'Geotrauma and the Eco-clinic: Nature, Violence, and Ideology.' (original) (raw)

Living within Our War on Nature

We ask here: Which world do we live in? Do we inhabit the Wholeness and Tripartite Unity (Pneuma/Nous-Spiritus/Intellectus-Heart, psyche-anima-soul, soma-corpus-body) of Nature? Or do we only inhabit physical sub-corporeal worlds, in which only measurements count? Many people believe, in their lives and work, that only economic growth counts. Thus, in legally authorised and socially myopic duties, at local, national, and global scales, their attention is on maximising short-term profits and long-term economic wealth in various heartless operations within Business-As-Usual. Consequently, in various inattentive ways, many marginalise and externalise coldly the health of people and planet (air, waters, soils, plants, and animals) from their immediate concerns and future considerations. Thus, many of us fail to live Heart-Centred lives, failing to truly LOVE familiar and unfamiliar people, and failing to fully engage with the thriving of life on our precious planet. So, ALL OF US are “on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator” (António Guterres, UN Sec-Gen). Let us go much deeper here in our inquiries: Why are we cascading so madly with various interacting ecological and social crises into TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know It)?

Ecocriticism in an Age of Terror

CLCWeb, 2013

In his article "Ecocriticism in an Age of Terror" Simon C. Estok argues that we cannot ignore the context of terror in and through which ecocriticism works and that the relationships between the imagining of terror on the one hand and of conceptualizing hostile environments on the other is in very serious need of critical analysis. Changes in how we think about nature are also long overdue, as are changes in how we think about doing ecocriticism. Working toward these changes now in our scholarship will take us leaps and bounds closer to the activist intervention about which ecocriticism has always fantasized. The contexts through which ecocriticism work today are much different than they were twenty years ago when ecocriticism made its entrance with such anticipation, hope, naïveté, and optimism. To mainstream ecocritics, theory was out, mimetic realism was in, and the future looked bright and restorable. The anti-climax with which the twentieth century rolled into the twenty-first was only outdone by the terror that blindsided the world and has grown like a cancer to involve many an unwitting accomplice. The "theory" that exploded onto the ecocritical scene in 2009 and brought us the term ecophobia has also radically altered things.