antimetaphysical, arguments Rorty, Dennett, pragmatic and Hacking make. Ecocritics have not been taking those things and in those arguments and much of their work to date, discred seriously, are never more than a ited "correspondence" theories of representation or

synonym

two

away.22

Buell mentions

Roger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide to theBirds as a text the of theory on the possibility animadversions of its which, despite a vital relationship with the world and is adequate in a doing so, sustains sense of the term. But appealing to Peterson does not fulsome, Pongean allow Buell to make a case for the literary text's vital maintenance of the same relationship, is not a literary text. All he does, because Peterson's on to before moving then, is invoke the Field Guide as a touchstone, texts same consider he sort the of which, argues, literary perform a If a and referential work. of bird in representational "stylized image" . . . viewer can field guide the Peterson's in the touch with "put to expect that stylized environment," then, Buell reasons, it is legitimate same do the may (El 97). literary images thing and Peterson, Buell cites a few examples of invoking Ponge he considers models of works and realism. literary ad?quation Though is highly problematic, each of these examples only a couple of them need to be reexamined here. Buell first discusses a passage from Gerard After

Manley

Hopkins's

"Pied Beauty":

poem

Glory be to God for dappled

things,?

as a brindled cow; couple-colour For rose-moles trout all in stipple that upon Fresh-firecoal finches' chestnut-falls; wings; For

skies

Landscape And all

of

In the crucial moment the poem's

noting But have

how

delicately responsive to see trout's

effectively,

environmental the

aestheticist

pieced?fold, and

landscape. In short: intended

fallow,

and

and

trim.

tackle

gear,

on commentary artfulness, he exclaims:

of Buell's

the poem "rose-moles bonding. distortion

is to the all

in

stimuli

stipple"? the poet

plough;

this passage,

it registers! this way,

In

Who

after

would

aestheticism

a fish; painted its body makes this is a live trout for an shimmering another evokes the glance, Hopkins the mottled look of the agricultural

Literally, animates

can be no There that question in Hopkins's imaginary pool. With and look of chestnut-falls, with another

palpable. instant feel

their

polished

thought

produces

and

plotted trades,

swim;

the

trout

sees

and

(El 98) It seems to me that if this commentary is "Spot-on, Hopkins!" as ecocriticism, then ecocriticism may benefit from a strong

590

NEW

dose of formalism. Otherwise, formalism?and after mode correct

and

improve

LITERARY

lapse into the merely theory?was originally

itmay it,

HISTORY

appreciative to intended

upon.

that Buell's of Hopkins's is "merely poem reading mean to I that it itself is rather than suggest poetic, appreciative," critical. Such a reading invites quibbles it cannot resolve. For example, to interpret what Buell's consider the poem attempt "registers" as By

implying

terms like "all list of categorical and therefore abstract cannot be and tackle their and trim" covered trades, gear, by this rubric. can an more But neither like "fresh-firecoal ostensibly specific phrase sense. The to make mimetic of which it is very difficult chestnut-falls," is elusive, "feel and look" of "fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls" given the of what undecidable undecided, question they are: fallen perhaps "stimuli." A

chestnuts? fallen limbs of chestnut

chestnut leaves? firewood scavenged from the dropped trees? the coals remaining from a fire built out of that seems motivated wood? The phrase "fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls" by across his point about to desire the put Hopkins's glory of God by for example?to creating "dappled" effects of language?alliteration, of meaning; suggest that glory, even if he has to do so at the expense come to enlist also here. considerations into Buell tries rhythmic play sort in self-referential of this and aesthetic features formal highly seem to realist is why of the militate That support against. reading they he claims that the poet "literally" sees trout in Hopkins's is "painted" poem such twists of logic because he wants can effect artifice that heightened natural: "There can be no question for an instant questions

in Hopkins's

to ask

about

such

in fact, the He only metaphorically. employs his reader to accept the paradox a heightened of the perception that this is a live trout shimmering imaginary pool."23 But there are a number of a trout,

not

"a painted

least

the

trout" when,

question

of whether

an

"imaginary pool" is the sort of habitat in which "live trout" fare the best. things in the By trying to peg particular details in the poem to particular notion of makes the originally "stimuli"?Buell world?to expansive trout seem all in "rose-moles that reductive: upon stipple ad?quation a replica after all. It is swim" is a Buellian equivalent, which seems to be not an instant of Pongean ad?quation. is not Buell's It may be that the reading of poetry strong suit. The of the strengths of what Environmental Imagination is chiefly a celebration or "environmental nonfiction" he likes to call "environmental prose."24 to the ghettos is usually of that such prose He complains relegated if his and special-topics freshman writing programs courses; I wonder some to it does not afford undertheorized, contradictory approach so. Consider another of his this be about examples why might suggestion of ad?quation, this one from the natural history writer John Janovy Jr.'s

