Reading the Environment: Narrative Constructions of Ecological Subjectivities in Australian Children’s Literature
Thesis submitted by
Geraldine Massey
B.A., Dip.Ed. ( UQ), Grad-Dip. T-L., M.Ed. (Research) ( QUT )
July 2009
Centre for Learning Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
For the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy ii Abstract
Ways in which humans engage with the environment have always provided a rich source of material for writers and illustrators of Australian children’s literature.
Currently, readers are confronted with a multiplicity of complex, competing and/or complementing networks of ideas, theories and emotions that provide narratives about human engagement with the environment at a particular historical moment.
This study, entitled Reading the Environment: Narrative Constructions of Ecological
Subjectivities in Australian Children’s Literature , examines how a representative sample of Australian texts (19 picture books and 4 novels for children and young adults published between 1995 and 2006) constructs fictional ecological subjects in the texts, and offers readers ecological subject positions inscribed with contemporary environmental ideologies.
The conceptual framework developed in this study identifies three ideologically grounded positions that humans may assume when engaging with the environment.
None of these positions clearly exists independently of any other, nor are they internally homogeneous. Nevertheless they can be categorised as: (i) human dominion over the environment with little regard for environmental degradation
(unrestrained anthropocentrism); (ii) human consideration for the environment driven by understandings that humans need the environment to survive (restrained anthropocentrism); and (iii) human deference towards the environment guided by understandings that humans are no more important than the environment
(ecocentrism).
iii The transdisciplinary methodological approach to textual analysis used in this thesis draws on ecocriticism, narrative theories, visual semiotics, ecofeminism and postcolonialism to discuss the difficulties and contradictions in the construction of the positions offered. Each chapter of textual analysis focuses on the construction of subjectivities in relation to one of the positions identified in the conceptual framework. Chapter 5 is concerned with how texts highlight the negative consequences of human dominion over the environment, or, in the words of this study, living with ecocatastrophe. Chapter 6 examines representations of restrained anthropocentrism in its contemporary form, that is, sustainability. Chapter 7 examines representations of ecocentrism, a radical position with inherent difficulties of representation. According to the analysis undertaken, the focus texts convey the subtleties and complexities of human engagement with the environment and advocate ways of viewing and responding to contemporary unease about the environment. The study concludes that these ways of viewing and responding conform to and/or challenge dominant socio-cultural and political-economic opinions regarding the environment.
This study, the first extended work of its kind, makes an original contribution to ecocritical study of Australian children’s literature. By undertaking a comprehensive analysis of how texts for children represent human engagement with the environment at a time when important environmental concerns pose significant threats to human existence, I hope to contribute new knowledge to an area of children’s literature research that to date has been significantly underrepresented.
iv Key Words
Anthropocentrism, Australian Children’s Literature, Ecocatastrophe, Ecocentrism,
Ecocriticism, Ecological Subjectivity, Environment, Environmental Discourses.
v vi Statement of Original Authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, this thesis contains no material previously published or written by another except where due reference is made.
Signed: ______
Date: ______
vii viii Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ...... III
KEY WORDS ...... V
STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP ...... VII
TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... IX
LIST OF FIGURES ...... XIII
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... XV
CHAPTER 1: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY...... 1
THE ERA OF THE ENVIRONMENT : A DISCURSIVE APPROACH ...... 5
AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN ’S LITERATURE , ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES , AND ECOLOGICAL
SUBJECTIVITIES : THE REASON FOR THE STUDY ...... 12
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ...... 21
KEY CONCEPTS AND TERMS ...... 22
Australian Children’s Literature ...... 22
Environment...... 23
Discourses ...... 24
Narrative Discourses...... 25
Environmental Discourses...... 25
Anthropocentrism ...... 26
Ecocentrism ...... 26
Ecological Subjects, Subjectivities, Subject Positions and Agency ...... 27
Ecocriticism...... 28
THE AIM OF THE STUDY ...... 29
THE RESEARCH APPROACH ...... 30
Criteria for Selecting Texts...... 31
Parameters of the Study...... 33
OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS ...... 36
SUMMARY ...... 41
ix CHAPTER 2: ECOCRITICAL RESEARCH INTO CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: A
LOCUS FOR THE STUDY...... 43
AN OVERVIEW OF ECOCRITICAL STUDIES INTO CHILDREN ’S LITERATURE ...... 45
ENVIRONMENTAL TROPES : THE FOCUS OF EARLIER STUDIES ...... 50
Pastoral ...... 52
Wilderness ...... 55
Apocalypse...... 57
Georgic...... 62
OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL TROPES : WAYS OF KNOWING AND ENGAGING ...... 65
The Environment as Female ...... 66
The Environment as Spiritual Entity...... 71
The Environment as Moral Guide (or Teacher) ...... 71
The Environment as Resource or Artefact...... 72
Living Creatures as Human Beings...... 72
SUMMARY ...... 74
CHAPTER 3: SHADES OF GREEN: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR AN
ECOCRITICAL STUDY OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE...... 77
ECOCRITICAL PARADIGMS : THREE ESTABLISHED FOCI ...... 79
UNRESTRAINED ANTHROPOCENTRISM : DOMINION OVER ALL ...... 87
Dominion Re-envisioned: Living with Ecocatastrophe ...... 91
Representations of denial of ecocatastrophe ...... 95
Representations of human adaptation and ingenuity...... 95
Representations of the consequences of ecocatastrophe and contesting the causes...... 96
RESTRAINED ANTHROPOCENTRISM : MODERATING CONTROL WITH CONSIDERATION ...... 101
Contemporary Connections: Sustainability...... 107
ECOCENTRISM : ECOLOGICAL EQUALITY ...... 113
An Ecological Approach to Intrinsic Value and Aesthetics...... 116
Ecological Aesthetics...... 123
SUMMARY ...... 127
x CHAPTER 4: AN ECOCRITICAL METHODOLOGY: A TRANSDISCIPLINARY
APPROACH TO TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ...... 129
A TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH : POSTSTRUCTURALIST ASSUMPTIONS ...... 130
ECOCRITICISM : OPPORTUNITIES FOR A TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO TEXTUAL ANALYSIS .135
Narrative Methodologies...... 137
Visual Methodologies ...... 146
Ecofeminist Perspectives ...... 153
Postcolonial Perspectives...... 155
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS : DEGREES OF ACCEPTABILITY ...... 157
SUMMARY ...... 159
CHAPTER 5: LIVING ALL OVER THE EARTH: BRINGING IT UNDER CONTROL? 161
ENCOUNTERS WITH ECOCATASTROPHE ...... 164
DENIAL OF ECOCATASTROPHE ...... 191
HYBRIDISING ECOCATASTROPHE WITH ECOCENTRISM ...... 202
AN ENVIRONMENTAL ALLEGORY ...... 207
SUMMARY ...... 213
CHAPTER 6: TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY: BALANCING CONTROL WITH
CONSIDERATION?...... 216
INDIVIDUALS ENACTING SUSTAINABILITY ...... 219
COMMUNITIES OF PARTICIPANTS ENACTING SUSTAINABILITY ...... 246
SUMMARY ...... 257
CHAPTER 7: THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF ECOCENTRISM: RELINQUISHING
CONTROL? ...... 259
Raising Eco-consciousness: Shared Aesthetic Experiences ...... 263
ECOCENTRIC PERSPECTIVES : SOME TEXTUAL POSSIBILITIES ...... 270
Decentring the Human: Recentring the Environment...... 272
Human Effacement: The Ecological Sublime ...... 291
SUMMARY ...... 304
xi CHAPTER 8: ENVIRONMENTAL FUTURES ...... 306
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRAXIS ...... 312
Implications for Environmental Education...... 312
Implications for future Environmental Education ...... 316
Implications for Writers, Illustrators, Publishers...... 317
FUTURE DIRECTIONS : SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ...... 317
A study of constructions of ecological subjectivities in different genres and other media ...... 317
A study of environmental children’s literature produced internationally...... 318
A study of readers’ responses to environmental texts...... 319
A study of Indigenous ways of constructing subjectivities of relatedness...... 319
REFERENCES...... 322
xii List of Figures
FIGURE 5.1 THE COVER OF TASMANIAN TIGER ...... 166
FIGURE 5.2: THE CHILDREN AND THE SOUVENIRS ...... 169
FIGURE 5.3: THE OPENING PAGE OF WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE ? ...... 173
FIGURE 5.4: THE CONCLUDING PAGE OF WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE ? ...... 176
FIGURE 5.5: AN ENCOUNTER WITH ECOCATASTROPHE IN UNO ’S GARDEN ...... 183
FIGURE 5.6 A SECTION OF THE TOWER ...... 187
FIGURE 5.7: THE FINAL ILLUSTRATION FROM THE TOWER TO THE SUN ...... 190
FIGURE 5.8: THE FRONT COVER OF AT THE BEACH ...... 194
FIGURE 5.9: THE CAMPGROUND IN AT THE BEACH ...... 196
FIGURE 6.1 THE PASSENGERS ON THE TRAIN ...... 221
FIGURE 6.2 THE VOCAL BIRD ...... 223
FIGURE 6.3 ISLANDS IN MY GARDEN ...... 227
FIGURE 6.4 TARRAH AND HER FAMILY ...... 235
FIGURE 6.5 THE FRONT COVER OF BELONGING ...... 247
FIGURE 6.6 THE BACK COVER OF BELONGING ...... 251
FIGURE 6.7 THE SHY MALA ...... 255
FIGURE 7.1 SOPHIE IN THE UNDERWATER FOREST ...... 268
FIGURE 7.2 THE FALCON ’S PERSPECTIVE ...... 273
FIGURE 7.3 THE FALCONS ’ HOME ...... 274
FIGURE 7.4 REEF SUPERSTAR ...... 279
FIGURE 7.5 THE DRY WATERHOLE ...... 282
FIGURE 7.6 THE WATERHOLE ...... 283
FIGURE 7.7 EGLITIS ’ GREEN TREE FROG ...... 289
FIGURE 7.8 BRIM ’S GREEN TREE FROG ...... 290
FIGURE 7.9 THE YOUNG TURTLE ...... 295
FIGURE 7.10 THE SURFING TURTLE ...... 296
FIGURE 7.11 FROM THE WORLD WE WANT ...... 299
FIGURE 7.12 LEAF LITTER ...... 302
xiii
xiv Acknowledgements
This study was undertaken within a supportive network of colleagues, friends, and family. To everyone who is a part of those networks I extend my sincere thanks.
I was fortunate to have two supervisors whose willingness to offer guidance at each stage of the study was exemplary. Professor Kerry Mallan freely shared her outstanding knowledge of the field of children’s literature. Doctor Deborah
Henderson offered wise counsel. Their careful reading of many written drafts was much appreciated. I am most grateful for their patience and diligence.
Professor Annette Patterson, Head of the School of Cultural and Language Studies in
Education, together with the academic and administration staff of the school, showed unfaltering interest in the study as it progressed. The Critical Dialogues Group of postgraduate students provided enlightening discussions of their studies, as well as scrutiny and constructive criticism of this study, which sustained me at all times. I especially wish to thank my office partners Anna Free and Cherie Allan who, together with Amy Cross, shared the moments of conflicting emotions that any study of this kind involves.
Many people beyond the university also provided support. Friends and neighbours offered encouragement; my mother never doubted my ability to complete the task; my sisters, Jennifer and Susan read and assisted with proof reading various drafts; and my husband David and son Dylan provided the love and understanding that were invaluable in the advancement of the study.
xv
xvi Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
We have quadrupled the population of the world in the last 100 years. We have magnified the power of our technologies a thousandfold. And the combination has radically transformed the underlying relationship between the human species and the Earth. We are now capable of having a destructive impact on the ecological system of the entire planet. We are the largest force of nature now, and we have to take that into account in the way we relate to the environment. (Gore, as cited in Dalton, 2006, p. 34)
When I first read Al Gore’s statements, quoted in the epigraph, at about the time I began this study, I was prompted to reflect on his choice of words to encapsulate his position on the current environmental debate about global warming and the predicted climate changes that it will bring about. I was interested in how Gore was attempting to persuade me of the truthfulness of his perspective. To convince me as a reader, as well as the viewers of his film An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim, 2006), to believe and adopt his point of view, I suggest, as Harré, Brockmeier and
Mühlhäusler (1999) might, that Gore skilfully combines the rationality of numbers with a temporal sense of urgency drawn from the apocalyptic trope to create a prophecy that has the appearance and strength of a scientific hypothesis. However, there is more to these statements than rhetoric, as Gore acknowledges (Dalton, 2006, p. 34). Moral issues underpin these statements. Gore is proposing moral ways for humans to engage with the environment that redress the abuses of the past so as to ensure environmental and human futures. What Gore’s statement offers me as a reader, (at this point I am assuming a position as an ideal reader who accepts the
1 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study position constructed)1 is a position as an ecological subject obliged to reconsider my interactions with the environment, and to act accordingly.
The environmental discourse used by Gore is, in Althusser’s (1971, p. 169) terms, interpellating me as a free subject who willingly accepts subjection or, in other words, my position is as “ a subjected being ” who submits to the authority of the social formation (Belsey, 2002, p. 58, italics in the original). The use of the first person plural and its repeated use at the beginning of all but one of the sentences in this example includes me as part of a larger social group. I am “interpolated” into a certain subject position (Althusser, 1971). The moral imperative suggested by the change from “we have” to “we have to” appears to deny me any resistance to the position being proffered.
Further examination of Gore’s statements reveals some culturally established anthropocentric ideologies. The “We are the largest force of nature now” sentence is inscribed with an anthropocentric assumption of the centrality of human control of the environment. Environmental discourse such as this offers me a position as an ecological subject who takes for granted the notion that human control over environmental influences is the appropriate way to act.
Yet Gore’s text offers only one of the many ecological subject positions I have encountered since I began this study. My ecological subjectivity, for example, is currently very different from when I first read Gore’s words, before I was immersed
1 I address less ideal or resistant readers elsewhere in this chapter.
2 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study in the range of environmental discourses I encountered in the texts about the environment, environmental concerns, environmental ethics, and environmental politics and most surely, the focus texts of Australian children’s literature. What these texts offer is, in Belsey’s terms, “a matrix of subject positions, which may be inconsistent or even in contradiction with one another” (Belsey, 2002, p. 57). My ecological subjectivity, comprising a multitude of discursive experiences, has been formed by the process of negotiating meaning with the texts I have studied.
It can be noted, however, that texts alone have not shaped my ecological subjectivity.
Beyond the texts, the sense I have of my self as an ecological subject, distinct from others, but also aligned with others, has been realised through discursive participation with other texts, and with the people I encounter in my daily life. My ecological subjectivity, formed through intersubjective relations (both within and outside texts), is thus always evolving, a process of taking up or rejecting certain subject positions, offered by others and by texts. In so doing, I am operating as, what
Smith (1988) and McCallum (1999) call, a discerning agent, acting consciously and deliberately to construct myself as an ecological subject. For example, my commitment to the environment may mean that I can resist the discourses of consumerism by reconceptualising and reducing my participation in the over- consumption that drives late capitalism. In this way my ecological subjectivity is at all times shaped, not only by my willingness to take up certain subject positions within discourses, but also by decisions to reject subject positions offered by other ideologically inscribed discourses. However, it is not the purpose of this study to pursue the construction of my ecological subjectivities. Rather, my concern for the environment, together with my involvement in teaching courses in Children’s
3 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Literature, ignited my interest in an investigation of how Australian environmental children’s literature constructs, and therefore offers to readers, a range of ecological subject positions, informed by contemporary environmental discourses with their inscribed ideologies, which may or may not be easily recognisable in the texts under examination.
This chapter, therefore, provides an introduction to my study. It begins with a brief overview of significant concerns about, and responses to, human engagement with the environment over the last forty years. This examination provides an introductory account of an important analysis of environmental discourses, The Politics of the
Earth (Dryzek, 2005), that was influential in the early stages of my study. As my study is concerned with the construction of ecological subjectivities at the intersection of environmental and narrative discourses I bring into the discussion accounts of subjects, subject positions, subjectivity and agency.
Following this, to provide a background for the study, I draw on a selection of historical and contemporary Australian texts to highlight the environmental discourses that inform their narratives and construct subject positions for readers. In this way I foreground the rationale for the study and articulate the significant contribution it makes to the interconnected fields of children’s literature criticism and ecocriticism.
Brief accounts of the recurring concepts that underpin the study follow, to ensure clarity of understandings of the terms used throughout. I draw into focus the aim and objectives that guide my research. Ecocriticism, as a methodological approach to the
4 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study study of literature and the environment, introduces the transdisciplinary approach that informs the textual analysis. In relation to the construction of ecological subjectivities, the intention of my textual analysis is twofold: to scrutinise the specific environmental discourses that inform the texts; and to examine the crucial features of narrative discourses that contribute to the construction of ecological subjectivities. In order to set out the scope and delimitations of my research, the parameters of the study are also articulated. Criteria that were applied to the selection of the focus texts precede an overview of how each of the ensuing chapters helps to achieve the aim and objectives of the study.
The Era of the Environment: A Discursive Approach
The significance of the radical transformation of humanity’s interactions with the earth and its atmosphere that is described epigraphically is similarly acknowledged by the use of the term Anthropocene for the current geological era (Crutzen &
Stoermer, 2000). This term captures the enormity of the impact humans have had on the environment on a global scale through rapid population growth, loss of prime agricultural land to urbanisation, increased demands for food production, diminishing water supplies, increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
(due to fossil fuel burning), deglaciation, changes in rainfall distribution, loss of biological diversity, and the profligate use of resources (Reeves, 2006). Recent international expressions of concern for the scale and impact of these issues on humans and the environment have been articulated by the United Nations with the release of GEO4 (Global Environment Outlook, 2007); reports from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007); the initiation of the Decade of
5 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), and the declaration of 2008 as the “International Year of Planet Earth”.
Daily, at a national level, the interdependence of humanity’s relationship with the environment is evidenced as complex and in need of critical, close attention. Within a short time of taking office the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, committed the nation to the ratification of the Kyoto agreement on the reduction of carbon emissions. The Garnaut Climate Change Review (2008a) demonstrates the interconnected involvement of science, politics, and economics in the Australian government’s proposed carbon emissions trading scheme. At the time the report was released, Professor Ross Garnaut (2008b) reiterated Australians’ concerns for the environment, particularly iconic features such as the Great Barrier Reef and the tropical wetlands which Garnaut claims will be damaged irreversibly if only small scale changes are made to carbon emissions.
However, these most recent expressions of concern for environmental issues are reverberations of “voices” that over the past forty years have proffered solutions and predicted dire consequences to wide ranging environmental problems such as: the excessive use of chemical biocides (Carson, 1962); over population (Ehrlich, 1968); the finite nature of earth’s resources (Club of Rome, 1972); concern for animal welfare (Singer, 1975); the preservation of natural wilderness areas (for example, the
Great Barrier Reef’s listing as a World Heritage Area, 1981); global climate change and biological diversity (The first International Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in
1992 produced Agenda 21, the United Nations’ report which addresses sustainable
6 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study development in the twenty-first century); and global climate change ( Kyoto Protocol ,
1997, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).
Since the middle of the twentieth century, therefore, these multiple perspectives on human interactions with the environment, with their often contradictory ways of responding to serious environmental issues, have contributed to a dramatic increase in environmental discourses (Mühlhäusler & Peace, 2006). Indeed, Harré,
Brockmeier, and Mühlhäusler (1999, pp. 3-4) conclude that
The [environmental]’crisis of our time’ is at root a discursive phenomenon. It comes about through a shift in our ways of seeing and assessing what we see, made possible by the taking up into our discursive resources new vocabularies, new judgemental categories, new metaphors and analogies that have promoted awareness of much that was previously overlooked.
Environmental discourses, therefore, are worthy of serious attention. Within the context of a contemporary, Western, socio-political framework, Dryzek (2005) analyses many of the popular texts and environmental reports mentioned above in order to “make sense” of the distinctive reciprocity that exists between environmental discourses and environmental issues. Four broad categories of contemporary environmental discourses are identified in Dryzek’s study: (i) environmental problem solving; (ii) survivalism; (iii) sustainability; and (iv) green radicalism (Dryzek, 2005, p. 15). 2 For Dryzek, each category of environmental discourse recognizes, constructs and privileges certain basic entities such as governments, markets, humans, resources, technologies, and ecosystems. Certain relationships between these entities can be described as competitive, cooperative, hierarchical or equal. In Dryzek’s analysis, each discourse includes motivated
2 Dryzek (2005) divides these categories further. Green radicalism, for example, has two sub- categories, green consciousness and green politics. 7 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study agents, who, in the terms of this study, would be considered ecological subjects: for example, “enlightened elites, rational consumers, ignorant and short-sighted populations, virtuous ordinary citizens …” (Dryzek, 2005, p. 18).
The significance of Dryzek’s research lies in the analysis of environmental discourses in terms not of their meaning, but of their function: an examination of how discourses function in particular ways or as what Rose (2001) describes as
“strategies of persuasion” (p. 140). However, Dryzek’s examination of the power of discourses to shape perceptions of the world by proposing a particular worldview has a focus on rhetorical strategies such as metaphor which give environmental discourses the power to position listeners and/or readers to accept or reject particular perceptions. For example, some of the nominated metaphors common to environmental discourses include the earth as spaceship, the environment as machine or organism (Dryzek, 2005). These metaphors, which describe the environment in such hyperbolic or romantic ways, undoubtedly contribute to people’s attitudes and behaviours towards the environment, but I want to move beyond an examination of metaphor as a rhetorical strategy of persuasion. Similarly, I want to move beyond an interest in the persuasive powers of environmental discourses in the non-fiction texts, documents and reports that provide subject material for Dryzek (2005).
While I acknowledge that Dryzek’s research was instrumental at the commencement of this study, my interests now centre on how environmental discourses intersect with narrative discourses to construct the ecological subject positions that offer readers certain ways of understanding human engagement with the environment: offers which may be embraced, neglected or rejected. Although it is not the purpose
8 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study of this study to theorise ‘the subject’, I acknowledge that my understandings are informed by Althusser (1971), Belsey (2002), Foucault (1980) and particularly, in relation to how subjectivities are implicated in children’s literature, McCallum
(1999), Misson and Morgan (2006), and Stephens (1992, 2002). I wish, here, to introduce my assumptions about the subject, the discursive construction of subjects, the connections between subjectivity and agency, the ideological implications involved, and how readers engage intersubjectively with texts.
I have chosen to give preference to the terms subject and subjectivity rather than identity, to separate my understandings from humanist beliefs in unique and individual human beings whose identity originates in an essential core which is fixed and stable (Mallan, 2003; McCallum, 1999). However, while this distinction has been made, it should be noted that identity has been used synonymously with subjectivity even when poststructural understandings come into play (Bradford,
2007; McCallum, 1999).
I began this chapter with a personal example of how the environmental discourse used by Al Gore to promote his film An Inconvenient Truth positioned me as a subject within the discourse, but also as a subject of the discourse: that is, I was subjected to it, or as Stephens (1992, p. 56) would say, I was “both agent of and object of discoursal processes”. I alluded to the ways in which that discourse had the potential to contribute to the sense I have of myself as an ecological subject, but I also mentioned that this was only one of a choice of environmental discourses available to me. Access to a variety of discourses offers opportunities for my active
9 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study involvement in the discursive construction of my subjectivity. Therefore, I wish to theorise briefly, notions of the subject as follows.
For the purpose of this study, the subject is understood as any human individual whose sense of her/his self comes into being, over time, as a process of being socially situated in a range of subject positions (Stephens, 1992). Foucault provided accounts of the “technologies of the self” whereby individuals
effect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being , so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality. (Rabinow & Rose, 2003, p.146)
The active involvement of the subject in subject formation requires, in Foucauldian accounts, “a knowing subject [ sujet de connaissance ]”, a subject able to appreciate choice, make choices, and at the same time resist certain positions offered (Rabinow,
1994, p. 200). The subject is thus, “the site of a multiplicity of practices or labours”
(Rabinow & Rose, 2003, p. xx). From this perspective, the subject may also be understood as a socially situated agent.
However, as I have stated, the subject is also submitted to, or can become the object of, certain “technologies of power” which Foucault proposed, determine how individuals conduct themselves. These ideas were central to Foucault’s earlier theorising, where the subject was seen as the effect or product of power relations.
Foucault (1980) assumed that people modify their own behaviour but also attempt to modify the behaviour of others. Technologies of power are, therefore, bound with social systems that select, exclude, and dominate (Foucault, 1980). Discourses
“embody power in the way they condition the perceptions and values of those
10 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study subject to them, such that some interests are advanced, other suppressed (Foucault, as cited in Dryzek, 2005, p. 9). When understood in this way, discourses and subject positions are infused with ideologies. For it is the role of ideology, as Belsey (2002, p. 54) contends, to “ construct people as subjects ” [italics in the original]. To consider the inscription of ideologies in discourses in this way is to move towards conceptualising ideology as “a way of thinking, speaking, experiencing” (Belsey,
2002, p. 5). Ideologies may be explicitly inscribed in texts, or they may be implicit, to the extent that they become invisible, naturalised, and culturally assumed as common sense (Belsey, 2002). This apparent invisibility makes the infusion of discourses with ideology neither straight-forward nor unproblematic when considering subject positions available to readers of texts. By persuading readers into the subject positions offered by the text, a reader may potentially assume the particular world view that the text proposes and his/her subjectivity will be constructed from experiences with the text (Misson & Morgan, 2006).
