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Best regards, Andrew Stewart - - - Subscribe to the Washington Babylon newsletter via https://washingtonbabylon.com/newsletter/ Begin forwarded message: > From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-rev...@lists.h-net.org> > Date: May 1, 2020 at 2:08:29 PM EDT > To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > Cc: H-Net Staff <revh...@mail.h-net.org> > Subject: H-Net Review [H-Environment]: Kredell on Seymour, 'Bad > Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age' > Reply-To: h-rev...@lists.h-net.org > > Nicole Seymour. Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the > Ecological Age. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 2018. > 316 pp. $26.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-5179-0389-3. > > Reviewed by Jack Kredell (University of Idaho) > Published on H-Environment (May, 2020) > Commissioned by Daniella McCahey > > Mainstream Western environmental culture--_March of the Penguins_ > (2005), Sierra Club ad campaigns, Al Gore's _An Inconvenient Truth_ > (2006), _National Geographic Explorer_ (2015) and _Hostile Planet_ > (2019), the BBC's _Planet Earth_ (2006) and _Blue Planet_ (2001) > series, Netflix's _Our Planet_ (2019)--has a tendency to operate from > a position of moral and intellectual superiority, reinforced by > definitions of the more-than-human environment that tend to be > spatially "superior" as well--pristine geographies that select for > wild plants and animals but which exclude our messy urban and > suburban environments. Almost universally, these Western > environmentalist works rely on "serious" affective attitudes and > appeals--doom and gloom, guilt, shame, awe, wonder, reverence, > sanctimony, self-righteousness, sentimentality, expertise--that > reflect a discourse of moral, aesthetic, and even racial purity. In > response, Nicole Seymour's _Bad Environmentalism: Irony and > Irreverence in the Ecological Age_ offers its archive of "bad > environmentalism" to help dismantle the affective and ideological > barriers that situate the environment as our sanctified, unfunny, > nonhuman Other, one whose moral, ethical, and aesthetic standards we > fail to live up to (even as we threaten to destroy it). > > Seymour's _Bad Environmentalism_ belongs to a growing body of > ecocritical scholarship that analyzes the cultural production of > environmental affect and sensibility. Foundational to that > scholarship is the belief that a comprehensive and discursive > understanding of environmental affect can lead to a more ethical > engagement with the nonhuman world. However, the prescriptivist bent > of environmentalist discourse, with its arsenal of high-minded, > moralizing affects and sensibilities, is precisely how _Bad > Environmentalism_ wants us to break bad. With sources from "low" mass > culture, literary satire (Percival Everett, Sherman Alexie, and > Edward Abbey's _The Monkey Wrench Gang__ _[1975]), and the artistic > avant-garde (Isabella Rossellini's _Green Porno_ [2008], Shawna > Dempsey and Lori Millan's performance art project _The Lesbian > National Park Service_ [1997], and _Goodbye Gauley Mountain_ [2013]), > "bad environmentalism" is a socially and culturally diverse group of > environmental texts that employ non-serious affective modes and > behaviors, such as irony, pastiche, absurdity, camp, and playfulness. > By addressing the environment and environmentalism with irony and > irreverence, claims Seymour, "the works in my archive undercut public > negativity toward activism while also questioning basic environmental > assumptions: that reverence is required for ethical relations to the > nonhuman, that knowledge is key to fighting problems like climate > change" (p. 5). Importantly for Seymour, reflexive and non-serious > techniques challenge cultural assumptions about environmentalism > while simultaneously offering more enjoyable and relatable forms of > environmental affect and engagement through humor, obscenity, > disgust, and even arousal. Here we must take Seymour's > non-seriousness seriously in terms of its ethical departure from the > ideology of mainstream environmentalism: the notion of a reverential > environmentalism only reinforces the affective split or barrier > between, on the one hand, nature as the distant, suffering, and > sympathetic Other; and on the other, the near and all-to-familiar > thing in which our bodies--obscenely and toxically--are always > already enmeshed and at stake. _Bad Environmentalism_ is an attempt > to reach out across that barrier. Solidarity rather than knowledge > becomes key to fighting climate change. > > In addition to its critique of normative environmental attitudes, > Seymour's project doubles as a meta-critique of environmental > humanities scholarship and its "tendency to reproduce the same > dominant affect and sensibilities found in mainstream > environmentalism, and to judge artworks primarily by their > functionality" (p. 7). For this reason, Seymour's archive can be > appreciated on its own terms as both a scholarly resource and a > pragmatic workaround to the discipline's tendency of reproducing > those same authors--John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, > Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, and Terry Tempest Williams--in whom we > encounter those same dominant sensibilities and perspectives. As > unusual and shocking--or just as likely, obvious--as these texts may > seem to scholars in the field of ecocriticism, the "bad" archive > offers a much-needed challenge to the ruling scholarly paradigm and > its definition of a valid environmental text. > > _Bad Environmentalism_ is a provocative contribution to the field of > affective ecocriticism that, I believe, represents a decisive break > from the prescriptivism inherent to the empiricist and cognitive > approaches most recently exemplified by Alexa Weik von Mossner's > _Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative_ > (2018). Rather than a quest for correct or corrective affect, _Bad > Environmentalism_ and bad environmentalism together "offer a > different way to do politics, one that is both messy and pragmatic" > (p. 232). Yet while Seymour's text has gone bad in relation to the > general sweep of the field's affective turn, it remains to be seen if > Bad Environmentalism's turn to popular culture--a move all too common > within academic scholarship of belatedly discovering value in mass > culture only to immediately overvalue it--is actually generative in > terms of radical politics and perspectives. The deeper question > remains for affective-based theoretical approaches, even more radical > ones such as Seymour's, of whether sociopolitical systems can be > challenged by displacing their conflicts to the realms of culture and > individual subjectivity. > > Citation: Jack Kredell. Review of Seymour, Nicole, _Bad > Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age_. > H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. May, 2020. > URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54748 > > This work is licensed under a Creative Commons > Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States > License. > > _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
