ECOCRITICISM: PRINCIPLES AND

APPLICATION
Literary Criticism,
Thursday, November 25th, 2021
 The Definition:
• Ecocriticism comes from the words ecology and criticism
• Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment
from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature
scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns
• They also examine the various ways literature treats the
subject of nature
• Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environment from
an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come
together to analyze the environment and brainstorm
possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary
environmental situation
 The Definition:
• It gives importance to the relationship
between human beings and nature,
how are human beings affecting nature and
vice versa.
• In a broader perspective, Ecocriticism guides
us to examine the world around us and
critiquing the mannerisms of society in the
treatment of nature
 History
• Ecocriticism was officially propounded
by the publication of two seminal
works, both published in the mid-
1990s: The Ecocriticism Reader edited
by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm,
and The Environmental Imagination,
by Lawrence Buell
The Main Sources:
 The Stand Points:
• Ecocriticism investigates the relation between
humans and the natural world in literature.
• It deals with how environmental issues, cultural
issues concerning the environment and attitudes
towards nature are presented and analyzed.
• One of the main goals in ecocriticism is to study
how individuals in society behave and react in
relation to nature and ecological aspects.
 What does Ecocriticism suggest?
• It suggests that there is a connection between
“Human Culture” and “Physical World”
affecting each other
• It brings individuals together to collaborate
like natural scientists, writers, literary critics,
and more
• It allows us to look at ourselves in the real
world and examine how we actually interact
with the natural and man made environment
 Recently,
• This form of criticism has gained a lot of attention
during recent years due to higher social emphasis on
environmental destruction and increased technology.
• It is hence a fresh way of analyzing and interpreting
literary texts, which brings new dimensions to the
field of literary and theoretical studies.
• Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that
is known by a number of other designations,
including “green (cultural) studies”, “ecopoetics”,
and “environmental literary criticism.”
 green (cultural) studies
• “Cultural studies” refers to the study of cultural objects, meanings,
and processes, and their production and use in contemporary society.
• It is an interdisciplinary field with a twin commitment to intellectual
rigor and social relevance.
• It involves a questioning of the assumption that objectivity and
subjectivity can be easily distinguished and kept separate; studying
culture, in other words, is hardly possible without some level of
engagement in culture, which raises ethical issues for those doing the
studying
• “Green cultural studies” describes the study of cultural objects,
meanings, and actions with an eye and ear for their implications for
environmental politics, that is, for understanding and improving the
relations between people and the places, landscapes, and multi-
species ecological relations they find themselves enmeshed within.
 Contd:
• “green cultural studies” has developed close,
though frequently contested and contentious, links
with feminism(s), socialism(s), postcolonialism(s),
poststructuralism(s), critical race theory, queer
and sexuality studies, and other perspectives
within cultural theory and politics.
• As a relatively new and poorly defined field, green
cultural studies also overlaps significantly
with ecocriticism and environmental
communication
 Ecopoetics
• As a discipline poetry is vigorous,
imaginative, and alternative; it opens up
clearings in our mental conception of the
world, providing us with new paths of
investigation, and it makes available other
possible worlds to those commonly
offered to our understanding.
• Ecopoetics extends this art form (poetry)
with the intention of foregrounding an
investigation into ecology: a word derived
from the Greek oikos (home)
and logos (word, reason, thought)
 Contd:
• As a discipline ecopoetics investigates how the human
is situated within its habitat; how “home” is defined
and built; where (or whether) borders exist between
body and world, human and other, space and place;
and how sense activities, physical presences, memory,
and moments of thinking locate and assist the human
desire to navigate the self in the world.
• Ecopoetics thus contributes to the dissident project of
resistance to dominant cultural modes of thinking.
Environmental literary criticism
 Some Considerations:
• The issues in ecocriticism have developed so far
along with the dramatic change of climate and
environment in developing countries
• This raises another problem which is called as
environmental transformation
• Environmental transformation involves global
warming, forest burning, the change of
animals’ behaviours, climate change, and the
melting ice in North pole which in fact gives
effects to the sea level
• The issues become the main concerns for
ecologists to bring them into their projects, to
develop new approaches toward better
solution
What does Environmental literary criticism?

• It is theoretically an overlapped
vocabulary with ecocriticism
• Sometimes it also can be referred to
as green studies, green literature,
green studies, environmental studies,
green cultural studies, eco-lit [eco-
literature], eco-fiction, cli-fi [climate
fiction] and so on and so forth
• However, this relatively new paradigm
[ecocriticism] is lacking of its
methodological guidelines
 Why?
• Its affiliation with scientific theory, its interest in
political and civil activism to instrumentalize literature
in ways that run the risk of us losing sight of the role,
and what could tentatively be called the function, of
fiction in the context of both aesthetic and ethical
discourses.
• Heise claims that :
[e]cocriticism, arguably, has not reached this stage [of an
overarching theoretical paradigm]; it has not yet demonstrated how its
particular concerns over a nonhuman world under threat might reshape
the study of texts and artefacts that do not explicitly engage with
nature (Heise 2006: 296)
 Why?