Concepts of persuasion presuppose ideas about “the reader”. Like the subject discussed earlier, a reader can be compliant in subject formation. If so, the reader is what Iser (1974) and Stephens (1992) propose, an “ideal” reader, who takes up the reading positions offered by the text and “best actualizes a book’s potential meaning”. For Stephens, the “best” reading, “occurs when the real reader is most closely aligned with the ideological position of the implied reader” (1992, p. 55).
However, it would be simplistic and fallacious to consider that all readers and all readings are ideal. It is possible that a resistant reader could reject any or all of the positions offered by a text (Misson & Morgan, 2006). Readers do not exist as a
11 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study neatly homogeneous group conforming to the status of ideal reader. Subject positions constructed within texts are dependent on the discourses that construct them and as such are available for scrutiny and evaluation. Each reader, confronted with a range of subject positions available to him/her, engages in a dialectical process, negotiating meaning by weighing up the positions offered against those held by the reader prior to the reading (Misson & Morgan, 2006; Stephens, 1992). The subjectivity of central characters, for example, that confront a reader, are constructed and defined within the text, by the characters themselves, their “actions, speech and thought processes”, as well as the ways in which these are narrated, along with other characters’ perceptions of them and interactions with them (Stephens, 1992, p. 48).
Through the intersubjective relationships that exist between the reader and the character, texts for young people assume a responsibility to shape readers’ subjectivities. As Stephens (1992, p. 48) states,
The subject positions available to children as users of books are often restricted and restrictive, and this is nowhere so sharply defined as by the tendency for these positions to express the ideological assumptions of a society’s dominant cultural groups. A function of many books, and sometimes their primary function, is an attempt to change those assumptions.
This discussion of readers assists in understanding the working of texts which is the focus of this study. Therefore, it is to children’s literature, in particular Australian children’s literature informed by environmental discourses, that I now turn attention.
Australian Children’s Literature, Environmental Discourses, and Ecological Subjectivities: The Reason for the Study
The Australian environment, possibly due to the unique qualities of its flora, fauna, geological formations and extreme weather patterns, has always featured as an 12 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study integral part of Australian children’s literature. The following historical overview identifies the environmental discourses that have informed Australian children’s literature from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. The ecological subject positions explicitly or implicitly endorsed by the texts are also acknowledged. Such a survey contextualises my study by providing background detail to the present study’s time frame (1995-2006).
Environmental discourses suggest ways for readers, as ecological subjects, to engage with the unique features of the Australian environment represented in early
Australian children’s literary texts, including those of Ethel Pedley (1899/1933),
May Gibbs (1918/1977) and Norman Lindsay (1918/1972). One of the earliest indications of environmental consciousness, for example, is expressed by Pedley in
Dot and the Kangaroo (1899/1933). The dedication underscores a concern for the protection of perceived endangered species: “To the children of Australia in the hope of enlisting their sympathies for the many beautiful, amiable, and frolicsome creatures of their fair land, whose extinction, through ruthless destruction, is being surely accomplished” (Pedley, 1899/1933, unpaged). Similarly, in the dedication of
Gibb’s Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918/1977, unpaged) the author/illustrator earnestly advises, “Please be kind to all bush creatures and don’t pull flowers up by the roots”, suggesting that both fauna and flora within the Australian environment are worthy of respect. The overt calls to action in these dedications and the narratives that follow them serve a didactic purpose which embodies an anthropocentric position of stewardship that proposes children take responsibility for living beings in the environment.
13 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Conversely, another iconic Australian children’s literary text of the same era proposes an alternative form of anthropocentrism, one which allows human dominion over the environment. The Magic Pudding (Lindsay, 1918/1972), which features the anthropomorphic koala, Bunyip Bluegum, and the eponymous pudding, offers no apparent concern for the environment which serves merely as the backdrop for the imaginary adventures. This representation of the environment is in keeping with the ideas of European settlement that advocated human dominion over the environment.
Environmental discourses are also a feature of Australian children’s literature from the mid-twentieth century onwards. During the 1950s and early 1960s, a favoured environmental setting in Australian novels for young readers was non-urban, or in the more Australian colloquial term, the bush (a term often synonymously used with the outback to depict the less populated and geographically isolated environment beyond the Australian coastal fringe).3 Environmental discourses, in the works of
Nan Chauncy, Joan Phipson and Colin Thiele, construct the bush as an antagonist. In the works of these authors, child characters, placed within the security of a solid family, meet the harsh challenges that the bush presents. However, despite the construction of the bush as threatening, the texts advocated respect for the environment, and more importantly recognize aspects of it as being endangered, and worthy of preservation because of its unique features.
3 The bush might be differentiated from the outback by physical features such as denser vegetation. The outback is frequently associated with the barren landscapes of the central desert areas of Australia that nevertheless have been used for sheep and cattle grazing. 14 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
During the 1970s and 1980s, environmental discourses that were also shaping community-driven activism, such as the opposition to the flooding of Lake Pedder in
Tasmania and uranium mining in Kakadu, informed texts such as Christobel
Mattingley’s The Battle of the Galah Trees (1973) which spotlighted the destruction of animal habitats, and Lizard Log (1975) and The Bird Smugglers (1979) by Joan
Phipson which drew attention to the illegal capture and sale of animals and birds.
The realistic mode, which these texts favour, constructs central characters who act to save the environment. As didactic texts, these narratives offer readers stable subject positions taken up by the central characters.
More sophisticated environmental discourses shape The Blooding (Wheatley, 1987) and consequently the text offers more ambivalent subject positions for readers to negotiate. In this text, son is pitted against father, as the complexities of conservation versus logging to enable an income are played out. If aligned with the youthful central character, readers might adopt the perspective of Colum, who saves the forest. An alternative reading, however, might suggest another more ecocentric position for the reader. The forest may be saved, but it still serves a utilitarian function as a site for commercial tourism. A resistant reading, therefore, might challenge the text’s outcome and interrogate the ideologies of anthropocentrism.
Another noteworthy environmentally themed children’s texts of the 1980s, the picture book, Where the Forest Meets the Sea (Baker, 1987), suggests that human needs for recreational facilities will subsume the environment. The text depicts a pristine environment threatened by development and concludes with the central character, a young boy, posing a wistful question to his father, “Will the forest still
15 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study be here when we come back?” (Baker, 1987). Together with the mirage like illustration of potential future tourist development, this final page denies the child character any agency but has complex implications for the child reader. On one hand, the text suggests that human dominion over the environment is a fait accompli , or alternatively, the text suggests a critical examination and re-evaluation of unrestrained anthropocentric perspectives.
Similarly, in the wordless picture book Window (Baker, 1991), the mode of address suggests an “environmental subject” who witnesses, over a period of time, the degradation of the environment which is occurring beyond the bedroom window of the child character, Sam. Not only does Sam passively view the destruction of the natural environment surrounding his house, but he contributes towards it by supporting McDonald’s and using a slingshot to shoot at pigeons. Bradford (2003, p.
115) contends that “Baker’s illustrations are informed by a discourse located toward the misanthropic end of deep ecology, where urban development is treated as antithetical to the survival of wilderness”. Sam, as an environmental subject within the text, is denied opportunities to act as an agent of change. Once again readers are faced with ambiguities: firstly, to align with Sam’s powerlessness and acceptance of the situation; to reflect on what Sam might have done differently; and/or to consider the socio-economic and political conditions that brought the changes into being.
Another text, but one where the child character is able to act as an agent of change, is
One Child (Cheng & Woolman, 1997). In this picture book, the child character develops throughout the text as an environmental activist (Bradford, 2003). For example, she adopts practical strategies that are within her capabilities such as
16 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study cleaning up her yard, to affect her immediate environment. When she imagines what would happen if all children adopted the same strategies, a position is being constructed for a reader as a proactive ecological subject.
In the Australian picture book, One Less Fish (Toft & Sheather, 1996), ecological details inform the peritext. 4 These details, with their emphasis on factuality and realism, and their acceptance within Western culture as authoritative, offer opportunities for presenting ecocentric environmental perspectives. By combining ecological discourses with a narrative that excludes human presence, this text offers opportunities to conceptualise the environment differently, to reconsider exclusively anthropocentric perspectives.
As this preliminary and brief discussion has illustrated, Australian children’s literature provides a powerful platform from which to disseminate particular forms of environmental awareness while marginalising other possibilities. Most consistently, over the approximately one hundred year history of Australian children’s literature, the environmental discourses that inform the texts are biased towards anthropocentrism. Recently, other environmental discourses, biased towards ecocentrism, are glimpsed. Narrative constructions of ecological subjectivities in
Australian children’s literature are, therefore, dynamic not static, and explicit rather than implicit.
4 I follow Bradford (2003), Genette (1997), and Hunt (1991), in the use of the term peritext to refer to features such as the dedication, table of contents, glossary, and publisher’s blurb. Frequently the term paratext is used to indicate the same features. 17 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
The discussion above indicates how Australian children’s literature has always drawn on historically contingent environmental discourses inscribed with particular ideologies to construct representations of human engagement with the environment.
Contemporary environmental discourses are enmeshed with complex ideological positions that may give the appearance of coherence but are ambiguous, ambivalent, contradictory or complementary. Environmental discourses accommodate notions of goodness, right and wrong, duty, and consideration of the consequences of actions, what serves the greatest good, or whether actions result in pleasure rather than pain for all parties concerned. Also involved are notions of rights based on sentience, or teleological functions such as the right to reach maturity and reproduce.
Concerns for the environment may conceal tacit controlling or appropriating strategies. Sustainability, the dominant environmental discourse of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, for example, offers a response to environmental challenges, particularly the finite limits of natural resources. Sustainability provides ways for humans to engage with the environment so as not to further degrade or destroy ecosystems upon which current generations rely, and to ensure their existence for future generations. Concepts of sustainability of resources, choices, and lifestyle have inherent difficulties when consideration is given to the impact these may have on the developing world, that is, sustainability appears a viable option for the future but only from an affluent, Western point of view (Scherer, 2003).
Other environmental discourses are inscribed with different ideologies. Deep ecologists view humanity as only one of many interrelated parts that together contribute to the survival of the biosphere. Individual humans count only in their
18 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study contribution to the whole, not as isolated individual beings (Naess, 1998a). Yet the possibility of texts presenting an ecocentric position is problematic. The environment has no ability to speak for itself, although it could be argued that the environment only speaks for itself in terms of global and local responses such as climate change, fires, floods, or drought. All environmental discourses are constituted by humans who speak on behalf of the environment, which means humans always have the potential to adopt a patronising, custodial approach. Ecofeminist discourses, although not cohesive, envisage new ways of living with the environment that do not involve the patriarchal oppression of either women or nature (Cheney, 1989;
Kolodny, 1996; Plumwood, 1993; Warren, 1998). From a postcolonial perspective it has been argued that environmental texts for children “in the main are informed by
Western thinking about a moral subject whose whiteness is central to formulations of relations between humans and the non-human world” (Bradford 2008). If this dominance remains unchallenged, Indigenous ways of engaging with the environment are devalued and Indigenous texts dismissed.
I contend, however, that contemporary environmental discourses suggest unequivocally that humans are threatened, future generations are threatened, and ecosystems are threatened. Ways of addressing the threats framed in these discourses are complex, unstable and often contradictory. There is currently a Western socio- cultural assumption that human survival may depend on dynamic, self-motivated subjects whose awareness of environmental concerns allows them to reflect on their relationships with the environment and to take responsibility for their engagement with the environment. This culturally privileged form of subjectivity is actively endorsed by international organisations such as the United Nations Environmental
19 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Program (UNEP) and the International Panel on Climate Control (IPPC), Australian government agencies such as the Department of Water, Environment, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA), state government agencies such as the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) and nongovernmental organisations such as Green Peace and the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF). It is also sanctioned by the Ministerial Advisory
Committee for Educational Renewal (MACER, 2006, p. 15) which proposes, “A sustainable society will be based on values including: respect, care and compassion for ourselves, others, and our environment; responsibility for our action; integrity of all life on earth; understanding and inclusion of all perspectives.” Most recently, the
Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008, p. 9) states that all young Australians should “act with moral and ethical integrity … work for the common good, in particular sustaining and improving natural and social environments… [and be] responsible global and local citizens.”
One way for young people to make sense of their responsibilities towards the environment is through literature – literature which does not merely reflect what happens in local and global settings, but persuasively constructs these settings for the purpose of socialising children into ways of being. These ways are guided by what the adults who produce the texts see fit. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries these ways are informed by environmental discourses and their inscribed ideologies. As environmental futures appear uncertain, and lack of agency, on behalf of individuals and communities, would appear to threaten human survival, young people are confronted with the often competing claims of humanity and the environment. My motivation for undertaking this study is, therefore, guided by awareness of the need to examine narrative constructions of ecological subjectivities.
20 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Significance of the Study
Ecocritical studies of children’s literature have appeared sporadically over the last two decades. Some have appeared in special editions of peer-reviewed journals such as Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (1994/95) and The Lion and the
Unicorn (1995). Others have been contained in Wild Things (Dobrin & Kidd, 2004), an edited collection of ecocritical studies of canonical and contemporary British and
North American literary and non-literary texts.
Within studies of Australian children’s literature, single chapters dedicated to the examination of literary representations of human engagement with the environment can be found in The Proof of the Puddin': Australian Children's Literature 1970-
1990 (Saxby, 1993); Australian Children's Literature: An Exploration of Genre and
Theme (Foster, Finnis & Nimon, 1995); Bush, City, Cyberspace: The Development of Australian Children’s Literature into the Twenty-First Century (Foster, Finnis &
Nimon, 2005); and Hearts and Minds: Creative Australians and the Environment
(Pollak & MacNabb, 2000).Within studies of broader scope than environmental concerns, Bradford (2003), Bradford, Mallan, Stephens and McCallum (2008), and
Stephens (2008) have contributed chapters to books or edited conference proceedings.
Some of the studies cited above adopt formalist or structuralist approaches to the examination of canonical and contemporary children’s literature. The extent of this study, with its specific focus on contemporary Australian children’s literature published between 1995 and 2006, and its transdisciplinary methodological approach to the investigation of narrative constructions of ecological subjectivities, has not
21 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study been attempted before. Consequently, this study provides a considerable contribution to the field of ecocriticism.
In addition, the study has pedagogical implications because of the potential to energise the teaching and study of children’s literature, and to help direct children’s literature criticism into a significant, widely relevant social and public role. The findings of this study are pertinent for praxis, specifically in the ways they can illuminate potential readings of Australian children’s environmental literature as well as other texts. Close textual analysis makes visible the discourses that frame the texts and shape readers as ecological subjects. Teachers will be encouraged by the study to provide opportunities for young people to identify and examine the ecological subjectivities created in texts. Such examinations will enable students to understand the range of ecological subject positions available to them . Students will have occasions to interrogate, resist, or accept the positions proposed. Finally, the provision of critical readings may alert researchers, practitioners, and young people to particular ways of making sense of the world, the ways they construct themselves as ecological subjects, and an awareness of how their own beliefs and interactions with the environment are formed and inform social practice now and in the future.
Key Concepts and Terms
Australian Children’s Literature
The broad term children’s literature is problematic. Simplistically, it can be regarded as a generic category that includes literature written for children from preschool to lower secondary school. Critics provide various encompassing and far more
22 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study sophisticated understandings of the field (Hunt, 1991; Nodelman, 2004). For this study, however, Australian children’s literature is accepted as texts produced and disseminated for children and young people in Australia (Stephens, 2003).
The term “text” is used consistently throughout this study to refer to primary sources, that is, children’s literature. Texts that are included in this study comprise those traditionally associated with the term literature. Novels which have a verbal narrative that details characters’ intersocial actions with each other, and also their engagement with the environment, make up a part of the study. Picture books that fall into two broad categories, those that have narratives with human characters and those that do not, are also included. The selection of the focus texts was guided by criteria detailed later in this chapter.
Environment
The term “environment” came to prominence in the 1960s. The conceptualisation of the physical world as the environment emphasises more than the word “nature”. The environment is not synonymous with nature, but is inclusive of nature (that which would exist without human existence, living beings such as plants and animals as well as physical elements such as rocks, water and air) and culture (that which is socially constructed). Buell’s enmeshment of nature and culture suggests an environment that is an amalgamation of the “brown landscapes” of industrialisation and the “green landscapes” of the natural, physical world (Buell, 2001, p. 7).
However, Buell’s account also takes into consideration the human modification of what he describes as first nature, “a degree of modification so profound that we shall never again encounter a pristine physical environment ” (Buell, 2001, p. 3).
23 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
The term environment is preferred in this study because of this inclusion of what was previously taken for granted, an awareness of how the environment has been abused and degraded by human actions and the implications for human health and livelihood
(Hochman, 1997). Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006, p. 471) have stated that “there is a tendency to equate the notion of environment with what sustains human life and what pleases humans”. Yet, just as humans impact environmental areas daily, the physical environment is still recognizable as a force that impacts humankind daily with cyclones, floods, droughts and heatwaves. The environment, therefore, is not static but in a constant state of flux, a “mutual constructivism” where the environment is shaped by, but also helps shape culture (Buell, 2001, p. 6). To conceptualise such synergistic relationships is to adopt a post-Cartesian stance that denies the dualisms which construct anthropocentric notions of human beings in the environment. What is facilitated by focusing on interconnections is a blurring of the nature-culture distinction, a more ecologically aware, human being with the environment.
Discourses
At a basic level, discourses are described as language use, or communicative sign systems (Schiffrin, Tannen & Hamilton, 2001; Stephens, 1990). Discourses operate as socio-cultural constructions which use language to create shared ways of describing, interpreting and understanding an array of human experiences and practices (Dryzek, 2005; Fairclough, 2003; Moon, 2004; Rose, 2001). Distinguished by particular vocabularies, discourses may privilege those who use them over others who do not and are consequently entangled within power relations (Moon, 2004).
The uncritical acceptance of discourses which are promoted by institutions with powerful social positions can mean those discourses may become dominant
24 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study discourses and in time unquestioned as common sense. Written discourses, the focus of this study, involve the “processes and effects of representation” and have “crucial features not normally present in actual spoken discourse” (Stephens, 1992, p. 5). The discursive interconnections of two types of discourses, narrative and environmental, are critical to this study because of the way they come together to construct subject positions within the texts.
Narrative Discourses
Narrative theories form another discourse that is central to this study. These theories differentiate between the events of a narrative, the story/ histoire, and the presentation of events, the discourse/ discours (Schiffrin, 2001, p. 374). Discourse, in this sense, includes choices of vocabulary and syntax, structure and order, orientation of speaker to content and to audience (Stephens, 1992). For this study elements of narrative discourse that are utilised in the analysis of the focus texts include: mode; narrative voice; point of view; focalisation; metaphor, metonymy, and irony; intertextuality; and closure. These narrative devices are critical in the construction of the subject positions within the texts and the positioning of readers as ecological subjects.
Environmental Discourses
Environmental discourses “offer specific ways of talking about particular environments and their futures” (Mühlhäusler & Peace, 2006, p. 458). They are not static, neither are they fixed permanently over time (Harré, Brockmeier &
Mühlhäusler, 1999, p. 7). Rather, environmental discourses evolve or emerge, and are contingent on complex socio-cultural and political-economic interactions.
According to Dryzek (2005) there is no single hegemonic environmental discourse.
25 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Environmental discourses can focus on local concerns and current issues, but there is a trend in contemporary environmental discourses to focus primarily on the endangerment of the human species within a global context (Mühlhäusler & Peace,
2006). In this study, two perspectives which shape and are shaped by environmental discourses include anthropocentrism and ecocentrism.
Anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism has been influenced by Judeo-Christian beliefs and values such as those espoused in Genesis 1:26 which exhorts mankind to have dominion over all living beings and the earth. Such dominion implies, for some, carte blanche exploitation or despotic control of the environment (White, 1991). For others,
Psalms and the Christian teachings of the New Testament imply a position of stewardship towards the environment, a responsibility to care for the environment on behalf of others (Garrard, 2004). Currently, stewardship is best encapsulated within the discourses of sustainability.
Ecocentrism
This more radical position denies humans a position of privilege above all else.
Ecocentrism encompasses several environmental viewpoints, including the land ethic and deep ecology, both of which take an holistic approach to the recognition of the interconnectedness of all life forms and the physical elements of the environment.
Intrinsic value from an ecocentric perspective can exist independently of human valuers. Both anthropocentrism and ecocentrism are critical to the construction of the ecological subject positions that are central to this study.
26 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Ecological Subjects, Subjectivities, Subject Positions and Agency
Concepts of ecological subjects, ecological subjectivities, and ecological subject positions are so closely related it is difficult to discuss them as distinct categories.
This study considers that there is no such being as an “ideal” ecological subject.
However, ecological subjectivity happens intersubjectively from interrelationships with others, with environmental discourses, and, although it is not the focus of the study, with the environment itself. Contemporary Western assumptions favour ecological subjects who are aware of the currently perceived dangers associated with human and environmental survival and who moderate their engagement with the environment. In other words, subjects who have access to environmental discourses, and who actively construct themselves as ecological subjects. Certain characteristics, therefore, can be identified in the accounts that make up the composite of ecological subjects/subject positions/subjectivities/ and agency in this study. Firstly, the use of the term ecological suggests an understanding, drawn from ecology, that coincides with Barry Commoner’s (1971) first law of ecology, that everything is connected to everything else; what affects one, affects all. The term ecological opens up more possibilities than the term environmental. Ecological, by implication, an awareness of relationships of interconnectivity and interdependence, includes the possibility of ecocentric perspectives, or what Pilz (1999) has described as an a-centred network of interactions between humans, living beings and the physical elements of the environment. Use of the term ecological is an attempt to avoid the anthropocentric connotations of the word ‘environmental’ which presupposes positive action that may nevertheless place humans in someway in control of the environment.
27 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Notions of agency imply assumptions about the positive outcomes that result from action. In this study, agency involves ecological subjects in acts of self awareness and reflection. Ecological subjects think about how they engage with the environment and choose particular courses of action in light of that reflection: their actions are purposively aimed towards self alteration or remaking the world
(Stephens, 2006, 2008). These understandings of agency encompass anthropocentric actions or ecocentric actions, but preclude recognition of environmental vandals as ecological subjects.
Ecocriticism
Ecocriticism is a diverse field of literary study, united by the shared premise that
“human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it”
(Glotfelty, 1996, p. xix). Scholars have advocated various approaches to their research. Branch, Johnson, Patterson and Slovic (1998) suggest that biocentric world views are an essential element in an ecocritical approach which encompasses “an extension of ethics, a broadening of human’s conception of global community to include nonhuman life forms and the physical environment” (p. xiii). Love (2003) bases his approach to ecocriticism on evolutionary biology thus aligning literary understanding with essential findings of earth and life sciences. Several approaches to ecocritical projects are proposed by Buell (1999), two of which include the study of literature as a site of environmental-ethical reflection, and the study of the construction of all modes of environmental discourse.
28 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
The Aim of the Study
This thesis contends that contemporary Australian children’s literature offers textual sites that represent complex interactions between humans, other living beings and the environment. Environmental discourses and narrative discourses intersect in these textual sites to construct a complex of ecological subject positions. Ways of negotiating and interpreting the various ecological subject positions represented may be problematic for the children who read the texts, for the teachers who use these texts in the classroom, and also for other adults who may read them. Therefore, the central aim of my study is:
To examine how a selection of Australian children’s environmental literature constructs, advocates, and contests particular ecological subjectivities .
In addition, four key objectives guide the contextual, conceptual, and theoretical/methodological structure for the study. These are:
Objective 1 : To locate previous research of children’s environmental literature which examines human engagement with the environment.
Objective 2 : To construct a conceptual framework that accounts for the complexities and subtleties of the interconnecting and interdependent networks of environmental discourses that inform Australian children’s environmental literature.
Objective 3 : To develop a transdisciplinary methodology that will facilitate close ecocritical reading of the focus texts .
29 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Objective 4 : To consider the implications for praxis and further research .
The achievement of the aim and objectives of any research study is only possible with an appropriate methodology: in this instance, a transdisciplinary approach informed by selected literary and critical theories.
The Research Approach
The methodological approach adopted for this study is guided by a tenet of ecocriticism identified by Estok (2001), that is, inclusivity. Ecocriticism’s transdisciplinarity provides opportunities to draw upon a range of critical theories, including literary theories, which have been afforded positions of privilege in the fields of language and literature studies to develop a unique framework to apply in this instance. I have chosen an approach that enables my position as an ecocritic to resemble that of a bricoleuse , creating my bricolage or textual analysis from an assorted collection of diverse but nuanced critical approaches.