ECOCRITICISM,

AND

THEORY,

591

ECOLOGY

Keith County Journal. In a passage cited for its excellence by Buell, Janovy some of the habits of caddis flies living in a stream in western describes Nebraska: One

has

to visualize

at a very rapid to the branches

lesser

branches

flies.

caddis

impressive in a house, a

senses each

fly

of

colony larva that

these

of

these

by

One

itself....

cliff

swallows,

chose

twigs

the

but

larvae

to build

no

sensed

My

many covered

twigs with

also submerged, on for homesites twigs a hand lens. Each larva

with

rather

in

large mind

larvae. were

colony a set

sensed

of of

caddis

of

cold

rushing-hard that creek

by these . . . there

trapped three.

and dangling flies' dependence

at

looked

the down

coming

being Whitetail

the banks, of

was

was

beneath

one

beneath

insects

food

and

rate,

along . . .The fact

only until constructed

of

life kind

back

amounts, goes and

the some

three:

Whitetail

flies,

instructions

was lived as one

within

. . .25

a house.

it does not this description of caddis flies is entirely adequate, to be so in a Pongean it is also perfectly prosaic. But sense, because Buell treats it as if itwere as vivid and intense as Hopkins's poem, and as one to the visualize" that "has artful. He saying interprets Janovy's life of the caddis flies, that his "mind goes back" to an earlier underwater of the river, and that one "senses" no collective identity for exploration the caddis flies but only the working out of a genetic pattern, as evidence

While seem

us that his image is a that "Janovy disclaims objectivity, reminding "the that little narrative" about the caddis flies and constructed thing," Its being "a complete not living colonially is "a complete fabrication." is false, however; that "the litde narrative" does not mean fabrication" of the caddis flies "comports Buell concedes that Janovy's description is symbiotic with the facts: the inner landscape with the entomological outer." But since Janovy "could not possibly have seen" some of the the scene," Buell argues, "with things he reports, he has "to portray than we would see much more vividness and intensity and magnification But why does Buell think Janovy "could not it in the field" (?7101,102). he have what describes? of the seen" Surely his "magnification" possibly scene he describes to the hand lens he used to view is to be attributed of those the caddis fly larvae. Buell turns Janovy's literal magnification of skepticism and adopts an initial position larvae into a metaphor, about Janovy's abandon

when

description the

time

of comes

the caddis to

flies

celebrate

the

he

is only

passage's

too eager

to

realism.

In his readings of Hopkins is intended, and Janovy, Buell's skepticism one supposes, to be the more it is only a "theoretical" But position. so it nor the celebration caricature. Neither of realism that follows are seem is to it both what be closely upon convincing: by produced as the literal and of the of the metaphorical deliberate misreadings literal as the metaphorical.

Ad?quation

will

not

bear

the construction

592

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

that the power Buell attempts to impose on it.He seems to be suggesting in the it skillful of environmental lies way writing plays peek-a-boo with a world it knows is there all along.

III. How To Use This Book Let me

the problems with the idea that "representa further unpack and with the idea that is the essence of environmental writing, is the narrative of discovery it relates what is exciting about such writing even if that narrative is ersatz, by discussing the work of Roger Tory "field-mark" system is widely regarded as the most Peterson. Peterson's the poor efficient effective and most way to identify birds under tion"

such

conditions,

as

often

glare,

color-obscuring

encountered

outdoors.

is any distinctive feature setting one species of bird apart barred tail feathers, eyebrow its near congeners: from others, especially an a unusual illustrations decurved bill, flight pattern. Peterson's ridges, a with student of the arrows?and field-marks?occasionally, highlight a bird in terms of its abstract patterns of Field Guide learns to recognize rather than in in so far as those patterns differ from others, marking can be terms of its overall body image or coloration, both of which as remarkably variable within as across similar well species, remarkably birder is defacto also an experienced "reader" of species. An experienced a to the has Such birder the Field Guide. flitting ability identify juncos in winter merely by catching a glimpse of through a patch of underbrush to their white outer tail feathers, an ability which can seem inexplicable A "field-mark"

that it derives from the Buell understands Lawrence the uninitiated. success of the Field Guide that the of Peterson's images, argues adequacy "the

demonstrates

viewer

in touch with

precisely stylization

what must

of

capacity

the

stylized

the environment,"

