Avenging Nature: A Survey of the Role of Nature in Modern and Contemporary Art and Literature

Editors: Eduardo Valls Oyarzun, Rebeca Gualberto Valverde, Noelia Malla
García, María Colom Jiménez and Rebeca Cordero Sánchez.

CALL FOR PAPERS
At the dawn of ‘ecocriticism’ as a discipline of study within the Humanities,
Glotfelty and Fromm (1996), in the first general reader in the matter, defined it
as the critical practice that examines the relationship between literary and
cultural studies and the natural world. In general terms, during the past two
decades, ecocriticism has denounced the anthropocentric and instrumental
appropriation of nature that has for so long legitimized human exploitation of
the nonhuman world. Exposing the logic of domination that articulates the very
power relationships that both connect and separate human culture and natural
life, recent trends in ecocriticism have raised awareness of the ‘otherisation’ of
nature (Huggan and Tiffin, 2015), pointing out the need of assessing insurgent
discourses that—converging with counter-discourses of race, gender or class—
realize the empowerment of nature from its subaltern position.

But such empowerment of nature first requires that the sundering of human
and nonhuman realms is overcome since, as Kate Rigby explains, only by
regaining “a sense of the inextricability of nature and culture, physis and techne,
earth and artifact—consumption and destruction—would be to move beyond (…)
the arrogance of humanism” (2002, p. 152). Yet, recognizing such inextricable
relationship between human and natural while overcoming the arrogance of
anthropocentrism entails the ecocritical admission that all cultural discourses
are in fact exploitative of nature. Rigby states it clearly while explaining,
“culture constructs the prism through which we know nature” (p. 154). We
comprehend nature when we apprehend the world through language and
representation, but nature precedes and exceeds words; it is therefore “real”
(1992, p. 32) and separated by an abyss from the symbolic networks of culture
that write, master, assign a meaning to and attempt to set nature in order.
From this perspective, culture is not exactly the end of nature as much as it is an
appropriation and colonization of nature. Culture masters, dominates and
instrumentalizes the natural world. However, in a time when the “end of nature”
that Bill McKibben prophesized in 1989 has been certified, when we know for a
fact that it is indeed a different Earth we are living in—because by changing the
climate there is not a corner of the planet that has not been affected by our
actions—the evidence of global ecological endangerment compels the ecocritical
debate to install environmental ethics and concerns at the crux of humanistic
research. The critical enterprise is far from easy though. The argument that
cultural representations of nature establish a relationship of domination and
exploitation of human discourse over nonhuman reality is extendible to the
critical task. As humanist critics, our regard of nature in literary and artistic
representation is instrumental and anthropocentric. But the time has come to
avenge nature—or, at least, to critically probe into nature’s ongoing revenge
against the exploitation of culture.

Nature—a different, humanly modified nature—will remain after the climate
change doomsday. Nature precedes our understanding and its
conceptualization. However, despite the unimaginable damage done, it will also
survive us when the Earth becomes inhabitable for humans. There will be
nature after culture, as there is now a rebellious nature that resists in spite of
culture. And thus, we call for articles that explore insubordinate representations
of nature in modern and contemporary literature and art. We press for the need
to reassess how nature is already, and has been for a while, striking back against
human domination. We call for scholars from the fields of literary studies,
postcolonial studies, art, history, gender and women’s studies, film and media
studies, ethics and philosophy, cultural studies, ethnology and anthropology,
and other related disciplines to join us in this interdisciplinary volume that will
re-examine the intersections of culture and nature in literary and artistic
representations and will point out the insurgence of nature within and outside
of culture.

Contributors may wish to explore, among others, the following topics:
 Ecofeminism and gender studies: domination and empowerment
 Postcolonial and transnational representations of nature as
(dis)empowered ‘other’
 Econarratives of subversion and rebellion
 Naturalisation of others and otherisation of nature in literature and art
 Literary and artistic representations of ecocides and ecological crisis
 Post-pastoral literature and the redefinition of the poetics of domination
 Social epistemology and ecology
 Environmental ethics applied to cultural studies
 Globalisation and global ecological imperilment
 Eco-social art and literature
 Post-humanism and ecology
 Ecotopias in literature, film and television
 Insurgent nature and the future of humanity
 Gothic nature and eco-horror in dystopic narratives
 Animal Studies and nonhuman sentience
Please submit article proposals for the volume tentatively titled Avenging
Nature, a Survey of the Role of Nature in Modern Contemporary Art and
Literature by July 1st, 2018. Article proposals should include a title, a 500-
word summary, author’s name, institutional affiliation, email address and a
short biographical note.
Articles will be selected following a blind peer-review process and authors will
be notified by October 1st, 2018. Full articles will be expected by March 1st, 2019. The final book proposal will be submitted for final approval to a top-tier
publishing house which has already shown interest in an international launch of
our volume.

