Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and Ecophobia

Abstract

What has popularized and expanded the hermeneutic range of ecocriticism has in some ways also made ecocriticism seem immune to the challenges presented by so much of poststructuralism. Propelled and positioned within a context of environments increasingly degraded and dangerous, direct effects of our and our ancestors' behaviors, ecocriticism-seeking and espousing an immediacy and directness; an aesthetics of contact; and a firm disavowal of obscurantism, dizzying spinnings off, and general ineffectivenesshas found a wide and largely enthusiastic audience. 1 The space of ecocriticism has indeed become one of considerable-though increasingly ambivalent-openness. 2 Theorizing within this space-one that Peter Quigley has termed a "dangerous space"-has become a bit of a risky business, one that potentially threatens the peace of ecocritical communities. When Terry Gifford perceptively noted that "ecocriticism has been remarkably free of theoretical infighting" and that it is "perhaps the absence of a methodology" 3 that is accountable for this phenomenon (15), he was probably correct, though there have been more voices of discontent than one would think, voices often ignored or given less airtime by an increasingly orthodox ecocritical † This paper was supported by the

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“…It has even been suggested that:

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