needs

stressing

somehow

work

as

a

against

to

image

and suggests counter outer

to

the

mimesis

put

the

or

reader

"is

that this capacity assumptions or take

that prece

dence over it" (?797-98). I do not think that the example of Peterson's Field Guide makes Buell's case, not in the way he says it does. Buell is right to claim that texts can in touch with the world. But his brief account of offer ways of getting text does that is too simplistic. First of all, it seems to me how Peterson's in that Peterson's illustrations do, in fact, "work against outer mimesis," the silhouettes showing the example, forms of accipiters, characteristic falcons, and kites when viewed from less than mimetic below?are by design. This point ismade by Peterson in the "How To Use This Book" chapter of the Field Guide's first himself his illustrations, he writes: "As they are not intended edition. Regarding the sense

that many

of them?for

ECOCRITICISM,

THEORY,

AND

ECOLOGY

593

or portraits, is to be pictures of form and feathering all modelling so that simple contour and pattern eliminated where it can be managed, if not, indeed, a confusing, remain. Even color is often an unnecessary, is and In Field Guide other the factor."26 words, numerically parsimonious, are not so. based abstractions illustrations Peterson's only deliberately on the illustrator's field experiences, but on what might be called the consensus in the ornithological image of a given species as recorded are not of observation: the simple products they They at the of others of avian certain expense aspects physiology emphasize to an observer but are less in fact, may be equally visible which, a have of formal for identification. And purposes they quality significant not observable in the real world. Most of the birds in the Field Guide are literature.

shown in side view, as if they had posed for police mug shots. Wild birds not oblige you by turning to the right on request. Nor will they or in spread their tail feathers, erect their crests, flash their wing-bars, sets from what them similar birds? indicate other, any way apart is considered should you "diagnostic," precisely why seeing a field-mark be so lucky as to see it.27 I realize, and it invites a quarrel about the This may seem picayune,

will

of the word "mimetic." A similar quarrel could be had about meaning the meaning of "stylization," for that matter. Very well, then: this is the claim about Peterson second point Buell's fails to consider. Mimesis sameness the represented the of the and presumes representation object. inferior Earlier field guides, and the Peterson guide's contemporaries, to the and in their natural habitats, according depict birds numerically as of bird like refined Audubon. techniques by painters portraiture Peterson's Field Guide is only incidentally mimetic, precisely because his were to his innovations base field-mark system on the diagnostic great one to ignore many of the and and between bird another, difference in the manner of Audubon of bird portraiture conventions and others, more to I instead his avian portray opting subjects schematically?and would argue, in a notably is synthetic; the less "stylized" way. Mimesis images in the Field Guide are splendidly analytic. They are, to retranslate the term Buell borrows from Ponge, merely adequate. And the and modify merely adequate image is not the same as a realistic image of the sort Buell

the merely celebrates; adequate image may eschew realism alto a seems and it less lot The Field Guide gether, aesthetically. exciting as the Double reduces the visual field and makes ornithology portable, Folio of edition Birds Audubon's which Elephant of America, might have been a better text for Buell to ponder as an exemplary work of realism, does not. Peterson's drawings are intentionally less vivid than Audubon's, in order to convey more information about each species, so that "live birds may be run down by impressions, patterns, and distinctive marks"

594

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

(T^Gv-vi). by birders in the field, as Peterson puts it in his 1934 preface down live birds in this way means that the Peterson-trained Running birder does not look for the whole bird or the bird-in-itself. Field Guide in terms of its usefulness Buell's celebration of Peterson's as a text also seems problematic no for a third reason: he provides use. so of its further status actual calls into its description Doing question as a touchstone of realism. Using Peterson's guide is not, after all, simply a matter of it and matching in the up a visual representation perusing text with the visual appearance of a bird in the field: more than that is bird, required to identify the bird in hand?the a in the the of binoculars?with bird bush, pair learn.

Peterson's

field-mark

system

encourages

that is, in view through as novice birders soon a

process

of

"identifica

In "How To Use This Book," Peterson tion by elimination." the explains as a to "It is behind this often know what bird process: logic quite helpful could not be as what it might be" (FG xx). The user of the Field Guide must therefore consult both its illustrations and the book's other text accompanying such as the descriptive each illustration on resources, the opposite page, in order to decide "what a bird could not be." If that a bird's not does the issue of setde identity, then the birder description must resort to the habitat maps in the back of the book (included in its recent editions). are not it to should be limited clear, "Field-marks," like visual features, but also comprise habitat range, things geographic and flight such as interspecial preferences, flocking, typical behaviors a must And the birder "reader." Such the become case, patterns. being or Annie is not like the reader of Thoreau, the "reader" of Peterson say, or It ismore like a cookbook, the Field Guide is not a narrative. Dillard: a piece of software; the new CD-ROM version is a piece of software. The adequacy of Peterson's inherently, images is not a quality they possess then,

and

impress

upon

"readers"

in

the

course

of

their

perusal

of

the

Field Guide front to back. The adequacy of Peterson's images evolves out of their use by birders. I do not think the same can be said of Thoreau's in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; of Thoreau's images in Waiden, or of Dillard's images,

not

very

often,

and

of Dillard's,

almost

never.