Please send your submission and queries to rgualberto@ucm.es

Works Cited

Glotfelty, Cheryl and Fromm, Harold, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader:
Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press,
1996.
Huggan, Graham and Tiffin, Helen. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature,
Animals, Environment. London and New York: Routledge, 2015.
McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. New York: Random House, 1989, 2006.
Rigby, Kate. “Ecocriticism.” Literary and Cultural Criticism at the TwentyFirst
Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. Pp: 151-178.
Zizek, Slavov. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through
Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.

The French Review of American Studies (RFEA)

CFP – RFEA special issue – early 2020

 

America’s Choice

Greatness and Liberties in Critical States 

 

***

This collection of theme-based papers entitled “America’s Choice: Greatness and Liberties in Critical States”proposes to examine and assess the Trump doctrine “America first: restoring and preserving its greatness” at the mid-term of the Trump administration. We will base our analysis on the results of the November 2018 by-elections and mid-term elections. Based on this data and the study of certain more specific fields, the impact of the organized dismantling of the Voting Rights Act (1965) will be assessed, together with the consequences of the redrawing of the boundaries of certain constituencies. How will the questioning of the right to vote and the readjustment of constituencies—to take account of demographic change—affect turnout, and particularly that of minorities, which is always lower at mid-term than for the presidential election? Will the Republican Party suffer a historic rout? Is it not caught between the omnipresence of the President and the hostility displayed by some of the majority’s elected representatives towards his ultra-nationalistic line and his leadership? What campaign strategy will the Trump administration opt for to enable it to keep hold of its majority in Congress? What conclusions will the Grand Old Party draw from the election results, both nationally and in key states, for the presidential election? Our thematic analysis will also aim to (re-)define and articulate the notions of “greatness” and of “freedom” to determine how Donald Trump’s presidency has revived the threat of social upheaval with the emergence of new modes of citizen protest and engagement (#ProtectTransTroops, #MeToo, #NeverAgain, #MarchForOurLives). To what extent may it be said that the restoration of the greatness of America is achieved to the detriment of the demands and the progress made by certain minority groups? In reviving the blatant strategies of erasure and invisibilisation, Donald Trump’s presidential method inevitably rests on chaos and distraction (Jean-Éric Branaa, Trumpland : Portrait d’une Amérique divisée, p.125), aimed in particular at undermining his predecessor’s political legacy.

The greatness and elevation of the presidential function as embodied by Trump have undeniably been clouded by his refusal to stick to “political correctness” by contravening more or less flagrantly the unifying principles of civil religion. In his official tributes to veterans, Trump constructs his presidential image by alternating barely overdone, respectable dignity and sincerity, and venomous verbal jousting to attack his detractors at the slightest opportunity. John McCain, the Khan family and the widow of the black sergeant David Johnson have all thus incurred Donald Trump’s wrath. His lack of compassion did not go unnoticed either when he threw toilet rolls at the inhabitants of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. The body language used by the president is the subject of numerous comments, particularly on the web, which oscillate between mockery, tension, interrogation and indignation. Contributions in the field of semiology will be particularly welcome.

As an unpredictable, much-parodied president, Trump masters the art of arrogance, staging and hence the strings of “show” politics so as to deliberately become undecodable by anyone resorting to the traditional communication channels used in the different circles of power. By injecting codes borrowed from reality TV (“You’re fired!”) and by his exclusive use of Twitter, he strategically occupies the media stage to dictate the agenda and impose a frenetic pace both on his staff and on journalists. He manages to deny the slowing down of certain reforms by resorting to artificial accelerations to divert attention and does not hesitate to expose himself publicly in dismissing his collaborators, constantly making shock announcements and rejecting outright the accusations he is subjected to in his various “affairs”. Trump tries to pass himself off as a victim of the system through an emotional approach to communication in order to elicit outrage among his followers and thus consolidate his electoral base. To what extent is Trump taking over and reinventing the cult of personality by deliberately lowering himself to the level of the anonymous masses in their relationship to conflict? How have lobbyists adapted to his style of communication so to be able to keep weighing on the political agenda?

