Ecocriticism: From the Wilderness Idea to Just Multispecies Futures
Author(s)
Byrnes, Delia
Date Issued
November 19, 2023
Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of key concepts, movements, and debates from across the terrain of ecocriticism as it relates to social justice. It bends both backward and forward in time to trace the field's emergence in colonial imaginations of wilderness, through to its present engagements with Indigenous futurisms, new materialism, and multispecies justice. The discussion is especially attuned to the ways that authors and critics from marginalized communities theorize the relationship between humans and environment while also challenging Enlightenment ideals of the liberal Western subject who is detached from the nonhuman world. Organized around the three interconnected analytics of settler colonialism and "the trouble with wilderness"; apocalypticism as a site of both terror and renewal; and human-nonhuman entanglement and multispecies justice, the chapter fleshes out connections to Indigenous and Black studies, postcolonialism, and the ongoing legacies of neoliberal globalization.
Journal
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Social Justice
Department
Environmental Science and Sustainability
Citation
Raja, M.A., & Lu, N.T.C. (Eds.). (2023). The Routledge Companion to Literature and Social Justice (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003246428
Publisher
Routledge
Version of Article
Published version
DOI
10.4324/9781003246428-11
Rights
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Masood Ashraf Raja and Nick T. C. Lu; individual chapters, the contributors