as opposed to Carolina the identity of Black-capped Establishing to out turn be and I am Chickadees may surprisingly complicated, are so common. because these species exemplary they precisely making an an nonde birder glimpses that apparendy inexperienced Suppose on a a winter walk while out for gloomy day in the script chickadee it is cold, the chickadee Poconos Because of northeastern Pennsylvania. its winter-worn in question is ruffled in appearance, feathers elevated for is And it the sake of the insulation flitting about, feeding they provide. the of in last hour through the Field daylight. Flipping actively remaining that either version of the chickadee's Guide, the birder first realizes

ECOCRITICISM,

THEORY,

AND

or

song?chick-a-dee-dee-dee,

ECOLOGY

the

same

595

thing,

but

higher

pitched?is

she looks once more at just heard.28 Next plausibly Peterson's illustrations, and realizes that she did not see the characteris of the Black-capped. tic white wing-stripe Then she reads Peterson's note about conditions ("season, wear, angle of light, poor discouraging to not and confess has that her that etc.") having seen it does not mean was not there. Despairing, the white wing-stripe she consults Maps 246 and 247, and realizes that she has chosen that day to go for a walk in one to a note on Map 246, of those liminal areas the maps chart. According is known to winter south of its normal range in some the Black-capped years, and the note to Map 247 points out that the Carolina's range what

she has

To make matters worse, Map "slighdy overlaps" that of the Black-capped. two the text's reiterates that the 247 warning species "mingle at times and hybrids are known." Finally, our conjectural naturalist, her attention notices that Map 248 shows the range of called wandering, something the Boreal Chickadee, is "casual south to n. 111.,Ohio, Pa., N.J., which that is not Md.," but only in "chickadee flight years," a phenomenon seen this rare visitor she possibly Could to the described.29 have Poconos? Could she glimpsed the chickadee have been a sport of even more Could she have nature, a hybrid, or something teratological? to the picked a worse time and place to go for a walk, and put Peterson test?30

This birder is now confronted with a variety of interpretive options. to be followed there are protocols in cases like hers. But in Fortunately, order to decide which of the two, possibly it three, kinds of chickadee is that she has just seen, she is going to have to rely on more something than just the resources provided this case, Peterson's?and by text?in it is now that dark night in which all chickadees are black. world, where a better "reader"?a It will help her, of course, to become better user? to figure out what he means when he says that a of Peterson's guide, bird is "casual" in a given area and to learn what "chickadee flight years" are. She may have to consult other field guides, a regional bird list, back issues of Birder's Digest and Birder's World, audio and video the National Audubon recordings, Society's Interactive CD-ROM Guide toNorth American Birds, and perhaps even the rare bird alerts posted at She . might have to go back out and beat the bushes more next the if need be, in aggressively day, intervening, the chickadee's life by "pishing" the alarm bird's call) in (mimicking order to encourage it to show itself to her. She may need to buy a new of binoculars. All of this users is what habituated of Peterson's pair Field Guide might do in such cases, which are or by no means unusual The not user has the of the in atypical. "stylized image" put guide touch with the environment, as Buell argues. In this instance, the quite

596

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

the environment has put the user of the guide has happened: as Buell calls in touch with the "stylized image." And that "transaction," another it, in turn puts her to considering stylized image, and yet

reverse

while

another,

she

fresh

now

returns,

and

to

again,

transaction

(El97).

the

entails

environment

further

for

action.

She text

Every impressions in a lot of this back-and-forth?between is going to have to engage and world, and world and text; between "stylized image" and bird, and to know what kind of she really wants bird and "stylized image"?if chickadee she saw. I think that it is this going back and forth between text and world, and between nature and culture, and the development like binoculars of tools and techniques, and computers and "pishing," a to enable "in which notion like touch with the it, gives getting environment" use

of

worth

whatever a

as

Peterson

itmay of

touchstone

have: "outer

a fourth

reason why Buell's seems

mimesis"

mistaken.

like the perpetually this means that Peterson's Field Guide ismore no texts recent celebrated than Buell open recognizes: by theory ever one is of the Field Guide achieves "closure." This, indeed, "reading" but of its usefulness, of the book's virtues, a sign not of its shortcomings At the same time, and explains why copies of it are often dog-eared. text is probably less like the sort of text Buell really wishes to Peterson's All

in

celebrate,

is more

it

that

more

constrained,

and

scientific,

more

in more

than one medium and form to help put us resourceful, working text also invites In short, Peterson's in touch with the natural world. to less do that text's these much But have with quibbles quibbles. in the differences than which between with myriad ways species vagaries This should remind us in the course of avian evolution. have ramified realism and literary realism are not only not the same that scientific thing, be

they may

less

realism,

even be opposed

"realistic,"

in

the

because

it

is

sense less

to one another.