• Coming to a similar conclusion, Philip
Armstrong, in his discussion of animal
motifs in modern fiction, complaints of a
“lack of methodological vocabulary”
(2008: 103) that a literary analysis of
animality in fiction would require.
• Indeed, it is believed that ecocriticism will
be unable to account for this lack as long
as it only sparsely and often insufficiently
concentrates on the genuinely fictional,
aesthetic elements of literature and the
potential that arises from these elements.
Some Elements of Ecocriticism:
Elements:
 What Do Ecocritics Do?
• Re-read major literary works from an ecocentric perspective, with
particular attention to the natural world
• Extend the applicability of a range of ecocentric concepts, using
them to apply to ideas outside of the natural world
• Give canonical emphasis to writers who foreground nature as a
major part of their subject-matter
• Extend the range of literary-critical practice by placing a new
emphasis on relevant “factual” writing, especially reflective of
topographical material, such as essays, travel writing, memoirs,
and regional literature
• Turn away from “social constructivism” and “linguistic
determinism” of dominant literary theories, and instead,
emphasize ecocentric values of meticulous observation, collective
ethical responsibility, and claims of the world beyond ourselves
What should be avoided?
 What methodological guidance could
ecocriticism offer us?
• This perspective is a branch of postmodernism
• Its stand points, of course, are in the same line with other
poststructuralists’ thoughts of theoretical implications
• It holds the nature of “bringing the margin to the center”
• In this case, the nature becomes the centre of attention
• making the invisible visible; any related issues which cause the nature to
suffer of destruction, and its impacts on global world
• rendering the trivial important, the problems of the interconnections
between nature and human being in the circle of global change are the
objects of analysis
• putting the spotlight on nature and how it is threatened by the presence
of human being and technology,
• Understanding nature as subjects in their own right rather than objects
for human beings
 3 Phases of Ecocriticism:
• 1).the representation of nature, savage, wilderness,
frontier, animals, cities, specific geographical regions,
rivers, mountains, deserts, technology, garbage, and the
body in literature
• 2). the neglected genre of nature writing, a tradition of
nature-oriented nonfiction in England and further in
America, identifying fiction and poetry writers whose
works manifest ecological awarness…
• 3). the symbolic constructions of the species, ecofeminism,
ecological poetics, a metaphorical function of poetry in
society---the philosophy currently known as deep ecology
Some Works which Could be Considered as
Green Literature:
• Climate fiction or the so-called
“cli-fi” takes on genuine
scientific discovery or
phenomenon and combines this
with a dystopian or over the top
twist. This approach underlines
the agency of non-human
beings, environments or even
phenomena – such as trees, the
ocean, or a tsunami.
Disgrace
• In Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee, a celebrated Noble
Prize laureate, who is also known for his
outspoken defence of animal rights interweaves
a brutal dog-killing scene with the gang-rape of a
white South African woman by three black men.
• Praised as one of the South African postcolonial
canons, the novel explores complex issues of
white supremacy and anticolonial resistance as
well as racial and gender violence. It ties these
issues with humans’ domination and
exploitation of the animals and further
challenges our ethical position.
• The combination of these two acts – the killing
of dogs and the rape of a woman – can be read
as Coetzee’s ecocritique of the colonial violence
against nonhuman beings and the natural
environment.
 Animal’s People
• Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, looks at
the Bhopal gas explosion in India – one of
the most horrific environmental disasters of
the 20th-century. A poisonous gas leak from
a US-owned pesticide plant killed several
thousand people and injured more than
half a million.
• The main character in the novel, Animal, is
a 19-year-old orphaned boy who survives
the explosion with a deformed body. This
means he must “crawl like a dog on all
fours”. Animal does not hate his body, but
embraces his animistic identity – offering an
unconventional non-human perspective.
• With this wounded “human-animal” figure,
Sinha puts forward his critique of India’s
postcolonial conditions and demonstrates
how Western capitalist domination
continues to damage people and the
environment in contemporary postcolonial
 The Overstory by Richard Powers
• The Overstory is praised by critics for its
ambition to bring awareness to the life of
trees and its advocacy to an ecocentric way
of life. Powers’ novel sets out with nine
distinctive characters - which represent the
“roots” of trees. Gradually their stories and
lives intertwine to form the “trunk”, the
“crown” and the “seeds”.
• One of the characters, Dr Patricia
Westerford, publishes a paper showing
trees are social beings because they can
communicate and warn each other when a
foreign intrusion occurs. Her idea, though
presented as controversial in the novel, is
actually well supported by today’s scientific
Movies:
• Alex Garland, a biologist
signs up for a dangerous,
secret expedition where
the laws of nature don’t
apply.
Avengers: Endgame
• Anthony Russo, Joe Russo.
