� INTRODUCTION

Toward a Theory of
Ecological Criticism

Nobody likes it when you mention the unconscious, and nowadays,

hardly anybody likes it when you mention the environment. You risk
sounding boring or j udgmental or hysterical, or a mixture of all these.
But there is a deeper reason. Nobody likes it when you mention the un­
conscious, not because you are pointing out something obscene that
should remain hidden-that is at least partly enjoyable. Nobody likes it
because when you mention it, it becomes conscious. In the same way,
when you mention the environment, you bring it into the foreground.
In other words, it stops being the environment. It stops being That
Thing Over There that surrounds and sustains us. When you think
about where your waste goes, your world starts to shrink. This is the
basic message of criticism that speaks up for environmental j ustice, and
it is the basic message of this book.
The main theme of the book is given away in its title . Ecology
without Nature argues that the very idea of "nature " which so many
hold dear will have to wither away in an " ecological" state of human
society. Strange as it may sound, the idea of nature is getting in the
way of properly ecological forms of culture, philosophy, politics, and
art. The book addresses this paradox by considering art above all else,
for it is in art that the fantasies we have about nature take shape-and
dissolve. In particular, the literature of the Romantic period, com­
monly seen as crucially about nature, is the target of my investigation,
since it still influences the ways in which the ecological imaginary
works.
2 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . 3

valid and important, are not the main point of this book. The goal is to
Why Ecology Must Be without Nature
think through an argument about what we mean by the word environ­
In a study of political theories of nature, John Meyer asserts that eco­ ment itself.
logical writers are preoccupied with the " holy grail " of generating " a Ecology without Nature develops its argument in three distinct
new and encompassing worldview." l Whatever its content, this view stages: describing, contextualizing, and politicizing. The first stage is an
" is regarded as capable of transforming human politics and society."2 exploration of environmental art. Along with books such as Angus
For example, deep ecology asserts that we need to change our view Fletcher's A New Theory for American Poetry, which offers a poetics of
from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism . The idea that a view can environmental form, and Susan Stewart's Poetry and the Fate of the
change the world is deeply rooted in the Romantic period, as is the no­ Senses, Chapter 1 develops a fresh vocabulary for interpreting environ­
tion of worldview itself (Weltanschauung). Coming up with a new mental art. It moves beyond the simple mention of "environmental"
worldview means dealing with how humans experience their place in content, and toward the idea of environmental form. Its scope is wide
the world. Aesthetics thus performs a crucial role, establishing ways of but precise. Without prej udging the results, or focusing on certain fa­
feeling and perceiving this place. In their collection of narratives on vorite themes, how does art convey a sense of space and place ? Chapter
ecological value, Terre Slatterfield and Scott Slovic tell a story about 1 explores how ultimately, environmental art, whatever its thematic
President Clinton's dedication of a wilderness area in Utah: "At the content, is hamstrung by certain formal properties of language. I con­
ceremony dedicating the new national monument [Grand Staircacse­ sider the literary criticism of environmental literature itself to be an ex­
Escalante], . . . President [Clinton] held up a copy of [Terry Tempest ample of environmental art.
Williams's] Testimony and said, 'This made a difference.' " 3 Slatterfield Chapter 1 lays out a voca bulary for analyzing works in a variety of
and Slovic want to demonstrate how narrative is an effective political media. I have taught several classes on kinds of literature that talk
tool. But their demonstration also turns politics into an aesthetic about some idea of environment, in which these terms have proved in­
realm. For Slatterfield and Slovic, narrative is on the side of the affec­ valuable. But ways of reading the text intrinsically, with an eye to its
tive, and science, which they call a "valuation frame," has blocked or paradoxes and dilemmas, are always in danger of themselves turning
is in " denial " about it.4 As well as producing arguments, ecological into the special, or utopian, projects they find in the texts they analyze.
writers fashion compelling images-literally, a view of the world. What I propose instead is that these close reading tools be used to keep
These images rely upon a sense of nature. But nature keeps giving one step ahead of the ideological forces that ecological writing gener­
writers the slip. And in all its confusing, ideological intensity, nature ates. I outline a theory of ambient poetics, a materialist way of reading
ironically impedes a proper relationship with the earth and its life­ texts with a view to how they encode the literal space of their inscrip­
forms, which would, of course, include ethics and science. Nature tion-if there is such a thing-the spaces between the words, the mar­
writing itself has accounted for the way nature gives us the slip. In gins of the page, the physical and social environment of the reader. This
Reading the Mountains of Home, for example, John Elder writes has a bearing on the poetics of sensibility out of which Romanticism
about how the narrative of nature appreciation is complicated by a emerged in the late eighteenth century. Environmental aesthetics is fre­
growing awareness of " historical realities." s Ecology without Nature quently, if not always, caught in this form of materialism.
systematically attempts to theorize this complication. Chapter 2 studies the history and ideology of concepts, beliefs, and
Conventional ecocriticism is heavily thematic. It discusses ecological practices that make up current obsessions with the environment in all
writers. It explores elements of ecology, such as animals, plants, or the aspects of culture, from wildlife club calendars to experimental noise
weather. It investigates varieties of ecological, and ecocritical, lan­ music. Ecology without Nature is one of the few studies that speak
guage. Ecology without Nature does talk about animals, plants, and about low and high environmental culture in the same breath, treading
the weather. It also discusses specific texts and specific writers, com­ the path paved by such books as The Great New Wilderness Debate,
posers and artists. It delves into all types of ideas about space and place which brought together a variety of thinkers in so-called theory and so­
(global, local, cosmopolitan, regionalist). Such explorations, while called ecocriticism. How did the current environmentalism arise, and
4 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . 5

how does it affect our ideas a bout art and culture ? This chapter ana­ medium, ecological writing can never properly establish that this is na­
lyzes the Romantic period as the moment at which the capitalism that ture and thus provide a compelling and consistent aesthetic basis for the
now covers the earth began to take effect. Working forward from that new worldview that is meant to change society. It is a small operation,
moment, the book elaborates ways of understanding the dilemmas and like tipping over a domino. My readings try to be symptomatic rather
paradoxes facing environmentalisms. In a somewhat more synthetic than comprehensive. I hope that by opening a few well-chosen holes,
manner than David Harvey's Justice, Nature and the Geography of Dif­ the entire nasty mess might pour out and dissolve.
ference, Chapter 2 accounts for why post-Romantic writing is obsessed Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from
with space and place. It employs my existing research on the history of afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of
consumerism, which has established that even forms of rebellion Woman. It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration. Simone de Beau­
against consumerism, such as environmentalist practices, fall under the voir was one of the first to theorize this transformation of actually ex­
consumerist umbrella. Because consumerism is a discourse a bout isting women into fetish obj ects.7 Ecology without Nature examines the
identity, the chapter contains detailed readings of passages in environ­ fine print of how nature has become a transcendental principle. This
mentalist writing where a narrator, an "I," struggles to situate him- or book sees itself, in the words of its subtitle, as rethinking environmental
herself in an environment. aesthetics. Environmental art, from low to high, from pastoral kitsch to
Chapter 3 wonders where we go from here. What kinds of political urban chic, from Thoreau to Sonic Youth, plays with, reinforces, or de­
and social thinking, making, and doing are possible ? The book moves constructs the idea of nature. What emerges from the book is a wider
from an a bstract discussion to a series of attempts to determine pre­ view of the possibilities of environmental art and criticism, the
cisely what our relationship to environmental art and culture could be, "widescreen" version of ecological culture. This version will be un­
as social, political animals. The chapter explores different ways of afraid of difference, of nonidentity, both in textual terms and in terms
taking an artistic stand on environmental issues. It uses as evidence of race, class, and gender, if indeed textual-critical matters can be sepa­
writers such as John Clare and William Blake, who maintained posi­ rated from race, class, and gender. Ecocriticism has held a special, iso­
tions outside mainstream Romanticism. Chapter 3 demonstrates that lated place in the academy, in part because of the ideological baggage it
the " Aeolian," ambient poetics outlined in Chapter 1-picking up the is lumbered with. My intent is to open it up, to broaden it. Even if a
vibrations of a material universe and recording them with high fi­ Shakespeare sonnet does not appear explicitly to be "a bout" gender,
delity-inevitably ignores the subj ect, and thus cannot fully come to nowadays we still want to ask what it might have to do with gender.
terms with an ecology that may manifest itself in beings who are also The time should come when we ask of any text, "What does this say
persons-including, perhaps, those other beings we designate as ani­ about the environment? " In the current situation we have already de­
mals. cided which texts we will be asking.
Chapter 1 offers a theory of environmental art that is both an expli­ Some readers will already have pegged me as a "postmodern theo­
cation of it and a critical reflection. Chapter 2 offers a theoretical re­ rist" on whom they do not wish to waste their time. I do not believe
flection on this, the " idea " of environmental art. And Chapter 3 is a that there is no such thing as a coral reef. (As it happens, modern in­
further reflection still. This "theory of the theory " is political. Far from dustrial processes are ensuring they do not exist, whether I believe in
achieving greater levels of "theoretical " abstraction (abstraction is far them or not. ) I also do not believe that environmental art and ecocriti­
from theoretical), the volume " rises " to higher and higher levels of con­ cism are entirely bogus. I do believe that they must be addressed criti­
creteness. Ecology without Nature does not float away into the strato­ cally, precisely because we care about them and we care a bout the
sphere. Nor does it quite descend to earth, since the earth starts to look earth, and, indeed, the future of life-forms on this planet, since humans
rather different as we proceed. have developed all the tools necessary for their destruction. As musician
Ecological writing keeps insisting that we are "embedded" in na­ David Byrne once wrote, "Nuclear weapons could wipe out life on
ture.6 Nature is a surrounding medium that sustains our being. Due to earth, if used properly." 8 It is vital for us to think and act in more gen­
the properties of the rhetoric that evokes the idea of a surrounding eral, wider terms. Particularism can muster a lot of passion, but it can
6 • Ecology without Nature Introduction . 7

become shortsighted. The reactionary response to wind farms in the "right." I do think that science would benefit from more grounding in
United Kingdom, for instance, has tried to bog down environmentalists philosophy and training in modes of analysis developed in the humani­
with the idea that birds will be caught in the blades of the windmills. ties. But in general the scientisms of current ideology owe less to intrin­
Yes, we need to cultivate a more comprehensive view of "humanity" sically skeptical scientific practice, and more to ideas of nature) which
and "nature." Before I get accused of being a postmodern nihilist, I set people's hearts beating and stop the thinking process, the one of
thought I would put my heart on the sleeve of this book. It is j ust that I saying "no " to what you j ust came up with. Have a look at any recent
aim to start with the bad new things, as Brecht once said, rather than edition of Time or Newsweek) which take Nature) one of the main sci­
try to return to the good old days. I wish to advance ecocritical ence journals, even more seriously than the scientists. In the name of
thinking, not make it impossible. My work is about an " ecology to ecology, this book is a searching criticism of a term that holds us back
come," not about no ecology at all. One should view it as a contribu­ from meaningful engagements with what, in essence, nature is all
tion, albeit a long-range one, to the debate opened up by environmental about: things that are not identical to us or our preformed concepts.
j ustice ecocriticisIL.. For related reasons, I have avoided the habitual discussions of anthro­
Actually, postmodernists have a few nasty surprises in store. I do not po centrism and anthropomorphism that preoccupy much ecological
think there is a " better way" of doing the things I describe in artistic writing. These terms are not irrelevant. But they beg the question of
media. Much contemporary artistic practice is predicated on the idea what precisely counts as human) what counts as nature. Instead of
that there is a better way of doing things, with an attendant aura of chic pushing around preformed pieces of thought, I have chosen to hesitate
that puts down other attempts as less sophisticated. Supposedly, we at a more basic level, to lodge my criticism in the fissures between such
should all be listening to experimental noise music rather than categories.
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. We should all be reading Gilles Throughout this book, I read texts from the Romantic period, not
Deleuze and Felix Guattari instead of Aldo Leopold. From the point of only because they exemplify, but also because they do not accord with
view of Ecology without Nature) these texts have more similarities than the various syndromes and symptoms that emerge from this very pe­
differences. riod. At the precise moment at which the trajectories of modern ecology
I do, however, distinguish between postmodernism, as a cultural and were appearing, other pathways became possible. I have called on a
ideological form, and deconstruction. Ecology without Nature is in­ multitude of art forms that deal with the idea of environment) even
spired by the way in which deconstruction searches out, with ruthless when this notion does not strictly entail nature in the way of rainforests
and brilliant intensity, points of contradiction and deep hesitation in or human lungs. A book so brief is only able to scratch the surface of
systems of meaning. If ecological criticism had a more open and honest the thousands of available examples. I hope that the ones I have chosen
engagement with deconstruction, it would find a friend rather than an are representative, and that they illuminate the theoretical exploration
enemy. Ecological criticism is in the habit of attacking, ignoring or vili­ of the idea of the environment. I have chosen to discuss authors of En­
fying this potential friend. Walter Benn Michaels has tarred both deep glish literature with whom I am familiar: Blake, Coleridge, Levertov,
ecology and deconstruction with the same brush.9 Hear, hear. There is Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, Thoreau, Edward Thomas. Though many
indeed a connection between the two, and contra Michaels, I wish agree that they are ecological authors, their attitudes are not simple and
heartily to promote it. Just as Derrida explains how differance at once direct, however, especially in the contexts of the other writers I adduce.
underlies and undermines logocentrism, I assert that the rhetorical I employ a variety of philosophers to help make my case. It is to Marx
strategies of nature writing undermine what one could call ecologocen­ and Derrida that I owe almost equal debts, for they have enabled me to
trism. create the frameworks with which the analysis proceeds. But I am also
Ecology without Nature tries not to foster a particular form of aes­ indebted to Benj amin, Freud, Heidegger, Lacan, Latour, Zizek, and in
thetic enjoyment; at least not until the end, when it takes a stab at particular to Hegel, whose idea of the " beautiful soul" has become the
seeing whether art forms can bear the weight of being critical in the single most important notion in the book. I use Theodor Adorno,
sense that the rest of the book outlines. No one kind of art is exactly whose writing has a strong, often explicit ecological flavor. Adorno
8 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . 9

