Representational Challenges: Literatures of Environmental
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REPRESENTATIONAL CHALLENGES: LITERATURES OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE by TAYLOR MCHOLM A DISSERTATION Presented to the Environmental Studies Program and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2017 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Taylor McHolm Title: Representational Challenges: Literatures of Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Environmental Studies Program by: Stephanie LeMenager Chairperson Kirby Brown Core Member Courtney Thorsson Core Member Sarah Wald Core Member Daniel HoSang Institutional Representative and Sara D. Hodges Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded September 2017 ii © 2017 Taylor McHolm This work is licensed under a Creative Commons iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Taylor McHolm Doctor of Philosophy Environmental Studies Program September 2017 Title: Representational Challenges: Literatures of Environmental Justice in the Anthropocene In this dissertation, I draw together an archive of twentieth and twenty-first century North American authors and artists who explore the settler colonial and racist ideologies of the Anthropocene, the proposed name for a contemporary moment in which anthropogenic forces have forever altered the Earth system. I hold that the “the Anthropocene” names a moment in which localized environmental injustices have become planetary. Addressing the representational challenges posed by the epoch requires engaging the underlying cultural assumptions that have long rationalized injustices as necessary to economic prosperity and narrowly conceived versions of national wellbeing. Works of literature and cultural representation can use literary and artistic form to this end. In this dissertation, I identify one such formal strategy, which I term insensible realism. As a form of realism committed to representing the real impacts of discursive and material practices, insensible realism refers to the rejection of rationality and Enlightenment ideals that have been used to justify the White supremacy, settler colonialism and environmental destruction that instantiates the Anthropocene. A realism of the insensible also refers to my archive’s concentration on what cannot be easily iv sensed: the epoch’s social and environmental interactions that are physically, temporally, geographically and/or socially imperceptible to dominant society. I argue that these works eschew accepted notions of rationality and empiricism in favor of using non- dominant cultural traditions and theories of environmental justice to address the problems the Anthropocene poses. Challenging the dominant logics that have been used to rationalize racist, settler colonial and environmental violence of the Anthropocene creates space for alternative environmental commitments and narratives. Throughout the dissertation, I draw on theories from women of color feminism, environmental justice scholars, settler colonial studies, theories of race, and new materialism. Through a critical environmental justice framework, I argue that the authors and artists that make up my archive develop a literary and artistic approach to environmental justice, using forms of representation to highlight—and challenge—the intersections of racism, settler colonialism and environmental destruction. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Taylor McHolm GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Pace University, New York City University of California, Davis DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Environmental Sciences, Studies and Policy 2017, University of Oregon Master of Arts, English, University of Oregon Master of Science, Adolescent Education, Pace University Bachelor of Arts, English and Religious Studies, University of California, Davis AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Environmental Humanities Environmental Justice Race and the Environment Post-1945 American Literature and Culture Ethnic-American Literature PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Sustainability Affairs Coordinator, Office of Sustainability, University of Oregon Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of English, University of Oregon Graduate Teaching Fellow, Environmental Studies Program, University of Oregon GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Dissertation Success Program Grant, University of Oregon, 2016 Barker Foundation Grant for Research, University of Oregon, 2016, 2014, 2013 vi UO Dissertation Research Fellowship Nominee, English Department, University of Oregon, 2016 Jane Campbell Krohn Prize for Best Ecocritical Essay, English Department, University of Oregon, 2011 PUBLICATIONS: McHolm, Taylor. “A Formal Spilling: Leaking and Leaching in Warren Cariou’s Petrography and ‘Tarhands: A Messy Manifesto,” Western American Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, 2017, pp. 429-446 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks go to the High Museum in Atlanta for granting me access to Richard Misrach’s work. I thank Warren Cariou for his correspondence and encouragement, and I thank Jenny Kerber for her feedback and support. Taylor West, Monica Guy, RaDonna Aymong, Alison Mildrexler, Gayla Wardwell, Richard York, Kari Norgaard, and Alan Dickman in the Environmental Studies Program have all provided guidance and support. My thanks to Nicolae Morar, Ted Toadvine and Jason Schreiner for dart games that were only sometimes about playing darts. Nicolae Morar, in particular, has been a model mentor and interlocutor; thank you. In the English Department, innumerable thanks are due to Kathy Furrer, Melissa Bowers, Susan Meyers, Mike Stamm and Marilyn Reid. The members of Mesa Verde, Lara Bovilsky, Forest “Tres” Pyle, Louise “Molly” Westling, Gordon Sayre, Sarah Jaquette Ray, and Bill Rossi have all given insightful feedback, advice, and encouragement along the way. I want to especially thank David Vázquez for his continued direction and support, including a grant to take part in a crucial dissertation workshop over the summer of 2016. Countless thanks to the members of my committee: To Daniel HoSang who, over a sandwich at one of his many programming events, made an off-hand comment about teaching that entirely reoriented my approach to understanding race and whiteness. Kirby Brown has been the most generous scholar, teacher, and mentor I could imagine. Thank you for showing me what it means to inspire ideas and refine them through a deeply invested engagement. My thanks also go to Sarah Wald for her insightful questions about my work and its commitments, and for her invaluable advice and insight regarding academia. Courtney Thorsson has continually motivated me through a keen focus and a viii truly inspiring approach and sense of responsibility to the subject. I will forever remember that, whatever the question, the answer is almost always “rigor.” Finally, to Stephanie LeMenager, whose creative scholarship and insightful mentorship grew my early ideas in directions that I could not imagine. I truly appreciate the time and sustained focus you’ve given to my scholarship and my teaching—both are vastly better for it. I’ve been fortunate to have a brilliant cohort of colleagues that I can also call dear friends. Specifically, Stephen Siperstein, Dan Platt, and April Anson routinely model a level of scholarship that drives me to catch up. Parker Krieg has taught me more about more than perhaps anyone else, and I consider myself lucky to have shared a small, dark office for so many years. Shane Hall has been a daily interlocutor, and I have difficulty imagining what scholarship looks like without having to explain that we’re different people. More than anyone, he has been kind enough to tell me when my ideas are bad. Thanks to Aaron Bergman; Brian Cannon; Lindsay, Brenton and Beckett Del Chiaro; Erica Elliott; Erica Gingerich; Ram Katalan and Laura McHolm; Jesse Murphy; Jeff Rempel; Lizzie Scanlon; Cal, Karina, Lynden, and Bailey Taylor; Matt, Sara, Amaya and Elsie Thornton; and, Zane and Meridy Wheeler, for reminding me what’s important and how truly fortunate I am. To Delia, who constantly reminded me to take walks: good girl. To Ed and Karen Townsend, who have been deeply supportive: thank you. To my parents, Steve and Sandy McHolm, who have never told me I couldn’t, which means that I have always believed I could: thank you. And finally, to Lauren, the only part of life that has ever consistently made sense: thank you most of all. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. THE INSENSIBLE REALITY OF THE ANTHROPOCENE: TOWARDS A CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE FORM ....................................................... 1 Introduction and Overview ........................................................................................ 1 The Problems of the Anthropocene ......................................................................... 17 Realism's Limits in the Anthropocene ..................................................................... 20 Chapter Overviews ................................................................................................... 27 II. A FORMAL SPILLING: LEAKING AND LEACHING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE ...................................................................................................... 29 Introduction and Overview ...................................................................................... 29 The Aesthetics