Sense of Place and Sense of Planet
The Environmental Imagination of the Global
ISBN13: 9780195335644ISBN10: 0195335643
Paperback,
264 pages
Aug 2008,
In Stock
Price:
$24.95 (01)Description
Sense of Place and Sense of Plane t analyzes the relationship between the imagination of the global and the ethical commitment to the local in environmentalist thought and writing from the 1960s to the present. Part One critically examines the emphasis on local identities and communities in North American environmentalism by establishing conceptual connections between environmentalism and ecocriticism, on one hand, and theories of globalization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, on the other. It proposes the concept of "eco-cosmopolitanism" as a shorthand for envisioning these connections and the cultural and aesthetic forms into which they translate. Part Two focuses on conceptualizations of environmental danger and connects environmentalist and ecocritical thought with the interdisciplinary field of risk theory in the social sciences, arguing that environmental justice theory and ecocriticism stand to benefit from closer consideration of the theories of cosmopolitanism that have arisen in this field from the analysis of transnational communities at risk. Both parts of the book combine in-depth theoretical discussion with detailed analyses of novels, poems, films, computer software and installation artworks from the US and abroad that translate new connections between global, national and local forms of awareness into innovative aesthetic forms combining allegory, epic, and views of the planet as a whole with modernist and postmodernist strategies of fragmentation, montage, collage, and zooming.Features
- Examines the connections between environmentalism/ecocriticism and theories of globalization and cosmopolitanism on the one hand and risk theory (especially Ulrich Beck's theory of the "risk society") on the other
- Critiques the localist emphasis of North American environmentalism (the "sense of place")
- Focuses on texts and artworks from both the US and Germany
- Examines a variety of different artifacts: novels, poetry, films, computer software, installation art
- Includes an epilogue on climate change and its artistic representations to date
About the Author(s)
Ursula K. Heise is Associate Professor of English at Stanford University, where she teaches contemporary literature and literary theory. She is the author of Chronoschisms: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism .
