Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:39:10.740Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Guest Column: Queer Ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Timothy Morton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

nearer than breathing, closer than hands and feet

—George Morrison, “The Reawakening of Mysticism”

Ecological criticism and queer theory seem incompatible, but if they met, there would be a fantastic explosion. How shall we accomplish this perverse, Frankensteinian meme splice? I'll propose some hypothetical methods and frameworks for a field that doesn't quite exist—queer ecology. (The pathbreaking work of Catriona Sandilands, Greta Gaard, and the journal Undercurrents must be acknowledged here.) This exercise in hubris is bound to rattle nerves and raise hackles, but please bear with me on this test flight. Start with the basics. Let's not create this field by comparing literary-critical apples and oranges. Let's do it the hard way, up from foundations (or unfoundations). Let's do it in the name of ecology itself, which demands intimacies with other beings that queer theory also demands, in another key. Let's do it because our era requires it—we are losing touch with a fantasy Nature that never really existed (I capitalize Nature to make it look less natural), while we actively and passively destroy life-forms inhabiting and constituting the biosphere, in Earth's sixth mass extinction event. Giving up a fantasy is even harder than giving up a reality.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 2 , March 2010 , pp. 273 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Barker, Clive. Sacrament. London: Harper, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Trans. Ritter, Mark. London: Sage, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Benedict XVI. “Papal Address: Key Extracts.” BBC. BBC, 23 Dec. 2008. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.Google Scholar
Boyd, Mark T., et al. “The Human Endogenous Retrovirus ERV-3 Is Upregulated in Differentiating Placental Trophoblast Cells.” Virology 196.2 (1993): 905–09. Print.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Clark, J. Michael. “Sex, Earth, and Death in Gay Theology.” Queer Nature 33–39.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. “The Evolution of a Great Mind: The Life and Work of Darwin.” Lancet 367.9512 (2006): 721–22. Print.Google Scholar
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge's Poetry and Prose. Ed. Halmi, Nicholas, Magnuson, Paul, and Modiano, Raimona. New York: Norton, 2004. 58–99. Print.Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Introd. James Moore and Adrian Desmond. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. Ed. Beer, Gillian. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Dawkins, Richard. The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. London: Phoenix, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Dawkins, Richard. The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Hurley, Robert, Seem, Mark, and Lane, H. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Ed. Mallet, Marie-Louise. Trans. Wills, David. New York: Fordham UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Hostipitality.” Acts of Religion. Ed., trans., and introd. Gil Anidjar. London: Routledge, 2002. 356–420. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Gaard, Greta. “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” Hypatia 12.1 (1997): 114–37. Print.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Print.10.1215/9780822386032CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, Ian. “Conclusion: Deflections.” Philosophy and Animal Life. By Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Hacking, and Cary Wolfe. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. 139–72. Print.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Hegel, Hegel Georg Wilhelm. “Jenaer Realphilosophie.” Frühe politische Systeme. Ed. Göhler, Gerhard. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1974. 201–89. Print.Google Scholar
“Henry James.” ASLE Archives. Interversity: A Bureaucracy-Free Zone. Assn. for the Study of Lit. and the Environment, 25 Feb.-5 Mar. 2009. Web. 16 Feb. 2010.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Douglas. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Trans. Pluhar, Werner S. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Khalip, Jacques. “The Archaeology of Sound: Derek Jarman's Blue and Queer Audiovisuality in the Time of AIDS.” Differences, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Roudiez, Leon S. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Kroeber, Karl. Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. Introd. Robert Finch. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Trans. Lingis, Alphonso. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969. Print.Google Scholar
Material World. BBC, 12 Mar. 2009. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.Google Scholar
Mazis, Glen. Humans, Animals, Machines: Blurring Boundaries. Albany: State U of New York P, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
McRuer, Robert. “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence.” The Disability Studies Reader. Ed. Davis, Lennard. New York: Routledge, 2006. 301–08. Print.Google Scholar
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper, 1980. Print.Google Scholar
Milburn, Colin. “Monsters in Eden: Darwin and Derrida.” Modern Language Notes 118.3 (2003): 603–21. Print.Google Scholar
Mitchell, David, and Snyder, Sharon. “Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor.” The Disability Studies Reader. Ed. Davis, Lennard. New York: Routledge, 2006. 205–16. Print.Google Scholar
Morrison, George H. “The Reawakening of Mysticism.” The Weaving of Glory. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1994. 103–11. Print.Google Scholar
Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona (see also Sandilands, Catriona). “Unnatural Passions? Notes toward a Queer Ecology.” Invisible Culture 9 (2005): n. pag. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. “The Dark Ecology of Elegy.” The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy. Ed. Weisman, Karen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. 251–71. Print.Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010. Print.Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. “Ecologocentrism: Unworking Animals.” Substance 37.3 (2008): 37–61. Print.Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Morton, Timothy. Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Nuridsany, Claude, and Pérennou, Marie, dirs. Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe. Agencie Jules Verne, 1997. Film.Google Scholar
Penn, Sean, dir. Into the Wild. Paramount Vantage, 2007. Film.Google Scholar
Queer Nature. Spec. issue of Undercurrents 6 (1994): 1–44. Print.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. “Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis.” Journal of Philosophy 47.22 (1950): 621–33. Print.Google Scholar
Rigby, Kate. “Earth, World, Text: On the (Im)Possibility of Ecopoiesis.” New Literary History 35.3 (2004): 427–42. Print.Google Scholar
Robisch, Sean K. Online posting. Timothy Morton's Amazon Blog. N.p., 30 Dec. 2008. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.Google Scholar
Romantic Circles Blog. U of Maryland, n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2009.Google Scholar
Roughgarden, Joan. Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. Berkeley: U of California P, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Sandilands, Catriona (see also Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona). “Lavender's Green? Some Thoughts on Queer(y) ing Environmental Politics.” Queer Nature 20–24.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. “Queer and Now.” Tendencies. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. 1–22. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Triumph of Life. Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Ed. Reiman, Donald H. and Fraistat, Neil. New York: Norton, 2002. 481–500. Print.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Cary. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. In Defense of Lost Causes. London: Verso, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. Organs without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.Google Scholar