Transversal Ecocritical Praxis
Theoretical Arguments, Literary Analysis, and Cultural Critique- Authors:
- Publisher:
- 2013
Summary
In Transversal Ecocritical Praxis: Theoretical Arguments, Literary Analysis, and Cultural Critique, Patrick D. Murphy, Ph.D, utilizes ecocriticism and ecofeminism to develop his concept of transversal practice: an interdisciplinary combination of theory and applied criticism. He begins by explaining the necessity for cutting across disciplinary boundaries of all kinds in order to address the ecological dimensions of culture and literature. The dialogical foundation of this orientation is elaborated through a consideration of the theories of Mikhail Bkahtin, particularly in terms of the ethical responsibilities of the reader and critic. Murphy then takes up issues of identity and subject formation in relation to genetics, embodiment, and selfhood. These same issues play out in the history of the aesthetic category of the sublime, which the author critiques from an ecofeminist perspective. Following that, he turns attention to cultural issues of consumption, both at home and internationally, looking particularly at postcolonial literature and forms of resistance to globalizations and agricultural land grabs. Resistance and postcolonial literature is further analyzed through consideration of two book-length Latin American poetic sequences, one by Pablo Neruda and the other by Ernesto Cardenal. Switching from works focused on the present, Murphy turns his attention then to how these themes play out in the future oriented worlds of science fiction. He concludes with two chapters that combine ecocriticial cultural critique and economic analysis in studies of the destructive role of megadams, particularly in Asia, and the impact of the combined threats of peak oil and climate change on one island's tourist economy. The conclusion contains a discussion of further drivers of future ecocritical analysis. Traversing a wide range of examples, literary, cultural and economic, this work fleshes out the benefits of an ethically grounded interdisciplinary ecocriticism.
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Bibliographic data
- Copyright year
- 2013
- ISBN-Print
- 978-0-7391-8270-3
- ISBN-Online
- 978-0-7391-8271-0
- Publisher
- Lexington, Lanham
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 183
- Product type
- Book Titles
Table of contents
- Contents No access
- Acknowledgments No access
- Introduction No access Pages 1 - 8
- Chapter One: Dialoguing with Bakhtin on Our Ethical Responsibility to Anothers No access Pages 9 - 24
- Chapter Two: Furnishing the Study for Performing the Household by Resolving Static Cling No access Pages 25 - 38
- Chapter Three: Subjects, Identities, Bodies, and Selves No access Pages 39 - 54
- Chapter Four: An Ecological Feminist Revisioning of the Masculinist Sublime No access Pages 55 - 72
- Chapter Five: Consumption as Addiction, Sustainability as Recovery No access Pages 73 - 84
- Chapter Six: Community Resilience and the Cosmopolitan Role in the Environmental Challenge-Response Novels of Ghosh, Grace, and Sinha No access Pages 85 - 104
- Chapter Seven: The Poetic Politics of Ecological Inhabitation in Neruda’s Canto General and Cardenal’s Cosmic Canticle No access Pages 105 - 118
- Chapter Eight: The Dilemma of Terraforming in Three Parts No access Pages 119 - 138
- Chapter Nine: Damning Damming Modernity No access Pages 139 - 148
- Chapter Ten: Preparing on the Plateau of Peak Oil for a Post-Carbon Economy in Okinawa No access Pages 149 - 158
- Conclusion No access Pages 159 - 166
- Bibliography No access Pages 167 - 178
- Index No access Pages 179 - 182
- About the Author No access Pages 183 - 183