After the devastating events
of Avengers: Infinity
War (2018), the universe is
in ruins. With the help of
remaining allies, the
Avengers assemble once
more in order to reverse
Thanos’ actions and restore
balance to the universe.
Chloe & Theo
• Theo, an Inuit from the Arctic,
travels to New York City to warn
world leaders about the
catastrophic impact of global
warming on the planet. Upon
arrival he meets a homeless girl
named Chloe, who has an unusual
vigor for life, is mildly delusional,
and completely obsessed by Bruce
Lee. Together, they will save the
world.
Poison Ivy from Batman & Robin
Who is She?
• “ I am the
mother nature”
• “I am preserving
the nature”
• “I am protecting
the nature”
• “Come to
Mommy,
babies…”
Songs About Nature & the Environment:
 “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson
• The track sees Michael sending out a
wakeup-call of sorts about the terrible
condition that mankind has caused to
the world, from war to the killing of
animals and of the earth itself.
• The song becomes somewhat spiritual
towards the end, where Michael calls
on people to remember the earth is
their inheritance from God via their
ancestor Abraham.
• Meanwhile, 'What about death again'
reminds listeners to think about their
eternal death, asking people to check
their heart for repentance, or to see if
they really ever cared.
TV Series: The Life and Times of Grizzly
Adams
• After fleeing into
the mountains
after he is wrongly
accused of murder,
woodsman "Grizzly
Adams" discovers
an uncanny bond
to the indigenous
wildlife of the
region after
rescuing an
orphaned grizzly
bear cub whom he
adopts and calls
"Ben".
 “May be” by Thomas Pace:
• Deep inside the forest • Walkin' through the land
• Is a door into another land • Where every living thing is
• Here is our life and home beautiful
• We are staying, • Why does it have to end
• here forever… • We are calling,
• In the beauty of this place all alone • oh so sadly on the whispers of the
• We keep on hoping wind as we send
• • a dying message
• Maybe… • Maybe…
• There's a world • There's a world
• where we don't have to run • where we don't have to run
• And maybe, Maybe…
• There's a time we'll call our own • There's a time we'll call our own
Livin' free in harmony and majesty Livin' free in harmony and majesty
Take me home, Take me home
 “Gersang” by Ian Antono:
• Kini tak pernah aku nikmati lagi
Indahnya alam desaku
Sawah yang hijau dulu luas terbentang
Kemana, tak nampak lagi
• Tak kudengar lagi seruling gembala
Lagukan kidung pujian
Tiada kudengar lagi desah dedaunan
Mewarnai alam ini
• Gersang melanda wajah desaku
Semakin pucat pasi tiada berseri
Gersang melanda tanah desaku
Kering merekah tanpa kehidupan
Tanpa kehidupan
• Kepada siapa, aku mengadu
• Air sungai penuh sampah limbah industri
• Kepada siapa aku bertanya
• Bencana yang terjadi ulah siapa?
“Gersang (Karna Siapa?)”
 Rumah Kaca
• Lahan kota kini semakin menyempit
Sampai-sampai rumahpun terhimpit
Temanku habis terkikis
Bumiku tak cantik lagi
• Bias rumah kaca s’makin menyengat membakar
raga
Membunuh semangat namun kau masih
perkasa
Bahkan kau semakin menjulang
• Jantung kota kini sirna
Oh .. tergilas rencana
Serba gila tanpa pola
• Oh.. aku kecewa
Tak sanggup lagi tuk menata kota
Oh… aku menjerit
Karna cuaca kini smakin panas, panas, panas
Kotaku panas, panaaaas
• Rumah kaca bakar tubuhku
Rumah kekar sumbat nafsuku
Hmm lahan sempit siksa gerakku
 Method of Analysis:
• Ecocriticism is a branch of poststructuralism
• Its method of analysis is of course applying
deconstructive reading method
• As a new discipline, ecocriticism is combining
many disciplines to be accommodated and
assembled into its own way of doing things
• Its main goals is to reverse the binaries
• It is to reveal the uncanny [strange or
mysterious]
 Procedure:
• Find the duality dominant term(s)in the text
• Determine the hierarchy in the text
• Identify the dominant voice in the text
• Distinguish the dominant story which is narrated in the text
• Note the dominant plot which interfere the balance in the text
• Define the dominant principle(s) in the text which overpower(s)
the hierarchy
• Trace what are in the hierarchies/binaries, what lies beneath the
hierarchy/binaries such as ambiguities, contradictions, tensions,
multi voices which disturb the balance of the text
• Give new meaning(s) over the hierarchy/binaries/oppositions
• Propose the new solution(s) for the inconsistencie(s)
 Practice:
• 1. Read/watch/study one of the works which
manifests the ecological awareness
• 2. Analyse the work(s)’s formal elements:
ironies, ambiguities, tension, paradox
• 3. Identify the dichotomy & hierarchy in the
work(s)
• 4. Identify the dominant part in the work(s)
• 5. Then, go to the procedure of analysis…
(previous slide)