Forum on Literatures of the Environment

 
William Slaymaker, "Letter," PMLA 114.5 (Oct. 1999): 1100-1.

THE PHENOMENAL GLOBAL growth in environmental literature and ecological literary criticism in the 1980s and 1990s is evident everywhere in world literary communities. Like a global tsunami, "ecolit" and "ecocrit" have flooded journals, academic publishers, and conference programs with a spate of monographs, essays, and papers. This tide of interest is felt most strongly in Euro-American metropolitan centers and in Japan. But it has also left a watermark on the literatures and criticism of marginalized groups such as Native Americans and Australo-Aborigines.

Ecolit and ecocrit have not experienced the same levels of interest or production among writers and scholars in the black Atlantic communities. Why has the Green Wave had only minor ripple effects back and forth across the Atlantic? The reasons are complex and numerous. An important factor is the lack of nature-writing traditions, which have been exceedingly strong in the Euro-American Romantic movements as well as in the literary histories of China and Japan. This reason is contravened to some extent by the rich oral nature narratives in black African and diasporic traditions, particularly in the American South. Perhaps most important is the indifference or even resistance to ecolit and ecocrit among the canonized scholars and writers within black Atlantic cultural communities who have already made waves in world literature and literary scholarship and who hold positions of power in high-profile academic institutions. For the generations of writers and scholars formed by colonialism and postcolonialism; by liberation, independence, and civil rights movements; and by various struggles to overcome political, cultural, and linguistic domination, surfing the Green Wave is for those with the luxuries of board, wet suit, and lots of time and energy. Ecocrit and ecolit appear to many academic and literary observers positioned around the margins of the black Atlantic as another whiteout of black concerns, by going green.

But the environmental disengagements and disincentives in the black Atlantic are changing. A quick review of the recent reference work Literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook (Chicago: Fitzroy, 1998) reveals three essay entries for African literature by African scholars and one for Caribbean literatures, although there is none for African American. However, the reference American Nature Writers (New York: Scribner's, 1996) contains "African Americans, Writing, and Nature," a survey article. Not much, actually, for a large two-volume work. The beginnings are there, but much more work remains to be done.

I have noticed that younger scholars and writers in and out of the black Atlantic have been very receptive to ecocritical approaches to black literature. Also, writers in Africa, the Caribbean, and America are increasingly concerned with environmental degradation and neocolonialist depredations of their bioregions. The controversy surrounding the Nigerian writer and ecoactivist Ken Saro-Wiwa has brought global attention to the delta region of Nigeria. The Nobelist Wole Soyinka has voiced his concerns about Nigeria's environment in numerous interviews and essays. The Nigerian poet Niyi Osundare has also written and lectured extensively about environmental problems, especially the destruction of forests. In the Caribbean Derek Walcott and Edward Brathwaite have taken positions on environmental problems, and Alice Walker is perhaps the closest African American match to a literary ecoactivist. Her collection of poems Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems (New York: Harcourt, 1991) celebrates natural regions and landscapes she has inhabited. The poems in this collection do not exhibit an environmentalist commitment like the one found in the ecopoetry of Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, or W. S. Merwin. But her poems have their own environmental resonances. The social histories of African American involvement in environmentalism and the literary histories of African American nature writers and ecocritics remain to be written. There is Melvin Dixon's study Ride Out the Wilderness: Geography and Identity in Afro-American Literature (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987). Lacking is a special issue of Transition or Callaloo devoted to environmental topics in Africa and in the diaspora. Given the heightened interest in environmental literature and in critical practices that have adopted ecological discourses and methodologies, it is likely that such special issues are being discussed and planned. The Green Wave is forming in the black Atlantic, but it has not yet made landfall.

Dominic Head, in his essay "The (Im)Possibility of Ecocriticism" (Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature, ed. Kerridge and Sammells [London: Zed, 1998]), demonstrates the difficulties of maneuvering through the tricky currents of a postmodern eco-centered whirlpool without getting sucked into the center and drowning in a deep green pool of ecological activism and concern for the nonhuman other. His reading of the South African writer J. M. Coetzee leads him to the conclusion that literary interpretations of nature are often incoherent and contradictory, but they must be attempted. I think this is good advice--even if tentative and uncertain--for new scholarship on writing and writers in the black Atlantic. In the case of ecolit and ecocrit, going with the global flow has the advantage of putting black Atlantic literature and literary interpretation in the mainstream, which carries with it easy availability and access to the global trade in topical ideas. Of course there are disadvantages to fashionable imitation, such as false consciousness. Caliban is justifiably tired of the master's voice and deserves a respite on what's left of his historically encumbered island. Nonetheless, as Head concludes, ecocrit and ecolit are both necessary and (im)possible.

My own Derridean move would be to put that "(im)" under erasure, reduce "necessary" to "needed," and add "probable" to the final formula. Since there has been little literary production by black Atlantic writers that might be called environmentalist or ecological and since ecocriticism has been tenuous in this arena of literary scholarship, now is the time to fill in those aporias. It is probable that the Green Wave will gather size and momentum as it rolls on. It is not probable that the considerable globalized interest in environmental literature and ecological literary criticism will diminish the further they recede in space and time from the eruptions that spawned them, And there is little danger that Atlantis will be submerged or spoiled by neoimperial or metropolitan debris that accompanies the impending green tidal wave.

WILLIAM SLAYMAKER
Wayne State College