From ecocriticism I make use of studies by Buell (2005) and Phillips (2003), two scholars whose opposing positions have advanced my preference for engagement with poststructuralist ideas. The postcolonial studies of children’s literature by
Bradford (2001, 2007, 2008) suggest critical consideration of my Eurocentric focus, just as the ecofeminist studies by Cheney (1989), Kolodny (1996), Plumwood
(1993), Warren (1998) present ways of critiquing androcentric approaches to the environment. In order to make visible the ideologies inscribed in ecological subject positions I draw from perspectives on narrative of Belsey (2002), McCallum (1999) and Stephens (1992, 2006, 2008). As most of the focus texts of this study are picture
30 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study books, I utilise theories of visual semiotics that have a particular emphasis on the interplay between the visual and the verbal narratives. As picture books play a crucial role in the socialisation of children, particularly with regard to the representation of the environment and human engagement with it, the importance of visual semiotics to the methodological framework for this study, which focuses on
Australian children’s texts, cannot be underestimated. Of particular significance is the aesthetic experience that picture books offer the reader. I therefore draw on the works of Mallan (1999) and Misson and Morgan (2005, 2006) to inform this dimension of the study.
The transdisciplinarity of this study is further strengthened by my approach to textual analysis informed by poststructural perspectives and other appropriate critical theories. My use of “textual” implies the whole, as the sum of the parts, not the examination of stretches of language or discourse in isolation from their specific context. It is my intention in this study to adopt strategies that allow the analysis of the discursive pressures that texts display (Bradford, 2001).
Criteria for Selecting Texts
There has been a proliferation of environmentally themed children’s literature in
Australia over the last years of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. This is confirmed by Bradford (2008, unpaged) who contends that
[h]undreds of children’s texts (in genres including fiction, non-fiction, film and picture book) address ecological issues including global warming, pollution, degradation of land and waterways and endangered species, in the process disclosing what adults regard as desirable possibilities or cautionary tales.
31 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Since 1995 The Wilderness Society has presented annual awards “to authors and illustrators that best encourage an attitude of caring, wonder and understanding of the natural world, or those that promote an awareness of environmental issues”
(Wilderness Society, 2006). The awards, for works of fiction, non-fiction and picture books, are an indication that mainstream Australian society values environmentally informed children’s texts. The increase in Australian children’s environmental literature published within the last ten to fifteen years has, therefore, provided a rich source of texts for my research.
To contain the study, it was appropriate to include texts produced in the years before the commencement of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development (2005-2014). As an historical tracing of changing ecological subjectivities was beyond the defined parameters of the study, I decided not to include texts published before 1995. In a time of environmental anxieties the knowledge that the focus texts would be laden with contemporary discourses was promising, as was the knowledge that the texts would be in use in classrooms across
Australia.
The selection process was guided by consideration of Buell’s (1995, pp. 6-8) four characteristics of environmentally oriented texts, namely: (i) The nonhuman environment is present not merely as a framing device but as a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history; (ii) the human interest is not understood to be the only legitimate interest; (iii) human accountability to the environment is part of the text’s ethical orientation; (iv) some sense of the environment as process rather than as a constant or a given is at least implicit in the
32 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study text. It is almost inconceivable that any one text would display all four characteristics, but the wordless picture book Belonging (Baker, 2004) with its forceful narrative of urban environmental renewal, is the exception. I was mindful that I did not want to include what Stephens (2008, p. 70) might categorise as information texts, that is, educational texts that “inform audiences about some aspect of the natural world and are primarily descriptive”. I made one exception to this condition, and that was the inclusion of Leaf Litter: Exploring the Mysteries of a
Hidden World (Tonkin, 2006) which is an information text that matched several of the selection criteria.
Novels for young adults which might be considered as narratives of personal growth, where the texts focus on an exploration of a young adult’s development as an ecological subject, are also included. Such texts as Hope Bay (Plüss 2005), Blueback
(Winton, 1997), and Yoss (Hirsch, 2001) explore the characters’ growth as ecological subjects. Picture books that pursue the same theme include The Singing Hat (Riddle,
2000) and The Hidden Forest (Baker, 2000).
The focus texts for this study fulfil at least one or more of these criteria and offer a representative sample of Australian children’s environmental literature published from 1995 to 2006.
Parameters of the Study
As discussed earlier, human relationships with the environment have been a feature of Australian children’s literature since its origins more than a century ago.
However, the proliferation of environmentally focused texts in the last decade of the twentieth century, together with strident socio-political expressions of the mounting
33 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study exigency of environmental challenges, as well as the more practical requirement of containing the study to a manageable size, limit its focus to texts published between
1995 and 2006.
A selection of 23 texts, that is, novels and picture books, written and produced in
Australia during those years, and disseminated for children, form the focus of this study. Despite my inclusion of critique informed by postcolonial theory and the discussion of Indigenous understandings where they are observed in Australian children’s literature, the main focus of my study is on texts which foreground
Eurocentric understandings of human interactions with the environment. Out of respect for Indigenous ways of being with the environment, I acknowledge here, that
I do not presume to speak on behalf of Indigenous people. This study does not discuss dreaming stories or presume knowledge of Indigenous ecological subjectivities or what Martin (2008b) calls “relatedness”. The analysis of Indigenous texts included in the study is guided by postcolonial research in children’s literature.
The inclusion of only a limited number of these texts could be seen as an act of marginalisation. I contend that texts which spotlight Indigenous ways of being with the environment are worthy of academic studies in their own right, and that academic scholarship would benefit from such research. Where Indigenous texts are included I have been guided by Martin (2008a) 5 who suggests a protocol for acknowledging
Indigenous authors and/or illustrators. Therefore, with each first reference to a text by Indigenous authors and/or illustrators, I have included along with their names, their language group and the traditional area associated with that language group. All
5 Karen Martin is a descendant of Quandamoopah people from North Stradbroke Island, Moreton Bay, South East Queensland and Bidjara people from Central Queensland. 34 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Indigenous texts included in the study are published and accessible to the public; however, where given, I acknowledge the permission for the stories to be shared.
This study does not engage with reader response, as that would necessitate a different kind of thesis and methodological approach. Engagement with actual readers to ascertain their understandings of the discourses in the texts, the ideologies inscribed in them, and how these shape readers as ecological subjects has not been undertaken. While this may appear to be a significant omission, scholars have argued that it is not essential for children to participate in studies of children’s literature
(Bradford, 2001; Johnston, 2003; Stephens; 1992). My study involves an examination of how children’s literature positions readers in certain ways but does not attempt to gather empirical evidence which would indicate that children take up those positions. I have not included responses from children in my study because, according to Bradford (2001) and Stephens (1992), three factors make it difficult to gauge the influence of texts on child readers. Firstly, for child readers as for adult readers, the experience of reading may be separated from the articulation of that experience (Stephens, 1992). Secondly, because ideologies become naturalised within cultures, they may not be visible to readers (Bradford, 2001). Thirdly, it is an unrealistic expectation that children could identify and articulate the meanings made from their reading experiences which may be cumulative and repetitive, and change according to the knowledges that children bring to a text at the time of reading
(Bradford, 2001).
The study does not attempt to measure causal effects of shifting moral values, obligations, or duties towards the environment as a result of children reading the
35 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study focus texts. For even though this study assumes that texts provide a literary route for changing consciousness (Head, 2000), it is not the purpose of this study to examine the connections “between the act of reading and the subsequent moral improvement”
(Stow, 2000, p. 192). Neither is it the purpose of this study to determine how understanding various ecological subject positions may contribute to relieving environmental pressures (Mühlhäusler & Peace, 2006).
While it may be the intention of authors of environmental texts for children to shape moral values through the conscious construction of their texts it is not the purpose of this study to pursue that avenue of presumed “intentionality”.
Overview of Chapters
The following chapters of this document are designed to realise the aim and objectives of the study as set out earlier in this chapter.
Chapter 2 addresses Objective 1: To locate previous research of children’s environmental literature which examines human engagement with the environment.
It presents an overview of scholarly studies of children’s literature and also includes some pertinent studies of adult literary and non-literary texts. In the studies of children’s literature from Britain, North America and Australia, there is a focus on the dominant environmental tropes which informed the focus texts. The review indicates that previous scholars have examined interactions between children and nature/environment using formalist or structuralist approaches. These studies do not focus on ecological subjectivities. The review therefore highlights the need for my study.
36 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Chapter 3 addresses Objective 2: To construct a conceptual framework which accounts for the complexities and subtleties of the interconnecting and interdependent networks of environmental discourses. This chapter develops a tripartite framework constituted of significant and contemporary environmental discourses. In developing the framework, I recognise the theories and concepts that shaped earlier ecocritical studies. By drawing on those studies, my discussion elaborates the three major environmental discourses –unrestrained anthropocentrism, restrained anthropocentrism, and ecocentrism – which support the framework.
In Chapter 4, I address Objective 3: To develop a transdisciplinary methodology that will facilitate close ecocritical reading of the focus texts. The nuanced methodology, developed in Chapter 4, offers the study an approach to textual analysis that is cognisant of the various disciplinary fields that contribute to the study’s area of investigation. The methodological framework is structured according to procedures recognised by the community of academic scholars working in the fields of ecocriticism and children’s literature. The chapter includes an account of the ontological and epistemological assumptions that underpin my study and a discussion of the theoretical approaches from ecocriticism, narrative theory, postcolonial and ecofeminist theory, and visual semiotics that will shape my methodology. The chapter concludes by addressing the issues of degrees of acceptability within this type of textual analysis.
The three chapters that follow those described above undertake the work of textual analysis needed to realise the study’s aim: To examine how a selection of Australian
37 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study children’s environmental literature constructs, advocates, and contests particular ecological subjectivities .
In Chapter 5 I argue that the focus texts provide opportunities for the creation of ecological subject positions which confront the folly of human attempts to live all over the world and bring it under control. The textual analysis demonstrates how narrative strategies construct subject positions where human dominion, with its anthropogenic impact on the environment, is contested. Postcolonial and ecofeminist perspectives add a further dimension to the textual analysis and enable the critique of the subjectivities constructed. In a group of picture books, Where Have All the
Flowers Gone? (Bruce & Wade, 2000), Tasmanian Tiger (Isham & Isham, 1996), and Uno’s Garden (Base, 2006), daily encounters with ecocatastrophe are constructed through representations of species loss. I suggest, however, that certain attention seeking features of the texts complicate and destabilise the ecological subject positions offered to readers. I propose that two picture books, At the Beach
(Harvey, 2004) and In the Bush (Harvey, 2005) superficially deny the consequences of unrestrained human engagement with the environment. If read ironically, however, the texts, by implying the folly of unrestrained anthropocentrism, offer the reader opportunities to interrogate dominion . The characters in the picture book, The
Tower to the Sun , (Thompson, 1996), when confronted with an ecological wasteland, manage to construct an ingenious adaptation to escape the effects of ecocatastrophic pollution. Reading positions are constructed by visual and verbal intertextual references which challenge the reader to critique the values that underpin human dominion over the environment. The young adult novel, Airdancer of Glass
(Bateson, 2004), is a hybrid text composed of elements of ecocatastrophe and
38 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study ecocentrism. Alternative scenarios, which show the consequences of controlling the environment or living as part of it, provide the reader with opportunities to evaluate aspects of contemporary treatment of the environment in Western society. Another young adult novel, Yoss (Hirsch, 2001), conforms to the rite of passage narrative structure, but may equally be read as an environmental allegory where readers may align him/her self with the central character who challenges the manifestations of dominion associated with over-consumption.
Chapter 6 continues the critical work undertaken in the previous chapter. In this chapter I argue that the texts analysed offer readers representations of sustainable human engagement with the environment. The characters develop as ecological subjects who participate in sustainability, through individual actions in their immediate environments or through collaborative actions with groups of other citizens acting as responsible ecological citizens. In the first group of texts analysed, the central characters emerge as ecological subjects. In the picture books, The
Singing Hat (Riddle, 2000), Belonging (Baker, 2004), and the young adult novels
Blueback (Winton, 1997) and Hope Bay (Plüss 2005), the reader is aligned with the characters as they mature into confident ecological subjects. On the other hand, the characters in Islands in my Garden (Howes & Harvey, 1998), My Home in Kakadu
(Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005) 6, and The Shy Mala (Stafford & Zielinski,
2006) 7 all have characters who understand their sense of themselves as agents acting in light of environmental consequences of their actions. Readers are invited to assume similar responsibility for the environment.
6 Jane Christophersen is an elder of the Bunitj clan from Kakadu, an area in the Northern Territory. 7 On the reverse of the title page, the Warlpiri people are acknowledged by the author as the traditional owners of the mala story and thanked for giving their permission for the story to be shared “with children everywhere” (Stafford & Zielinksi, 2006, unpaged). 39 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study
Chapter 7 completes the task of textual analysis. In this chapter, I argue that the texts attempt to represent ecocentric understandings which include the reconceptualisation of human engagement with the environment in order to favour the environment. As picture books, all the texts offer readers an aesthetic experience, and all but one of the texts advocate an ecocentric perspective by decentring the human characters if they are present, or effacing them altogether. In The Hidden Forest (Baker, 2000), the central character, Ben, shares his moment of epiphany with the reader who is then better placed to understand Ben’s re-evaluation of his earlier anthropocentric actions.
In one group of texts, human presence is evident but decentred: In Home (Oliver,
2006) the “central characters” are a pair of Peregrine falcons; in Reef Superstar
(Killingeck & Toft, 2005) the marine creatures participate in a competition similar to the idol competitions currently on television; and in The Waterhole (Base, 2001) the animals are given a voice but it is one that is suggestively human. The attempt to represent ecocentric perspectives are compromised by various aspects of these texts.
In Creatures of the Rain Forest (Brim & Eglitis, 2005),8 ecological understandings and Indigenous understandings are combined but Western epistemologies are prioritised and a potential move towards representations of ecocentric understandings of Indigenous peoples is not taken up. However, Turtles’ Song
(Brown & Toft, 2001), The World That We Want (Toft, 2004), and Leaf Litter:
Exploring the Mysteries of a Hidden World (Tonkin, 2006) offer the reader an aesthetic experience that is enhanced by the inclusion of persuasive ecological
8 Walter Brim is a member of the Djabugay language group from the tableland country of Far North Queensland. The text acknowledges the assistance of Djabugay elders, particularly Wanyarra (Roy Banning) and Bina (Michael Quinn) in the production of the text. 40 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study details. Although these details privilege Western epistemologies, I argue that they provide the reader with sufficient ecological knowledge to increase the aesthetic experience and place the reader in awe of the environment and the ability of creatures as a part of it, to adapt and survive. Along with this sense of awe, the reader is offered a position of humility, with the acknowledgement that humans are a part of, not apart from, this encompassing environment.
Chapter 8 concludes the thesis while addressing Objective 4: To consider the pedagogical implications for praxis and further research. In the study’s final chapter, I acknowledge that the focus texts and, by inference, others not included in the study, have a role to play in education and research by providing opportunities for individuals to examine, accept or challenge the ecological subjectivities constructed. By highlighting possible and alternative ways of reading Australian
Children’s Literature (1995-2006), young readers can become aware of how their own subjectivities are constructed and how they might behave as ecological subjects in environmental times that demand ecological consciousness.
Summary
In this chapter I have provided an introduction to my study of narrative constructions of ecological subjectivities in Australian children’s literature (1995-2006). The introduction sets out the major features that shape the study. This chapter, therefore, begins with a reflection on human engagement with the environment over the last forty years. Significant environmental discourses and their reciprocal relationship with ecological subjectivities are discussed before an examination of historical and contemporary Australian texts is undertaken. By providing such a background for the
41 Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Study study, I posit the need for this study and articulate the considerable contribution it seeks to make to the interconnected fields of children’s literature criticism and ecocriticism.
42 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature
Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature: A
Locus for the Study
Children’s literature offers one of the most extensive sources for the study of ideas about nature, the environment, ecology and the role of humans in relation to all of these (Lesnik- Oberstein, 1998, p. 216).
The opening epigraph alludes to the existence of a vast number of literary texts for children, where human engagement with the environment is worthy of investigation.
It also suggests that a corollary of this large number of environmental texts might be the expectation that the field of critical inquiry into children’s environmental literature is similarly vast. This field is, as suggested in Chapter 1, the field of ecocriticism, an area of study that has a particular focus “on literary (and artistic) expression of human experience primarily in a naturally and culturally shaped world; the joys of abundance, sorrows of deprivation, hopes for harmonious existence and fears of loss and disaster” (Cohen, 2004, p. 10).
Scrutiny of the field, however, reveals that the body of critical works analysing children’s environmental literature has not equalled the “extensive” possibilities offered by the literary texts themselves. Therefore, this chapter begins with a brief overview of studies of British, North American and Australian children’s literature.
Among these studies, those by Bradford (2003), Mallan (2004), and Stephens (2006) sparked an interest in environmental discourses and the narrative construction of subjectivities.
However, in order to confirm a direction for my study within the field of ecocriticism and an appropriate methodological approach, I had to move beyond the
43 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature field of criticism of children’s literature. Initially, I turned to a selection of scholarly studies of British and North American literature written for adult audiences (Bate,
2000; Garrard, 2004; Love, 2003). As my study progressed, I located ecocriticism of literature with an Australian focus (Robin, 2007; Tredinnick, 2007). Significant concerns in this ecocritical scholarship, and therefore of this chapter, are four major environmental tropes, the pastoral , wilderness , apocalypse and georgic . Interest in these tropes is also found in studies of Australian children’s literature, (Scutter,
1993; Weaver, 2006). By paying attention to the distinctive features of the pastoral genre, for example, Scutter (1993) has examined the trope across a range of
Australian texts for young people, but has not taken up opportunities to examine the trope’s potential to shape ecological subjectivities. Weaver (2006), on the other hand, uses a postcolonial approach to her critique of apocalyptic texts, thereby encouraging consideration of the historical and cultural contexts of the texts under review and providing a better insight into how postcolonial approaches might be appropriate for this study.
My account of these ecocritical studies detects discernible traces of a shift in ecocritical methodologies: a shift which conforms to the transitions in ecocriticism identified by Glotfelty (1996) and Buell (2005).9 The shift involves moving beyond the acceptance of structuralist approaches to literary analysis, to the application of ecocritical methodologies, informed by contemporary literary and cultural theories, to the analysis of historical, canonical classical, and contemporary literary and non- literary texts.
9 Ecocriticism’s transitionary stages (Glotfelty, 1996) or waves (Buell, 2001) are discussed further in Chapter 4. 44 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature
In this chapter, therefore, by taking a wide ranging but nuanced approach to the selection of scholarly studies, I provide an important mapping of the directions taken, and theoretical perspectives used by other scholars. The critique suggests that of the studies reviewed only a limited number are situated within the context of
Australian children’s literature. Also, what is not found in these studies is an examination of how contemporary Australian children’s literature, existing at the intersection of environmental and narrative discourses, offers certain ecological subject positions informed by various environmental perspectives. The subject positions offered will vary, for example, if the environment is represented metaphorically as female, or as a resource, or if non-human characters are represented as possessing human characteristics. The critique, therefore, provides the direction for the scholarly work undertaken in Chapter 3, which develops the conceptual framework for this study, and Chapter 4, which elaborates the transdisciplinary methodological approach taken to my ecocritical analysis.
An Overview of Ecocritical Studies into Children’s Literature
Critical essays of British, Northern American, and Australian children’s literature that contain environmental themes or address ecological issues have appeared sporadically over the past 15 years. In the mid 1990s, special issues of peer-reviewed international journals of children’s literature were devoted to “Ecology and the
Child” ( Children’s Literature Association Quarterly , 1994/95) and “Green Worlds;
Nature and Ecology” (The Lion and the Unicorn , 1995).
Several years later, in support of the belief expressed epigraphically above, Lesnik-
Oberstein (1998) compiled a survey of children’s literature that depicts the
45 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature relationships between children, animals, and the environment, beginning with
Reynard the Fox (first published in English in 1481) and Aesop’s Fables (first published in English in 1484) and concluding with two North American texts published in the early 1990s. In pursuing an historical overview, Lesnik-Oberstein’s study has a primary focus on the child-nature relationship as proposed by Rousseau and Locke, based on the child and nature seen as a joint construction of “the essential, the unconstructed, spontaneous and uncontaminated” (p. 210). She then considers the relationship depicted in literature between children and nature as one that evolves from children as conquerors of the natural environment (in boys’ adventure stories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) to the child characters in
The Great Kapok Tree : A Tale of the Amazon Rainforest (Cherry, 1990) and Brother
Eagle, Sister Sky (Seattle & Jeffers, 1991) having “a central role in ecological and environmental awareness and activism” (Lesnik-Oberstein, 1998, p. 213).
Although Lesnik-Oberstein has accomplished her goal to acknowledge the historically contingent changes in literary representations of children’s relationships with the environment, her observation of the role of characters in the texts as a response to the increased environmental awareness and activism of the second half of the twentieth century, has an implication for my study. The observation encouraged me to take up the investigation of the ecological subjectivities of the characters in recent texts and consequently the subject positions offered to readers.
More recently the ecocritical collection, Wild Things (Dobrin & Kidd, 2004), considers, from a range of critical perspectives, environmental issues in both canonical and contemporary British and North American, literary and non-literary
46 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature children’s texts. The approaches all reflect a concern for texts as culturally conceived expressions of children’s relations with the environment. For example, in that collection, Copeland (2004) takes an ecofeminist approach to her reading of the works of Beatrix Potter and Gene Stratton-Porter to argue that these female authors struggled with difficulties in their personal and professional lives as an outcome of patriarchal oppression. Discourse analysis is undertaken by other contributors,
Holton and Rogers (2004), in a study of Owl Magazine , a Canadian nature publication. Identified are seven major themes that constitute scientific discourse with three consistent and four changing themes over a twenty year period from 1978 to 1998. The significance of this particular study with its focus on the analysis of discourses is discussed further in Chapter 3.
With respect to Australian children’s literature, there is no shortage of environmental texts. However, criticism of these texts has not been extensive. As stated in Chapter
1, several scholarly books have chapters which address Australian environmental children’s literature. Common to those volumes is an analysis of the works of notable Australian authors whose books were published during the second half of the twentieth century, a time when conservation of bird life, and species such as whales, together with the saving of old growth forests, were contentious social and political issues in Australia.
In The Proof of the Puddin': Australian Children's Literature 1970-1990 , for example, Saxby (1993) examines the theme of environmental conservation as part of his review of Australian children’s literature. Saxby highlights the overt didacticism of these texts without challenging or critiquing the ideologies inscribed in the texts.
47 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature
In two chapters of Australian Children's Literature: An Exploration of Genre and
Theme Foster, Finnis and Nimon (1995) survey the attitudes towards the environment that are held by the child characters. These attitudes can be categorised in the oppositional terms of “praise” or “fear” of the bush. Attitudes of awe, emotional attachment or romantic engagement are identified in fictional texts by Nan
Chauncy, Frank Dalby-Davidson, and Hesba Brinsmead (Foster, Finnis & Nimon,
1995, pp. 53-69). In contrast, novels by Joan Phipson, Mavis Thorpe Clarke, Ivan
Southall, Lillith Norman, and Colin Thiele depict the environment as “anything but supportive… something to be survived, endured, defeated, defied, or denied”
(Foster, Finnis & Nimon, 1995, p. 78). In these novels, the critics are concerned with how a hostile environment operates as a plot device; the character’s battle with the environment is used as a vehicle for developing maturity and a rite of passage from childhood to adolescence and towards adulthood. These scholars are not concerned with how the characters’ developing maturity might involve their sense of self as ecological subjects and how this might be analysed in terms of the narrative strategies used to construct it.
The role of the environment (be it the bush, the beach, or the city) is identified as providing characters with opportunities to test themselves. For Finnis (2005), the characters’ experiences suggest unique, as well as authentic, depictions of Australian ways of relating to the environment, but Finnis does not examine how the construction of the characters’ experiences offers readers particular subject positions.
In a chapter in Hearts and Minds: Creative Australians and the Environment , Pollak and MacNabb (2000) regard Australian children’s literature as a site for the
48 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature expression of the environmental awareness of authors. Their discussion of texts published from the 1960s to the 1990s focuses on the perceived desire of authors such as Colin Thiele, Patricia Wrightson, Ruth Park, and Jeannie Baker to use their authorial voices to raise the environmental consciousness of their young readers.
While the chapter is highly descriptive, and lacks a serious, scholarly, theoretical frame, it alludes to, but does not analyse, the connections between the environmentally friendly actions of the central characters, in texts like Pinquo
(Thiele, 1983) and Brahminy (Thiele, 1995), and the development of readers’ environmental consciouness.
The Australian studies discussed above, which adopt structuralist approaches, offer limited understandings of how subject positions are implied within texts, and how the texts seek reader allegiance. They neither differentiate nor critique environmental perspectives such as anthropocentrism or ecocentrism, nor do they examine specific features of narrative discourses. By attending to the ideological implications of environmental discourses, as well as particular narrative strategies, attention can be given, not only to characters and action per se , but also to how readers are positioned to engage with the subjective experiences of the focalising character or the narrator- focaliser.
