Introduction - Modern Environmentalism’s Identity Politics

Summary

Wild Abandon’s introduction establishes the book’s methodology, introduces key terms (identity politics of ecology, ecological authenticity, and dissolution), and traces the origins of environmentalist identity politics to the American New Left. Movement radicals sought “natural” alternatives to the “artificial” postwar liberal order, often articulating this opposition in terms of repression and elevating self-liberation to the forefront of their program. However, ecology’s simultaneous political debut, and the field’s attention to the biophysical interrelationships that both constitute and undermine individuals, challenged selfhood’s apparent sanctity. For some radicals, ecology suggested that self-identity merely constitutes yet another repressive formation to discard. Because selfhood is socially constructed, the ecosystem as a whole comprises one’s most essential identity. This appeal to ecological rather than personal authenticity constitutes the identity politics of ecology, which is less a movement than a rhetorical tendency. Conversations between adherents to this perspective and a variety of other identity positions play out in literary texts from the 1960s to the present.