in which reliant

Buell on

uses

Scientific

realism may

the

than

term, But

representation.

the

literary conse

of of scientific realism are immediate, while the consequences are not. "How has In the if it deliberate any, admirably literary realism, the field To Use This Text," Peterson urges those who wish to employ of the old school mark system to recall a salient fact: "The ornithologist a sight record unless it was made along the barrel of a seldom accepted a surrogate of sorts for shotguns, the field-mark As system also shotgun." quences

care: "A quick field observer who does not temper his snap judgment with a bit of caution is like a fast car without text (TGxxi).31 brakes." "How To Use This Book" is, then, a cautionary should

Literary

Suppose screech chapter

be handled

texts

with

are

rarely

cautionary

or

cautious

in

the

same

way.

of Thoreau should conceive a desire to hear the heard it one lonesome owl call just as Thoreau night. In the of Waiden entitled the screech "Sounds," Thoreau paraphrases that a reader

ECOCRITICISM,

call

owl's

as

AND

THEORY,

that I never

uOh-o-o-o-o

597

ECOLOGY

had

been

This

bor-r-r-r-nr52

is

paraphrase

the versions of birdcalls Peterson offers inmany of the entries to paraphrase the the opportunity declines in his guide. But Peterson it in fairly abstract terms as a "mournful screech owl's call. He describes a series on a in pitch. Sometimes whinny, or wail; tremulous, descending more circumspect in I is this Peterson case, think, for the single pitch."33 reason call is That is, it is the screech owl's that unparaphrasable. simple not amenable to the sort of verbal treatment Thoreau attempts to give it. not unlike

As

a

of

representation

screech

the

owl's

that

uOh-o-o-o-o

call,

I never

had

been bor-r-r-r-n!" is faulty on two counts, then: (1) It is a trite expression; like a screech owl. Itwill not put Thoreau's reader (2) It sounds nothing in touch with the world. as a straw man in order to make I have used Thoreau the following to Buell's advocacy of a return to realism: and final point with regard the literature that points to the world is no way to counter celebrating is no doubt that claims of literary theory. There antirepresentational literature can be realistic and even in some limited sense representa tional: it can point to the world. That is, it can point to some carefully it must describe and locate in circumscribed aspect of the world which more or less detail for a competent reader who understands what it is as to to of the do. kind That ideal sort representation, opposed trying indicated by Buell's use of the term "mimesis," is conventional: elaborate must of cultural competence protocols always be followed by both speaker

and

auditor,

writer

and

reader,

in

to make

order

realism

a sentence one is apt to misinterpret like the Otherwise, operational. as a The from Rise Howells's Silas of following, Lapham, of description more much macabre the than gestures ordinary something perfecdy to describe: "He did not rise from the desk at which he Howells means was writing, but he gave Bartiey his left hand for welcome, and he rolled his large head in the direction of a vacant chair."34 Realism is idiomatic. It works only when interlocutors share similar assumptions about what is and its proper such sharing is not perfecdy ordinary description; universal. Itmay be quite rare. Point at something for the benefit of your new Labrador puppy, and it will stare at your finger. Speak to your not regard your speech as a representation and it will of how puppy, as some a to or call of but action kind another: Fetch! Bark! are, things to It's time for a walk! Mimic the call of the screech owl according Thoreau matter

("Oh-o-o-o-o how

competent

that I never his

had

woodcraft,

been may

bor-r-r-r-n!"), express

and concern

your for

friend, your

no well

of the same call, and the being. Repeat verbatim Peterson's description results will be a little better, if your friend thinks he has heard something like that before. Learn to whistle like a screech owl, and the results will we want to call your whistling a literary But would improve dramatically.

598

NEW

Or?the

performance?

more

extreme

alternative?would

LITERARY

we

HISTORY

want

to

treat it as a model of literary performance? I think we would balk at that; so would Lawrence Buell (and so would other ecocritics who have also argued for a return to realism). But on what grounds? If successful "outer mimesis" is the acid test of the then Buell, if he is serious about returning environmental imagination, to realism, is going to have to admit some unliterary but realistic texts but realistic works of art, like duck decoys, into and some literal-minded of praise and?here is the rub?critical his canon of works worthy at least this score, Buell has the courage of his convictions, criti is concerned: he enthusiastically hitherto praises an like Susan Fenimore Rural works Hours, cally-neglected Cooper's account of mid-nineteenth in life New and York, century Cooperstown, as a minor work of Americana at best. But for a book long regarded to texts which other Buell have sake, may consistency's treating begin seem indisputably for after Thoreau, all, was literary?Waiden, example: attention.

