Towards and Beyond a Conclusion

There is one passage in The Lives of Animals that epitomises the problem of ecocriticism understood an ?environmentalist practice'. It is a conversation between Costello's son, John, and his mother:?Do you really believe, Mother, that poetry classes are going to close down the slaughterhouses?'?No.'?Then why do it?' {EC m/TLoA 58)Elizabeth struggles with a direct answer and instead affirms that she just does not want to remain silent. Although she believes that there are bounds to the imagination (80/35), her helpless - wounded - affirmation that she simply wants to save her soul reveals her sympathetic capacity while simultaneously exposing its intellectual flaws, Head puts it (2009: 83). A language, a form of thought, Diamond summarises this impasse, (we may be told) get things right or wrong, fit or fail to fit reality; it can only be more or less useful (2008: 78). And although this coming apart of thought and reality belongs to flesh and blood (78), one may wonder about the power of fiction to emplot realities, and ask whether uncertainty and the challenges to understanding that I have outlined in this study suffice an ecocritical answer to the aporias discussed in previous chapters and to environmental crises in general.Susie O'Brien, in a discussion of the connection between literature classes and environmentalist action, remarks on various explanations given by prominent ecocritics. She cites Cheryll Glotfelty, who explains that as environmental problems compound, work usual seems unconscionably frivolous (quoted in O'Brien 180; see Glotfelty 1996: xxi). She also refers to Glen A. Love, who mentions a general ethical and environmentalist consciousness within the English departments and asks, how are we to account for our general failure to apply any sense of this awareness to our daily work? (quoted in O'Brien 2007: 180; see also Love 1996: 227). While these scholars explain their individual, moral motives, O'Brien is not satisfied. She criticises the fact that Love, like other ecocritics, leaves unexplained the mechanism by which the work of individual scholars, refracted through the profession of studies, might effect changes on the political level (O'Brien 2007: 181). But is there such a precise mechanism?In considering the sometimes confusing usage of ecological vocabulary and discussing it with regard to its aesthetic context, O'Brien concludes that the ideological revamping of scientific vocabulary for the sake of analyses sound[s] a bit like jumped-up versions of New (181). In fact, in discussing the hermeneutics of EnvironMentality, I have referred to many theoretical notions from the same context that the New Criticism referred to. However, in my argument, I have not spoken for the autonomy of a certain corpus of texts, nor do I prescribe any features ?good' at the cost of other forms of writing. Nevertheless, my discussion could also be understood one of quality - but not in a canonical, prescriptive sense. It should rather be understood in relation with the potential of language and literature to make us aware of the world of words in which we live (see Bartosch 2011 and Bartosch, forthcoming). The interpretive negotiation of this world of words, at least for us human animals, is tied to the ?real' world in many ways, and to study these ways is what constitutes ecocriticism for me.I agree with Attridge that[t]he effects of the literariness of certain linguistic works [...] are not predictable and do not arise from planning [...] - there can be no that the alterity brought into the world by a particular or other artistic work will be beneficial. (Attridge 2004b: 60)This is why ecocriticism cannot talk about the instrumental value of literature; in fact there is, Attridge goes on to say, not even a guarantee that the future will have a place for the literary (62). …