This approach has been undertaken in more recent studies by Bradford (2003, 2008) and Stephens (2006) who adopt contemporary, critical approaches to their ecocritical scholarship. Bradford (2008) examines the coterminous constructions of eco- citizenship and whiteness in Australian children’s literature. She identifies, in contemporary texts for children, the dominance of white colonial perspectives which
49 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature silence and consequently marginalise Indigenous voices. In contrast, the collaboratively produced Creatures of the Rainforest (Brim & Eglitis, 2005) “enacts and advocates a cross-cultural approach to representing the environment” (Bradford,
2008, p. 1). In his study of primarily North American texts, Stephens (2006) includes
Window (Baker, 1991) and Belonging (Baker, 2004) in the context of three ideologically grounded positions: mastery over the environment; caring for the environment; and an ecocentric regard for the environment. In his short study,
Stephens’ ecocritical approach assumes this three component framework, without examining it in detail. However, it allowed me access to ideas about different environmental perspectives. Further discussion of this framework, therefore, and its relevance to the development of the tripartite framework that guides this study are addressed in Chapter 3.
This overview of ecocritical studies into children’s literature suggests this is a nascent field, characterised by its state of transition with regard to critical approaches taken, and diversity in terms of the range of texts studied. However, further examination of ecocritical studies justifies the need for the transdisciplinary approach to my study, as well as my focus on Australian children’s literature.
Therefore, I turn my attention to the major environmental tropes that have preoccupied other ecocritical scholars.
Environmental Tropes: The Focus of Earlier Studies
My discussion of four major environmental tropes – pastoral, wilderness, apocalypse, and georgic – is intended to be neither definitive, nor exhaustive, but enabling (Garrard, 2004). As stated in the introduction to the chapter, because of a
50 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature paucity of ecocritical studies of Australian children’s literature, I have broadened my scope to include studies of literature written for both adult and younger audiences.
The ecocritical studies I examine are of value for the following reasons. Firstly, there is a focus on traditionally accepted features of environmental tropes and the application of those to specific texts to determine how they conform or fail to conform to conventional usage. This suggests the need for an examination of how traditional tropes shape and are shaped by current environmental discourses. For example, a reconceptualised pastoral might underpin the ecologically focused holidays of eco-tourism; the wilderness might infuse reworkings of the sublime that shift from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective; rather than foreshadow some future event, the apocalypse might exist as a daily ecocatastrophe; and the georgic, with its emphasis on proper methods of agricultural production, might be incorporated in the discourses of sustainability.
Also important for this study, but in terms of a methodological approach, is the need to move beyond a singular focus on tropes as generic structures, to a focus on how other narrative strategies, as outlined in the previous chapter, construct ecological subject positions.
Secondly, the four literary tropes are indebted to Western ways of understanding and engaging with the environment. Pastoral , Wilderness , and Apocalypse form “a linked series of tropes that are heavily indebted to the Euro-American, Judaeo-
Christian narrative of a fallen, exiled humanity seeking redemption, but fearing apocalyptic judgement” (Garrard, 2004, p. 15). The Georgic , with its emphasis on
51 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature strategies for agricultural production and animal husbandry also derives from
Eurocentric understandings. Some ecocritical studies (Robin, 2007; Tredinnick,
2007; Weaver, 2006) have problematised the uncritical acceptance of these tropes in literary representations, but not with regard to the formation of ecological subjectivities and not in a wide range of Australian children’s literature.
Finally, to date, no full length ecocritical studies of Australian children’s’ literature have been located.
Pastoral
The ecocritical studies discussed here focus on the examination of the characteristics of the pastoral trope and the identification of those characteristics and variations of them in a range of texts for adults and children. The studies are of interest because they imply other ways in which the pastoral could be conceptualised in literary texts and other ways in which the pastoral might be examined.
The pastoral trope constructs notions of contrast between rural and urban life, often expressed by a retreat by the protagonist to a pristine, bountiful, and restorative environment before his/her return. The pastoral trope foregrounds an environment which is pristine, abundant, and bucolic. Depictions of humanity’s relationship with such environments have been presented through the pastoral trope since classical times. Both the Idylls of Theocritus and Virgil’s Eclogues depict the desirability of a retreat from an urban environment to a rural environment which will provide a restorative escapade or antidote to urbanity (Bate, 2000, pp. 73-74; Garrard, 2004, p.
34). The poetry of Wordsworth and others of the Romantic Movement also depicts the contrasts between relationships of alienation in urban environments and
52 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature relationships of renewal in contact with a rural environment (Bate, 2000, p. 146).
Characteristic spatial metaphors identified in this trope include the city as “frenetic, corrupt, impersonal” and the country as “peaceful, abundant” (Garrard, 2004, p. 35).
The metaphors reinforce the popular conceptions of the restorative capacity of rural environments and the deleterious effects of an urban environment and serve to perpetuate representations of dichotomous relationships between city and country.
In a similar vein, temporal metaphors pertaining to past, present and future suggest a looking back with longing for something lost, or the celebration of a bountiful present, and/or the looking forward to a redeemed future (Garrard, 2004, p. 37). For
Love (2003) the pastoral trope fulfils a perceived psychological need or a genetic disposition of readers towards biophilia , that is, a love for country life. The pastoral therefore
can be a serious and complex criticism of life, involved not merely with country scenes and natural life but with a significant commentary on the explicit or implicit contrast between such settings and the lives of an urban and sophisticated audience. (Love, 2003, p. 66)
Similarly, in a comprehensive examination of Australian children’s environmental literature of the 1980s, Scutter (1993) highlights the combination of distinctively
Australian elements with the traditional characteristics of the pastoral trope discussed by Love (2003). Where, for example, the pastoral is traditionally associated with a temporal interlude of retreat or escape, Scutter (1993) identifies a characteristically
Australian turn through the use of those much revered Australian customs for gaining relief, namely, the weekend or the holiday. For example, in John Marsden’s
So Much to Tell You (1987) the protagonist, Marina, experiences a pastoral interlude at a school friend’s rural property. This respite precipitates the reunion with her
53 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature father which in turn enables her to regain her speech. Where the pastoral is traditionally associated with rustic physical space, the Australian element is as likely to be the walled space of the backyard or the domestic garden, as the rural setting of the bush (Scutter, 1993) . For instance, the diarist narrator, Mark, in Frank Willmott’s
Breaking Up (1983) experiences his pastoral “pick-me-up” in the organic vegetable garden, where he develops a sense of oneness with the environment, a “feeling that we’d all grow and die together and that included the vegetables and the chooks”
(Willmott, 1983, p. 50).
For Scutter (1993), other renditions of the pastoral reveal various relationships between humans, living beings and the environment. These various relationships are realised in My Sister Sif (Park, 1986) and The Web of Time (Harding, 1985). Park’s novel evokes a sense of mourning for a lost environment that taps the elegiac qualities of the pastoral as well as the healing power of a marine pastoral (Scutter,
1993, p. 25). In The Web of Time (1985) Harding repositions the pastoral not in the past, but as a new beginning that nevertheless embraces pastoral values in the hope of a more positive future (Scutter, 1993, p. 25). In contrast, Lenz (1995), in an analysis of Eva (1988) by British writer Peter Dickinson, examines the paradoxical themes of immortality and destruction together within the narrative pattern of separation, trial and return, within the dystopian trope as an example of the twenty- first century pastoral.
Included in Scutter’s (1993) account of the pastoral in Australian children’s literature is a discussion of Nadia Wheatley’s The Blooding (1987). In this text, there is no escape to a rural paradise from a frenzied urban setting; rather, the adolescent
54 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature protagonist, Colum Ferris, already living in a rural locale, escapes to “The Palace”, a retreat deep within a Tasmanian forest, complete with Edenic orchard. Scutter (1993) rightly draws attention to the anthropocentrism interwoven throughout this text, as it privileges human need over environmental need at all times. Logging is prohibited, and the forest is saved, but only because of its potential as a tourist site. Ironically, the remnants of an early pioneering settlement provide the impetus for saving the forest, rather than the forest itself. What is not addressed by Scutter (1993) is how the privileging of this colonial, white settlement creates subject positions which disregard Indigenous Tasmanians’ relationships with the environment or the intrinsic value of the unique Tasmanian environment in its own right.
Key elements of the pastoral, the retreat and return refreshed, within the distinctively
Australian context of the holiday, as identified by Scutter (1993), are of interest for their potential to construct ecological subjectivities. The characters participating in such a holiday, for example, might have ecological interests suggested by eco- tourism or they may have less up-to-date concerns, and consider their holiday environment from a purely selfish anthropocentric perspective.
Wilderness
Like the pastoral, texts employing the wilderness trope conceive of one environment as antidote for another. The “motif of escape and return” is common to both tropes
(Garrard, 2004, p. 59). But where pastoral texts depict the antidotal environment as bountiful and harmonious, the wilderness trope posits an environment of excess and extremes, one that is chaotic and complex rather than simple and balanced (Love,
2003). The wilderness trope, therefore, offers two contrasting opportunities for human characters, acceptance of which will facilitate redemption. Firstly, characters
55 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature can be challenged by the environment which is represented as a difficult and threatening opponent. In Australian children’s literature of the 1960s, the environment was depicted as an overwhelming opponent. For example, in Ivan
Southall’s To the Wild Sky (1967) the child characters face the daunting prospect of survival in an unforgiving environment. Secondly, characters can be filled with a sense of wonder at the environment’s overwhelming potential. This second option, evident in British and North American Romantic texts, is underrepresented in
Australian literature (Robin, 2007).
Other associations emerge within the wilderness trope. A wilderness environment can be either “sojourned in” or “inhabited” (Garrard, 2004, p. 76). Citing comparisons between the writings of Thoreau, Muir, Abbey, and Austin, Garrard
(2004) claims that women writers are more likely to present immersion in the landscape rather than confrontation with it (p. 76). Whether or not this observation applies to Australian children’s writers is beyond the parameters of this study. There are, however, at least two examples from Australian children’s literature which support and refute this somewhat totalising claim. In Jeannie Baker’s picture book,
The Story of Rosy Dock (1995), the female protagonist inhabits a wild environment appearing to be “immersed”. However, in Victor Kelleher’s Dogboy (2005) a male child protagonist becomes part of the environment, “like a creature of the wild, he had the ability to read the skies: to foretell the coming of high wind or unusually hot weather. He also understood the ways of the earth” (Kelleher, 2005, p. 39). The pertinent point is that both texts see characters, regardless of gender, “inhabiting” the environment and not simply “sojourning”.
56 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature
Few critics of children’s literature, with the exception of Bradford (2001, 2007,
2008) and Robin (2007), have discussed how the wilderness trope is problematic.
Although Australian environmental literature has been described as “earthy and popular”, from a postcolonial perspective, ideas of wilderness and white “sojourning in wilderness” often imply a previously uninhabited environment (Robin, 2007).
White, male writers have represented white colonial settlers as the first intrusion into pristine wilderness, but as Robin (2007) indicates, for Indigenous Australians, wilderness is “a white fella word”.
What emerges here, that is of relevance to this study, are two key points: elements of the wilderness trope can be reworked – the awe and wonder of the wilderness can be re-interpreted as an aspect of the ecological sublime (discussed in Chapter 3); and postcolonial perspectives can be brought to texts to examine how texts construct ecological subjects in the Australian bush or outback to include acknowledgement of an Indigenous presence.
Apocalypse
The third trope to be discussed here is the trope of the apocalypse. Representations of death, war, pestilence and famine, as depicted in the biblical Book of Revelation, shape this trope. The apocalypse can be understood as “a foreshadowing or a revelation regarding the end of the world” (Free, 2006, p. 35). In popular use, the trope may also suggest widespread destruction (Weaver, 2007). The trope therefore brings into play an unveiling of possible endings which may include destruction in the form of: transformed human relationships with the environment through dramatic environmental changes that are unconducive to human life; profound changes to human beings as they are forced to adapt to altered environmental conditions; and
57 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature the subsequent disintegration of the social, political and economic characteristics of
Western contemporary life.
Within apocalyptic narratives, according to O’Leary (as cited in Garrard, 2004, p.
87), alternative forms of acceptance, tragic and comic, exist which have an impact on representations of time, agency, authority, and crisis. In the tragic form, time is conceived as predetermined, and humans accept the inevitability of a catastrophic conclusion. Denied free will, humans are propelled towards the end. With evil conceptualised as guilt, and redemption achievable through sacrifice and victimage, the focus in the tragic frame of apocalypse is on death. The comic form, on the other hand, conceptualises evil as error, redemption as recognition of this, time as open ended and episodic, and human agents as “real but flawed” (Garrard, 2004, pp. 87-
88). Here, hope of survival is offered through human agency, the acknowledgement of mistakes, and the ability to act to redress wrongdoing.
The apocalypse trope offers similar opportunities for the denial or acceptance of hope in examples of late twentieth and early twenty-first century Australian children’s literature such as Lee Harding’s Waiting for the End of the World (1983),
Caroline Macdonald’s The Lake at the End of the World (1988), 10 Victor Kelleher’s
Taronga (1986) and Red Heart (2001), and John Marsden’s Tomorrow, When the
War Began series (1993-1999). The circumspect use of the tragic form and an emphasis on the comic form of the apocalyptic trope informs these Australian
10 Although born in New Zealand, Caroline Macdonald’s novels were all written and published in Australia. 58 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature children’s texts that speculate about end-of-the-world scenarios. 11 In Victor
Kelleher’s Taronga (1986), the cataclysmic event which precipitates the lived apocalypse is never specifically elucidated, but often enigmatically referred to as
“Last Days”. After “Last Days” social order has collapsed to the point where human relationships with one another as well as with animals are determined by the paramount importance of human survival. In the opening stages of the novel, the survival of the central character Ben is challenged by the hostile and unforgiving
Australian bush. He flees back to the city of Sydney, where traces of the tragic form of apocalyptic acceptance appear in the fatalistic attitudes of the leaders of opposing gangs, Molly and Chas, who both accept that the results of their actions could destroy everything. When Chas is preparing the attack on the ironically paradise-like
Taronga Zoo, he yells, “I’m not finished yet. I’m going to take this place even if I have to tear it apart in the process” (1986, p. 147). Molly has her Doomsday plan, to destroy the animals in the zoo, and accept the total devastation that will occur in the ensuing battle with Chas and his band of followers.
Yet it is the comic form of acceptance, through the deployment of human agency, which allows the possibility of hope. Through the actions of the central character,
Ben, and his accomplice Ellie, the animals are set free:
Even with the future of the entire human race limited, Ben cannot accept that people have the right to ensure their own survival no matter what the cost… The uncompromising message of Taronga is that risking one’s own death for principle is to be preferred to survival in some circumstances. (Foster, Finnis & Nimon, 1995, p. 161)
11 End-of-the-world scenarios are often associated with dystopic worlds “which function to reveal a dark future” (Weaver, 2007, p. 156). 59 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature
In the closing stages of the narrative, Ben uses the telepathic talent he possesses for calling animals, to redress previous incidents where he has wittingly “called” animals to their deaths. To redeem his guilt, his final actions embrace an ecocentric ethic of respect for animal life which is eerily reciprocated by Raja, the tiger that has physically and mentally sparred with him throughout the narrative.
In Caroline Macdonald’s The Lake at the End of the World (1988), excessive land clearing for agriculture produces an environment barely able to sustain human life but one where two groups of people meet the challenges of survival in very different ways. The novel explores “the interdependence of human beings and their integral relationship with the environment” (Foster, Finnis & Nimon, 1995, p. 162). For
Hector, one of the dual narrators of the story, survival has involved living in an underground community. Well prepared for environmental catastrophe, the community, with its autocratic leader, the Counsellor, and cult-like qualities has shades of the tragic. For Diana, the other narrator, survival involves a bucolic but isolated existence with her parents on a lakeside property. Initially, Diana’s attempts to contact other communities yield no response, and the future of the human race would appear to be doomed. The meeting of the two narrators and their determination to act as agents for change provides the comic turn, but ultimately it is the lake, 12 with its supernatural powers to engage empathetically with people who are environmentally responsible, which operates to imply the comic suggestion of hope for the future.
12 The personification of the lake and the allocation of agency to the environment are discussed later in this chapter. 60 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature
Set in a future devastated by the Greenhouse effect and climate change, Victor
Kelleher’s Red Heart (2001) juxtaposes Jack Curtis’s claimed identification and spiritual bond with the environment with his callous disregard of it. In a critical account that focuses on new world orders and dystopian/utopian possibilities, Mallan
(2004, unpaged) identifies in Red Heart features of the tragic/comic dichotomy:
“The narrative trajectory follows a path from a dystopic state towards a horizon of hope that leaves open for both protagonist and readers the possibility of transformed existence”. Jack’s nephew Nat sees “the key to the future” in rivers like the Darling, but more importantly,
…the ever-broadening river had twined itself about his heart, and he was no longer content just to live on its crumbling shores. Like one of the many islands he had sighted far out in the stream, he had become part of it. (Kelleher, 2001, p. 222)
Further critical examination of the trope of the apocalypse in Australian children’s literature suggests “the novels also engage in a discourse that reinforces colonial constructions of Australia as a hostile place and emphasizes the uneasy relationship its inhabitants have with the land” (Weaver, 2006, p. 156). This analytical remark is evidence of Weaver’s scholarly, postcolonial approach. The end-of-the-world scenarios draw attention to the harsh features of the Australian environment that were conceptualised by early white settlers as alien. These conceptions have formed the ambivalence of the white characters’ regard for the environment, a tension created by regarding the environment as threatening, and the environment as home, in Taronga and the Tomorrow series (Weaver, 2006).
These texts by Kelleher and Marsden have also been analysed in terms of the additional opportunities they provide to contrast colonial and Indigenous attitudes to the environment (Weaver, 2006). For Weaver, the opportunities have produced only
61 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature clichéd treatment of Indigenous environmental knowledges and attitudes with “a reduction of Indigenous people to characters whose use is seen primarily in their knowledge of the land and a diminishing of Indigenous land possession and the impact of white colonisation” (p. 163). In the Tomorrow series Indigenous knowledge is reduced to the stereotypes of bush remedies, tracker skills, and land knowledge, while in the Kelleher texts, the characters, Clarrie ( Red Heart ) and Ellie
(Taronga ), have Indigenous knowledge that will contribute to their survival.
Ultimately, however, the novels focus on the non-Indigenous people’s anxieties about their relationships with the Australian environment.
Emerging from this discussion of the apocalypse trope is the possibility that, with environmental disasters becoming regular occurrences around the world, apocalypse might be reconceptualised as a daily confrontation rather than a future event.
Georgic
The georgic is perhaps the least well known of the four tropes examined here. It was originally typified by the Boeotian form, where techniques for farm management were conveyed by a farmer giving instructions that could be understood satirically by the original Greek audience (Seddon, 2003). The georgic is embodied in the
Australian stories of Steele Rudd, those comical adventures of a family of battlers trying to make a living in the bush (Seddon, 2003). However, the georgic has more serious implications particularly with regard to contemporary concerns for agricultural practices and how these can ensure human and environmental survival in the future.
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For Garrard (2004), the works of notable American writer (and farmer) Wendell
Berry provide an example of contemporary georgic. Berry’s poetry, fiction and essays reflect an ethic of stewardship that is based on the principles of “usufruct”, that is, the temporary use and care of the environment which takes into account the needs of future generations (Garrard, 2004, p. 114). While critical of Berry’s privileging of patriarchal, white, male farmers, Garrard (2004), nevertheless, contends that Berry’s use of figurative devices depicts human relationships with the environment that are both intricate and intimate (pp. 115-120).
In Australia, the georgic can be interpreted as a distinctively colonial reworking of the pastoral. With white settlement of Australia, the environment was, for a long period of time, associated with work rather than leisure; land was cleared, sheep and cattle were raised. The practical bushman and selector, often known as “pastoralists”, replace the mythical, classical shepherd of Arcadia (Robin, 2007). The use and/or abuse of the land for pastoral and agricultural purposes, currently associated with environmental destruction by white settlers, is being reconsidered. In a study of the work of contemporary Australian poet, Robert Gray, Tredinnick (2007) examines the interconnectedness of poet, poetry, and the environment. In the poetry he examines,
Tredinnick observes the fierce love white settlers developed for the country they often despoiled in their attempts to tame it. However, in Gray’s later poetry,
Tredinnick discerns “a practice of pastoral care that wants to write and serve the land as it has been since the beginning, not just the way it has been since white men cleared and fence it and tidied it of its indigenes” (Tredinnick, 2007, p. 127). If postcolonial criticism has highlighted lack of an Indigenous presence in
63 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature environmental representations, continued assumptions of positive associations with the georgic are also being challenged in an Australian context.
In the Australian young adult novel, High Valley , by Colin Thiele (1996), an intimate relationship with the environment, within the framework of a farming way of life, is depicted. Jamie’s view of the farming landscape is Edenic, a cornucopia of fruit and vegetables (pineapples, mangoes, pawpaws, avocados, and macadamias) in harmony with the nearby natural rain forest. He perceives the valley as “his own territory” (1996, p. 2) but he can only ever hope to own the farmland when it is handed down to him; he can never own the pristine rain forest which surrounds it.
The preservation of Jamie’s environment conflicts with the need to supply water to the coastal towns beyond the gorge. Jamie’s future livelihood and aesthetic appreciation of the environment are sacrificed for an ethic of utilitarianism that serves the greatest good. The 100 people of High Valley forgo their homes to benefit the million residents of coastal towns. The valley farmers are sceptical about the use of water in the cities and towns. For them, the water will be wasted on the unsustainable life style of the residents “to wash their cars and fill their swimming pools… stand under the shower for half an hour every morning… and wash their dogs and cats, and sprinkle the lawn” (p. 55). The failed campaign to save the valley is a betrayal of Eden, a loss of pastoral innocence.
What emerges from this discussion is the potential for the georgic to be reworked within a framework of contemporary stewardship of the environment where the good
64 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature farming principles espoused in the georgic demand individual or community responsibility for the future.
The discussion above has examined how environmental tropes may be regarded as genres or “sets of conventions and expectations” that differentiate one type of text from another (Culler, 1997, p. 72). It highlights the potential of the four major tropes to establish conventions of behaviours with the environment. Ecocriticism has also been preoccupied with other environmental tropes. In the following section, I propose that some critics have viewed environmental metaphors as figurative devices, richly creative ways of representing the environment privileged by writers for colourful literary effect. More significantly, for this study, I suggest that other critics have looked at conventional environmental metaphors as a means for denaturalising taken-for-granted ways of knowing and engaging with the environment.
Other Environmental Tropes: Ways of Knowing and Engaging
Environmental metaphors have evolved historically to suit changing times and purposes. Many of the critics, whose work is mentioned below, have investigated metaphors for nature, but they are included here because in this study, as stated in
Chapter 1, Key Terms , the environment is conceptualised as encompassing nature.
To reiterate,
Nature, in the sense of the earth apart from human interventions, has mostly disappeared. We live in a world profoundly affected by human action, not just in the nearly complete destruction of the planet’s primeval wilderness or in the distribution of flora and fauna far from their original habitats, but in the alteration of the shape and character of the earth’s surface, its climate, its very atmosphere. (Berleant, 1992, pp. 166-167)
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However, in contexts where the environment was not conceptualised as such, the word nature is more appropriate to use.
The Environment as Female
The paradigmatic Western trope associated with the environment continues to be that of the female. This gendered metaphorical representation has provided a productive field of study for ecofeminists, whose viewpoints connect environmental degradation with the patriarchal domination and oppression of women (Kolodny, 1996; Soper
2000b). In general it could be argued that the female metaphor is the predominant environmental metaphor because Indo-European languages tend to gender the physical world as female (Kolodny, 1996). However, Soper (2000b) contends that coding nature as female is not just Western but universal, apparently through association with nature’s reproductive capacities. If thought of as female, acceptance of the metaphor belies the ambiguous understandings of human interactions with the environment that ensue. For instance, Soper (2000b) claims that the female metaphor identifies the environment with a body of scientific laws, principles, and processes.
The environment is, therefore, understood as an object of scientific scrutiny and experimentation. The gender metaphor is extended when understandings of the environment as a sexual object are prompted by spatial associations that link female metaphors of the environment with physical territory (Soper, 2000b). Understood in both these ways the environment may be realised as a seductress, “the potential spouse of science, to be wooed, won, and if necessary forced to submit to intercourse” or a “source of erotic delight”, in the sense of territory that can be penetrated, tamed and tilled (p. 141). However, further semantic tension arises when the environment is represented, metonymically, in line with the Romantic tradition, as mother.
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Metonymic associations with the female representing the environment as mother and/or sexual object are noted by Kolodny (1996) in her ecofeminist reading of early
American pastoral texts that document the European settlement of America. Kolodny
(1996) suggests that as part of the settlement of America, daily life was determined by metaphors of “the land as essentially feminine – that is, not simply the land as mother, but the land as woman, the total female principle of gratification – enclosing the individual in an environment of receptivity, repose, and painless and integral satisfaction” (p. 171). Beyond the settlers’ initial experience of a mother’s embrace on arrival, lay the despoliation of the “virgin” land, as the settlers colonised, industrialised and urbanised the environment (Kolodny, 1996). Soper (2000b, p.
