Deconstructive ecocriticism

pp. 13-52

in: Meliz Ergin, The ecopoetics of entanglement in contemporary Turkish and American literatures, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter proposes advancing a mode of ecocritical thought free of any transcendental notion of nature, and explores the distinction between nature writing and ecological literature by highlighting the contrast between the Romantic and the revised sublime. Ergin argues that contemporary eco-narratives focus on the revised sublime to present a complex view of natural-social entanglements in light of the new scale of the capitalist-industrialist system and technology. She then turns to Derrida's work to foreground entanglement as a key concept in deconstruction and to rethink its benefits for ecocritical thought. Ergin introduces the notion of "ecological text" to emphasize textuality as a form of entanglement that proves useful in thinking about ecological interdependence and uncertainty. This chapter advances an improved understanding of the ethics of complicity and responsibility by articulating our embeddedness in the ecological (con)text and its material-discursive network.