based much of his work on the idea that modern society engages in a dilemmas, and shortcomings. "A theory of ecological criticism " is a
process of domination that establishes and exploits some thing "over theoretical reflection upon ecocriticism: to criticize the ec:ocritic.
there" called nature. His sensitivity to the idea of nuclear annihilation Ecology without Nature thus hesitates between two places. It wavers
has many parallels with the sensitivity of ecological writing to equally both inside and outside ecocriticism. (For reasons given later, I am at
total catastrophes such as global warming. Where the relationships are pains not to say that the book is in two places at once . ) It supports the
less clear (for instance, in the case of Descartes, Derrida, or Benj amin), study of literature and the environment. It is wholeheartedly ecological
I trust that my text will explain why a certain writer is appearing. And in its political and philosophical orientation. And yet it does not thump
the study introduces some writers as test cases of environmental an existing ecocritical tub. It does not mean to undermine ecocriticism
writing: David Abram, Val Plumwood, Leslie Marmon Silko, and entirely. It does not mean to suggest that there is nothing "out there."
David Toop, among others. Add to these a host of artists and com­ But Ecology without Nature does challenge the assumptions that
posers: Beethoven, Reich, Cage, Alvin Lucier, Yves Klein, Escher. And ground ecocriticism. It does so with the aim not of shutting down eco­
along the way we will also be encountering a number of popular prod­ criticism, but of opening it up.
ucts by J. R. R. Tolkien, Pink Floyd, The Orb, and others. Environmentalism is a set of cultural and political responses to a
Ecology without Nature covers a lot of ground in a short space. crisis in humans' relationships with their surroundings. Those re­
Studies of the idea of nature have appeared before, many times . Di­ sponses could be scientific, activist, or artistic, or a mixture of all three.
verse accounts of environmentalism and nature writing have emerged. Environmentalists try to preserve areas of wilderness or "outstanding
And specifically, scholarship has frequently derived ecology from Ro­ natural beauty." They struggle against pollution, including the risks of
manticism. In a reflexive and systematic way, Ecology without Nature nuclear technologies and weaponry. They fight for animal rights and
accounts for the phenomenon of environmentalism in culture, delving vegetarianism in campaigns against hunting and scientific or commer­
into the details of poetry and prose, and stepping back to see the big cial experimentation on animals. They oppose globalization and the
picture, while offering a critique of the workings of "Nature" at patenting of life-forms.
different levels. It does this by operating principally upon a single pres­ Environmentalism is broad and inconsistent. You can be a commu­
sure point: the idea of "nature writing" or, as this book prefers to call nist environmentalist, or a capitalist one, like the American "wise use "
it, ecomimesis. The book is thus necessarily one-sided and incomplete, Republicans. You can be a "soft" conservationist, sending money to
even as it tries to be comprehensive. But I can see no other way of use­ charities such as Britain's Woodland Trust, or a "hard" one who lives
fully drawing together all the themes I wish to talk about, in a reason­ in trees to stop logging and road building. And you could, of course, be
ably short volume. I trust that the reader will be able to bring his or both at the same time. You could produce scientific papers on global
her own examples to the discussion, where they are lacking. My own warming or write "ecocritical " literary essays. You could create poems,
specializations in Romantic studies, food studies, and the study of lit­ or environmental sculpture, or ambient music. You could do environ­
erature and the environment have necessarily skewed my sense of mental philosophy ( " ecosophy" ), establishing ways of thinking, feeling,
things . and acting based on benign relationships with our environment(s).
Likewise, there are many forms of ecocriticism. Ecofeminist criticism
examines the ways in which patriarchy has been responsible for envi­
Environmental Reflections
ronmental deterioration and destruction, and for sustaining a view of
"A theory of ecological criticism" means at least two things. Clintonian the natural world that oppresses women in the same way as it oppresses
explanations aside, it all depends on what you mean by "of." On the animals, life in general, and even matter itself. A form of ecocriticism
one hand, this book provides a set of theoretical tools for ecological has emerged from Romantic scholarship, in the work of writers such as
criticism. "A theory of ecological criticism " is an ecocritical theory. On Jonathan Bate, Karl Kroeber, and James McKusick.10 It puts the critical
the other hand, the study accounts for the qualities of existing ecocriti­ back into academic reading in a provocative and accessible way. It is it­
cism, placing them in context and taking account of their paradoxes, self an example of a certain aspect of the Romantic literary project to
10 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . 11

change the world b y compelling a strong affective response and a fresh think that the "re-enchantment of the world" will make nice pictures,
view of things. Then there is environmental justice ecocriticism, which or whether it is a political practice.
considers how environmental destruction, pollution, and the oppres­ Revolutionary movements such as those in Chiapas, Mexico, have
sion of specific classes and races go hand in hand. ll had partial success in reclaiming place from the corrosion of global eco­
From an environmentalist point of view, this is not a good time. So nomics. "Third World" environmentalisms are often passionate de­
why undertake a project that criticizes ecocriticism at all ? Why not just fenses of the local against globalization.1 3 Simply lauding location in
let sleeping ecological issues lie ? It sounds like a perverse joke. The sky the abstract or in the aesthetic, however-praising a localist poetics, for
is falling, the globe is warming, the ozone hole persists; people are example, just because it is localist, or proclaiming a " small is beautiful"
dying of radiation poisoning and other toxic agents; species are being aestheticized ethics-is in greater measure part of the problem than
wiped out, thousands per year; the coral reefs have nearly all gone. part of the solution. Our notions of place are retroactive fantasy con­
Huge globalized corporations are making bids for the necessities of life structs determined precisely by the corrosive effects of modernity. Place
from water to health care. Environmental legislation is being threat­ was not lost, though we posit it as something we have lost. Even if
ened around the world. What a perfect opportunity to sit back and re­ place as an actually existing, rich set of relationships between sentient
flect on ideas of space, subjectivity, environment, and poetics. Ecology beings does not (yet) exist, place is part of our worldview right now­
without Nature claims that there could be no better time. what if it is actually propping up that view? We would be unable to
What is the point of reflecting like this ? Some think that ecocriticism cope with modernity unless we had a few pockets of place in which to
needs what it calls "theory" like it needs a hole in the head. Others con­ store our hope.
tend that this aeration is exactly what ecocriticism needs. In the name Here is the book's cri de guerreJ but I will be making a lot of small
of ecocriticism itself, scholarship must reflect-theorize, in the broadest moves before I interrogate such ideas head-on. There are problems in
sense. Since ecology and ecological politics are beginning to frame other the fine print of how we write about the environment. Underlining
kinds of science, politics, and culture, we must take a step back and ex­ some of this fine print will not make the bigger problems go away, but
amine some of ecology's ideological determinants. This is precisely the it is a useful start. The initial focus is what marketing and scholarship
opposite of what John Daniel says about the need for a re-enchantment in the United States calls "nature writing." Under this banner I place
of the world: most ecocriticism itself, which, if not wholly an instance of nature
writing, contains good examples of the genre. This is far from sug­
The sky probably is falling. Global warming is happening. But somehow gesting that nature writing is the only game in town. It is simply that
it's not going to work to call people to arms about that and pretend to such writing presents significant artistic and philosophical solutions
know what will work. People don't want to feel invalidated in their lives
that crystallize all sorts of issues in ecological writing at large. The
a nd they don't want to feel that they bear the responsibility of the world
on their shoulders. This is why you shouldn't teach kids about the dire
book goes on to examine much more: philosophy, literature, music, vi­
straits of the rain forest. You should take kids out to the stream out back sual art, and multimedia, in an expanding cone of critical analysis.
and show them water striders.12

Ecocritique
To speak thus is to use the aesthetic as an anesthetic.
To theorize ecological views is also to bring thinking up to date. Va­ In order to have an environment, you have to have a space for it; in
rieties of Romanticism and primitivism have often construed ecological order to have an idea of an environment, you need ideas of space (and
struggle as that of "place " against the encroachments of modern and place). If we left our ideas about nature on hold for a moment, instead
postmodern " space." In social structure and in thought, goes the argu­ of introducing them all too soon-they always tend to make us hot
ment, place has been ruthlessly corroded by space: all that is solid melts under the collar anyway-a clearer picture would emerge of what ex­
into air. But unless we think about it some more, the cry of "place! " actly the idea of "environment" is in the first place. This is not to sug­
will resound in empty space, to no effect. It is a question of whether you gest that if you subtract the rabbits, trees, and skyscrapers, you will be
12 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . 13

left with something called an environment. That kind of thinking goes cism that i s a disguised position all of its own. It i s all very well to carp
too fast for this book. Instead of lumping together a list of things and at the desires of others while not owning up to the determinacy of one's
dubbing it "nature," the aim is to slow down and take the list apart­ own desire. This is a political as well as an intellectual position, one to
and to put into question the idea of making a list at all. Ecology which ecological thinking is itself prone. After Hegel, I call it beautiful
without Nature takes seriously the idea that truly theoretical reflection soul syndrome, and examine it in Chapter 2 . The " beautiful soul "
is possible only if thinking decelerates. This is not the same thing as be­ washes his or her hands of the corrupt world, refusing to admit how in
coming numb or stupid. It is finding anomalies, paradoxes, and conun­ this very abstemiousness and distaste he or she participates in the cre­
drums in an otherwise smooth-looking stream of ideas. ation of that wqrld. The world-weary soul holds all beliefs and ideas at
This slowing-down process has often been aestheticized. When it is a distance. The only ethical option is to muck in. Thus, the book does
called "close reading" it is supposed to convey all sorts of healthy ef­ offer its own view of ecology and ecocriticism, not only throughout its
fects on the reader, much like meditation. Like many other forms of sustained critique of other views, but also in its own right.
criticism, ecocriticism has a canon of works that are better medicine In places I come close to Hegel's idea that art since Romanticism has
than others. Even though Ecology without Nature widens our view of been surpassed by philosophy-or even to Oscar Wilde's idea that crit­
environmental literature to include texts that are not normative in this icism itself is now the best vehicle for telling us where we are at.16 But I
way, it is possible that it could advocate the medicinal approach in an­ shy away from being absolute about this, preferring instead to suggest
other way. The reading process itself, no matter what its materials, ways of thinking, making, and practicing environmental art, politics,
could be thought of as healing balm. But ultimately, theory (and medi­ and philosophy. Ecocriticism is too enmeshed in the ideology that
tation, for that matter) is not supposed to make you a " better person" churns out stereotypical ideas of nature to be of any use. Indeed, eco­
in any sense. It is supposed to expose hypocrisy, or if you prefer, to ex­ criticism is barely distinguishable from the nature writing that is its ob­
amine the ways in which ideological illusions maintain their grip. So ject. I want to develop an idea of what "properly critical" might mean.
Ecology without Nature is not an attempt to be slower than thou, in Timothy Luke employs the term ecocritique to describe forms of left
order to outdo the tortoise of close reading, a kind of anti-race toward ecological criticism. I? I use the term in a more self-reflexive way than
an aesthetic state of meditative calm that we could then (falsely) asso­ Luke. Ecocritique is critical and self-critical. This is the proper sense of
ciate with some sort of "ecological awareness." This is especially im­ critique, a dialectical form of criticism that bends back upon itself. It
portant since ecological ethics can be based on a meditative aesthetic was the Frankfurt School that established this notion of Kritik. As well
state, for instance, the " appreciative listening" that Michel Serres hopes as pointing, in a highly politicized way, to society, critique points
will replace "mastery and possession."14 And this ethics of the aesthetic toward itself. There is always further to go. Ecocritique is permeated
has in general been getting a good run for its money in the recent work with considerations common to other areas in the humanities such as
of writers such as Elaine Scarry.1S race, class, and gender, which it knows to be deeply intertwined with
The point is not to attain any special state of mind at all. The point is environmental issues. Ecocritique fearlessly employs the ideas of decon­
to go against the grain of dominant, normative ideas about nature, but struction in the service of ecology, rather than, as is all too frequent,
to do so in the name of sentient beings suffering under catastrophic en­ flogging the dead horse of "postmodern theory." Ecocritique is similar
vironmental conditions. I say this with all due respect to the deep ecol­ to queer theory. In the name of all that we value in the idea of "nature,"
ogists who think that humans, being just a viral infection on the planet, it thoroughly examines how nature is set up as a transcendental, uni­
will at some point be sneezed away in a wave of extinction, and that, ul­ fied, independent category. Ecocritique does not think that it is para­
timately, we could just sit back and relax in quietude-or hasten our doxical to say, in the name of ecology itself: "down with nature ! "
own demise; or act as if we didn't matter at all. The guiding slogan of ecocritique is: "not afraid of nonidentity." To
A truly theoretical approach is not allowed to sit smugly outside the borrow an argument from Theodor Adorno, a member of the Frankfurt
area it is examining. It must mix thoroughly with it. Adopting a posi­ School and one of the guiding lights of this study, the thinking process
tion that forgoes all others would be all too easy, a naive negative criti- is in essence the encounter with nonidentity.18 If not, it is j ust the ma-
14 . Ecology without Na ture Introduction . 15

nipulation of preformed pieces on a ready-made board. This is also for its reflection, only to find none. If it is just another word for
how Hegel distinguished dialectical thinking from sheer 10gic.19 There supreme authority, then why not j ust call it God? But if this God is
must be a movement at least from A to not-A. At any moment, thought nothing outside the material world, then why not j ust call it matter?
necessarily bumps its head against what it isn't. Thinking must "go This was the political dilemma in which Spinoza, and the deists of
somewhere," though whether it goes anywhere particularly solid is up eighteenth-century Europe, found themselves.22 Being an "out" atheist
for grabs. This encounter with non identity, when considered fully, has was very dangerous in the eighteenth century, as evidenced by the
profound implications for ecological thinking, ethics, and art. Non­ cryptic remarks of Hume and the increasingly cautious approach of
identity has a lineage in nature writing itself, which is why I can write Percy Shelley, who had been expelled from Oxford for publishing a
this book at all. Peter Fritzell delineated a difference between naively pamphlet on atheism. God often appeared on the side of royal au­
mimetic and self-reflexive forms of nature writing. In the latter, " 'what thority, and the rising bourgeoisie and associated revolutionary classes
nature was really like' is often not what nature was really like (or, for wanted another way of being authoritative. " Ecology without nature "
that matter, what it is)."2 0 means in part that we try to confront some of the intense notions which
nature smudges.
Ecological writing is fascinated with the idea of something that exists
in between polarized terms such as God and matter, this and that, sub­
Natural History Lessons
ject and obj ect. I find John Locke's critique of the idea of ether to be
One of the ideas inhibiting genuinely ecological politics, ethics, philos­ helpful here. Locke's critique appeared toward the beginning of the
ophy, and art is the idea of nature itself. Nature, a transcendental term modern construction of space as an empty set of point coordinates.2 3
in a material mask, stands at the end of a potentially infinite series of Numerous holes in materialist, atomist theories were filled by some­
other terms that collapse into it, otherwise known as a metonymic list: thing elemental. Newton's gravity worked because of an ambient ether
fish, grass, mountain air, chimpanzees, love, soda water, freedom of that transmitted the properties of heavy bodies instantaneously, in an
choice, heterosexuality, free markets . . . Nature. A metonymic series analogy for (or as an aspect of) the love of an omnipresent God.2 4 If
becomes a metaphor. Writing conj ures this notoriously slippery term, ether is a kind of "ambient fluid" that surrounds all particles, existing
useful to ideologies of all kinds in its very slipperiness, in its refusal to " in between " them, then what surrounds the particles of ambient fluid
maintain any consistency.21 But consistency is what nature is all about, themselves?25 If nature is sandwiched between terms such as God and
on another level. Saying that something is unnatural is saying that it matter, what medium keeps the things that are natural sandwiched to­
does not conform to a norm, so "normal" that it is built into the very gether? Nature appears to be both lettuce and mayonnaise. Ecological
fabric of things as they are. So "nature " occupies at least three places in writing shuffles subject and object back and forth so that we may think
symbolic language. First, it is a mere empty placeholder for a host of they have dissolved into each other, though what we usually end up
other concepts. Second, it has the force of law, a norm against which with is a blur this book calls ambience.
deviation is measured. Third, "nature " is a Pandora's box, a word that Later in the modern period, the idea of the nation-state emerged as a
encapsulates a potentially infinite series of disparate fantasy objects. It way of going beyond the authority of the monarch. The nation all to o
is this third sense-nature as fantasy-that this book most fully en­ often depends upon the very same list that evokes the idea of nature.
gages. A " discipline " of diving into the Rorschach blobs of others' en­ Nature and nation are very closely intertwined. I show how ecocritique
j oyment that we commonly call poems seems a highly appropriate way could examine the ways in which nature does not necessarily take us
of beginning to engage with how "nature" compels feelings and beliefs. outside society, but actually forms the bedrock of nationalist enjoy­
Nature wavers in between the divine and the material. Far from ment. Nature, practically a synonym for evil in the Middle Ages, was
being something "natural" itself, nature hovers over things like a ghost. considered the basis of social good by the Romantic period. According
It slides over the infinite list of things that evoke it. Nature is thus not to numerous writers such as Rousseau, the framers of the social con­
unlike "the subject," a being who searches through the entire universe tract start out in a state of nature. The fact that this state is not much
16 . Ecology without Nature Introduction • 17