142) has realised these dual impulses as the “impulse to dominate and the impulse to be nurtured” (Soper, 2000b, p. 142). In ecocritical studies of British and American, historical and contemporary children’s literature, representations of the environment as a “damsel in distress” in need of rescue (Apol, 2003); as efficient housekeeper dutifully caring for her charges (Wood, 1995); and as harsh cold mother (Wood,
2004) are analysed. These critics move beyond structuralist approaches to discuss these doubly coded representations in terms of their historical and cultural significance.
To highlight unchanging anthropocentric attitudes toward the environment, Apol
(2003) identifies two metaphorical females in examples from American children’s literature written a century apart. In Herm and I (Gibson, 1894), the environment is a female to be controlled and dominated, while in California Blue (Klass, 1994) the environment is a damsel in distress , in need of protection and intervention (Apol,
2003, p. 105). Other doubly coded representations, but in this instance, that of
67 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature mother and housekeeper, appear in Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies (Wood,
1995). Kingsley’s use of metaphor provides a critique of the wastefulness of the processes of industrialisation (Wood, 1995). Nature is the mother to be obeyed, whose “love for her children cannot be compromised”, but also the good housekeeper, busy and efficient, not wasteful like society (Wood, 1995, p. 234).
Wood’s interest in examining the historical and cultural significance of metaphorical representations of the mother in The Water Babies is extended in her later analysis of the icy mothers who feature in the works of Hans Christian Andersen and Philip
Pullman. In contrast to the metaphorical warm nurturing mother, Andersen’s icy mother in the The Snow Queen (1974) is a “beautifully austere disciplinarian – a mother who demands submission” (Wood, 2004, p. 199). On the other hand, in The
Golden Compass (1996) Pullman separates the cold mother into two contrasting mothers who embody respectively “the hostility Western philosophical and religious traditions have displayed toward the natural and the importance of recognizing the symbiotic and irreducible connections humans have with their environment” (Wood,
2004, p. 200). While these two ecocritics discuss gendered metaphors as culturally dominant understandings and historically enshrined ways of understanding the environment, they do not address these gendered metaphors in relation to the narrative construction of ecological subjectivities.
In Australian children’s literature, the creating and nurturing aspects of mothering are often metaphorically linked with the Australian bush. According to Foster, Finnis and Nimon (1995), Australian authors draw on a gender connection that has found expression through time in Australian Aboriginal cultures, together with Roman,
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Celtic, Teutonic, and Hindu cultures. For example, Foster, Finnis, and Nimon (1995, p. 65) suggest some notable female characters in Australian “bush” stories,
appear to personify [sic] the qualities of mother nature herself: they assume a significance in the narrative which complements the romantic mother earth subtext so prevalent in stories of the bush. Their presence, as substantial but particular identities, is a constant reminder that the bush has a strong female dimension to it.
In contrast with the studies mentioned immediately above, the approach adopted by
Foster, Finnis, and Nimon (1995) does not acknowledge the constructedness of the strong female dimension nor do they suggest how this particular construction might preserve particular, culturally dominant behaviours in the environment.
Beyond these variations of the female metaphor, but aligned to them, is the representation provided by the Gaia metaphor (Lenz, 1994/95; Lenz, 1995). Often thought of as akin to the metaphor of the female/mother earth because of its nominal association with the ancient Greek Earth-goddess, Gaia is the metaphor of the environment as an holistic entity. The metaphor is derived from James Lovelock’s hypothesis of the earth as one living organism, alive, dynamic, and interdependent
(Lovelock, 1982). Most obviously this metaphor is associated with pictures of the earth taken from outer space such as those in Seeing Earth from Space by Patricia
Lauber (1990) (Lenz, 1994/95, p. 162). Yet, distance from the earth’s surface is not a prerequisite for the ability to see the environment holistically. Wordsworth’s “Lines
Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” pre-empts the Gaia hypothesis in its recognition that the Wye valley is a part of “a single vast living, breathing ecosystem” (Bate, 2000, pp. 146-147). Australian children’s literature also cites the
Gaia metaphor. In Gillian Rubinstein’s Skymaze (1989) the protagonist Elaine expresses her relationship with the environment using this metaphor:
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Gaia, the mother of them all, the mother who would never abandon any of her creatures. And she [Elaine] knew also that they were all part of the Earth, no part more important than the others, and that their interdependence was the Earth’s life, their disunity its death. (Rubinstein as cited in Saxby, 1993)
The Gaia metaphor is also used in Eva (1988) by the British writer, Peter Dickinson, when nature is shown to be capable of looking after itself, even at the expense of humans (Lenz, 1995).
In Caroline Macdonald’s The Lake at the End of the World (1988), the lake retaliates swiftly and decisively when threatened by human abuse (Foster, Finnis & Nimon,
1995). With prescient overtones of James Lovelock’s Revenge of Gaia (2007) the eponymous lake “can do anything” (Macdonald, 1988, p. 100). Early in the narrative, stories about the lake’s vengeful powers appear apocryphal: a boastful fisherman becomes a “catch” himself; a real estate developer is devoured by a storm over the lake; an eddy swallows two government officials who are surveying the lake’s potential for tourism; members of the family who own the lakeside land are spared when they choose to preserve the lake in an act of acknowledgement of intergenerational justice. But when drought threatens the survival of the family of one of the narrators, who live by and respect the lake, the lake water defies gravity and flows uphill to irrigate their food crops. Similarly the narrative ending relies on the lake flooding the underground tunnels, forcing the underground community members above ground for the first time in fifty years. The narrative suggestion that the lake has ensured human survival, proposes that agency need not be restricted to humans. Equal degrees of reciprocity between humans and the environment exist.
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The Environment as Spiritual Entity
Metaphors coupled with the spiritual qualities of the environment abound in the works of the British Romantic poets (Bate, 2000). Similarly in children’s literature the environment is depicted through metaphors of spirituality and iconicity. In
Freckles (1904) by Gene Stratton-Porter, the environment is presented as the spirit of
God (Phillips, 1994/95). In both The Wind in the Willows (Grahame, 1908/1983) and
The Secret Garden (Hodgson, 1911/1987), the environment has “a quasi–religious mysticism” (Darcy, 1995, p. 214).
Metaphors present the Australian bush as a spiritual entity worthy of respect and reverence (Foster, Finnis, & Nimon, 1995; Saxby, 1993). The bush has “a spiritual dimension that is sensed and deferred to but not completely understood … on every occasion, [it is] awe inspiring, substantial and strangely satisfying” (Foster, Finnis, &
Nimon, 1995, p. 56). The secularisation of Australian social life, however, may mean that this metaphor is no longer in use in Australian children’s literature.
The Environment as Moral Guide (or Teacher)
Linked closely with the metaphor of the environment as source of spirituality is the concept of the environment as moral guide or teacher, the dominant metaphor in both
Rousseau’s Emile (1762) and the works of Mary Wollstonecraft (Sigler, 1994/95).
The inclusion of metaphors of the bush as a tough teacher in Australian children’s literature is predictable, given Australia’s predisposition for harsh climatic conditions. More than likely, the harsh climatic conditions have also predicated the use of the metaphor of the environment as opponent or aggressor. As Foster, Finnis and Nimon (1995, p. 81) note,
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The bush has its reputation as an inhospitable, if not downright dangerous place to venture into … In place of suggestions that the bush will nurture are assertions that it will do no such thing. Instead of security and glorious productive isolation, there is uncertainty, stress, menace and alienation.
What Foster, Finnis and Nimon are not acknowledging in this instance is their
Western viewpoint. They are disregarding Indigenous knowledges that may interpret the bush in other ways.
The Environment as Resource or Artefact
In contrast to conceptualising the environment through metaphors of sacredness, sagacity, or aggression are notions of the environment as resource, or artefact. The classic, North American children’s text based on the metaphor of environment as resource is The Lorax (1971) by Dr Seuss. The silky threads of the truffula trees provide the entrepreneurial Once-ler with the perfect resource for making the useless garment, “thneed”. The large scale production of these garments eradicates the truffula trees, and creates a toxic environment incapable of supporting the Swomee-
Swans, or the Humming-Fish. The ethical implications for the conceptualisation of the environment as resource, as depicted in The Lorax (1971), are discussed in
Representation of contestation of causes and consequences of ecocatastrophe in
Chapter 3. Alternatively, as resource, the environment can be seen as in need of being cared for, which is discussed in Restrained Anthropocentrism: Moderating
Consideration with Control in Chapter 3.
Living Creatures as Human Beings
One of the earliest stories about non-domesticated animals appearing as protagonists with human qualities occurred in Aesop’s Fables , created by Aesop, a slave and storyteller. In children’s literature, towards the end of the nineteenth century, British,
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European, and North American writers such as Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame,
Rudyard Kipling, Selma Lagerlöf and Gene Stratton-Porter used personification 13 of wild animals as a device to persuade their readers to adopt positive attitudes towards the conservation of animals and their habitats (Copeland, 2004; Rahn, 1995). The shaping influence of the use of this trope lies not only in overt expressions of personification such as animals wearing clothes or living in “furnished” habitats, but also in the animal protagonists’ ability to think, feel, communicate, and behave as humans. When texts for children are narrated and/or focalised through a personified animal character, readers are likely to be aligned with the subjective experience of the characters or the text’s subject positions.
In the case of animals such as whales and dolphins, which are highly social beings, species boundaries are easily blurred. At a global level the whale is the iconic representation of endangered species. Buell (2001) traces the “imaging” of whales from the Leviathanic adversary of Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
(1851/1967) to a friend and responsive pet in the Free Willy films of the 1990s (pp.
207-221). In contrast to the humanising of whales through personification in these texts, Buell (2001) cites an essay by Barry Lopez, “A Presentation of Whales”
(1988). By refraining from familiarising whales and maintaining an aesthetic distance from them, Lopez avoids the anthropocentric ethic of human usefulness apparent in Moby Dick and the three Free Willy movies (Buell, 2001). Similarly,
Stephens (2006) draws attention to such a restrained approach to the description of
13 Personification, prosopopoeia and anthropomorphism may be used synonymously to describe the ascription of human physical, mental or social characteristics to any other entity. In this study personification and anthropomorphism are used to denote this trope.
73 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature animals’ social habits in Sonoran Desert Spring (1985) by John Alcock. Despite detailed explanatory material to describe the desert animals known as peccaries,
Alcock still characterises their behaviour by human attributes such as ‘slovenly’ and
‘fastidious’ (Stephens, 2006, p. 6).
The work of Lopez and Alcock, however, is non-fiction nature writing for adults, a form that is in opposition to the plot and character-driven content of much children’s literature. The personification of animals in children’s literature may prevail for two reasons. Firstly, as has been suggested above, animals have been used in literature as a didactic device and because of their presumed appeal for the implied child readers.
Secondly, by giving animals or the environment a voice, albeit a human one, authors and illustrators may be attempting to make them equal to humans, to proffer an ecocentric rather than anthropocentric ethic. The eponymous Lorax may well speak for the trees, but personification gives non-human protagonists in literature the ability to speak as trees.
Summary
This chapter achieves the first of the four objectives of the study, namely to locate previous research of children’s literature which examines human engagement with the environment. The chapter provides a critical review of studies that are noteworthy for what they contribute to the field of ecocriticism, as well as what they fail to realise. Undoubtedly all the critical works reviewed acknowledge that environmental tropes are pervasive and persuasive and help to shape human understandings of the environment and responses to it. Nevertheless, some studies of
Australian children’s literature (Foster, Finnis & Nimom, 1995; Scutter, 1993) have
74 Chapter 2: Ecocritical Research into Children’s Literature overlooked the potential of environmental tropes to become so common as to become invisible. These studies promote the unquestioned acceptance of environmental tropes, with their associated beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Other ecocriticism of Australian children’s literature (Bradford, 2001, 2007, 2008; Mallan,
2004; Weaver, 2006) identified in the chapter, realises how environmental tropes have the potential to perpetuate anthropocentric, Eurocentric, and androcentric points of view. A key concern that this chapter raises is how ecocriticism can scrutinise environmental tropes from narrative, ecofeminist, and postcolonial perspectives to determine the ideologies inscribed in the tropes and how the tropes work to construct ecological subjectivities.
The chapter has shown a lack of emphasis on the investigation of other literary tropes in Australian children’s literature such as metonymy and irony which can contribute to the construction of subject positions. The chapter has also shown that, to date, the range of Australian texts ecocritics have examined is limited. The studies include many Australian texts written before 1960, but only a limited number fall within the time frame of this study.
By providing this review of previous research of children’s environmental literature which examines human engagement with the environment, this chapter addresses the first of the four objectives of the study. My study’s focus provides a critical approach by attending to the way narrative and environmental discourses shape ecological subjectivities. In the following chapter, therefore, I continue to contextualise the study and build a conceptual framework by considering the environmental discourses which inform narratives.
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76 Chapter 3: Shades of Green
Chapter 3: Shades of Green: A Conceptual Framework for
an Ecocritical Study of Children’s Literature
[A]ll rational environmentalist discourses are comprised, in varying degrees, of both ‘ecocentric’ and ‘anthropocentric’ elements. Within this unity, variation will occur as different subsets of nature or human society will be considered the foci of the particular discourse. (Whitworth, 2001, p. 33)
In the preceding chapter I argued that some previous ecocritical studies investigated narrative constructions of human engagement with the environment by examining environmental ‘metatropes’ of pastoral, wilderness, apocalypse, and georgic. I reviewed other ecocritical studies that examined metaphorical and metonymical representations of the environment. It was acknowledged that these studies were limited if their tropological approach failed to problematise how the evolutionary nature of tropes has the potential to shape different ecological subjectivities in narratives at different points in time.
As this study is concerned, in part, with how environmental discourses shape ecological subjectivities, the purpose of this chapter is to critique existing ecocritical studies of both children’s literature and literature for older readers which have a more specific focus on contemporary environmental discourses. These, together with key studies of environmental discourses from the fields of ecolinguistics (Harré,
Brockmeier, and Mühlhäusler, 1999; Mühlhäuser and Peace, 2006), ecopolitics
(Dryzek, 2005), and environmental ethics (Attfield, 2003, Callicott & Palmer, 2005;
Pojman, 2005) integrated throughout the discussion, enable the development of the conceptual framework that facilitates the textual analysis undertaken in Chapters 5,
6, and 7.
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As the epigraph alludes, it is possible to identify subsets of environmental discourses which involve focal shifts that differentiate varying degrees or shades of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism. Drawing on ecological understandings, which presuppose “the study of indissoluble connections” (Berry, as cited in Flower, 2002, p. 321), such subsets can be understood as part of a network of reciprocally constitutive components. This ecological concept of the complexity of interdependencies opens up the possibility of examining related environmental components, but the impossibility of investigating all the components is also acknowledged. For example, contemporary environmental discourses are interwoven with other major discourses such as socio-cultural, political-economic, ecological, and ethical. These discourses are in a constant state of flux, characterised by the volatility and often extremely subtle variation within them, and the variability in the strength of the continually fluid connections between them.
Within the scope of this study I discuss some of the intricacies of socio-cultural movements such as Romanticism, Modernism and Postmodernism, and the political- economic influences of industrialisation, late capitalism, and globalisation. It is not appropriate to include in detail the ways in which the rise of ecology has paralleled disillusionment with science because of the perceived links to the technologies blamed for environmental problems, or the philosophical arguments and counter arguments in environmental ethics, all of which inform environmental discourses in the twenty-first century. Rather, in the section that immediately follows, a discussion of significant ecocritical studies points to the emergence of three foci which provide the opportunity for a more detailed discussion of the complexities of environmental discourses, later in the chapter.
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Ecocritical Paradigms: Three Established Foci
Three framing foci emerge from previous ecocritical studies. Each focus involves humans conceptualising the environment in certain ways and engaging with it accordingly. The foci are variously identified and labelled but share certain characteristics within degrees of anthropocentric and ecocentric perspectives.
An influential article in the early stage of my research for this study was an ecocritical paper by Bradford (2003) which situated contemporary British, Canadian, and Australian picture books within a two-dimensional framework developed by
Dryzek (1997). On the horizontal axis of his framework, Dryzek (1997) contextualises environmental discourses within the dominant discourse of industrialism, but with deviations from industrialism in either radical or reformist ways. These deviations are further characterised, on a vertical axis, as prosaic
(approaches that work within the political-economic status quo), or imaginative
(approaches that operate within degrees of change). As mentioned in Chapter 1,
Bradford (2003, p. 112) contends that “picture books of the last decade lean toward radical rather than reformist discourses”. Dryzek’s framework and Bradford’s application of it to children’s literature provide useful starting points, particularly with regard to the texts which Bradford claims lean towards radical discourses.
However, Dryzek’s framework was established in his study of non-literary texts, and the political nature of those texts means that the framework was not totally suitable to apply in toto to this study.
In one of the ecocritical studies mentioned in Chapter 2, Lenz (1994/95) relies on a framework of three interwoven strands of ethically oriented environmental
79 Chapter 3: Shades of Green discourses to undertake her textual analysis. The framework was adapted from an earlier study by Meeker (1974) who read the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of
Dante’s Divine Comedy as metaphors for “contemporary responses to the environment” (Lenz, 1994/95, p. 160). Lenz suggests the delineation and characterisation of texts as representative of separate and isolated strands is achievable in some instances, but difficult in others as the texts under review often combine discourses to offer a transition from one ethical position to another . Many of the texts Lenz considers are discussed in more detail later in the chapter, and are discussed briefly below to highlight the absence of Australian texts studied.
In the framework, Hell is compared with the polluted result of abusive and negligent use of resources. The North American text, The Giving Tree (Silverstein, 1964), a narrative of greed and environmental neglect, and the British picture book, When the
Wind Blows (Briggs, 1982), which depicts the destructive potential of a nuclear blast, are cited by Lenz (1994/95, p. 160) as examples of texts that fit within the metaphorical position of Hell.
Purgatory is a site for environmental consciousness and awareness raising, evoking the caretaker role associated with stewardship. Lenz includes two North American texts, Bill Peets’ The Wump World (1970), Chris Van Allsburg’s Just a Dream
(1990) and the British story “The Glass Cupboard” in Terry Jones’s Fairy Tales
(1982) as texts which depict a transition from the abusive neglectful mode to the caretaker mode. Notions of caretaking in these three texts are examined in more detail later in the section of this chapter, Restrained Anthropocentrism: Moderating
Control with Consideration .
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Paradise suggests a holistic, harmonic ecosystem. There are subtle degrees of difference between the caretaker role and the holistic visionary: “the caretaker stands apart from nature in a spectator role, whereas the holistic/harmonic mode of perception involves an aesthetic and mystical awe, plus a feeling of oneness with all of nature – the experience of the sublime (Lenz, 1994/95, p. 160). Harmonic relationships between child protagonists and the environment include the North
American texts Hawk’s Hill (1971) by Allan Eckert and Julie of the Wolves (1971) by Jean George (Lenz, 1994/95, p. 162).
However, Meeker’s (1974) Paradise as an holistic, harmonic ecosystem is flawed because of shifts within ecological paradigms over the past three decades. At the time Meeker developed the model, ecology proposed environmental models of stability, harmony, and balance. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, ecology has been influenced by the same challenges that posited alternative understandings of the physical sciences. Quantum mechanics (with its theories of sub-atomic physics) and chaos theory (with its focus on self-organising systems), have promoted alternative interpretations within the field of ecology itself such as the move from ecological models of balance and harmony to models of disequilibrium (Hay, 2002). Critics of models of ecological disequilibrium suggest the possibility that these models resonate with the socio-cultural theories of postmodernism and the political-economic theories of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, rather than with genuine ecological influences (Hettinger &
Throop, 2005). Therefore, while it is not appropriate to assume Meeker’s model for the conceptual framework for this study, it is appropriate to observe how the
81 Chapter 3: Shades of Green differing ecological theories are brought into play in the environmental discourses under discussion here.
Using a slightly different framework, but one not unrelated to Lenz’s adaptation of
Meeker’s model, Stephens (2006) suggests children’s texts comply with three
“ideologically grounded perspectives”, shaped by the environmental discourses. This ideologically shaped framework is more in keeping with the chapter’s epigraphical reference to Whitworth (2001). The first of these ideological perspectives is characterised by the Christian position of mastery over the environment where humanity has dominion over living and non-living beings in a hierarchical relationship that perpetuates the ideologies of utilitarianism and consequentialism.
However, despite the claim that this position still dominates Western thought,
Stephens (2006) cites only two children’s texts, the Australian picture book Where the Forest Meets the Sea (Baker, 1989) and the British picture book The Creation
Story (Messenger, 2001), as examples of this ethical perspective.
The second ideological perspective encompasses a position of stewardship or caring for the environment which is founded on a sense of wonder, understanding, and an awareness of the beauty and the finite limits of all aspects of the environment. This strand shares with the first, an anthropocentric position that privileges human beings over other living and non-living entities. Most children’s environmental texts adopt this position according to Stephens (2006). 14 Two texts from the United States with the same environmental setting, Jean George’s One Day in the Desert (1983) and
14 This is in contradiction of Bradford’s (2003) claim that contemporary children’s texts lie within the discourse of green radicalism (Dryzek, 1997) which is similar to the third of Stephen’s identified positions. 82 Chapter 3: Shades of Green
John Alcock’s Sonoran Desert Spring (1985), together with the Australian texts
Window (1991) and Belonging (2004) by Jeannie Baker, are cited as examples by
Stephens.
The third ideological perspective draws on the tenets of deep ecology to offer a stance where all beings have intrinsic value and humans are not privileged. With literature this is a difficult position to present because human effacement is difficult to achieve when it is the human’s voice which is heard, the human hand which creates the visual narrative. However, Stephens credits two North American texts with attempting to achieve this human effacement and an ecocentric ethical position.
The first is Arrowhea d (1994) by Lola M. Schaefer and Gabi Swiatkowska. The text is from the perspective of the hawk. Humans are not seen directly but suggested through the verbal text and the illustrations, where artefacts such as a bandage and food on a plate imply human intervention and caring. The second text is Welcome to the Sea of Sand (1996) by Jane Yolen and Laura Regan. Again, no humans are represented in the illustrations which accompany the verbal text. The language, however, personifies the desert creatures, and ultimately undermines the attempt to present an ecocentric position.
One of the most recent ecocritical studies, at the time of writing, and one of the most pertinent to this study is Stephens’ (2008) examination of multimodal ecological texts for children. Environmental texts are, for Stephens (2008, p. 70), multimodal in two senses: they “deploy a range of genres”; but they also deploy “various discourse types brought together at a high level of cohesion”, as for example, in picture books.
In this study Stephen’s modifies his three part framework discussed above. The
83 Chapter 3: Shades of Green position of mastery which Stephens (2006, p. 40) previously claimed dominated
Western thought because “it is a tenet underlying Christian and post-Christian societies, and informs the ideology of liberal democracies”, is excluded. In his exclusion of mastery, Stephens infers that children’s texts no longer represent the position of human mastery over the environment. It might be assumed from this that, in a time of global crises, mastery is not a tenable perspective for texts to represent.
While it may seem incongruous that dominion should still be represented, close scrutiny of texts within the range of this study indicates that ideas about dominion now serve an ironic purpose, not to endorse dominion but to show up the folly of human mastery over the environment. Thus a new perspective on dominion informs the conceptual framework of this thesis.
Stephens’ new foci are what he currently considers the two pro-environment discourses that inform multimodal ecological texts for children. As in his earlier work, Stephens maintains the stance that in children’s texts humans are not deeply embedded in the environment but stand apart from it as the source of value, therefore confirming the texts anthropocentric focus. In his analysis of Australian and British picture books published prior to 1996, and Canadian environmental television programs for children, Stephens proposes that the characters’ growth towards “eco- consciousness” conforms to the narrative pattern of “the expression, evaluation and transformation of the self which is supremely the domain of language in children’s literature”(2008, p. 73). Stephens suggests that the characters’ developing attitudes of care and environmental awareness are within models of sustainable living and social empowerment aligned with ecofeminist theory. I acknowledge that ideas of stewardship or caring for the environment might reasonably be conceptualised in
84 Chapter 3: Shades of Green terms of sustainability, the dominant environmental discourse of contemporary times. Therefore, sustainability forms a critical component of my conceptual framework.
The second of Stephens’ foci is a re-examination of deep ecology and its tenet of the intrinsic value of all aspects of the environment. Stephens extends his earlier investigation of how children’s texts attempt to represent this perspective through human effacement. He suggests that multimodal texts have potential to produce “an uncentred, unhumanized perspective” and evoke the “thingness” of environmental features, despite implying a perceptual point of view that is distinctly human
(Stephens, 2008, p. 74). While human effacement or decentring is one possible way for textual representations to prioritise the environment, in his discussion of deep ecology Stephens makes reference to, but does not expand on, the difficulties of intrinsic value. Stephens fails to problematise notions of intrinsic value in light of a postmodern context which dismisses concepts of intrinsic value altogether. In focusing on human effacement as one way “to give nature a voice”, Stephens ignores other ways that intrinsic value may be reconceptualised. Therefore, the third component of my framework builds on these ideas, but replaces Stephens’ focus on deep ecology with a focus on the broader perspective of ecocentrism.
The instances of ecocriticism outlined above indicate that a framework with three foci are conceptually sound for a study of this kind: (i) unrestrained anthropocentrism supports human dominion over all other living beings and physical elements of the environment; (ii) restrained anthropocentrism moderates human control of the environment with consideration for the environment; and (iii)
85 Chapter 3: Shades of Green ecocentrism encompasses deep ecology, ecofeminism, and green radicalism which challenge and renegotiate assumptions about humans’ relationships with the environment.
To clarify the choice of terminology for the three parts of the framework further, degrees of anthropocentrism are distinguished as unrestrained and restrained rather than “strong anthropocentrism” or “weak anthropocentrism” favoured by environmental ethicists such as Norton (2003) and Hargrove (2003). Norton’s account of strong anthropocentrism reiterates that the unquestioned preferences of human beings and their interests dictate the use of the environment without checks or controls. Weak anthropocentrism, Norton contends, critiques preferences, rationalises human behaviour and is critical of “value systems which are purely exploitive of nature” (2003, p. 165). Lexically, however, the two adjectives, strong and weak, have ambiguous connotations. Strong, with its nuances of power and control, may suggest a superior category of anthropocentrism, whereas weak with its stress on lack of power or strength, may imply an inferior category. The two terms – unrestrained anthropocentrism and restrained anthropocentrism – assume and emphasise degrees of anthropocentrism rather than the dualistic strong and weak.
Where unrestrained indicates supremacy of human authority over the environment, restrained indicates human authority that is checked and kept under control in recognition that environmental wellbeing is essential for human survival. While encompassing a wide range of non-anthropocentric discourses, ecocentrism is a commonly accepted term in environmental ethics and is employed here according to accepted usage to refer to a radical and holistic position that explores the ethical possibilities for entire ecosystems ahead of individual or species components of
86 Chapter 3: Shades of Green ecosystems (Botzler & Armstrong, 1998; Callicott & Palmer, 2005; Hettinger &
Throop, 2005; Pojman, 2005).
The intricacies of each of the three foci are now examined to indicate the strength of the framework.
Unrestrained Anthropocentrism: Dominion over All
Historically, Western beliefs in the right to dominion over the environment have been shaped by Greco-Roman traditions which privileged humans as the “measure of all things”, and, as indicated in “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”,
Judeo-Christian beliefs derived from the biblical Book of Genesis (1:26), with its directive for human dominion and mastery over the natural world and all its inhabitants (Callicott & Palmer, 2005; White, 1967). Islamic religious beliefs are also implicated in notions of human dominion because, as Lowe (2005, p. 39) suggests, they share with Judeo-Christian writings a line to Abrahamic languages which
are all based on the fundamental premise of the innate superiority of humans, who have dominion over all other species and the right to exploit them for our needs. This has arguably been the mythos underpinning consumer society: the Earth and all other species are at our disposal to exploit as we see fit.
In contemporary environmental discourses, Dryzek (2005) identifies the confidence in human needs and demands being continually satisfied through the manipulation of the environment as Promethean. 15 Dryzek’s metaphor is underpinned by two
15 “In Greek mythology Prometheus stole fire from Zeus, and so vastly increased the human capacity to manipulate the world” (Dryzek, 2005, p. 51). In nineteenth century literature, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , was subtitled The Modern Prometheus . The novel suggests that modern man has 87 Chapter 3: Shades of Green assumptions. The first, an assumption that humans’ role is to have dominion over a cornucopian environment, and the second, to which I will return, is the assumption that human capabilities can overcome environmental challenges. Human self-interest will ensure a bright environmental future despite continual human plundering of the cornucopian bounty (Dryzek, 2005).
The position of mastery and control is reiterated in the picture book The Creation
Story (2001) by Norman Messenger. Stephens’ analysis of this text posits that mastery and control are achieved through the verbal narrative which relies on its
Biblical pre-text, and, perhaps more significantly, through the illustrations. Initially, illustrations of Adam and Eve are centrally placed in the abundant environment of the Garden of Eden. However, in the final illustration, animals surround the couple in a scene of domesticity and benign complicity. Ideologically, dominance and mastery are further reinforced by the representation of Adam and Eve as white
Europeans. The book’s verbal and visual narratives thus confirm the regulatory function of religious texts to sanction contemporary Western relationships of white dominion over the environment. As a reworking of a Biblical passage, however, The
Creation Story cannot be considered as indicative of contemporary environmental texts that negotiate ideas about human dominion. Some contemporary Australian children’s texts appear to endorse cornucopian beliefs that support the unfettered economic growth and development models of late capitalism.
exceeded his potential, that the revolutions of the eighteenth century, presumed to offer promise of Promethean proportions, also presented difficulties.
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In Chapter 1, I described how the mirage-like final illustration of high-rise tourist development in Where the Forest Meets the Sea (Baker, 1989) suggests that “human needs for recreation facilities will subsume the environment”. The text endorses
Dryzek’s suggestion that “economic growth usually means increased stress on environmental systems – more pollution, more congestion, faster depletion of resources…[but] the political-economic discourse of liberal capitalist systems still generally floats free from any sense of environmental constraints” (2005, p. 52). In the final illustrations Stephens (2006, p. 40 ) sees the construction of high-rise coastal development, at the expense of the pristine rainforest, as an overt representation of the “aggregated interests of land speculation, service industries, tourism, and the desire for holidays in ‘natural’ but comfortable places.” The fatalistic resolution of this text denies the characters’ agency and positions readers to accept the ideologies of progress and development that sanction insatiable human interests.
Another picture book by Jeannie Baker engages with the discourses of unrestrained anthropocentrism. As noted in Chapter 1, Bradford (2003) states that Jeannie Baker’s
Window (1991) depicts urban development as antithetical to the preservation of the original environment. Bradford reads Window , as Stephens reads Where the Forest
Meets the Sea , as texts which represent an inevitability about the ascendancy of the models of growth and development of late capitalism. Both texts construct an imperious human engagement with the environment, and represent an environmental trajectory directed by economic rationalism that can be used to justify perception of the environment in instrumental terms. Both texts align with Brennan’s proposal that confidence in economic growth has changed Leopold’s land ethic (1949/1966, p.
262) from “[a] thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and
89 Chapter 3: Shades of Green beauty of the biotic community”, to become, “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the global economic community”
(Brennan, 2005, p. 20). These texts may be read as marginalising environmental concerns in order to maintain economic systems where self interest, either that of an individual, corporation, or nation state, is paramount. Considering self-interest and competition as key determinants in ecosystems takes my discussion back to the second of the Promethean assumptions mentioned above, namely that human beings are capable of overcoming the environmental challenges which may coincide with strategies of dominion.
Economic growth models have supported and continue to support Western countries’ ever-increasing standards of living which progressively place more stress on the environment. However, these models also generate innovative means for overcoming the difficulties associated with them. The Australian picture book for young readers,
The Super Parp-Buster by Janeen Brian and illustrated by Greg Holfeld (2005), offers an “innovative” yet fantastic solution to one such difficulty. The picture book tells the story of Pickles and Jolly, two ingenious inventors whose ecological consciousness allows them to solve the problem of stinking exhaust fumes, or parps that are emitted by the cars which visitors drive up the hill to marvel at their inventions. The success of their parp-buster, or bus for short, spurs them on to other creations to eliminate air pollution such as,
splonkety-twangs with leathery heels and gibblers that rolled along fifty-three wheels. There were flubbery-floats And treddley-rings. Boppers and waddlers And wollies-with-wings. There were twozzers that twinkled And grunches all green- All sorts of inventions. (Brian & Holfeld, 2005, unpaged)
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Such light, humorous touches, notably the inventive name for imaginative modes of transport, combined with the appealing sounds and the repeated rhyming pattern, imply that human ingenuity can resolve the effects of air pollution. This linguistic playfulness and the visually fascinating cartoon-like characters suggest a positive outcome to an acknowledged environmental issue, that is, humans can act to rid the environment of air pollution.
However, no matter how inventive human ingenuity may be, it may not be enough to counter the stresses placed on the environment. By considering the negative outcomes that result from dominion I am afforded a means for re-envisioning dominion as the first component of my conceptual framework.
Dominion Re-envisioned: Living with Ecocatastrophe
The discourses of unrestrained anthropocentrism, as outlined in the discussion above, are linked with the potential for positive human outcomes extended by economic models. However, ecological discourses have helped shape “the downside of dominance” (Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 2004, p. 45).
Ecological discourses articulate the undesirable outcomes from relationships of dominance over the environment. Framed as responses to various environmental crises, ecological discourses have highlighted the deleterious effects of continued relationships of dominance. Within a broad context, discourses of environmental crisis have shifted, from expressing concerns about disasters in the future, to what
Buell (2003, p. 181) has named, “dwelling in crisis”. Buell (2003) identifies what could be regarded as three developmental stages in the discursive transition in
91 Chapter 3: Shades of Green environmental texts: (i) apocalyptic futures; (ii) environmental deterioration; and (iii) living in crisis.
In the first stage, Buell (2003) says that significant environmental writers such as
Vogt (1948), Osborn (1948), Carson (1962) and Ehrlich (1968) used apocalyptic models to forecast futures where human existence is threatened by environments which are unconducive to human life. Such models of the end were characterised by concerns that environmental resources were not infinite. There were limits which, when breached, would result in scarcity rather than continued replenishment. These models assume that in order to avert environmental ecocide in the future, prescribed changes in human relationships with the environment should be enacted.
A shift from predicted environmental “annihilation” to environmental “deterioration” is noted by Buell (2003, p. 186) in the second stage, that is, in the discourses of environmental texts of the last three decades of the twentieth century. Texts such as
The Closing Circle (Commoner, 1971), Our Common Future (Brundtland
Commission Report, 1987) and Earth in the Balance (Gore, 1992) challenged continued models of growth and expansion and highlighted the downside of dominance. Whereas the first stage environmental texts offered an all enveloping cataclysmic outcome as the result of single causes such as toxicity or an explosion in population growth, texts of the second stage offered multiple causes of environmental crises on a global scale. Despite the magnitude of the ecocatastrophes evinced, by favouring the equilibrium model of ecology, the texts propose that prescribed behaviours can restore the balance, or in other words, there is, paradoxically, the chance of returning to an optimistic future.
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Alternative scenarios appear in the third stage identified by Buell (2003). In the last decade of the twentieth century, Buell (2003) contends that important environmental texts such as Beyond the Limits (Meadows, Meadows, & Randers, 1992) propose the finite limits of the earth’s resources have been exceeded and models of infinite growth are ecologically unsustainable. With limits exceeded, in accordance with the ecological principles of equilibrium, there is still hope that action taken to reduce further damage will promote a harmonious relationship. 16
Contrary to these assumptions, if beliefs that ecosystems are in a constant state of flux are accepted, striving to restore the balance is not an achievable aim because ecological balance has never existed . There is the possibility of living, not with the alternatives of optimistic or apocalyptic futures, but with environmental crises as a way of life, “in short, a process within which individual and society today dwell; it has become part of the repertoire of normalities in reference to which people construct their daily lives” (Buell, 2003, p. 76). Another way of understanding this concept is in terms of ‘apocalypse now’ adopted by Harré, Brockmeier, and
Mühlhäusler (1999) to indicate that “the future and the past are presented as immanent in the present… [in a] dramatic condensation of the past-present-future reference of all environmental discourse” (p. 7).
Whereas Buell (2003) has used the term “dwelling in crisis”, and Harré, Brockmeier, and Mühlhäusler (1999) have preferred ‘apocalypse now’, I have coined the
16 The possibility of balancing economic growth and development within a framework of respect rather than dominion forms the basis for the position of sustainability which is discussed later in this chapter and in relation to Australian children’s literature in Chapter 6.
93 Chapter 3: Shades of Green expression, living with ecocatastrophe , to describe the daily confrontation with environmental concerns. I dismiss “apocalypse now” because of implications that apocalypse has for a time in the future as well as the associations apocalypse has in literature with single cataclysmic events. Despite the inclusion of the ‘now’ to indicate the immediacy of crisis, the term lacks conviction because none of the predicted apocalypses (in the sense of the end of the world) has come to fruition.
Contemporary familiarity with the “eco” prefix confers associations with ecological, which, in this study, as I have explained in Chapter 1, pertains to the interrelationship between living beings and their environment. Catastrophe theory is associated with chaos theory and well suited to ecological models of disequilibrium:
Catastrophe theory focused on how the addition of one grain of sand to a growing pile could result in a sudden avalanche, and chaos theory described how a butterfly’s wing, agitating the air in Beijing, could produce changes that cascaded through the system to result in thunderstorms in New York City. (Buell, 2003, p. 192)
The partnerships of the theories described above sanction unpredictability and risk taking. Catastrophe, when attached to “eco”, not only denotes environmental damage, but also that the damage is a result of human activity (Oxford English
Dictionary Online, 2009).
Ecocatastrophe is constructed in a range of texts including general environmental texts, texts written for children, and critical appraisal of children’s texts. I propose that living with ecocatastrophe is textually constructed through representations of denial; human adaptation and ingenuity; and contestation.
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Representations of denial of ecocatastrophe
To deny the existence of threatening environmental conditions is one way of living with ecocatastrophe (Buell, 2003). Denial may result from lack of understanding highly complex environmental issues. The complexity of the issues and confusion about the uncertainty of outcomes could suggest that children’s texts might promote denial as a soft option when representing environmental issues. Children might be saved from unpleasant topics. To date, no ecocritical studies have analysed children’s texts which represent denial of environmental issues. However, two popular Australian children’s texts, At the Beach (2004) and In the Bush (2005) by
Roland Harvey, seemingly construct human-environment relationships that deny any likelihood of environmental ecocatastrophe. In Chapter 5, both of these texts are the focus for an ecocritical analysis which provides alternative ways of reading the texts’ denial of ecocatastrophe.
Representations of human adaptation and ingenuity
Human ingenuity and adaptability in the face of environmental crisis have been discussed earlier in this chapter in relation to Dryzek’s (2005) discussion of
Promethean discourses. I provided brief analytical comments about the Australian children’s text, The Super Parp-Buster (Brian & Holfield, 2005). My analysis focused on the story’s inventive strategies which made the environment more conducive to human survival, but ingenuity is also a feature of adaptation as humans adjust to changing and threatening environmental conditions. However, self interest is a strong motivating factor in adapting to environmental issues (Brennan, 2005;
Buell, 2003). The picture book, Tower to the Sun, by Colin Thompson (1996) frames human adaptation and ingenuity within anthropocentric considerations; therefore it is included for analysis in the second section of Chapter 5.
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Representations of the consequences of ecocatastrophe and contesting the
causes
Within a worldwide context, one of the elements of daily acknowledgment of environmental crisis is confrontation with species loss. Species loss results from human imposed pressure on the natural environment for resources and expanding populations, capitalist growth, and development. Ecological discourses record and report species loss but they can also challenge unrestrained anthropocentrism.
In one of the most popular examples of environmental children’s literature, The
Lorax (Seuss, 1971), the opening page draws on the apocalyptic trope used in Silent
Spring (Carson, 1962) to depict, both verbally and visually, an ecocatastrophe, where
“no birds sing excepting old crows” (unpaged). The narrative progresses through a series of flashbacks to describe how the impoverished environment came into being, and in so doing, gives an ecological account of the importance of preserving biodiversity.
Initially, The Lorax represents an environment which has elements of the cornucopian bountifulness that I noted above were associated with Promethean discourses:
The bright-coloured tufts of the Truffula Trees! Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze. And, under the trees, I saw Brown Bar-ba-loots frisking about in their Bar-ba-loot suits as they played in the shade and ate Truffula Fruits. From the rippulous pond came the comfortable sound of the Humming-Fish humming while splashing around. (Seuss, 1971, unpaged) But it is soon made clear that the Once-ler’s Promethean faith in “doing no harm” is misplaced, as the downside of dominance is revealed. “The sound of the chopping of
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Truffula Trees” indicates the removal of more and more trees, which in turn leads to a damaged habitat incapable of supporting, at the outset, the Brown Bar-ba-loots.
The importance of awareness of ecological interconnections is evident as the story continues to trace species loss, with the “poor Swomee-Swans” overcome by smog, the Humming-Fish whose “gills are all gummed”, and finally with “a sickening smack of an axe on a tree… The very last Truffula Tree of them all! ” proclaims the extinction of the Truffula species (1971, unpaged).
The Lorax was thus informed by, and evinces the discourses of limits that recognise carrying capacity and the risks inherent with approaching those limits too closely. By concluding with the opportunity to restore the balance by planting the last Truffula seed, it also conforms to environmental discourses of equilibrium and harmony. The
Lorax was published in the United States nearly forty years ago, yet the issues of threatened species continue as part of living with ecocatastrophe in the early years of a new millennium.
Within an Australian context, of particular concern is the loss of unique flora and fauna. Many of Australia’s plant species and the most widely recognised species of mammals such as the marsupials, are not found anywhere else in the world. Australia has an unfortunate record of species extinction since European settlement. 17 Loss of native species has been a popular subject for Australian authors and illustrators of children’s literature as discussed in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2. Between 1995 and
2006, the focus years for the texts in this study, there has been a 300% increase in
17 For example, since 1800, 40% of mammalian extinctions throughout the world occurred in Australia, and all of those mammals were unique to Australia (ABS, 2006, p. 100). 97 Chapter 3: Shades of Green the number of threatened bird and mammal species. 18 Not surprisingly, in the last decade, species loss is widely represented in Australian non-fiction texts for children, and is also a feature of Australian fictional texts for children.
I argue that, to date, no scholarship in the field of Australian children’s literature has examined the textual construction of species loss as a consequence of unrestrained anthropocentrism. Tasmanian Tiger (Isham & Isham, 1996), Where Have All the
Flowers Gone (Bruce & Wade, 2000), and Uno’s Garden (Base, 2006), are all texts that address species loss. How these texts do this is elaborated further in Chapter 5,
Encounters with Ecocatastrophe .
Further pressure on environments has come from global economic reforms geared towards growth, and increasingly higher standards of living, which have promoted higher rates of consumption than ever before. The continuous consumption of the material goods and services created as by-products of the neoliberal economic policies of late capitalism may be viewed as one of the causes of ecocatastrophe. In
Affluenza ,19 Australian economists Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss (2005) challenge governments and businesses to make political and economic changes to markets and the desire for perpetual growth in GDP. Affluenza draws attention to the impact of consumerism on individuals and society, but also highlights the harmful environmental effects of over-consumption.
18 Threatened fauna and flora species by category, 2006 indicates 394 species of fauna and 1300 species of flora (Australia Year Book, 2007). 19 Included in the peritext of Affluenza are definitions of this term, one of which is “An unsustainable addiction to economic growth” (Hamilton & Denniss, 2005). The term is acknowledged by the authors as being popularised by a documentary of that name in the United States in 1997. Affluenza: The all consuming epidemic published in 2001, was a book written by one of the producers of the documentary, John De Graf together with David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor. 98 Chapter 3: Shades of Green
Children’s texts also draw attention to and offer challenges to the ethics of consumption. Over-consumption and the consumer, capitalist ethic that underpins
American society are the foci of a critical study of The Lorax (Lebduska,
1994/1995). The Once-ler’s entrepreneurial ability to create a demand for the useless garment, “Thneed”, and the acquisitiveness of the consumers who purchase it, ensure the destruction of the resource that produces the garment. As Ledbuska (1994/95, p.
174) observes, the disappearance of the Truffula trees depicts out of control consumption or anthropocentrism “at its ugliest”. The Once-ler’s desire for the boy to plant the seed for a new stand of Truffula trees reflects a conservationist, environmental discourse, but it may be too little too late. The Once-ler acknowledges liability but passes responsibility for replanting to the next generation, thus denying intergenerational justice. The Once-ler presents an economic growth model that incorporates mastery without any notion of sustainability. The text can be seen as a critique of a relationship with nature that sees it as “an inexhaustible source of material to be consumed” (Ledbuska, 1994/95, p. 172).
A more contemporary Australian children’s novel, Dogboy (Kelleher, 2005), is considered by Parsons (2006, p. 29) as a narrative of consumerism and corporate greed in a globalised economy accompanied by “capitalism run wild”. The eponymous central character has learned, as an infant nurtured by dogs, how to sniff out water. In a drought-stricken environment, where the provision of water has been corporatised, Dogboy uses this skill to create a corporate empire and become the epitome of capitalism, a wealthy and inhumane man who disregards his former sensitivities towards the environment along with its human and non-human inhabitants. The drought-breaking rain of the final stages of the novel coincides not
99 Chapter 3: Shades of Green only with Dogboy’s return to the modest community of his human mother but also to a less masterful and more caring position. Parsons posits a view of this ending that
“only when big business voluntarily gives up its position of power and demonstrates humility and kindness, will the people be safe – in this case from drought” (2006, p.
31). It also parallels a transition from a position of mastery to a position of stewardship with regard to the environment and its inhabitants. However, Parsons
(2006) acknowledges the ambivalence of the ending by suggesting that it
nullifies the text’s criticism of big business by intimating an imminent change in corporate morals, not to mention naturalising the processes of corporate violence by modelling the need to exploit an impoverished world in order to learn a valuable lesson. (Parsons, 2006, p. 31)
In Dogboy , as in The Lorax , the narrative difficulties of representing a challenge to corporate greed and consumerism, with their accompanying positions of mastery, are not fully resolved. Two Australian novels for young adults, Airdancer of Glass
(Bateson, 2004), and Yoss (Hirsch, 2001), which offer representations of challenges to greed and over-consumption, are included in the analysis in Chapter 5.
The discussion above has elaborated the first part of the study’s conceptual framework which is concerned with environmental discourses that construct living with ecocatastrophe as a daily confrontation with environmental crises rather than an apocalyptic future. Characteristics of these discourses include the ways they construct human responses to ecocatastrophe in different ways. For example, humans may deny the existence of ecocatastrophe and engage with the environment irrespective of the consequences of their behaviour; they may adapt to ecocatastrophe in ingenious ways that nevertheless still exhibit human disregard for the environment; or the discourses can contest the perceived causes of
100 Chapter 3: Shades of Green ecocatastrophe such as the imperatives of continuous economic growth and consumption.
The following discussion moves away from unrestrained anthropocentrism to open up the second component of the conceptual framework, restrained anthropocentrism.
Restrained Anthropocentrism: Moderating Control with Consideration
The position of restrained anthropocentrism is most conspicuously articulated in the discourse of sustainability, what Dryzek (2005, p. 157) has described as “a discourse of reassurance”. Restrained anthropocentrism offers humanity a future, the hope of survival in the face of contemporary environmental crises. Yet reassurance alone is insufficient to ensure survival, if sustainability is merely “a discourse rather than a plan of action” (Dryzek, 2005, p. 149). For survival, humans need to be proactive, to acknowledge warning signs and to act to bring about attitudinal change and life style modification. In the Hawke lecture, A sustainable planet: A future for Australia ,
Greg Bourne (2005) draws attention to Collapse (Diamond, 2005) which states that one element common to the downfall of previous civilisations has been their response to environmental problems.
Discourses of sustainability, therefore, have a threefold purpose: to offer hope of
human survival; to critique environmental exploitation; and to propose human
action to avert or redirect environmental crises. The human agency prompted by
sustainability is derived from concepts of stewardship that are associated with
consideration for the environment while still supporting a hierarchical position that
privileges human beings over other living and life supporting elements, or in
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Stephens’ words, “humans as outside of nature and as the source of value and
meaning” (Stephens, 2006, p. 41).
Stewardship involves a different interpretation of the Judeo-Christian beliefs used to support relationships of dominion. Where Biblical passages from Genesis (1:26 and
1:28) are quoted to argue relationships of dominion, Dobel (2005) contends that both
Old Testament (Psalms 2:7-12; Psalms 115:16) and New Testament (Luke 12:41-48;
Matthew 25:14-30) texts favour a point of view that positions humans as tenants of a divine landlord. As such there are covenantal relationships that recognise the environment as a gift held in trust. To fulfil their contractual obligations, humans are therefore called upon to stand apart from, but take responsibility for, the environment.
A limited number of critics of children’s literature have analysed the caretaker as spectator role in texts for children (Apol, 2003; Holton & Rogers, 2004; Lenz,
1994/95; Stephens, 2006) despite Stephens’ claim that most children’s environmental texts adopt this position. I propose that these critical studies have been concerned with constructions of stewardship based on the Christian precepts discussed above and/or environmental ethics based on beliefs that human beings, as rational agents, have a moral responsibility towards the environment . The studies have analysed stewardship in terms of caretaker/spectator roles of characters, and examined how texts offer readers a caretaker/spectator subject position, but fail to theorise stewardship from a critical perspective that considers the impact of sustainability on ecological subjectivities.
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A comparative study of two American fiction texts published one hundred years apart identifies a shift from dominion to stewardship in textual constructions of young, white males’ relationships with the environment (Apol, 2003). In the
American novel for young adults, California Blue (Klass, 1994), the environment is depicted “as a vulnerable ecosystem, fragile, a landscape that invites – even requires
– human protection and intervention” (Apol, 2003, p. 110). A textual construction of an environment that either “invites” or “requires” human involvement suggests human agency, but also the possibility that human abilities to reflect and act, justify their placement outside the environment and in a hierarchical relationship with the environment.
