Literary Landscapes & other environmental investigations

Come On, Eileen! & Other (Over)reactions to Environmental Academics

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Anyone who has ever tried to hang out with me while I do my environmental studies reading knows that I am very vocal when I have a reaction to said reading. Oftentimes, this reaction is a happy reaction, such as when a new connection is formed between William Cronon and John Rember in Hal Rothman’s introduction to his book Devil’s Bargains or when the word “cosmopolitanism” links postcolonial literature to place theory. I am frequently unable to contain my excitement when my reading reminds me of something else I learned in a different class. This tendency is a testament to my interdisciplinary interests that often illuminate connections in surprising and unusual places.  

However, my reactions to the reading are not always in favor of the content. This week, we read an excerpt from Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler as we collected a breadth of opinion regarding the Anthropocene. In Ned Hettinger’s short piece “Valuing Naturalness in the“Anthropocene”: Now More than Ever,” he argues that the conviction that humans have taken control of the earth systems in a complete and irreversible way is decidedly false. He states:

Despite our dramatic impact on Earth, significant naturalness remains, and the ever-increasing human influence makes valuing the natural more, not less, important in environmental thought and policy” (Hettinger 2014)
In light of our discussions surrounding the definition of “natural,” I first objected to his phrase “significant naturalness” and wondered how exactly “naturalness” can be quantified. He also abides by the nature/human binary that defines “nature” as essentially severed from humanity. At this point, I looked back to the title page of the collection to try and gauge the perspective of the piece and the flavor of the publication. That is when I saw her name. Eileen Crist, editor.
I vividly remember Eileen Crist from my course on Environmental Philosophy (PHIL 215). While conducting research on wilderness, I came across her paper “Against the Social Construction of Nature and Wilderness” in a collection called The Wilderness Debate Rages On. This paper refutes the constructivism of William Cronon and I remember that when I first read it, this offense was unforgivable. Add in phrases like “how the deflowering of wilderness was paving the way to its conceptual emasculation” (Crist 2004, 21) and from that moment on, Eileen Crist’s name would always spur an intense feeling of disgust. My intense objection to her argument, rhetoric, and language became an important frame for the development of my final philosophy paper regarding human histories implicated within designated wilderness.

It is reactions against as well as reaction in favor that can sometimes teach us the most. Its hard to carve out an argument when you are gathering material that you wholeheartedly agree with. However, coming across perspectives such as Crist’s to which I fundamentally abhor is particularly useful in two ways (at it again with those binaries!): 1) I can now define my own perspective in relation to what it is not, and 2) being exposed to discourse that makes me cringe will challenge me to consider fully and carefully that which I do not agree .

And, just because the title promised:

Works Cited

Crist, Eileen. 2004. “Against the Social Construction of Nature and Wilderness.” Environmental Ethics 26 (1): 5–24. doi:10.5840/enviroethics200426138.
N. Hettinger, “Valuing Naturalness in the ‘Anthropocene’:Now More than Ever” in  Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth, ed. G. Wuerthner, E. Crist, and T. Butler (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2014), 174–179.