where

On

literature

not a realist?as less valuable than they have been thought to be. He may be much less willing to do that. at the heart of Buell's arguments in The Environ The contradictions of ecocritical mental Imagination axe ones that have become characteristic in general. Though discourse Buell asserts that an inquiry into the of the "limitations of environmental involves an exploration imagination in the light of recent literature's literary theory, his representations" is not nearly so strong as his desire to those limitations desire to explore of theory about the naivete of realism. Like other flout the warnings that to think he imagines and environmentalists, ecocritics, many recover to of thought of habits is the and environmentally ecologically some era in the past before and natural the disruption of the human a the loss of worlds by a heedless industrialism, runaway agriculture, and the of relativity, the embrace of modernism, faith, the discovery And he seems to believe that those habits of advent of the postmodern. But to imagine that the solution thought were somehow untheoretical. to from

the

environmental the

metropolitan

crisis

involves

dream"?ignores

a

return the

to fact

the that

past?"awakening our understanding

of nature by of the environment has come about through the disruption rise of science. and the concomitant industrialism and agriculture there be no in other environmental Without words, crisis, might be there At would "environmental best, only a very imagination." to one. Nor might understand there be ecologists attenuated struggling of a damaged natural world. We would still and repair the mechanisms era is considerable in There the of "natural history." be living irony in we to alter to first had understand the fact that in order to begin nature, realism may not be the world view best it for the worse. Four-square

THEORY,

ECOCRITICISM,

AND

599

ECOLOGY

that irony, just as a sense of place of the suited to helping us understand in Rural Hours or by Thoreau in Waiden will not sort displayed by Cooper or one in less much life for Concord, prepare Cooperstown present-day of acid rain, global warming, and a host of other for the complexities ills. Today, the real is contested not only in the academy, environmental that reality is hyperreal or not. but in reality, whether Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania

NOTES tr.William Weaver in his Travels inHyperreality, Umberto Eco, "Travels in Hyperreality," (New York, 1986), p. 49. of the Humanities," The New York Times Magazine "The Greening 2 Jay Parini, (29 October 1995): 52. 1

Western American Nature: Toward An Ecological Criticism," "Revaluing told in Love's article: he 25,3 (Fall 1990): 205, 212. Another story is also being are especially at and critics of Western American that writers literature argues adept of because the and "eco-consciousness"?presumably epistemo achieving appreciating that this from living under Western he suggests skies?and they derive logical advantage

3

Glen

A. Love,

Literature,

to the hyper-sophistication, of a corrective the indiffer may serve as something from either of the two coasts. He makes this to nature, and the elitism of intellectuals in a follow-up "Et in Arcadia Ega Pastoral Theory much more directly piece, suggestion Western American Literature, Meets 195-207. Ecocriticism," 27,3 (Fall 1992): deftness ence

in Reinventing "Nature of History," ed. and the Disorder Nature?, Worster, E. Soul? and Gary Lease D.C., 1995), pp. 73-74. (Washington, 5 Joel B. Hagen, An Entangled Bank; The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology (New Brunswick, N.J., 1992), p. 194.

4

Donald

Michael

"Nature and the Disorder of History," Worster, faces in a disorderly the challenges world ecology A History Ideas, 2nd ed. Economy: of Ecological 6

p. 72. Worster only

recently.

himself His

has recognized 1977 book Nature's

a 1994) (1977; Cambridge, presents a term Worster view of ecology, it to then used very loosely, applying remarkably Utopian like Gilbert White the work of literary figures and Thoreau. It is worth noting that Nature's of ecology cited by ecocritics. is usually the only history The of Economy shortcomings in this respect have been in his essay "Some ecocriticism Howarth addressed by William in The Ecocriticism Reader, ed. Cheryll of Ecocriticism" and Harold Glotfelty Principles Fromm (Athens, Ga., 1996), pp. 69-91. means 7 By "inextricable," Elder apparently that is both all of one piece or something and inseparably bound indivisible, up with a particular place. 8 John Elder, the Earth; Poetry and the Vision of Nature, 2nd ed. (Athens, Ga., Imagining cited in text as IE. 1996), pp. 1, 39; hereafter

9 A. G. Tansley, "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational and Terms," Concepts reprinted Foundations ed. Leslie A. Real and James of Ecology; Classic Papers with Commentaries, Brown 1991), pp. 318-41. (Chicago, 10 Today that the ecosystem is beset recognize ecologists concept by a variety in theoretical and practical difficulties the initial identification of problems: ecosystems, distinct ecosystem obstacles

from

the

grosser

as a biological to determining

forms

of

the

landscape; its constituent

since entity, the relative importance

questions

about

the

status

of

in H.