In a study of British and American fiction texts for children, mentioned earlier, Lenz
(1994/95) claims that “the caretaker stands apart from nature in a spectator role”
(1994/95, p. 160). Representations of the dualistic spectator/caretaker role are not unproblematic and are worthy of a closer examination than Lenz’s framework allows. The spectator role contradicts the agential ecological subjectivities demanded by sustainability. I propose that in the three children’s texts that Lenz examines, the caretaking/spectator role is variously represented through: human characters reflecting on an environmental crisis but taking no action to correct it, as in The
Wump World (Peet, 1970); characters directing others to take action, as in The Glass
Cupboard (Jones, 1981); or the central character taking ineffective action as in Just a
Dream (Van Allsburg, 1990).
The cow-like creatures in The Wump World (Peet, 1970) adopt the spectator role as the human-like “Pollutians” despoil the environment. At the end of the narrative, the
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Wumps have survived but not through the Pollutians’ caretaking actions. A human caretaking role is not modelled, but implied, through the verbal and visual narrative construction of the consequences of environmental exploitation: beneath a sky darkened “by the factory smoke and the fumes from the motorways the Pollutians could barely breathe. They went sneezing and wheezing about the streets grouching and grumbling and blaming one another for the awful mess they were in” (Peet,
1970, pp. 26-27). However, the text ultimately conveys ambivalence. It suggests that it is not acceptable for humans to pollute the environment, but if they do it is possible to move on elsewhere. The Pollutians merely leave the ruined environment and move on, presumably to destroy another one. This can be construed as metonymic of generations of environmental disregard, yet it works against humans as caretakers even though the Wumps ultimately survive, as the final words state that
“the Wump World would never be quite the same” (Peet, 1970, p. 44).
The glass cupboard, in the eponymous fairy tale by Terry Jones (1981), is a metaphor for the environment. In this allegory of environmental abuse, the King, on his return to the kingdom after the cupboard has been destroyed by greedy thieves, advocates the caretaker role. The king, looking on as an outsider, judiciously claims,
“If those thieves had always put something back into the cupboard for every bag of gold they had taken out, they would be alive to this day” (Jones, 1981, p. 36). The king’s words at the end of the narrative provide a closing echo of the imperious tone encountered in the opening description of the cupboard where the narrator’s voice chides commandingly, “The only thing you had to remember was that, whenever you took something out of the glass cupboard, you had to put something else back in , although nobody quite knew why” (1981, p. 33). The text, as an allegory, prescribes
104 Chapter 3: Shades of Green moral obligation on the part of human beings in the broad general terms of give and take, but does not offer ethical behaviours in terms of practical everyday strategies at a personal level offered by texts informed by sustainability.
The central child character, Walter, in Chris Van Allsburg’s Just a Dream (1990) is a young boy who has little respect for the environment. At the beginning of the narrative, Walter drops litter, is disdainful of the girl next door and her birthday present tree, and is too busy to sort the rubbish for recycling. In the illustrations of his nightmares, Walter stands apart from the environment, able to see that his day time practices are symbolic of large scale environmental abuse. Walter’s nightmares alert him to the state of the environment if more care is not taken, and upon waking, he acts to right his wrongdoings. The illustrations of his next dream show him the idyllic environmental future if a new course of action is pursued. In the final illustrations Walter is a content family man, surrounded by the clichéd picket fence of a human shaped and controlled suburban environment. This is narrative incoherence: Walter’s actions are incommensurate with the scale of environmental disaster (Bradford, 2003). The simplistic measures the boy takes to clean up his immediate environment are in no way likely to redress the environmental devastation evident in his futuristic dream. Walter’s initial behaviour serves a metonymic function for pervasive environmental peril, yet the text offers no effective challenge to, and suggests no ways of reflecting upon severely degraded environments. Walter, as perpetrator of minor environmental abuse contributes to large scale devastation, but he is not offered the opportunity to develop as a mature ecological subject.
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A different approach to the analysis of the caretaker/spectator role appears in a study by Holton and Rogers (2004) of the Canadian nature publication Owl Magazine from
1978-1998. The study of scientific discourses in the magazine concludes that an emphasis on factual information offers readers subject positions as caretakers/spectators. The use of scientific discourses privileges objectivity and denies other human-environment relationships. In Owl Magazine , the caretaker/spectator role is constructed in the following ways: (i) features of the environment are discussed through scientific lenses, that is, close examination is needed in order for those features to be understood; (ii) scientists whose ways of knowing, that is, close examination, speak as experts; and (iii) studying the environment, in order to help it, is privileged over interaction with it for the sake of enjoyment alone (Holton & Rogers, 2004, pp. 153-155).
The critical studies discussed above analysed human caretaking/spectator relationships with the environment in a selection of fiction and non-fiction children’s texts published outside Australia. They considered stewardship using outmoded frameworks which fail to take into account contemporary notions of sustainability.
Sustainability moves stewardship into new realms, beyond the caretaker/spectator role, but nevertheless within the anthropocentric concerns for human survival, moderated by consideration for the environment. Representations of stewardship, which emphasise a caretaker/spectator role, serve a prescriptive function, suggesting ways individuals should behave as ecological subjects, to highlight the consequences of negative behaviours, and humans’ contractual obligation to repair environmental damage.
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I propose that, to date, no critical studies of children’s literature have engaged
directly with ecological subjectivities shaped by discourses of sustainability. The
Australian picture book Belonging (Baker, 2004) may be considered as the
archetypal text informed by sustainability. However, neither Stephens (2006), who
looks at the text’s utopian possibilities, nor Bradford (2008) who examines the
postcolonial potential of the text, analyse the text with regard to the discourse of
sustainability. There is a need to go beyond ecocriticism of children’s literature to
theorise sustainability sufficiently to develop a framework for the analysis of texts
which represent ecological subjectivities informed by aspects of sustainability.
Contemporary Connections: Sustainability
Since the Brundtland Commission report, Our Common Future (1987), the most prominent environmental discourses have been those that espouse sustainability.
Diverse governmental and non-governmental organisations at international, national and local levels (for example, the United Nations; the Worldwatch Institute; the
Australian Government; and Australian State Government Environmental Protection
Agencies) conceptualise sustainability to suit their particular perspectives and political mandates. Integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes is one of the targets contained in the United Nations
Millennium Declaration to reach the goal of environmental sustainability. In 2002, the World Summit for Sustainable Development urged States not only to take immediate steps to make progress in the formulation and elaboration of national strategies for sustainable development but also to begin their implementation by
2005.
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The Australian Government recognises sustainability as “the quest for a sustainable society; one that can persist over generations without destroying the social and life- supporting systems that current and future generations of humans (and all other species on Earth) depend on” (DEH, 2005, p. 27). The Forum for the Future accounts for sustainability as “A dynamic process which enables all people to realise their potential and improve their quality of life in ways which simultaneously protect and enhance the Earths life support systems.” To capture the complex and often conflicting accounts of sustainability introduced very briefly here is outside the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, I want to focus on notions that are critical to the implementation of sustainability no matter how it is formulated by diverse agencies.
Later, I address a less prominent aspect of the discourses of sustainability, an awareness of, and respect for, the intrinsic value of the environment. Dryzek (2005) accounts for this absence, or silence, by noting that this was a conspicuous omission in Our Common Future (Brundtland, 1987) and therefore not taken up in official interpretations of sustainability.
Common to all accounts of sustainability are the explicit or implicit assumptions that human agents will act to change or modify their ways of engaging with the environment. When Dryzek (2005, p. 142) says sustainability entails “ecological protection, economic growth, social justice, and intergenerational equity, not just locally and immediately, but globally and in perpetuity” he is implying human involvement in ongoing processes for these goals to be achieved. Human agency is interpreted in ways that support proactive humans as individuals or in collaborative and inclusive communities that work towards achieving sustainability, or what can be described as restrained anthropocentrism.
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According to Beck (1995) and Dryzek (2005) sustainability requires not only cooperation between all levels of government – global, regional, and local – but also a democracy where citizens actively engage in environmental issues and maintain a critical scrutiny of environmental measures introduced by governments, corporate capitalism, and the scientific establishment. In contrast, postmodern practices offer
“unadulterated individualism” with a liberatory freedom from duty, commandments, and obligations (Bauman, 1993). Superficially these ideas appear conducive to anarchism – anything goes, and the ambivalence that pervades postmodern discourse would seem to confirm this. Yet Bauman (1993) sees potential for ethical action in an individual moral subject who can accept and address this ambivalence.
This concept of ethical regard for the environment, based on action of self-regulating subjects, is expounded in the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1988, p. 254) who adopt an ecological framework to suggest that “each individual is an infinite multiplicity and the whole of nature is a multiplicity of perfectly individuated multiplicities”.
This view applies postmodern perspectives, with their emphasis on subjectivities, diversity, and transience, to both individual human beings and the environment.
Attfield (2003) takes a different approach when he envisions that globalisation may encourage a “cosmopolitan” environmental ethic, if humans, as agents, accept a role as global citizens. Attfield acknowledges that this concept is problematic, for it implies the existence of a global community with citizenship of a global state that does not exist. However, a belief in the “common heritage of humankind” may encompass loyalty to a world that exists beyond the need for a political state
(Attfield, 2003, p. 161). As citizenship of any state suggests moral responsibilities,
109 Chapter 3: Shades of Green human global citizens have responsibilities to nonhuman members of the biotic community. Unlike communitarianism (where moral obligations only extend to those who share values), global citizenship for Attfield is consistent with consequentialism as a normative ethic which extends beyond anthropocentrism to conceptualise the environment as heritage “not in the sense of inherited assets, to be spent for our own benefit either now or later … [but as] … global commons … unowned aspects and tracts of the planetary biosphere” (Attfield, 2003, pp. 171-
172). These ideas are similar to those of stewardship or the tenancy agreement advocated by some interpretations of the Biblical verses that were discussed earlier in this section.
Postmodern influences on environmental discourses suggest an alignment between reconstructive (affirmative) postmodernism and the discourse of sustainability
(Oelschlaeger, 1995). This interpretation proposes an emphasis on the importance of communities and collaborative discussion rather than individual action. In Chapter 6,
Communities of Participants Enacting Sustainabilit y, I include an analysis of the narrative constructions of ecological subjectivities in Belonging (Baker, 2004), a picture book where the central character, Tracy, together with other members of her immediate community, acts in accordance with principles of sustainability.
The importance of communities and collaborative discussion is a feature of the
Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999). This
Act seeks to promote the conservation of biodiversity through “a co-operative approach to the protection and management of the environment involving government, the community, land-holders and indigenous peoples”. Furthermore, it
110 Chapter 3: Shades of Green recognises the role of Indigenous Australians and seeks to promote Indigenous knowledge. It was stated in Chapter 1, Parameters of the Study , that it is not the purpose of this study to investigate Indigenous ecological subjectivities per se .
However, as My Home in Kakadu, The Shy Mala and Creature of the Rainforest ,
(included in the analysis in Chapters 6 and 7) depict Indigenous knowledges, it is appropriate to state briefly that understandings of Indigenous knowledge in relation to ecological subjectivities includes Martin’s (2008b, p. 28) understanding that “to know who you are in relatedness is the ultimate premise of Aboriginal worldview because this is the formation of identity”. Furthermore, according to Martin (2008b, p. 29),
relatedness is not limited to people but extends to everything in the environment: the animals, the plants, the skies, the climate, the waterways, the land and the spirits. It is not just with people. In fact people are not regarded as better or more important than any of these elements.
Understood in this way, relatedness espouses ecocentric connections, and it is these that the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act
(1999) seeks to incorporate into sustainable practices.
As indicated earlier in this section, concepts of Western understandings of intrinsic value are missing from official responses to sustainability. From pragmatic and postmodern perspectives, intrinsic value is an untenable concept. Pragmatic perspectives on environmental ethics reject accounts of intrinsic value, proposing that “all value judgements are meaningless, arbitrary, subjective, irrational expressions of emotion” (Hargrove, 2003, p. 176). In contemporary socio-cultural contexts, intrinsic value is associated with aesthetics. Assumptions about aesthetics influence the assignation of non-instrumental value to animals and other aspects of
111 Chapter 3: Shades of Green the environment. Culturally established links such as those which relate aesthetic properties of beauty with moral values of truth and goodness persist (Misson &
Morgan, 2005). The pretty and attractive faces of certain species, for example, dolphins, whales, and pandas, or what Callicott and Palmer (2005, p. xxvi) call “the charismatic mega fauna”, are used to encourage affection for these animals, and support for conservation organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund. Aesthetic aspects of the environment such as scenic or picturesque areas of National Parks, also involve non-instrumental value, yet aesthetic responses such as these remain powerfully anthropocentric with the corollary that there is a need to conserve unspoiled environments, if only for the aesthetic pleasure they bring to humans.
These are socially-enculturated ways of knowing which always foreground human interests “because knowing is the quintessential anthropocentric act of appropriation” (Fromm, 2003, p. 8).
To summarise, four points emerge as significant for sustainability. Firstly, sustainability acknowledges the ecological concept of interdependence in human engagement with the environment but an anthropocentric focus prevails in the assumption that human life depends on the environment, therefore the environment is of value primarily because it ensures human life (Goodland, 1995). Secondly, sustainable practices demand human agency, both personal responsibility and collective responsibility at community, governmental and international levels.
Sustainability assumes the ecological point of view that healthy ecosystems exhibit balance, harmony, stability, and diversity. The implications of this equilibrium model propose anthropocentric practices and interventions framed within global and national, personal and communal contexts. Thirdly, sustainability is sited within
112 Chapter 3: Shades of Green economic frameworks of capitalism and globalisation. Finally, sustainability may or may not be informed by anthropocentric ideas of intrinsic value and aesthetics.
This discussion suggests the direction for the textual analysis of Australian
children’s literature (1995-2006) in Chapter 6. The focus texts are analysed in terms
of how they offer narrative constructions of ecological subject positions aligned
with the dominant environmental discourse of sustainability, that is, restrained
anthropocentrism.
Ecocentrism: Ecological Equality
Ecocentric discourses draw on environmental sensibilities such as the land ethic, deep ecology, theories of intrinsic value, and changed understandings of environmental aesthetics which are closely aligned with ecological principles.
Conceptual complexities and contestations associated with these paradigms are examined here for their contribution to the discourses of ecocentrism, which have been described as concerned with ecological systems, species and processes, to the extent that the “long term health of the biosphere should take precedence” (Botzler
& Armstrong, 1998, p. 410).
The land ethic outlined by Aldo Leopold in A Sand Count Almanac (1966) established a pattern of concern for the environment that was based on the holistic view of land as constituted of soils, water, plants, and animals. Unlike ethical positions which focus on individual entities and are formulated on considerations based on rationality, sentience, and/or reverence for life, the land ethic focuses on whole ecosystems and the interrelationships and interdependencies that exist within
113 Chapter 3: Shades of Green and between them. Three scientific cornerstones ground the land ethic. Firstly,
Darwin’s evolutionary biology “establishes a diachronic [lasting through time] link between people and nonhuman nature”; secondly, ecological biology provides “a synchronic [at a given time without reference to historical data] link… a sense of social integration of human and nonhuman nature… interlocked in one humming community of cooperations and competitions”; thirdly, an assumption based on
Copernican astronomy that the earth is part of a larger universe (Callicott, 2005, p.
153).
Children’s literature scholars have identified representations of these ecological interconnections in a range of historical texts from Britain and North America. In the works of Beatrix Potter, for example, Copeland (2004) perceives the recognition of community ecology, in the way Potter refuses to shy away from an objective view of her animal characters as both predators and victims in the food chain. Holland considers the three brothers in BB’s Brendon Chase (1944) as being linked irrevocably to the environment. They are depicted as animals, enjoying “no immunity from that complex pattern of interdependence” known as ecology
(Hollindale, 1990, p. 6). For Sigler (1994/95) the late eighteenth century works of
British writers Anna Barbauld, Dorothy Kilner and Sarah Trimmer exemplify ecological interconnectedness.
In the celebrated Australian children’s classic The Adventures of Snugglepot and
Cuddlepie (1918/1977), Seddon (1997) says the author/illustrator May Gibbs depicts a “calm and clear eyed acceptance of ecological reality” (p. 125). While these ecocritical studies acknowledge the ecological principles in the children’s texts, their
114 Chapter 3: Shades of Green focus on texts (pre 1996) and their preoccupation with the characters moral development are outside the central concerns of my study.
A second radical position in environmental ethics, deep ecology, has also been identified in secondary sources that offer ecocritical accounts of children’s literature.
Deep ecology, the philosophically based environmental position articulated by Arne
Naess in the 1980s, has an holistic focus and a recognition of the interrelatedness and interdependence of human and non-human. Deep ecology questions and challenges anthropocentric relationships with the environment and offers ecocentric alternatives based on the recognition that “all organisms and entities in the ecosphere, as part of the interrelated whole, are equal in intrinsic worth” (Devall & Sessions, 2005, p.
202). Ecocentric recognition of the intrinsic value of the environment as represented in children’s literature is highlighted in ecocritical studies by Hollindale (1990);
Phillips (1994/95); Plevin (2004); and Wood (1995). In Ranger Rick Magazine , published in the United States since 1967, the environment is respected, animals are equal to humans or vice versa, and “protecting animals and improving the habitat are important above and beyond selfish humanism” (Plevin, 2004, p. 179). The reconciliation of the environment and humanity as equal partners is identified by
Phillips (1994/95) in her discussion of Gene Stratton-Porter’s Freckles (1904). The eponymous central character is connected to the Limberlost swamp, in a relationship that acknowledges the intrinsic value of the environment (Phillips, 1994/95, p. 154).
The boys in Silver Flame by Kenneth Allsop (1950) “are not superior intrusive presences, representative of a different kind or order of being, but animals themselves and therefore part of the pattern… [They have a role] as natural occupants of the life-filled habitat and not as alien controllers of it” (Hollindale,
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1990, p. 8). In A Stranger at Green Knowe (1961) by Lucy M. Boston, the life of
Hanno the gorilla is celebrated because “the moral principle is non-intrusiveness , reticence, respect for the biological space of other creatures (including people)”
(Hollindale, 1990, p. 15). Once again, the historic nature of the texts analysed, their non-Australian origins, and the failure of the critics to interrogate ecocentric perspectives points to the need for my study.
I have referred above to ecocritical studies that examined texts within a framework guided by understandings of deep ecology. I have suggested that while intrinsic value may be alluded to in these studies, the difficulties of intrinsic value have not been investigated nor have the difficulties of decentring the human actant in textual representations. To underpin this third component of the conceptual framework of the study I turn my attention here to a discussion of intrinsic value and the difficulties and/or possibilities of decentring the human.
An Ecological Approach to Intrinsic Value and Aesthetics
Understandings of intrinsic value are the most contentious aspect of ecocentric approaches to environmental ethics. For Callicott (2005), according the environment intrinsic value is “the defining project of environmental ethics” (p. 351). Lexically, environmental intrinsic value appears uncomplicated, the environment’s worth is inherent or essential, that is, it is worthy because of its essential constitution
(Callicott, 2005, p. 351). However, as discussed earlier in this chapter, pragmatic and postmodern approaches to environmental ethics eschew concepts of value conferred because of inherent or essential properties. Nevertheless, environmental ethicists propose arguments in defence of concepts of intrinsic value which recognise the existence and value of living beings and the physical elements of the environment,
116 Chapter 3: Shades of Green irrespective of their value for human purposes. This understanding interprets intrinsic value as synonymous with non-instrumental value, that is, the environment, or elements of it, can have value as an end in themselves, they do not have to serve any use for human beings (O’Neill, 2003).
Intrinsic worth, as understood by deep ecologists, can be “independent of any awareness, interest, or appreciation of it by any conscious being” (Regan, 2005, p.
273). In other words, deep ecologists deny that the source of all environmental value lies in humans as valuers. In this understanding, intrinsic value is synonymous with objective value and is, as O’Neill (2003) suggests, a meta-ethical claim. It denies the subjectivist view that the source of all value lies in valuers. Deep ecologists, therefore, avoid the arrogant approach of humans who, because of their capacity for rational thought, perpetuate a dichotomous relationship between humans and non- human entities. From a Western perspective, the possibility of perceiving the environment from anything other than a human viewpoint is difficult but not impossible. For as Fox states:
to say that humans cannot be nonanthropocentric is like saying that a male cannot be nonsexist, or that a white person cannot be nonracist because they can only perceive the world as male or white subjects … humans are quite capable of cultivating a nonanthropocentric consciousness. (Fox, 1990, p. 21)
In children’s literature, representations of deep ecology’s non-anthropocentric consciousness are examined by Bradford, Mallan, Stephens and McCallum (2008).
In their analysis of City of Beasts (2002) by Chilean author Isabel Allende, these authors argue that it is the human inhabitants of an Amazonian region in City of
Beasts who offer an ecocentric perspective towards their environment. The human inhabitants achieve this by the assignation of intrinsic value to all living things, thus
117 Chapter 3: Shades of Green denying humans a position of privilege. However, the egalitarian interconnectedness with their environment is advanced by the central character’s ability to communicate with his totemic animal, a jaguar; the absorption by the environment of the People of the Mist through their ability to become invisible; and the character Nadia’s ability to speak with humans and animals. Here, Bradford, Mallan, Stephens and McCallum
(2008) acknowledge that it is the mode of magical realism, or the fantastic, non- human elements that serve as narrative devices which construct a non- anthropocentric perspective.
The Australian fantasy Shædow Master (2003), by Justin D’Ath, is another successful attempt to represent a nonhuman, ecocentric perspective. The two vital environmental features in this young adult novel are the drought ridden land and a mysteriously threatening lake. To confront and reverse the lethal potential of the environment is the responsibility of the principal character, Aqua-Ora, whose name links her with the environmental features of water and gold. Again, fantasy serves as a narrative mode to present a non-human perspective, as Aqua-Ora relinquishes her human body and becomes the dolphin-like spirit, Dalfen, in order to save both the environment and its human inhabitants.
If narrative modes such as magical realism and fantasy utilised by Allende and
D’Ath contribute to the construction of non-human perspectives, how do ecocentric ethicists argue the possibility of intrinsic value independent of human valuers? One way is to use ecological understandings to argue that living beings and physical elements of the environment have intrinsic, biologically-based values (Rolston,
2005). Using plants and animals as examples, Rolston (2005) claims that the
118 Chapter 3: Shades of Green genetically encoded information that ensures their reproductive capacities and survival “exists independently of observers even though it is observers who have constructed the ways in which this is known and reported” (p. 94). As plants and animals had these faculties independent of human existence, it is human arrogance
“to think that for hundreds of million years flourishing nature on Earth was actually valueless and then became valuable when humans arrived to bestow value on it”
(Hettinger, 2005, p. 102).
Rolston argues that plants and animals have “value-ability”, that is, they generate values, not in the cognitive sense, but in other ways. Higher vertebrates value instrumentally, food, shelter and so on, but beyond that they value their own lives intrinsically. Rolston goes beyond the valuing of sentient beings. As invertebrates and plant species constitute an overwhelming percentage of living organisms, if value is extended only to higher vertebrates, humans are still arrogantly dismissing the majority of life forms. Using the Darwinian model of survival that emphasises
“goodness of fit” (organisms do not survive without environmental fitness), rather than the popular misinterpretation of survival of the strongest, Rolston proposes that the complex processes of adaptation and survival are a reflection of contesting values. Rolston suggests that it is arrogant of humans not to recognise the possibility of intrinsic value based on adaptability for survival.
Rolston’s argument, as outlined above, may be understood as compatible with postmodern perspectives which seek to breakdown dualisms and decentre the subject. Callicott (2005) proposes that in foregrounding the intentional but unconscious acts of a multitude of living organisms, Rolston has deconstructed the
119 Chapter 3: Shades of Green rational Cartesian subject, for Rolston’s multitude are self-valuing non-subjects. The ecological emphasis on holistic systems, as a way of contextualising organisms, renders them meaningless outside that context, and also serves to decentre the human subject. I argue that there are no ecocritical accounts of children’s literature which identify Rolston’s ecological approach to the recognition of the intrinsic value of plants and animals, but it provides an informing perspective for this study in the section, Human Effacement: The Ecological Sublime , in Chapter 7.
Ways of decentring the human subject are, however, analysed in other ecocritical studies. In literature, one way for the human subject to be decentred is for the narrative to deny a human presence. This is a difficult position to achieve because total human effacement is impossible when it comes to literature – a human endeavour from creation to production, marketing and consumption.
Unlike the young adult texts discussed above, which used fantasy as a narrative strategy to attempt a move beyond an anthropocentric viewpoint, Stephens (2006) credits an American children’s text, Arrowhawk, with attempting to achieve human effacement and a non-anthropocentric or ecocentric position. In Arrowhawk (1994) by Lola M. Schaefer and Gabi Swiatkowska, the hawk is the focaliser. Humans are not seen directly but suggested through the verbal narrative and the illustrations, where artefacts such as a bandage and food on a plate imply human intervention and caring. Here, Stephens’ analysis falls short of drawing attention to the way this text provides an answer to a challenging question associated with ecocentric paradigms:
If humans recognise the intrinsic value of other entities, do humans have a moral obligation towards the entities that have intrinsic value?
