Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis

Climate Change, Subsistence, and Questionable Futures

Patrick D. Murphy

Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis continues Patrick D. Murphy's focus on transversal ecocritical praxis by considering literature and cinema in terms of the persuasive force of aesthetic activity and whether or not artistic production and its criticism can be considered forms of activism. Murphy argues that literature and other forms of aesthetic production hold out the promise of being able to move some individuals deeply through both affective and intellectual engagement in ways that facilitate ideological reflection. To analyze aesthetic production ecocritically requires a transversal orientation in order to work continuously at accommodating a vast array of often seemingly disparate perspectives, disciplines, and contextual information, as well as the ever changing thematic, plot, setting, and contextual elements of the aesthetic works under consideration and the responses of changing audiences through time and across cultures. Murphy demonstrates this approach through presenting theories of transversality and applying them with attention to issues of propaganda, agitation, and persuasion, both in terms of artistic production and the criticism of such production. He also brings an ecofeminist orientation to the fore with particular attention to the gendered economic aspects of environmental issues in an age of land grabs and plantation economies. Along the way he treats a wide range of literary works, films and miniseries. In American literature he discusses realist and science fiction works, from Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours to Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior to Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312, and Ana Castillo's So Far from God to Leslie Marmon Silko's Gardens in the Dunes. In international literature, he analyzes Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads, Jiang Rong's Wolft Totem, Michiko Ishimure's The Lake of Heaven, Miyuki Miyabe's All She Was Worth, and other novels. The book concludes with a reading of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging, an Afterword recommending further directions for transversal ecocritical research an and interview that discusses Murphy's previous book, Transversal Ecocritical Praxis, and provides some personal background on the author.

Lexington Books

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-4985-1483-5 • Hardback • August 2015 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-4985-1484-2 • eBook • August 2015 • $108.00 • (£83.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Nature, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Historical Events

Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis

Climate Change, Subsistence, and Questionable Futures

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis continues Patrick D. Murphy's focus on transversal ecocritical praxis by considering literature and cinema in terms of the persuasive force of aesthetic activity and whether or not artistic production and its criticism can be considered forms of activism. Murphy argues that literature and other forms of aesthetic production hold out the promise of being able to move some individuals deeply through both affective and intellectual engagement in ways that facilitate ideological reflection. To analyze aesthetic production ecocritically requires a transversal orientation in order to work continuously at accommodating a vast array of often seemingly disparate perspectives, disciplines, and contextual information, as well as the ever changing thematic, plot, setting, and contextual elements of the aesthetic works under consideration and the responses of changing audiences through time and across cultures. Murphy demonstrates this approach through presenting theories of transversality and applying them with attention to issues of propaganda, agitation, and persuasion, both in terms of artistic production and the criticism of such production. He also brings an ecofeminist orientation to the fore with particular attention to the gendered economic aspects of environmental issues in an age of land grabs and plantation economies. Along the way he treats a wide range of literary works, films and miniseries. In American literature he discusses realist and science fiction works, from Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours to Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior to Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312, and Ana Castillo's So Far from God to Leslie Marmon Silko's Gardens in the Dunes. In international literature, he analyzes Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads, Jiang Rong's Wolft Totem, Michiko Ishimure's The Lake of Heaven, Miyuki Miyabe's All She Was Worth, and other novels. The book concludes with a reading of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging, an Afterword recommending further directions for transversal ecocritical research an and interview that discusses Murphy's previous book, Transversal Ecocritical Praxis, and provides some personal background on the author.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-4985-1483-5 • Hardback • August 2015 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-4985-1484-2 • eBook • August 2015 • $108.00 • (£83.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Nature, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Historical Events

Author

Patrick D. Murphy is professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Central Florida.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Continuing the Transversal Ecocritical Praxis Project
Chapter One: The Question of Aesthetic Praxis: If Literature and Art are Propaganda, What is Ecocritical Analysis?
Chapter Two: Back to Concerns about the Future: Susan Fenimore Cooper and Rural Hours
Chapter Three: Pessimism, Optimism, Human Inertia and Anthropogenic Climate Change
Chapter Four: Directing the Weather, Producing the Climate
Chapter Five: Buying Agriculture, Selling Starvation and the Failure of Business-as-usual in a Dystopic Future
Chapter Six: Viewing the Far Fields through an Ecofeminist Subsistence Perspective in an Age of Land Grabs
Chapter Seven: From Consumables to Sustenance through an Ecofeminist Sufficiency Reorientation
Chapter Eight: Listening for a Way out Through a Deep Yearning for a Resounding Relationship
Chapter Nine: The Role of Women and Gender Equality in Creating Ecotopia
Afterword: Directions for Future Research
Appendix: Framing the Subject: An Interview by the editors of Frame
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis offers some glimpses of new routes or questions for study, as well as a sizeable range of texts to expand the bibliography of ecocriticism… Murphy makes a strong theoretical case that ecocriticism should take a ranging and self-consciously diversity of approaches.
— Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism