Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination
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Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination
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| ISBN-13: | 9780252094873 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 232 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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STRANGE NATURES
Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination
By NICOLE SEYMOUR
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2013 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09487-3
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Introduction Locating Queer Ecologies
[E]nvironmentalism and queer politics seldom seem to intersect. This dislocation rests on a narrow association of ecology with visible landscapes and sexuality with visible bodies bounded by skin. In the pages of journals, as in popular culture, attractions may range far afield, but the field itself merely offers a place to suffer or to frolic, a simple backdrop for the playing out of sexual politics.
—Kath Weston, "A Political Ecology of 'Unnatural Offences'"
The task of a queer ecology is to probe the intersections of sex and nature with an eye to developing a sexual politics that more clearly includes considerations of the natural world and its biosocial constitution, and an environmental politics that demonstrates an understanding of the ways in which sexual relations organize and influence both the material world of nature and our perceptions, experiences, and constitutions of that world.
—Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire
Strange Natures identifies a tradition of queer environmentalism in contemporary fictions: I find that novels and films generally categorized as queer—including Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues (1993), Todd Haynes's Safe (1995), Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Shelley Jackson's Half Life (2006)—explicitly link the queer to the natural world through an empathetic, ethical imagination. These works understand oppressed humans (including working-class individuals and people of color, in addition to queers) and oppressed non-humans (degraded landscapes, threatened natural resources, and other flora and fauna) to be deeply interconnected, and they promote politicized advocacy on behalf of both. My focus on contemporary work from the Americas is crucial to my intervention in the emerging paradigm known as "queer ecology": I maintain that the ecological stances of the works I treat here are striking precisely because of the contexts from which they emerge—including postmodernism, poststructuralism, and the "post-identity" era—and precisely because they are so self-consciously queer. That is to say, these works manage to conceive of concrete, sincere environmental politics even while remaining, to varying degrees, skeptical, ironic, and self-reflexive. And they do so even while, as I detail below, queer fictions and theory are known for their cynicism, apoliticism, and negativity, such that "queer environmentalism" sounds like an oxymoron.
My readings thus make a unique contribution to the queer-ecology paradigm, while taking up what Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson define in the second epigraph of this chapter as its general task. More broadly, these readings perform what David Mazel calls poststructuralist ecocriticism: "a way of reading environmental literature and canonical landscapes ... that attends concurrently to the discursive construction of both ... environment and ... subjectivity" and that analyzes environment "as a powerful site for naturalizing constructs of race, class, nationality, and gender" (American Literary Environmentalism xxi). In rereading contemporary queer literature and film as environmental literature and film, I add "sexuality" and "gender identity" to Mazel's list of dominant identity constructs. And I show that the environment can function as a site not just for establishing such constructs, but for challenging them.
This book draws on the insights and methodologies of queer theory and ecocriticism—as well as on critical race theory, environmental and social-justice studies, feminist theory, transgender studies, and areas of philosophy such as environmental ethics. Mine is not an arbitrary attempt to join together the already diverse and already interdisciplinary fields of queer theory and ecocriticism: these fields are known for focusing on the concept of nature. But they have historically done so in very different ways, ways that suggest that the "naturalness" of a category such as heterosexuality is largely unrelated to the "naturalness" of a category such as wilderness. "Natural" has actually become something of a dirty word in queer theory, as I outline below, though one that it seems unable to do without. One of Strange Natures's major projects is challenging this conceptual disconnect. I show that contemporary queer fictions ask the question, "What counts as 'natural'—and why?" in regard to both gender/sexuality and environment—as well as race, immigration status, health status, ability, and class—and that they do so in a way that illuminates the imbrication of those categories. In what follows, I offer a genealogy of this book's iteration of queer ecology. I specify how I intervene in, and draw on, queer theory and ecocriticism—thereby suggesting that queer ecology exists not only to provide a new lens, but to make use of the gaps in and overlaps among existing lenses. I also specify what Strange Natures offers more broadly as a scholarly work: not just a reconceptualization of the human relationship to the non-human natural world, but a reassessment of how we draw critical-theoretical boundaries.
Queer Theory and Ecocriticism: An Unnatural Union?
Queer Theory
Queer theory and its (arguable) precursor, gay and lesbian studies, have long wrestled with the concept of the natural. Jeffrey Weeks's Against Nature: Essays on History, Sexuality, and Identity (1991) is a prominent early example, and one worth considering here in some depth. Weeks nicely summarizes the stalemate at which nature-versus-nurture debates arrive, noting that "the textbooks used to tell us that homosexuality was unnatural. Lesbians and gay men, on the contrary, assert that homosexuality is natural. Who is to tell us which of these two 'truths' is true?" (88). He seeks to step out of the stalemate by historicizing sexuality, as have other theorists, such as Michel Foucault and Eve K. Sedgwick. First, Weeks declares that "sexuality in general, and homosexuality in particular, has been shaped in a complex, and ever changing history over the past hundred years. At the centre of that history has been the making of sexual identities—identities we so readily take for granted now as rooted in nature, but which in fact have a variety of determinable sources and points of origin" (vii). He then goes on to maintain that "lesbian and gay history has led the way in challenging the conventional view that sex is a private, unchanging, 'natural' phenomenon" (89, my emphasis); that "what we should use history for is to ... try to see whether what we assume is natural is not in fact social and historical" (91, my emphasis); and that "identity is not inborn, pregiven, or 'natural'" (94, my emphasis).
Some curious things have happened to "nature" in these discussions. For one, the concept of nature itself, rather than the dehistoricizing and discriminatory processes of naturalization, has come under fire. "Nature" thus starts to look like something that can function only oppressively—or, at best, naively; it is rendered monolithic even as it is decried for being farcical. For another, Weeks makes strange bedfellows of an anti-discriminatory, anti-essentialist, historicist position, and a discriminatory, homophobic one; both positions agree that queerness is "against nature." Of course, they agree for different reasons. And, of course, Weeks has nothing like anti-gay discrimination as his goal. But we might object to the undertheorization and underhistoricization of "nature," in comparison to the theorization and historicization of "sex." We might object, further, to how Weeks's foundational work speaks from a poststructuralist stance to create an antipathy between "the queer" and "the natural" that potentially exacerbates the antipathy already engendered by the dominant culture. (And all this despite the fact that, as Weeks acknowledges, "lesbians and gay men" have deployed the concept of nature to combat oppression.) We might then say that "nature" occupies a particularly strange position within queer theory: both abhorred and needed, as a kind of conceptual whipping boy.
It is in fact striking how regularly queer scholarship targets designations of "nature" and the "natural" while failing to theorize or contextualize the terms themselves; to acknowledge that the terms have multiple meanings, not all of which apply to the human or the social; or to acknowledge what the rejection thereof might mean for nature qua the non-human world. Indeed, at times "nature" or "natural" function in queer theory as synonyms for heteronormativity or political conservativism, while at other times they are benign synonyms for something like "character" or "status." Consider, for example, that one of Weeks's other stated aims is "to show that sexual identities are historical in nature" (viii, my emphasis)—while, above, "historical" was his antonym for "natural." Weeks's work is not unique in this regard; consider José Esteban Muñoz's reference to "the relational and contingent nature of sexuality" ("Thinking Beyond" 825, my emphasis). To be fair, both theorists seem to mean something like "status" here. Moreover, "nature" is one of the most elastic words in the English language; one could make the case that if such theorists sometimes mean "nature" as in "essence" at some points, and "nature" as in "status" at others, then they might very well talk about nature in respect to the human without implying, or being expected to imply, anything about nature in respect to the non-human. But what I show throughout this book is that such divisions are disingenuous, as the two are always co-implicated. If "nature" is the foundational point of departure for queer theory, then, it is a departure that has left much to be resolved.
The texts in my archive, and this book itself, heed this call. Rather than simply ignoring the fact that the same concept that applies to human sexualities and gender identities also applies to the non-human world, they approach that overlapping application head-on. But they refuse to collapse "nature" qua the threatened natural world into "nature" qua the threats of heteronormativity and homophobia. Instead, these texts and this book consider that queerness might be progressively articulated through "the natural" more broadly, or the non-human world more specifically. For instance, in Chapter 4 I show how Brokeback Mountain frames wilderness and the queer human as equally threatened by capitalist domestication, and develops in response a portrait of anti-domestic, non-urban queer living. Through such depictions, the texts in my archive imply that it is a mistake, rather than a radical provocation, for queers to embrace the charge of "unnaturalness" and align themselves with culture, against nature. And they suggest that it is a tragedy to allow queer criticism of "the natural" to render us silent, or even scornful, about the natural qua the non-human world.
