A review of Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture, edited by Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imr... more A review of Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture, edited by Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imre Szeman.
Man will live here until he has made this planet a garden, this orchard, with no question about t... more Man will live here until he has made this planet a garden, this orchard, with no question about the animals. Man debases himself by his use of animal food. There was no butcher in Paradise.-Amos Bronson Alcott 1 The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come.. .. Wild mercy is in our hands.-Terry Tempest Williams 2 The recent collections New Genesis: A Mormon Reader on Land and Community and Stewardship and the Creation: LDS Perspectives on the Environment both demonstrate in myriad ways that the time is right for LDS scholars in the humanities and other Saints to speak up about the environmental crises which, as President Gordon B. Hinckley has asserted, render creation ugly and offend its Creator.
This essay argues that one of the factors holding back civilization-wide transitions to renewable... more This essay argues that one of the factors holding back civilization-wide transitions to renewable energy is the widespread tendency to render petroleum and other hydrocarbons abject and abstract. Fossil fuel industry representations do this by hiding the true costs of petroculture behind the virtualization Energy; environmentalist framings do it by relying too much on petroaesthetics of doom (i.e., apocalyptic imagery) and gloom (i.e., Gothic visualizations of oil spills and rusting extractive infrastructure). The scarcity of representations of hydrocarbons that acknowledge both their life-giving and life-destroying properties, their powerful nonhuman agency in mediating practically every human and nonhuman relationship in the modern world, makes it hard to imagine alternatives to petroculture. Recently, artists have begun subverting petroaesthetic conventions in ways that counter the abstraction and abjection of hydrocarbons, including by using crude oil as an artistic medium in it...
Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies, 2012
The return of the animal?1 We acknowledge that it may seem woefully naive to herald the return of... more The return of the animal?1 We acknowledge that it may seem woefully naive to herald the return of non-human creatures under present conditions, when they are worse off than they have been in some 65 million years (see Garrard 2004, p. 155). We also agree with Jacques Derrida that the Western idea of ‘the animal’ itself has contributed greatly to the plight of living animals (Derrida 2002).2 But, as necessary as it is to raise our students’ awareness about the global extinction crisis and about the historically unprecedented scale of industries in which animals suffer and die by the billions,3 with countless negative ramifications for the biosphere, we believe that the ecocritical classroom can be an ideal place to discuss — and work towards — the return of the animal, for two reasons. First, some animals, such as the wolves of Yellowstone, actually are returning, however controversial and unfinished such projects may be. Second, over the past several years a rapidly growing body of work on the ‘ethical question of the animal’ (Wolfe 2003, p. 8) and on representations of animals and animality in human cultures has been redefining ‘the animal’ and, in the process, challenging the anthropocentric foundations on which the humanities are built. Scholars like Cary Wolfe have even begun thinking in terms of the ‘posthumanities’: a set of new interdisciplinary formations that could radically transform the nature of a humanities education.
24 Squeal Like A Pig: Manhood, Wilderness, and Imperialist Nostalgia in John Boorman&am... more 24 Squeal Like A Pig: Manhood, Wilderness, and Imperialist Nostalgia in John Boorman's Deliverance BART H. WELLING Everyone who has seen John ... a sow. 4 See Jacques Derrida,'Eating Well' and The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). Cary Wolfe's recent ...
Journal article by Bart H. Welling; The Mississippi …, 1999
... Note: First edition, possibly second printing. --. Dr. Martino and Other Stories. London: Cha... more ... Note: First edition, possibly second printing. --. Dr. Martino and Other Stories. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. ... The Royal Life-Guard: Or, The Flight of the Royal Family; A Historical Romance of the Suppression of the French Monarchy (1893). Duncan, Isadora. My Life (1928). ...
... The mimetic turn authorizes ecocritics to rove freely from one field of discourse to another,... more ... The mimetic turn authorizes ecocritics to rove freely from one field of discourse to another, from naturalist novels to lyric poems to scientific articles to environmental justice pamphlets to spiritual autobiographies and ... (7) In Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature ...
In "Petronarratology: A Bioregional Approach to Oil Stories", Bart Welling argues that ecocritics... more In "Petronarratology: A Bioregional Approach to Oil Stories", Bart Welling argues that ecocritics and narratologists have an important role to play in challenging the narratives that help perpetuate the modern world's catastrophic addiction to fossil fuels. Welling builds on the concept of reinhabitation, a central idea in the grassroots bioregional movement, as he explores strategies through which authors have reinhabited (i.e., transformed from within) not just oil-polluted places but problematic energy narratives, such as narratives that euphemize hydrocarbons as "energy" in the first place. Focusing on books by David Gessner and Stephanie LeMenager, Welling identifies six features of reinhabitory petronarratives: (1) they acknowledge their authors' personal debts to oil; (2) they own up to the enmeshment of environmentally oriented ways of thinking in our hydrocarbonfuelled culture; (3) they make room for the voices of ordinary residents of this culture, including people whose political perspectives clash with those of the authors; (4) they take seriously the reinhabitory capacities of nonhuman beings; (5) they rethink petroleum itself as a new kind of character in the fictions of "petromodernity"; and (6) they describe physical encounters with unprocessed hydrocarbons, thus addressing the massive problems posed by fossil fuels on a productively non-apocalyptic scale.
A review of Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture, edited by Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imr... more A review of Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture, edited by Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imre Szeman.
Man will live here until he has made this planet a garden, this orchard, with no question about t... more Man will live here until he has made this planet a garden, this orchard, with no question about the animals. Man debases himself by his use of animal food. There was no butcher in Paradise.-Amos Bronson Alcott 1 The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come.. .. Wild mercy is in our hands.-Terry Tempest Williams 2 The recent collections New Genesis: A Mormon Reader on Land and Community and Stewardship and the Creation: LDS Perspectives on the Environment both demonstrate in myriad ways that the time is right for LDS scholars in the humanities and other Saints to speak up about the environmental crises which, as President Gordon B. Hinckley has asserted, render creation ugly and offend its Creator.
This essay argues that one of the factors holding back civilization-wide transitions to renewable... more This essay argues that one of the factors holding back civilization-wide transitions to renewable energy is the widespread tendency to render petroleum and other hydrocarbons abject and abstract. Fossil fuel industry representations do this by hiding the true costs of petroculture behind the virtualization Energy; environmentalist framings do it by relying too much on petroaesthetics of doom (i.e., apocalyptic imagery) and gloom (i.e., Gothic visualizations of oil spills and rusting extractive infrastructure). The scarcity of representations of hydrocarbons that acknowledge both their life-giving and life-destroying properties, their powerful nonhuman agency in mediating practically every human and nonhuman relationship in the modern world, makes it hard to imagine alternatives to petroculture. Recently, artists have begun subverting petroaesthetic conventions in ways that counter the abstraction and abjection of hydrocarbons, including by using crude oil as an artistic medium in it...
Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies, 2012
The return of the animal?1 We acknowledge that it may seem woefully naive to herald the return of... more The return of the animal?1 We acknowledge that it may seem woefully naive to herald the return of non-human creatures under present conditions, when they are worse off than they have been in some 65 million years (see Garrard 2004, p. 155). We also agree with Jacques Derrida that the Western idea of ‘the animal’ itself has contributed greatly to the plight of living animals (Derrida 2002).2 But, as necessary as it is to raise our students’ awareness about the global extinction crisis and about the historically unprecedented scale of industries in which animals suffer and die by the billions,3 with countless negative ramifications for the biosphere, we believe that the ecocritical classroom can be an ideal place to discuss — and work towards — the return of the animal, for two reasons. First, some animals, such as the wolves of Yellowstone, actually are returning, however controversial and unfinished such projects may be. Second, over the past several years a rapidly growing body of work on the ‘ethical question of the animal’ (Wolfe 2003, p. 8) and on representations of animals and animality in human cultures has been redefining ‘the animal’ and, in the process, challenging the anthropocentric foundations on which the humanities are built. Scholars like Cary Wolfe have even begun thinking in terms of the ‘posthumanities’: a set of new interdisciplinary formations that could radically transform the nature of a humanities education.
24 Squeal Like A Pig: Manhood, Wilderness, and Imperialist Nostalgia in John Boorman&am... more 24 Squeal Like A Pig: Manhood, Wilderness, and Imperialist Nostalgia in John Boorman's Deliverance BART H. WELLING Everyone who has seen John ... a sow. 4 See Jacques Derrida,'Eating Well' and The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). Cary Wolfe's recent ...
Journal article by Bart H. Welling; The Mississippi …, 1999
... Note: First edition, possibly second printing. --. Dr. Martino and Other Stories. London: Cha... more ... Note: First edition, possibly second printing. --. Dr. Martino and Other Stories. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. ... The Royal Life-Guard: Or, The Flight of the Royal Family; A Historical Romance of the Suppression of the French Monarchy (1893). Duncan, Isadora. My Life (1928). ...
... The mimetic turn authorizes ecocritics to rove freely from one field of discourse to another,... more ... The mimetic turn authorizes ecocritics to rove freely from one field of discourse to another, from naturalist novels to lyric poems to scientific articles to environmental justice pamphlets to spiritual autobiographies and ... (7) In Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature ...
In "Petronarratology: A Bioregional Approach to Oil Stories", Bart Welling argues that ecocritics... more In "Petronarratology: A Bioregional Approach to Oil Stories", Bart Welling argues that ecocritics and narratologists have an important role to play in challenging the narratives that help perpetuate the modern world's catastrophic addiction to fossil fuels. Welling builds on the concept of reinhabitation, a central idea in the grassroots bioregional movement, as he explores strategies through which authors have reinhabited (i.e., transformed from within) not just oil-polluted places but problematic energy narratives, such as narratives that euphemize hydrocarbons as "energy" in the first place. Focusing on books by David Gessner and Stephanie LeMenager, Welling identifies six features of reinhabitory petronarratives: (1) they acknowledge their authors' personal debts to oil; (2) they own up to the enmeshment of environmentally oriented ways of thinking in our hydrocarbonfuelled culture; (3) they make room for the voices of ordinary residents of this culture, including people whose political perspectives clash with those of the authors; (4) they take seriously the reinhabitory capacities of nonhuman beings; (5) they rethink petroleum itself as a new kind of character in the fictions of "petromodernity"; and (6) they describe physical encounters with unprocessed hydrocarbons, thus addressing the massive problems posed by fossil fuels on a productively non-apocalyptic scale.
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