different from the "concrete j ungle " of actual historical circumstance Ecological forms of subjectivity inevitably involve ideas and decisions
has not escaped attention. about group identity and behavior. Subjectivity is not simply an indi­
In the Enlightenment, nature became a way of establishing racial and vidual, and certainly not j ust an individualist, phenomenon. It is a col­
sexual identity, and science became the privileged way of demon­ lective one. Environmental writing is a way of registering the feeling of
strating it. The normal was set up as different from the pathological being surrounded by others, or more abstractly, by an otherness, some­
along the coordinates of the natural and the unnatural.26 Nature, by thing that is not the self. Although it may displace the actual social col­
then a scientific term, put a stop to argument or rational inquiry: "Well, lective and choose to write about surrounding mountains instead, such
it's just in my nature." He is ideological, you are prej udiced, but my displacements always say something about the kinds of collective life
ideas are natural. A metaphorical use of Thomas Malthus in the work that ecological writing is envisaging. Fredric Jameson outlines the ne­
of Charles Darwin, for example, naturalized, and continues to natu­ cessity for criticism to work on ideas of collectivity:
ralize, the workings of the " invisible hand" of the free market and the
" survival of the fittest"-which is always taken to mean the competi­ Anyone who evokes the ultimate value of the community or the collec­
tive war of all (owners ) against all (workers) . Malthus used nature to tivity from a left perspective must face three problems: 1) how to distin­
argue against the continuation of early modern welfare, in a document guish this position radically from communitarianism; 2) how to differen­
tiate the collective project from fascism or nazism; 3) how to relate the
produced for the government of his age. Sadly, this very thinking is now
social and the economic level-that is, how to use the Marxist analysis of
being used to push down the poor yet further, in the battle of the sup­ capitalism to demonstrate the unviability of social solutions within that
posedly ecologically minded against "population growth" (and immi­ system. As for collective identities, in a historical moment in which indi­
gration). Nature, achieved obliquely through turning metonymy into vidual personal identity has been unmasked as a decentered locus of mul­
metaphor, becomes an oblique way of talking about politics. What is tiple subject positions, surely it is not too much to ask that something
presented as straightforward, " unmarked," beyond contestation, is analogous be conceptualized on the collective leve1. 29
warped.
One of the basic problems with nature is that it could be considered The idea of the environment is more or less a way of considering groups
either as a substance, as a squishy thing in itself, or as essence, as an ab­ and collectives-humans surrounded by nature, or in continuity with
stract principle that transcends the material realm and even the realm of other beings such as animals and plants. It is about being-with. As La­
representation. Edmund Burke considers substance as the stuff of na­ tour has recently pointed out, however, the actual situation is far more
ture in his writing on the sublime.27 This " substantialism" asserts that drastically collective than that. All kinds of beings, from toxic waste to
there is at least one actually existing thing that embodies a sublime sea snails, are clamoring for our scientific, political, and artistic atten­
quality (vastness, terror, magnificence) . Substantialism tends to pro­ tion, and have become part of political life-to the detriment of mono­
mote a monarchist or authoritarian view that there is an external thing lithic conceptions of Nature.:10 To write about ecology is to write about
to which the subj ect should bow. Essentialism, on the other hand, has society, and not simply in the weak sense that our ideas of ecology are
its champion in Immanuel Kant. The sublime thing can never be repre­ soci?.! constructions. Historical conditions have abolished an extra­
sented, and indeed, in certain religions, says Kant, there is a prohibition social nature to which theories of society can appeal, while at the same
against trying (Judaisn1, Islam ) . This essentialism turns out to be politi­ time making the beings that fell under this heading impinge ever more
cally liberating, on the side of revolutionary republicanism.28 On the urgently upon society.
whole, nature writing, and its precursors and family members, mostly Different images of the environment suit different kinds of society.
in phenomenological and/or Romantic writing, has tended to favor a Substantialist images of a palpable, distinct "nature " embodied in at
substantialist view of nature-it is palpable and there-despite the ex­ least one actually existing phenomenon (a particular species, a partic­
plicit politics of the author. Further work in ecocritique should delin­ ular figure) generate authoritarian forms of collective organization. The
eate a republican, nonsubstantialist countertradition running through deep ecological view of nature as a tangible entity tends this way. Es­
writers such as Milton and Shelley, for whom nature did not stand in sentialist ideas of a nature that cannot be rendered as an image have
for an authority for which you sacrifice your autonomy and reason. supported more egalitarian forms. It would be very helpful if ecocri-
18 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . 19

tique simply observed that there were other kinds of models for nature . supernatural, a process made clear in John Gatta's decisive treatment of
For instance, the republican (small " r " ) poetics derived from writers the history of Puritan ideas about nature and wilderness (though Gatta
such as Milton and the neglected history of radical environmentalism in sets aside the more radical Puritan possibilities of the Diggers, the
the English Revolution convey iconoclastic figures of the environment mystic Jacob Boehme and the vegetarian Thomas Tryon) ;B Or nature
that transcend discrete forms of representationY Other political forms dissolves and we are left with sheer matter, and a sequence of ideas
prohibit graven images of nature. In contrast to the touchy-feely or­ with numerous high points in radical materialist philosophy, such as
ganicism derived from Burkean ideologies of class and tradition, we Spinoza. We want there to be something in between. But would that be
could think the environment in a more open, rational and differently natural? Would it not be supernatural ? Would that be supernatural like
sensuous manner. The study of iconoclastic representations of space a spirit-more of a refined essence-or a ghost-something more sub­
and world recovers fresh ways of thinking and creating. Demonstrating stantial, maybe made of ectoplasm ? We could go on splitting hairs infi­
that there are, at least, different sorts of fantasy images of the natural nitely. Our journey to the middle, to the "in between " space, whatever
would refresh environmental thinking. But ecocritique does not stop we call it, would go on generating binary pairs, and we would always
there. be coming down on one side or the other, missing the exact center. It
Substance and essence are strangely different from each other. There does not matter whether this is materialist spirituality, or spiritual ma­
is no easy way of finding a term that would supersede both at once. If we terialism. Thinking posits something "over there " that maintains a
claim that substance and essence are absolutely different, this is sup­ mysterious allure.
porting substantialism-substance and essence are two entirely different Since the Romantic period, nature has been used to support the capi­
" substances." On this view, essence and substance are like chalk and talist theory of value and to undermine it; to point out what is intrinsi­
cheese, apples and oranges. If, on the other hand, we say that essence cally human, and to exclude the human; to inspire kindness and com­
and substance are different the way black and white, or up and down, passion, and to justify competition and cruelty. It is easy to see why
are different, then we approach the essentialist view-substance and M. H. Abrams would have written a book on Romantic poetry called
essence are not different all the way down, but are related to one an­ Natural Supernaturalism. In short, nature has been on both sid�s of the
other in opposition. For instance, the substance of things, on this view, equation ever since it was invented. Ecology without Natu1'e takes na­
is just a variation in their atomic structure, or DNA code. Substance is ture out of the equation by exploring the ways in which literary writing
embodied in at least one thing, but not in others. Essence cannot be em­ tries to conjure it up. We discover how nature always slips out of reach
bodied. Nature wants to be both substance and essence at the same time. in the very act of grasping it. At the very moment at which writing seems
Nature opens up the difference between terms, and erases those very to be dissolving in the face of the compelling reality it is describing,
differences, all at once. It is the trees and the wood-and the very idea of writing overwhelms what it is depicting and makes it impossible to find
trees ( Greek hyle, matter, wood). anything behind its opaque texture. Even as it establishes a middle
The more we study it, the more we see that, beyond the fact that ground "in between" terms such as subject and object, or inside and
many different people have many different opinions about it, nature in outside, nature without fail excludes certain terms, thus reproducing the
itself flickers between things-it is both/and or neither/nor. This flick­ difference between inside and outside in other ways;14 Just when it
ering affects how we write about it. Nature is . . . animals, trees, the brings us into proximity with the nonhuman "other," nature re­
weather . . . the bioregion, the ecosystem. It is both the set and the con­ establishes a comfortable distance between "us" and "them." With eco­
tents of the set. It is the world and the entities in that world. It appears logical friends like this, who needs enemies ?
like a ghost at the never-arriving end of an infinite series: crabs, waves, Some will accuse me o f being a postmodernist, by which they will
lightning, rabbits, silicon . . . Nature. Of all things, nature should be mean that I believe that the world is made of text, that there is nothing
natural. But we cannot point to it. What we usually get is a suggestive real. Nothing could be further from the truth. The idea of nature is all
effusion on something "Whose dwelling is in the light of setting suns, / too real, and it has an all too real effect upon all too real beliefs, prac­
In the round ocean, and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the tices, and decisions in the all too real world. True, I claim that there is
mind of man," as Wordsworth marvelously put it. 32 Nature becomes no such "thing" as nature, if by nature we mean some thing that is
20 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . 21

single, independent, and lasting. But deluded ideas and ideological fixa­ plored throughout this book. Thunderbird o r Chardonnay, retro o r fu­
tions do exist. "Nature " is a focal point that compels us to assume cer­ turistic, it's all the same ecomimesis.
tain attitudes . Ideology resides in the attitude we assume toward this Postmodernism is mired in aestheticism. It freezes irony into an aes­
fascinating obj ect. By dissolving the object, we render the ideological thetic pose. When I suggest that we drop the concept of nature, I am
fixation inoperative. At least, that is the plan. saying that we really drop it, rather than try to come up with hastily
The ecocritical view of "postmodernism," for which "theory" is a conceived, " new and improved" solutions, a new form of advertising
shibboleth, has much in common with the English dislike of the French language. This is about what you think "without" means in the title of
Revolution-indeed, it is in many ways derived from it. 35 "Theory," this book. Derrida's profound thinking on the "without," the sansJ in
goes the argument, is cold and abstract, out of touch. 36 It forces organic his writing on negative theology comes to mind. Deconstruction goes
forms into boxes that cannot do them j ustice. It is too calculating and beyond j ust saying that something exists, even in a "hyperessential "
rational. "Postmodernism " is j ust the latest version of this sorry state of way beyond being. And it goes beyond saying that things do not exist . '!? .

affairs. Of course, the English position against the French was its own "Ecology without nature " is a relentless questioning of essence, rather
abstraction, a self-imposed denial of history that had already hap­ than some special new thing. Sometimes the utopian language of a
pened-the beheading of Charles I, for instance. writer such as Donna Haraway rushes to jerry-build ideas like "na­
Academics are never more intellectual than when they are being anti­ tureculture." 38 These non-natures are still nature, based on hopeful in­
intellectual. No self-respecting farmer would comport himself or herself terpretations of emerging ideas across disciplines such as philosophy,
quite like Aldo Leopold or Martin Heidegger. What could be more mathematics, and anthropology, ideas that turn out to be highly aes­
postn10dern than a professor reflexively choosing a social and subjec­ thetic. Chapter 1 focuses on a set of alternatives to traditional ideas of
tive view, such as that of a farmer ? What could be more postmodern nature that lie j ust to the side of it. Assuming that nature itself is too
than ecocriticism, which, far from being naive, consciously blocks its soft a target these days, I analyze possible ways of thmking the same
ears to all intellectual developments of the last thirty years, notably idea bigger, wider, or better under the general heading of "ambience."
(though not necessarily all at once ) feminism, anti-racism, anti­ To get properly beyond postmodernism's pitfalls, genuinely critical
homophobia, deconstruction? Just as the Reagan and Bush administra­ ecocriticism would engage fully with theory. If we consider the nonthe­
tions attempted a re-run of the 1950s, as if the 1 9 60s had never hap­ ological sense of nature, the term collapses into impermanence and his­
pened, so ecocriticism promises to return to an academy of the past. It tory-two ways of saying the same thing. Life-forms are constantly
is a form of postmodern retro. coming and going, mutating and becoming extinct. Biospheres and eco­
If ecocritics dislike what I say, however, so will post-structuralists. systems are subj ect to arising and cessation. Living beings do not form
Post-structuralism-criticism that acts as if the 1 9 60s had occurred­ a solid prehistorical, or nonhistorical ground upon which human his­
has its own views of nature, though it may not name it so baldly. It is tory plays. But nature is often wheeled out to adj udicate between what
j ust that these views are supposedly more sophisticated than previous is fleeting and what is substantial and permanent. Nature smoothes
ones. There is still the basic search for something " in between" cate­ over uneven history, making its struggles and sufferings illegible. Given
gories such as subj ect and object, fact and value. There exists a class di­ that much ecocriticism and ecological literature is primitivist, it is ironic
vide between the enjoyment-objects of ecocritical-conservative and that indigenous societies often refer to nature as a shape-shifting trick­
post-structuralist-radical readers. If ecocritics prefer Aldo Leopold's al­ ster rather than as a firm basis. The final word of the history of nature
manac style, complete with cute illustrations, post-structuralists tend to is that nature is history. " Natural beauty, purportedly ahistorical, is at
go for the latest compilation al bum by an ambient techno DJ. It may its core historical." 39
not be Beethoven, but it is still polite at a cocktail party or art opening,
if not more so. Leopold and The Orb are really two sides of the same What Is Nature For ?
coin, according to ecocritique. Whether they are highbrow or middle­
brow, installation or pastoral symphony, artworks exhibit what I call Ecology without Nature starts as a detailed examination of how art
ecomimesisJ a rhetorical form described in detail in Chapter 1, and ex- represents the environment. This helps us to see that "nature " is an ar-
22 . Ecology without Nature Intro duction . 23