There are also bodily issues, latent as they are, that have marked the beginnings of this administration. In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, prominent psychiatrists and psychologists claim that the President may be suffering from mental illness. His mode of government is claimed to be dictated by his impulsiveness, recklessness and paranoia, which are in danger of compromising national and international security. It is in this very specific context that Donald Trump’s critics are attempting to have him pronounced as “mentally unfit” by appealing to the 25^th amendment (section 4) to get him removed from office. This approach is unlikely to succeed, but it has the merit of raising questions about the paradoxical relationship between presidential greatness marked by outrageousness, and the principle of instability and uncertainty (Branaa, p.244).

In their essay How Democracies Die (2018), Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (political scientists and professors at Harvard) warn us about the potential threat posed to American democracy by this presidency, on the basis of a number of identification criteria that they claim corroborate the thesis that Trump is a danger for a whole system. We will cite just two of them: the legitimacy of any opposition (“mutual tolerance”) and the non-respect of democratic norms in the exercise of power (“forbearance”). As regards Robert Mueller’s investigation into suspicions of collusion with Russia and James Comey’s resounding revelations, can the (guilty?)  resistance / silence on the part of the Republican-dominated Congress be accounted for solely by blind opportunism with respect to long-term ideological stakes concerning the republican identity? To what extent has the President’s style of leadership reinvented itself and adapted to the institutional constraints of the system of checks and balances, faced as he is with the predictability of the Congress on the one hand and with the unpredictability of the Supreme Court on the other? It should be noted that the last conservative judge Trump appointed, Neil Gorsuch, clearly opposed the president’s migration policy by joining forces with some of the progressive judges. It should also be remembered that the president has personally engaged in a sensation-seeking crusade against what he calls “fake news”, thereby questioning the freedom of the press and the reliability of journalistic investigations. His untimely accusations against the “committed” media and the two majority parties also demonstrate the president’s difficulty in accepting the criticism and contradiction that lie at the heart of the democratic pact. These all-out attacks are also symptomatic of his presidential style and his hallmark as if he were seeking to destroy bipartisanship. In this context, how then does “greatness” allow the president to show a certain form of authoritarianism or, conversely, how does the greatness of democracy cause him to suffer a number of setbacks? We will try to pay particular attention to the militaristic culture of the South and the way in which the Sovereignty Movement (“the Tenther Movement”) has positioned itself under the Trump presidency through the mediatization of its Southern muses. In this hyper masculine presidency, what place do Melania and Ivanka Trump, the “first two” ladies in the White House, occupy?

In the face of this resurgence of conservatism, contributors should seek to question the durability of the economic and social successes achieved by the President. To what extent has he restored the dignity and freedom of speech of a fringe of his betrayed and weakened voters? The latter have constantly denounced the excesses of capitalism, the moral decadence of society and the untimely meddling of Washington DC. Can any credible political alternatives be envisaged to somehow reconcile a deeply fractured America?

Submissions may include case studies and specific examples or may adopt a comparative approach addressing the following areas:

– Electoral campaigns

– Cultural Studies

– Civil rights and protest movements

– Advocacy / activism

– Free press / media

– Religion(s) and religious freedom

– Democracy and culture wars

– Justice and/or checks and balances

– Regression and/or progress for women’s equality / minority rights

– Feminism and/or women’s quest for power

– Liberalism and economic freedom

– Immigration

– Populism

– White nationalism

– Foreign policy and/or « America first »

Special issue guest editor:

Anthony Castet, Université de Tours

A 500-word abstract in English along with a short biographical notice should be sent to Anthony Castet (anthony.castet@univ-tours.fr) by August 2, 2018.

Notification of acceptance will be given by September 30, 2018.

The selected articles should be turned in by July 1, 2019 and should not exceed 30,000 signs (inclusive of footnotes and spaces). They will then go through the peer-reviewing process before publication (January 2020).

Organizer: Anthony Castet