of as the

related; parts are not genetically versus of organic in processes inorganic

600

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

of quantitative to the applicability techniques to use in experiment and so on. Attempts design; have yielded results. On very mixed practice

about doubts maintenance; ecosystem of scale natural phenomena; problems in experimental the ecosystem concept

see the final sections of the second edition of in contemporary ecology, P. R. The Mclntosh, Economy, Background of Ecology: Concept and Theory B. Botkin, Discordant Harmonies; A New Ecology for the Twenty-First (New York, 1985); Daniel (New York, 1990); R. H. Peters, A Critique for Ecology 1991); Frank Century (Cambridge, theoretical

Worster's

debates

Nature's

A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology; More Than E. Kingsland, Nature; Episodes 1993); Sharon Modeling

the Sum of the Parts (New in theHistory of Population Nature's Keepers; The New Science of 1995); Stephen Budiansky, Ecology, 2nd ed. (Chicago, Nature Management The Song of the Dodo; Island 1995); David Quammen, (New York, in an Age of Extinctions 1996). (New York, Biogeography Golley, Haven,

in the convenient 11 A representative in the field is available form sample of early work is included in this volume). of The Ecocriticism Reader (my essay "Is Nature Necessary?" The Environmental the and 12 Lawrence Buell, Thoreau, Nature Imagination; Writing, as text Formation American Culture hereafter in cited 11; Mass., 5, 1995), pp. (Cambridge, of EL 13

"Praxis"

is a term from

not just practice, but implying from practice. Whether Buell cut its theoretical implications in real-world, the grounding of ecocriticism nonideological somewhat less qualified of ecocriticism: definition Glotfelty's the Marxist

the

on his insistence against activities. Compare Cheryll "Simply put, ecocriticism physical

("Introduction:

is the ecocriticism

environment... Literary

and/or deriving is doubtful, since

study of the relationship takes an earth-centered

in An Age

Studies

p. xviii). 14 Cheryll

of Environmental

also raises this question Glotfelty to The Ecocriticism Reader. "How then can we

to the way

think,

other

he?like

and

literature

the

and

to literary studies" approach Crisis," The Ecocriticism Reader,

have This

ecocritics?treats

to redeploy

between

in her introduction of disciplinary relevance not to environmental contribute restoration, as professors of literature?" capacity (p. xxi).

our just in our spare time, but from within not exactly theorists 15 And the proposition are unreliable. of theoretical positions phrases to appropriate hesitating or watered-down ways.

tradition

theoretical

assumptions undergirding ideological to have a Marxist flavor the word intends

Buell's either; para put forward, I in his argument weakness is due, as a not while term, "theory" generic

theoretical

terms

like "praxis"

in nonidiomatic

use of the word "metropolitan," which his peculiar a certain resentment of and which expresses theory postcolonial In fact, Buell has attempted Eurocentric values seen as oppressive by the less metropolitan. see his essay "American as to characterize literature American Literary "postcolonial": 16

This

he

borrows

also helps from

explain,

by the way,

as a Postcolonial

Emergence 42.

Phenomenon,"

American

Literary History,

4

(Fall 1992):

411

has to do not just with quality of the rhetoric Buell employs prophetic context in the other of his project for literary studies, but with the urgency movement. environmental that of the American which his work must be understood, Many of are environmentalists fervor, and tend to speak in the language by evangelical possessed in the past, when claims This rhetorical the converted. strategy has backfired intemperate 17

The

somewhat

his

sense

of

about

environmental

some

of the excesses

matters of popular

were

shown

"ecological"

to have

been

discourse

just during

discusses (R. P. Mclntosh the 1970s in The Background

that

of Ecology). so much takes the form of the jeremiad, environmental is precisely 18 This writing why a clear-eyed to produce at odds with the desire of can be somewhat a form which appraisal the truth of ecology.

THEORY,

ECOCRITICISM,

19

A novel

to my

claim

ECOLOGY

601

like Adventures here.

But

Twain's

metropolitan. determining on frontier

AND

cultural violence.

ofHuckleberry Finn might I do not think it is an exception frontier setting is one in which

factors The

in realist real

novel.

fiction

be put forward as a counterexample to the rule that realism is social and the kinds

are very much is at stake what

of social norm

in flux;

thus

that are the

the novel's

focus

is precisely the Mississippi

and culturally in the socially River provides Huck and Jim with only the social turmoil which Huck's continually interrupts content has to do with the river. I would descriptive

As for the natural world, of havens from the temporary and very little of the novel's narrative, realism" is a contradiction argue that a "frontier

most

in terms: if realism is possible, then the Owen Wister's The Virginian). (as in, for example, in the course of this chapter Buell notes 20 that a number of studies published in the 1980s argued for the constructed of American character that such realism, but maintains to overstate studies tended their case. No doubt he has a point, but it seems to me that Buell intent of the overstatements he rejects, and thus avoids ignores the polemical seeing some of their for his own point of view. implications 21 Sherman Paul, For Love of theWorld; Essays on Nature Writing (Iowa City, 1992), p. 19. as the source which Buell cites Paul's book first made him aware of Ponge in The Environmental 464n31. Imagination, frontier