bitrary rhetorical construct, empty of independent, genuine existence art and nature, the new secular churches in which subject and object
behind or beyond the texts we create about it. The rhetoric of nature can be remarried.42
depends upon something I define as an ambient poetics, a way of con­ This all depends upon whether subj ect and object ever had a rela­
j uring up a sense of a surrounding atmosphere or world. My argument tionship in the first place; and indeed, upon whether there are such
follows Angus Fletcher's recent work on an emerging American poetics things as subj ect and object, which leads us to a central knot, the
of the environment.4o His suggestive idea that the long, sinuous lines in problem posed by some forms of utopian environmental art. If subject
Whitman and his descendants establish ways of reaching out toward and object do not really exist, then why bother trying to reconcile
and going beyond horizons, and of creating an open-ended idea of na­ them ? Or, if they do exist, why would some fresh amalgamation of the
ture, is a valuable account of a specific form of poetics. I associate it, as pair be better than what we have now? Would this amalgamation look
he does, with developments in postmodern and de constructive any different than the subject-object dualism that concerns us ? If the
thinking. I am, however, less confident than Fletcher of the utopian solution to subject-object dualism were as easy as changing our minds,
value of this poetics. then why have countless texts seeking to do exactly that not done so al­
In Chapter 2, we see that this poetics has its own history and that ready? If the solution is some sense of an environment, then what pre­
people have invested various ideological meanings in it, over time. cisely is it if it is not " around" anything? Will it not tend to collapse ei­
When we historicize ambient poetics, we find out that this, too, is de­ ther into a subj ect or an object?
void of any intrinsic existence or value. Some contemporary artists use There are at least two ways of looking at these irksome questions.
am bient poetics to rise above what they see as the kitsch quality of The first examines the idea that we need to "change our minds." In­
other forms of natural representation. But in so doing, they ignore the stead of looking for a solution to the subj ect-object problem, a more
ideological qualities of the rhetoric they are using. They risk creating paradoxical strategy is in order. It questions what is problematic a bout
j ust a "new and improved " version of the kitsch they were trying to es­ the problem itself. If, at bottom, there is no problem-if reality is in­
cape. The history of ambient poetics depends upon certain forms of deed devoid of reified, rigid, or conceptual notions of subj ect and ob­
identity and subjectivity, which Chapter 2 also discovers to be histor­ ject, and we coexist in an infinite web of mutual interdependence where
ical. Chapter 3 goes still further. Rather than resting in historicization, there is no boundary or center-why then do we need to make all this
we should begin to politicize environmental art, which means begin­ ecocritical fuss ? Surely therefore, the fuss is like scratching an itch that
ning to become less blind to its operations. We ourselves must not ven­ doesn't exist-thereby bringing it into existence. In which case, one of
ture formulating a "new and improved " version of environmental art. the targets of genuine critique would be the very (eco)critical lan­
This will involve us in some paradoxes. For example, since there is no guages-the constant elegy for a lost unalienated state, the resort to the
escaping kitsch, the only way to " beat" it is to "join" it. aesthetic dimension (experiential/perceptual ) ra ther than ethical­
The "thing " we call nature becomes, in the Romantic period and af­ political praxis, the appeal to "solutions," often anti-intellectual, and
terward, a way of healing what modern society has damaged.41 Nature so on-which sustain the itch, albeit in a subtle way.
is like that other Romantic-period invention, the aesthetic. The damage The second approach is to wonder whether the problem lies not so
done, goes the argument, has sundered subj ects from objects, so that much " in our heads " as " out there," in social reality. What if, no
human beings are forlornly alienated from their world. Contact with matter what we thought about it, certain features of the dreaded du­
nature, and with the aesthetic, will mend the bridge between subject alism were hardwired into our world ? Ecocritique, in that case, takes
and object. Romanticism saw the broken bridge as a lamentable fact of the cry against dualism at least half seriously. It perceives it to be a
philosophical and social life. Post-Kantian philosophy-Schelling and symptom of a malaise that was not an idea in our heads, but an ideo­
Hegel in Germany, Coleridge in England-often wishes for reconcilia­ logical feature of the way in which the world operates.
tion of subject and object. If they met under the right circumstances, Ecocritique is indeed critique; but it is also "eco." My aim is not to
they would hit it off. Subject and obj ect require a certain environment poke fun at hopeless attempts to join together what could never be torn
in which they can join up together. Thus is born the special realms of asunder, or to supplant ecological thinking with a hipper form of belief,
24 . Ecology without Nature Introduction • 25

a nihilistic creed that anything goes. The aim is to strengthen environ­ ronment and the aesthetic. No wonder Marcuse thinks of the aesthetic
mentalism. Appealing to nature still has a powerful rhetorical effect. In as a " dimension." He writes: "Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible
the short term, relatively speaking, nature still has some force. But en­ to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and
vironmentalism cannot be in the game just for the short term. And that things no longer stand under the law of the established reality prin­
nature remains an effective slogan is a symptom of how far we have not ciple."46 Dimension, like the aesthetic itself, sits somewhere between an
come, not of how far we have. objective notion (in mathematics, for instance) and a subjective experi­
"Ecology without nature " could mean "ecology without a concept of ence. Many of the writers this study encounters treat the aesthetic and
the natural." Thinking, when it becomes ideological, tends to fixate on nature as if they comprised a single, unified dimension. But even if there
concepts rather than doing what is "natural " to thought, namely, dis­ were more than one dimension, this would not solve the problems of
solving whatever has taken form. Ecological thinking that was not fix­ this intrinsically spatial way of thinking. No matter how many there
ated, that did not stop at a particular concretization of its object, would are, a dimension is something we are in-or not-and this assumes a
thus be "without nature." To do ecocritique, we must consider the aes­ dichotomy between inside and outside, the very thing that has yet to be
thetic dimension, for the aesthetic has been posited as a nonconceptual established.
realm, a place where our ideas about things drop away. For Adorno, Adorno is more hesitant than Marcuse. For him, the aesthetic help­
"The iridescence that emanates from artworks, which today taboo all fully distances us from something we have a tendency to destroy when
affirmation, is the appearance of the affirmative ineffabile, the emer­ we get close to it:
gence of the nonexisting as if it did exist."43 Art gives what is noncon­
ceptual an illusive appearance of form. This is the aim of environ­ The distance of the aesthetic realm from that of practical aims appears
mental literature: to encapsulate a utopian image of nature which does inner-aesthetically as the distance of aesthetic objects from the o bserving
subject; just as artworks cannot intervene, the subject cannot intervene in
not really exist-we have destroyed it; which goes beyond our concep­
them; distance is the primary condition for any closeness to the content of
tual grasp. On the other hand, a nonconceptual image can be a com­ works. This is implicit in Kant's concept of a bsence of interest, which de­
pelling focus for an intensely conceptual system-an ideological mands of aesthetic comportment that it not grasp at the object, not de­
system. The dense meaninglessness of nature writing can exert a gravi­ vour it.47
tational pull.
The aesthetic is also a product of distance: of human beings from na­ In this way, the aesthetic promotes nonviolence toward nature. Art is
ture, of subjects from objects, of mind from matter. Is it not rather sus­ not so much a space of positive qualities (eros), but of negative ones: it
piciously anti-ecological ? This is a matter for debate in the Frankfurt stops us from destroying things, if only for a moment. For Benjamin, on
School. Benj amin's famous description of the aesthetic aura does indeed the other hand, the aesthetic, in its distancing, alienates us from the
use an environmental image.44 Herbert Marcuse claims that "The aes­ world. What we need is some kind of anti-aesthetic strategy. Benj amin
thetic universe is the Lebenswelt on which the needs and faculties of finds a model for this in the age of technical reproducibility, where we
freedom depend for their liberation. They cannot develop in an envi­ can download MP3s of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, or distribute
ronment shaped by and for aggressive impulses, nor can they be envis­ photocopies of a landscape painting.48
aged as the mere effect of a new set of social institutions. They can It is still uncertain whether the aesthetic is something we should
emerge only in the collective practice of creating an environment. "45 shun, in the name of generating a liberating ecological artistic practice,
Art could help . ecology by modeling an environment based on love or whether it is an inevitable fact of life that reappears in ever-subtler
(eros) rather than death (thanatos)-as is the current technological­ guises j ust as we think we have given it the slip. We could claim that
industrial world, according to Marcuse. Marcuse uses Lebenswelt (life­ there is a difference between the aesthetic and aestheticization.49 But
world), a term developed in phenomenology out of Romanticism's con­ this is rather Romantic. It brings to mind the notion of a " good" aes­
struction of worlds and environments that situate the thinking mind. As thetic and a " bad" one. The first is good because it resists becoming ob­
we shall see in Chapter 2, this line of enquiry linked together the envi- jectified or turned into a commodity, if only because it ironically inter-
26 . Ecology without Nature Introduction . 27

nalizes the commodification process. My final chapter (Chapter 3) does further, that this idea is one of the illusions that the signifying system
not entirely escape this Romantic distinction. enables and sustains . Virtual reality and the ecological emergency point
A consideration of the aesthetic is vital, since the aesthetic inter­ out the hard truth that we never had this position in the first place.
twines with the idea of a surrounding environment or world. The idea Slavoj Z izek has pointed out the salutary effect that this has, at least
of a "good" aesthetic is based on the notion that there is some intrinsic when it comes to thinking about virtual reality. n We are now com­
.