This is not to suggest that the texts in my archive embrace "nature" or "the natural" unreservedly. They interrogate these concepts, but they do so very carefully. And with good reason: there is much more at risk for queers than for heterosexuals and other dominant groups in calling into question the naturalness of sexual, gender, or other types of identity. While these texts agree that ideas of nature are constructed, they take aim less at "nature" than at the processes of construction. They suggest that, while it may not be possible to escape altogether the construction of some things as natural and some as unnatural, it might at least be possible to combat the kinds of naturalizations and denaturalizations that enable exploitation and discrimination, or that deny the complexities of humans and non-humans. My archive thus engages, as does this book on the whole, with the question posed by Mei Mei Evans: "When it is said that women are 'by nature' maternal ... or that it is 'unnatural' for people of the same gender to be sexually attracted to one another"—or, I would add, when queer theorists say that sexual and gender identities are not "natural"—"what role is being assigned to [nonhuman] nature? ... What is at stake for these groups of human beings, and what is at stake for nature [the non-human] itself?" (184).
In addition to queer theory's general disdain for the "natural," its so-called negative turn—including the "anti-social thesis"—has worked against the development of queer ecological stances. A 2005 PMLA roundtable article on the anti-social thesis paints a picture of a hostile climate for queer ecology—and, ironically, of the need for just such a perspective. The MLA panel that prompted the PMLA article traced the anti-social thesis to Leo Bersani, who has outlined a concept of queer sexuality as "self-shattering" in essays such as "Is the Rectum a Grave?" and argued that "homo-ness" represents "a potentially revolutionary inaptitude—perhaps inherent in gay desire—for sociality as it is known" (as quoted by Caserio 819). Theorists such as Edelman and Michael Warner have extended Bersani's ideas in order to critique mainstream gay bids at respectability, such as same-sex marriage, and in order to highlight queer forms of existence that do not seek to reproduce the dominant social order. Similar to Weeks's ironic embrace of the "against nature" designation, these theorists have celebrated the charge of anti-sociality and reclaimed concepts such as "failure" and "shame." However, like the aforementioned embrace, these recent moves leave the queer at a curious impasse: as Tim Dean argues in the PMLA article, "the antisocial thesis originates not in queer theory but in right-wing fantasies about how 'the homosexual agenda' undermines the social fabric" (826). Again, though the motive of the queer theorist and the right-winger may differ, their messages and potential effects are troublingly similar.
One could imagine, however, that these concepts of self-shattering and anti-sociality might open out onto something else entirely, such as queer interest in the natural world. After all, a measure of self-renunciation and antisociality is central to many if not most forms of environmentalism, including ecocriticism; the renunciation of anthropocentrism and the adoption of biocentric or ecocentric viewpoints are veritable prerequisites for participation in either. In fact, as I discuss in Chapter 3, some radical environmentalists, such as those associated with deep ecology and ecoanarchism, abhor humanism and humans themselves. I take serious issue with ecological misanthropy in that chapter, and I believe, along with ecophilosopher Patrick Curry, that humanism can be rehabilitated for ecological purposes—as he argues, "humanism ... has strong roots in Montaigne, and later Voltaire, Bentham and Mill, for whom it implied almost the opposite of its modern meaning: the need to be humane, including but extending beyond humanity, in order to be fully human" (54). But the point nonetheless remains: if queerness is anti-social, might radical environmentalists' targeting of society as we know it—say, through tree-sitting, tree-spiking, or destroying fast-food restaurants—not be the anti-social move de résistance? And if even mainstream environmentalist groups ask us to put the ecosystem ahead of individual human desires, might environmentalism as an impulse then be queer at its very core? At the very least, if queer theorists are interested in "[a]pproaching the humanities without any need to preserve the subject of humanism" (Edelman, "Antagonism" 822), might they not find something in common with figures such as author/environmental activist Edward Abbey, who lamented the fact that "in the classicist view only the human is regarded as significant or even recognized as real" (as quoted in McKibben 177)? But such elaborations of the anti-social thesis have not happened. Many who promulgate it have, arguably, devolved into nihilism, or, at least, "cast[ing] material political concerns as crude and pedestrian" (Halberstam, "The Politics of Negativity" 824). Among other things, such thinkers thereby leave the health and future of the planet looking like a frivolous concern.
(Continues...)
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