22

ismore

or

less "closed"

See Richard

and theMirror (Princeton, Rorty, Philosophy 1979) and Conse of Nature C. Dennett, Consciousness 1982); Daniel of Pragmatism (Minneapolis, Explained and theMeanings (Boston, 1991) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea; Evolution of Life (New York, Ian Hacking, and Intervening; in the Philosophy 1995); Representing Introductory Topics of Natural Science (Cambridge, 1983). Itmay seem that Buell 23 is doing much the same thing with "Pied Beauty" that Sherman Paul does when he reads the passage from Cape Cod as echoing the waves it describes in the textures and rhythms of its prose. But the two cases are quite different: Buell does not quences

claim as a whole that Hopkins' reflects the overall structure of a particular poem of the natural world is a sonnet, that would be a very difficult (since the poem experience to make). claim more His much ambitious claim is that the discrete details of "Pied have a one-to-one to particular moments of an experience of the Beauty" relationship natural world?to "stimuli." Paul is concerned to render form as a kind of higher-order is concerned Buell content; of aesthetic many varieties 24 See The Environmental

to preserve

content

as such,

and

regards

form

as one

of

the

seasoning.

429nl6. Imagination, (Lincoln, 1978), p. 105 (my ellipses). Jr., Keith County fournal A Field Guide to the Birds; 26 Roger Tory Peterson, Giving Field Marks of AU Species Found in Eastern North America, Facsimile ed. (1934; Boston, cited in text as FG. 1996), p. xix; hereafter 27 The I am making to Peterson's with to birds Field Guide is argument regard 25

John

Janovy,

I think, by considering other field guides, such as A Field Guide toWildflowers, even less mimetic and arguably than the Field Guide to birds. by Peterson The great majority of its plates do not show color, because there is no need for it: the is presumed and the tint of blossoms is indicated green of foliage throughout, by a legend in the upper corner of each illustrations of printed righthand page. The righthand individual wildflowers consist of simple, unshaded line drawings of their flowering mostly of these illustrations is a principle of parts, with a few leaves. The visual impoverishment the wildflower and is enabling of identification, for purposes guide's organization, just as it is in Peterson's to birds. See and Margaret A Field guide Roger Tory Peterson McKenny, Guide toWildflowers and North-central North America of Northeastern (Boston, 1968). a chickadee 28 the pitch of its call is, of course, a feat that can be Identifying by judging strengthened, also illustrated

is already familiar performed only if one intimately that chickadee calls differ in pitch would be of very

with

that call. Peterson's

little use

to our novice.

indication

602

NEW LITERARY HISTORY

A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America Tory Peterson, Roger 246, 247, 248. 1980), p. 210; Maps (Boston, a scenario In the Field Guide's first edition, 30 similar Peterson offers to, but more a bird that is a female than mine: "We may, for example, be puzzled hopeful by certainly 29

A consultation of the brief descriptions of those birds eliminates the Hooded a dark one. It was seen on the because the bird sought had a reddish head?not Merganser so the text tells us, increases coast which, the probability it was a Red-breast. And finally, we learn that in the Red-breasted 'the rufous of the head blends into the white of Merganser as in the American the throat and neck instead of being sharply defined' This Merganser. Merganser.

which describes the bird we have seen, makes the identification accurately is clearly shown in the plate but because we had not known what soft merging to look for, we failed to notice it" ("How to Use This Book," pp. xvii-xviii). If Peterson's seems a bit heavy 31 snap judgments warning against ornithological in other areas of consider the possible of incautious identification handed, consequences characteristic, certain. This

natural as birds

history, never

they guides mushrooms.

such as mycology. Because the objects of their interest are often poisonous, to be especially hunters have and the field are, mushroom circumspect, use reflect in making the solemnities involved sound of identifications

or Life in theWoods Waiden, (New York, 1991), p. 102. Henry D. Thoreau, A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern and Central North America, p. 172. Other Peterson, to reproduce field guides the screech owl's call. In the Audubon also avoid the temptation Guide to Birding, vol. 2, ed. John Farrand, it in a Society Master Jr., Sadie Coats describes 32 33

manner quickly

similar descending

to Peterson's: with

"Song a pronounced louder toward

length, usually growing 1983], p. 160). Dean Howells, 34 William

The Rise

a

on a 'whinny,' long beginning rising pitch and in quaver. Also a rapid trill on 1 pitch, variable end. Short barks or yelps also given" ( [New York,

of Silas Lapham

(New York,

1963),

p. 5.