goodness in perception, neither captured nor perverted by the aestheti­ pelled to achieve ways of sorting things out without the safety net of
cization process. In some sense this must be true! Otherwise it would be distance, ways that are linked to ways of sorting things out ethically
well nigh impossible to see the cracks in anyone's aesthetic edifice, no and politically.
clean eyes with which to see that the emperor has no clothes. Ecocri­ We are losing touch with a nonexistent measuring stick. One of the
tique is loath to give this clarity a name, for fear that it becomes an­ symptoms of this is the corrosive effect of thinking about "how far in"
other blinding art-religion. Despite the appearance of his acid nega­ to virtual reality or the ecological emergency we have "gone " -is the ca­
tivity, Adorno is really a Romantic, because he thinks that things could tastrophe imminent, or are we already "inside " it? The very worry
be different, and that art whispers that this is so-even when shouting about whether we are inside or outside becomes a symptom of how far
it has become politically compromised. Benjamin, on the other hand, inside we have gone-the inside/outside distinction has itself begun to be
seems to be ready to see where specific artistic practices might lead us, corroded by this way of thinking. Not only that, but the illusory mea­
despite his opposition to the aesthetic aura. So he is another kind of Ro­ suring stick, in the shape of modern modes of discovery, technology,
mantic, an experimental, constructivist sort who sees the aesthetic not and categorization, appears to have been partially responsible for im­
as an explicit agenda but as a political " boot-up disk."sO It appears that mersing us in toxic panic. Quantum-theory utopianism-Hey look! My
even at its metacritical level, this study is caught within the Romanti­ mind can influence matterl-is just the upside of an all-too-true embed­
cism it is trying to describe. It remains to be seen whether there are dedness of dominating mind in dominated world. The idea that we
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in Romantic cannot extricate ourselves, far from providing a necessarily blissful nar­
ecology. cissistic experience, also induces a terrifying loss of bearings. "Read it in
the papers / You hear it in the news / Very few listen / A spew
without a view" (Public Image Limited, "Don't Ask Me " ).52
You Gotta Get into It if You Wanna Get out of It
The idea of drowning in an epistemological sea, as toxic as the
Ecological culture is supposed to be soft and organic, old-fashioned and mercury-filled physical one, is more than unpleasant. Are we thus con­
kitschy, while technoculture is hard, cool, and electronic. But there are demned to insanity ? Romantic art, with its engagement with immersion
surprising connections between the imminent ecological catastrophe and the strange thing called nature, can give us some clues . The func­
and the emergence of virtual reality. The connections concern not con­ tion of Romantic irony is to show how far the narrator, who is thought
tent but form, and they open up questions of epistemology-how can to sit sideways to his or her narrative, is actually dissolved in it, part of
we know that we know, and how can we verify what we know? Both it, indistinguishable from it. Since we are still within the Romantic pe­
virtual reality and the ecological panic are about immersive experiences riod in a number of very significant ways, as this book demonstrates, it
in which our usual reference point, or illusion of one, has been lost. Old is highly appropriate that we consider how Romantic poetics tackled
ways of thinking, we tell ourselves, are not to be trusted. They helped ideas of immersion.
to get us into this mess in the first place. In virtual reality it becomes im­ The so-called ecological crisis, which is also a crisis of reason, has the
possible to count on an idea of " distance." We feel that can't achieve a urgency of being about our physical survival. If it were just a matter of
critical purchase, but are instead about to be dissolved into a psychotic virtual reality, we could imagine that at least we would remain alive,
aquarium of hallucinatory un-being. Part of the panic is the coming to psychotic but alive, in the worst case scenario. When the immersive
terms with the idea that "there is no metalanguage " -that there is world is also toxic-when it is not actually just a matter of phenomena
nowhere outside a signifying system from which to pronounce upon it; appearing on a screen, but of chemicals penetrating our cells-the
28 . Ecology without Nature

stakes get higher. None of this is remotely funny, or just an intellectual

� C H A P T E R ON E
exercise. The disorientation of virtual reality-wondering how far im­
mersed we have become in a world with no metalanguage-is as
nothing compared with the disorientation of global warming-exactly
the same wondering, with extra added death and destruction. The al­ The Art of Environmental Language
ready existing ecological emergency resembles the anxiety about virtual
reality-that we will be drowned in a psychotic soup where we won't "I Can-'t Believe It Isn-'t Nature! -'-'
be able to tell one thing from another-only it also involves the possi­
bility of our own death. It is very hard to get used to the idea that the As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
catastrophe, far from being imminent, has already taken place.
saffron,
More haste, less speed. This is the ideal moment for us to slow down
as Derrida encouraged us to do, and not act (out), but instead to read and as you read, many gods
lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian
the linkage between an apparently technocultural-aesthetic issue and an
are watching the generations of leaves,
apparently wet and organic one. This book will take the injunction to
hurry up and do nothing seriously. Exploring the aesthetics of this and as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
frightening and seductive immersion will be how it works its way out of turning
the maze. Instead of talking about content-software and wetware-I its dark pages.
explore the realm of fOrln. This is not by any means because I think that - D EN I S E L E V E R T O V,
"
TO THE READER
"

there are, or ever were, purely aesthetic solutions to our social and po­
litical problems. It is more that the very act of scrutinizing the aesthetics
of the issue at hand encourages the beginnings of a critical view. This is As I write this, I am sitting on the seashore. The gentle sound of waves
an argument about close reading, which has always tried to be both up lapping against my deck chair coincides with the sound of my fingers
close, and distant, at the same time. At a subtle level, it may be impos­ typing away at the laptop. Overhead the cry of a gull pierces the twilit
sible to forget the aesthetic dimension altogether, and in that sense, my sky, conjuring up a sensation of distance. The smoke trail of an ocean
approach is a kind of aesthetic solution! liner disappears over the far horizon. The surrounding air is moist and
Teasing out just how paradoxical this is will become one of the smells of seaweed. The crackle of pebbles on the shore as the waves roll
book's testing problems as it tries to maintain the appropriate degree of in reminds me of England, summer holidays on stony beaches.
slow reading. Distance and proximity are aestheticized terms. They No-that was pure fiction; just a tease. As I write this, a western
imply a perceiving subject and a perceived object. They are part of Im­ scrub jay is chattering outside my window, harmonizing with the quiet
manuel Kant's language of aesthetics-in order to have aesthetic appre­ scratch of my pen on this piece of paper. The sound of Debussy's Trio
ciation, you have to have an appropriate distance toward the aesthetic for Flute, Viola, and Harp falls gently around me from the speakers in
"thing."53 We keep hearing that we can no longer j ust sit back and be the living room. The coolness of the air conditioning suggests the
spectators when it comes to the environmental events around us. The blazing heat of the Californian afternoon. A crop-spraying plane buzzes
original advertising of virtual reality was an incitement to get into it low overhead.
and dissolve our boundaries. I am banking on the idea that shedding That was also just fiction. What's really happening as I write this : a
some critical light on ideas of distance and proximity will be of help. So digital camera is resting silently on a copy of an anthology of Romantic
let us begin by examining some artistic forms that play with these poetry. The sound of Ligeti fills the headphones, chiming with a signal
terms, whether they are explicitly "environmental " or not. from the dishwashing machine. The smell of sweet pea-scented bubble
bath seems artificial in comparison to the aroma of freshly mowed grass
outside the window. An ant crawls down my computer screen.