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In his analysis of another American text, Welcome to the Sea of Sand (1996) by Jane
Yolen and Laura Regan, Stephens suggests that the absence of humans in the illustrations contributes to the foregrounding of the desert creatures. The verbal narrative, however, personifies the desert creatures, and this for Stephens, ultimately undermines the attempt to present an ecocentric position. Through the personification of non-human entities, the text is privileging an anthropocentric perspective, representing the desert creatures as human beings, not as beings in their own right.
This consideration of ecocentrism raises questions that are pertinent for this study: how do the focus texts address the moral obligation of humans towards the non- human beings and other environmental elements in response to the recognition of their intrinsic value?; how do the texts represent the quintessential ecocentric belief that “in everything human society does, the primary consideration should be for the long-term health and biological diversity of Earth” (Foreman, 1998, p. 449). These questions will be explored as part of the analysis in Chapter 7.
A further problematic aspect of ecocentrism is its potential for interpretation as misanthropic, privileging the needs of the environment over the needs of human beings. Philip Reeve’s young adult novel, A Darkling Plain (2006), offers a view on ecocentrism’s latent inhumane potential. As a post-human cyborg, Stalker Fang, the leader of the anti-tractionist, Green Storm group, takes deep ecology’s conviction about the need for population reduction to extremes in her attempt to eradicate all humans. Her intentions however are not realised and the narrative’s conclusion, as
Bradford, Mallan, Stephens and McCallum (2008) suggest, resonates with the
121 Chapter 3: Shades of Green ecological principles of the interconnection and interdependence of all living entities in an ecosystem.
The “fascist potential” of ecocentrism is also discussed by Murray (2001) in his analysis of Victor Kelleher’s Parkland (1994), a narrative which allows readers to engage with one of the tenets of the deep ecology, namely, population control. In an ironic reversal of human dominance of the environment, alien cosmic gardeners control human beings and human-ape hybrids, in an attempt to achieve planetary balance. The cosmic gardeners have reduced the human population because of the environmental destruction they have caused. The environment created by the cosmic gardeners is beautiful and diverse, but achieved through the subjugation of individual freedom for the benefit of the whole ecosystem as advocated by Aldo Leopold in the land ethic (as cited in Murray, 2001, p. 27). At the end of the narrative, free from the control of the alien gardeners, the human and human-ape hybrid characters confront ethical alternatives if they are to maintain the richly diverse environment created by the gardeners. However, the novel fails to show how the human and human-ape hybrids will maintain an ecocentric focus.
Advocates of ecocentrism defend charges of misanthropy by claiming that it is not humanity that ecocentrism shuns but human chauvinism (Eckersley, 1992). In
Parkland , the focaliser Cassie frequently proclaims that the inhabitants of Parkland are “one people” (Kelleher, 1994, p. 6). Parkland explores the complexities of
Cassie’s claim that humans and hybrid human primates are equal, and the extent of the obligation that the relationship demands. Cassie’s ethical stance poses the perennial philosophical question of what it means to be human. In his analysis of the
122 Chapter 3: Shades of Green text, Murray (2001) claims that Kelleher explores this question in both descriptive
(factual based on biological attributes) and normative terms (how humans ought to be treated or rights) but Cassie’s claim suggests one unresolved problem, “if we and the apes are ‘one people’, do we treat them in the same way as we treat other human beings?” (Murray, 2001, p. 31). Although opportunities exist for consideration of ecocentric ethical positions, Cassie’s ‘one people ’ claim is an act of human chauvinism and works against an ecocentric position.
As the discussion above has indicated, ecocentric perspectives are not without either conceptual or representational difficulties. However, some environmental scholars provide an alternative approach to ecocentrism through contemporary understandings of aesthetics which include attention to previously disregarded ecological details.
Ecological Aesthetics
Contemporary approaches to environmental aesthetics, informed by ecological understandings, support ecocentric perspectives rather than the anthropocentric positions discussed earlier in the chapter. As previously stated, Western conceptions of aesthetic experiences of the environment, including the Romanticism of the eighteenth century and Kantian accounts of the sublime, conformed to culturally dominant ideas of the aesthetic properties of the environment which sanctioned dualistic divisions. Thus the dichotomous human-environment relationships reasserted the power of human subjects over the environment as a threatening
“Other” and strengthened humans’ separation from the environment.
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More recently, developments in environmental aesthetics have included a re- interpretation of traditional understandings of the sublime (Hitt, 1999). Hitt interrogates previous understandings of the sublime which limit human interactions with the environment to an unequal power relationship between an autonomous, human subject in confrontation with a threatening “Other”. This strongly anthropocentric approach is overturned by Hitt who proffers an account of the ecocentric possibilities of the sublime. Countering interpretations of the sublime experience which propose that initial fear is overcome by the validation of the perceiving subject’s authority over the environment, Hitt (1999, p. 609) theorises an ecological sublime that acknowledges the “revelatory experience” but does not include the re-inscription of human domination over the environment. By drawing upon the recognition, by Kant and Burke, of human respect and admiration for the environment, Hitt (1999) elicits in the sublime humility suggestive of ecocentric principles (p.607). Humility can foster human engagement with the environment that negates environmental otherness and breaks down binaried perspectives.
As well, challenges to the aesthetic appreciation of the environment from the late eighteenth century visual appeal of the scenic/picturesque have lead to the development of theories of “eco-friendly aesthetics”, that is, the aesthetic appreciation of unscenic environmental entities, where aesthetics are shaped by ecological understandings (Callicott, 1998b; Carlson, 1998; Fudge, 2001; Lintott,
2006; Saito, 1998; Simus, 2008). As stated at the beginning of this discussion, changed understandings of environmental aesthetics shape and are shaped by ecocentric discourses. These theories of aesthetics propose that an awareness of the ecological complexities and interconnections between living and nonliving
124 Chapter 3: Shades of Green organisms contributes to aesthetic appreciation of all aspects of the environment, not just the attractive, scenic, grand, or awe inspiring. It has been argued in various ways that ecologically informed aesthetic appreciation, rather than endorsing a human focused approach to the environment which separates humanity from the environment, may shape ecocentric and holistic environmental understandings
(Callicott, 1998b; Carlson, 1998; Fudge, 2001; Saito, 1998).
Ecological discourses inform and shape environmental narratives which attempt to give the environment a voice and facilitate an aesthetic appreciation that is not anthropocentric (Saito, 1998). Through ecological discourses humans attempt a less anthropocentric viewpoint which aims:
to recognize its own reality quite apart from us and to suspend our exclusive pursuit for entertainment in nature. Instead of imposing our own standard of aesthetic value (such as pictorial coherence), we are willing to acknowledge and appreciate the diverse ways in which nature speaks. (Saito, 1998, p. 103)
For Carlson (1998), scientific knowledge encourages aesthetic appreciation of the environment which does not presuppose anthropocentrism. Ecological understandings and ways of looking at the active, frenetic, stimulating and diverse aspects of ecosystems increase aesthetic appreciation beyond sensory pleasure.
Similarly, Callicott (1998b) maintains that understanding ecological interconnections can add to aesthetic appreciation. Expanded knowledge of different natural environments and the myriad of interrelationships that exist within them point towards positive aesthetics where every component is naturally beautiful (Carlson,
1998, pp. 128-129). This view accords with Deleuze and Guattari’s point that was referred to earlier, about nature being comprised of a multiplicity of individuated multiplicities (1988). Aesthetic appreciation of all aspects of the environment
125 Chapter 3: Shades of Green stresses the need to consider the unscenic elements of the environment, not just the visually striking. The inclusivity of ecologically founded aesthetics means previously overlooked living beings and non-living objects can provide new opportunities for aesthetic experience (Fudge, 2001). Cultural conditioning directs attention towards the pretty picturesque, but ecological understandings can point to
“the way different parts of nature interact systematically” (Fudge, 2000, p. 276).
More than ecological appreciation is involved in these understandings. The ecologically aesthetic encounter combines delight at recognising something hitherto unknown and absorption, not passive detachment. Fudge (2001, p. 276) sees this stimulating an “active engagement…which excludes everything external to it.”
Being actively engaged, “demands involvement with ecological discourses which categorise, expose the systemic properties of ecosystems, and reveal the complexities that ensure the persistence of these systems” (Fudge, 2001, p. 284). I argue, in
Chapter 7, that many of the texts develop ecological aesthetics in the construction of an ecocentric viewpoint.
The discussion above has highlighted the understandings of ecocentrism that provide one of the components of the conceptual framework that underpins the textual analysis undertaken in Chapter 7. In summary those understandings include the following. Ecocentrism has an holistic focus on closely interconnected ecosystems. It is thereby concerned with ecological equality where humans are not privileged over any other environmental component. From a human perspective this is a difficult position to endorse practically because concepts of intrinsic value have traditionally been anthropocentrically grounded. However, ecological approaches to intrinsic
126 Chapter 3: Shades of Green value seek to allocate value to all species on their inherent ability to survive and adapt. As well, ecological approaches to aesthetics have focused on re- conceptualising the sublime in terms of the unscenic. Together, these two new approaches provide ways to envisage the possibility of representing a more fully ecocentric perspective.
Summary
This chapter has examined previous ecocritical studies to determine the influential environmental discourses that provided foci for studies of children’s literature. Three foci emerged from that investigation: unrestrained anthropocentrism (human dominion over the environment); restrained anthropocentrism (human consideration for the environment driven by understandings that humans need the environment to survive); and ecocentrism (human deference towards the environment guided by understandings that humans are no more important than the environment).
Further examination of these discourses in studies outside the field of children’s literature studies provided ways to reconceptualise two of the foci, namely, unrestrained anthropocentrism and restrained anthropocentrism. Currently, it appears that unrestrained anthropocentrism may be represented in terms of its consequences, that is, ecocatastrophe. Restrained anthropocentrism, on the other hand is, at this time, more familiarly regarded as sustainability. Therefore, the tripartite framework generated in this chapter will underpin the textual analysis in terms of ecocatastrophe, sustainability, and ecocentrism.
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The generation of the framework developed in this chapter satisfies the second of the study’s four objectives, namely, To construct a conceptual framework that accounts for the complexities and subtleties of the interconnecting and interdependent networks of environmental discourses that inform Australian children’s environmental literature.
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Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology: A Transdisciplinary
Approach to Textual Analysis
Like artful dodgers we weave our way through various theoretical terrains, keeping out an eye for sparkling gems of ideas, always ready to pick the pockets of the famous in order to bring our own spin on old texts, new texts, old theories, new theories… but without losing sight of developing an understanding of how textuality functions. (Mallan, 2006, p. 7)
This chapter outlines the methodological approach to textual analysis that is informed, as the epigraph implies, by a multiplicity of theoretical perspectives that have evolved within contemporary social and academic contexts. Chapters 2 and 3 reviewed ecocritical studies that analysed environmental tropes and discourses with respect to textual representations of human engagement with the environment. Both chapters contextualised the study within the field of ecocriticism, but Chapter 3 also provided a conceptual framework constituted of three interrelated components, each of which shapes ecological subjectivities in particular ways . The transdisciplinary approach developed here indicates that ecocriticism, as an interdisciplinary field, encourages perspectives that offer multiple ways of analysing texts. As suggested in the epigraph’s reference to gathering from various sources and as stated in Chapter 1,
The Research Approach , I take on the work of a bricoleuse , selecting and gathering from disparate but complementary methodologies, to construct an appropriate approach to textual analysis.
Therefore the form of ecocriticism adopted for my purposes is grounded in narrative and visual methodologies, ecofeminist and postcolonial perspectives. Each of these critical approaches has a valid place in the study: narrative methodologies are
129 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology pertinent to the verbal narratives of all of the focus texts; visual methodologies are relevant to the focus texts which are picture books. Ecofeminist scholars address censure of ecocriticism as a predominantly white, male field of scholarship and postcolonialism accommodates Australia’s position as colonial territory.
Ecofeminism and postcolonialism add a further dimension to the textual analysis and enable a critique of the subjectivities constructed in the texts. Throughout the chapter
I draw on studies by children’s literature scholars (Bradford, 2001, 2007, 2008;
McCallum, 1999; Stephens, 1992, 2006, 2008) which examine narrative, postcolonial, and ecological discourses and subject formation in literature for children and adolescents.
As this study is informed by poststructuralist perspectives, a statement of ontological and epistemological assumptions precedes the discussion of the distinctive ecocritical approach taken. I consider it important to articulate the beliefs and understandings that affect the accomplishment of the study, for my approach is neither neutral nor impartial. In accordance with the study’s aim and objectives set out in Chapter 1, and the conceptual framework developed in Chapter 3, the methodological approach discussed here guides the analysis of the focus texts throughout Chapters 5 to 7.
A Transdisciplinary Approach: Poststructuralist Assumptions
Any research provides the researcher with the immediate dilemma of choosing the most appropriate methodology for the task. As Glesne (1999, p. 8) states, “people tend to adhere to the methodology that is most consonant with their socialized worldview … [their] personal view of seeing and understanding the world.” In my
130 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology choice of ecocriticism as the broad framework for my study I align myself with ecocritics who believe in, and are committed to, the physical world, a world that exists beyond the pages of literary texts (Estok, 2001). As a human being, I am concerned for the state of that physical world, not only within an Australian context but also within a global one. I consider, like Buell (2005), that “there is no space on earth immune from anthropogenic toxification” (p. 41). I contend that, unless this widespread toxification is addressed, the quality of life for future generations will be impacted significantly, for as Diamond (1997) suggests, we may be the first generation of human beings to envisage a planet incapable of sustaining healthy human life. My stance as an ecocritic, therefore, is influenced by a commitment to environmentalism. I share with other ecocritics “a common concern about the exploitation and overconsumption of nature by certain human cultures” (Hitt, 2004, p. 125). I believe that my approach to ecocriticism “shares with a number of other critical approaches … the conviction that literary criticism should assume an overtly ethical stance” (Hitt, 2004, p. 125). Therefore my position with its particular attitudes and values will undoubtedly influence the kind of literary criticism I undertake in this study. However, poststructuralism demands the need for a dialogical engagement between my already held subject position as reader/ecocritic and the subject positions offered by the texts (Bakhtin, 1981). In this way my analysis encourages an interactive and interpretative reading of the focus texts.
Ecocriticism recognises that the physical world is affected by and affects human culture, and as such, ecocriticism involves the examination of “the interconnectedness between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature” (Glotfelty, 1996, p. xix). In acknowledging texts as cultural
131 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology artefacts ecocritics disagree about the “reality” that is presented textually. Some ecocritics resist poststructuralist theory, favouring instead what Belsey (2002) calls a
“common sense” approach to literary criticism. These ecocritics see literary texts as mimetic reflections of the real world (Cohen, 2004). This resistance to poststructuralist theories highlights an epistemological contradiction, where ecocritics fear that they will deny themselves a subject if they embrace notions of social constructedness (Easterlin, 2004, p. 3). Although abstract concepts like the environment may be cultural constructs there is surely no denying that a physical world exists beyond the social construction of our understandings of it.
By acknowledging the multiple and complex “realities” that are present in the focus texts, my analysis examines how those realities have been constructed through language and visual representations at the intersection of narrative and environmental discourses (Belsey, 2002). The analysis also takes into account the context within which those realities were constructed because texts are always constructed within socio-cultural and historical circumstances. The conceptual framework developed in Chapter 3 demonstrates how environmental discourses, as outlined in this study, exist within a Western socio-cultural, political-economic and temporally contingent framework.
The approach to the analysis of texts is undertaken with an understanding that there is no one true explanation, that all readings are subjective and that texts offer readers multiple meanings. The research is unconcerned with the pursuit of a universal truth that is external to the texts. My interest is in literary texts as representation of the world or what Rorty (1989) calls “re-descriptions” of the world. For Rorty these acts
132 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology of re-description imply constantly evolving ways of representing the world, some of which are “good or bad representations”, but none of which is real or true. I propose, like Rorty, that there is no point in attempting to uncover or reveal the “truth” in a text. I am not concerned with stripping away levels of a text with the hope of revealing an ultimate reality or a universal truth. The texts studied are imaginative representations of the physical world and, as such, the world in them is a constituted world, a word and image-world that bears resemblance to the physical world, but is a mediated and refracted version of it.
As literary texts, they are “one of society’s instruments of self awareness” (Calvino,
2004, p. 114), for it is through literature that we can recognize ourselves and come to self-knowledge through experiencing alternative ways of knowing. Poststructuralist thought supports, to a degree, concepts that texts contribute to the way children and adults experience themselves (Misson & Morgan, 2006). Poststructuralist perspectives suggest that this occurs intersubjectively as readers engage with texts.
Texts have the potential to offer readers multiple and dynamic subject positions which the ideal reader may subscribe to, assuming the attitudes and “beliefs of that subject position as if they were the reader’s own, giving the reader the experience of seeing the world in this particular way” (Misson & Morgan, 2006, p. 71).
However, poststructuralist thought also acknowledges that it is rare for an actual reader to always take up the ideal reading position inscribed in a text. From a poststructuralist perspective the fluidity of texts permits the possibility of multiple reading positions, across which readers range when reading a text. Texts offer “a matrix of subject-positions, which may be inconsistent, or even in contradiction with
133 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology one another” (Belsey, 2002, p. 57). Readers, in negotiating texts, act as agents “of a certain discernment” (Smith, as cited in McCallum, 1999, p.4) able to accept, refuse, or critique this matrix of subject positions. Readers, therefore, are active in the perception and construction of their own subjectivity.
One further epistemological assumption is that, as all texts are human expressions, it may be impossible for them to represent an ecocentric perspective, or in other words, represent the third component of the framework. Ecocritics (Buell, 1995; Head,
1998; Hochman, 1997; Rigby, 2004; Stephens, 2006, 2008) have acknowledged the difficulties involved with this. However, my intention is not to “question the human point of view as the primary lens through which to view the nonhuman world
(Irmscher, 2003, unpaged). I assume texts, as human expressions, can only be constructed and perceived from a human perspective, but as I have stated in Chapter
3 and as my analysis of texts in Chapter 7 demonstrates, I believe it is possible for human constructions to represent other than anthropocentric perspectives, or in other words, for the focus to shift from an anthropocentric position to an ecocentric one.
Finally, poststructuralist perspectives mean that the analyses offered are provisional and without concern for measures such as validity and reliability as indicators of truthfulness. Validity and reliability that may be used to verify the outcomes of other research methodologies are not applicable to this study. However, degrees of acceptability are discussed later in the chapter.
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Ecocriticism: Opportunities for a Transdisciplinary Approach to Textual Analysis
Ecocriticism resists orderly definitions. Ecocritical studies have been undertaken by a diverse community of scholars and consequently ecocriticism is neither a harmonious nor a unified field. However, fundamental to ecocriticism is a commitment on the part of ecocritics to the physical world (Estok, 2001; Glotfelty,
1996; Kerridge & Sammells, 1998). As a scholarly movement, ecocriticism may be seen as a response by literary scholars to the escalating environmental crises of the
1960s. At about the same time as socially conscious movements with regard to race, class, and gender were developing in cultural studies, ecocriticism gave voice to literary theorists who espoused environmental consciousness. In a consideration of ecocritical scholarship, Glotfelty (1996, pp. xxiii-xxiv) identifies three stages in the course of ecocriticism: (i) scrutinising images of nature to raise awareness of stereotypes; (ii) investigating writing that manifests ecological awareness; (iii) developing theoretical frameworks for their work (for example, ecofeminism seeks to explore the links between the oppression of women and the oppression of nature, while ecopoetics metaphorically links poetry to ecology through the idea of poetry as stored energy).
Whereas Glotfelty classifies the evolution of ecocriticism as stages, Buell (2005) allocates as the ‘first wave’: early tendencies to focus on the pastoral/wilderness canon; biographical studies of nature writers; regional studies; generic studies, for example, poetry from a particular time such as the Romantic period. As well, in this first wave of ecocriticism, ecocritics collected and edited anthologies of nature writing or revisited literary works to reinterpret them from a perspective of
135 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology environmental awareness. In the ‘second wave’, the ecocritical lens was expanded to include urban as well as rural environments, ecofeminism, environmental justice, and the profound impact of humanity on the environment as depicted in contemporary texts (Buell, 2005, pp. 22-23).
Common to these two accounts of the historical path of ecocriticism is an awareness of a move from formalist approaches, with their emphasis on studying the text in isolation, to the development of a more critical approach, conscious of the cultural forces that shape, and to some extent are influenced by, the text. Opportunities for reflection on the work of fellow scholars have resulted in some strong critical appraisal of ecocritical studies (Buell, 2005; Cohen, 2004; Easterlin, 2004; Levin,
2002; Phillips, 2003). Of these critiques, by far the most strident has been levelled by
Phillips (2003) who accuses ecocritics of: wishing to escape from academic constraints; fixating on the pastoral; scorning literary theory because of its distance from realism thus rehabilitating ideas of texts as mimetic representations of reality; espousing interdisciplinarity to strengthen literary criticism but in effect weakening it; and having overly ambitious aims for the role of literature in contributing to environmental protection and restoration. While it is not appropriate to re-present
Phillips’ (2003) argument in its entirety here, nor is it possible here to refute it by citing examples from ecocritical studies, it is necessary to take account of these shortcomings when drawing upon ecocriticism to develop my methodological framework.
Consequently, the accounts of ecocriticism proffered by Phillips (2003), together with those produced by Buell (2005) and Glotfelty (1996), contribute to the
136 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology methodological approach for this study in the following ways. My study takes
Phillips’ challenges (2003) into account as it avoids the structuralist approaches to the analysis of tropes as detailed in Chapter 2. It also incorporates poststructuralist perspectives and thereby is situated within Glotfelty’s third stage (1996) and Buell’s second wave (2005) of ecocriticism. This transdisciplinary approach to textual analysis of environmentally themed literary texts for children and young adults locates my study firmly within the field of contemporary ecocriticism. Through its transdisciplinarity, the study embarks upon new theoretical territory in its examination of ecological subjectivities constructed within texts and the subject positions available to readers.
Narrative Methodologies
Two important assumptions, informed by poststructuralist theories of narrative, guide the approach of the study. Firstly, I accept that instead of focusing on the text as an unchanging product, isolated from the social context in which it was created and the context of reading and what the reader might bring to a text, the strategies adopted allow the examination of verbal and visual narratives within texts. Such an examination illuminates the implied potential to form, both within and outside the text, a range of subject positions (Belsey, 2002; Bradford, 2007; Stephens, 1992).
Secondly, the subject positions offered may be inscribed with the ideologies that are obvious or implicit in the texts (Belsey, 2002; Stephens 1992).
As stated in Chapter 1, the ecological subject positions offered by contemporary
Australian environmental texts for children and young adult readers exist at the intersection of two types of discourses, environmental discourses and narrative discourses. The study’s conceptual framework suggests environmental discourses
137 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology expressly advocate or implicitly encode human engagement with the environment as discussed in Chapter 3. Here I wish to turn attention to significant narrative strategies that construct subject positions, what Stephens (1992) elaborates as the “Process of
Selection,” that is, what is stated, what is read, as well as what is implied (p. 18). It might be observed that these are strategies commonly associated with structuralist approaches to textual analysis. However, my approach embraces these strategies because of the important work they do in constructing subject positions. Narrative strategies that construct subject positions and inscribe ideologies include: mode; narrative voice; point of view and focalisation; metaphor, metonymy, and irony, intertextuality; and closure. Later in the chapter I focus on the particular visual strategies that are specific to picture books.
A useful way of approaching the examination of subjectivity is to scrutinise the mode of texts and Belsey (2002) provides a framework to do this; categorising texts as declarative , imperative , and/or interrogative . It is not suggested that texts fall neatly within a single category, as an individual text may display elements of one or more modalities, shifting between modes at various points. It is also possible different ways of reading or different critical approaches may allocate texts from one modality to another (Belsey, 2002).
Initially, it would seem that the least likely of Belsey’s categories to be useful for this study is the imperative. Belsey (2002) suggests that imperative texts are not usually fiction, often being works of propaganda, which refer to the actual world outside the text. Imperative texts, understood as propaganda, assume a reader who is
“a unified subject in conflict with what exists outside” and therefore the texts exhort,
138 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology instruct or order the reader into a position of struggle against what is happening outside (Belsey, 2002, p. 84). However, as some environmental picture books for children presuppose non-fiction properties, and may function to exhort, instruct or order the reader to struggle against what the text represents as a shortcoming in the outside world, it is highly likely that traces of the imperative are identifiable in the focus texts.
A popular genre in children’s environmental literature, what Belsey would call
“classic realism”, is situated within the declarative mode (Belsey, 2002). This mode, which attempts to represent the actual world as suggestively as possible, has the potential to offer readers a single, stable subject position. There is no inevitability about specifying the way in which a text can be read, yet classic realism suggests obvious readings within certain ranges of meaning in accordance with current dominant ideologies (Belsey, 2002). Readers are invited to participate in an act of intersubjective communication, sharing understandings of the truthfulness of the text with the author as source of that truth (Belsey, 2002). Classic realism thus provides opportunities for readers to accept freely the subjectivity and ideologies offered.
Whereas Belsey (2002) proposes that classic realism provides a space where author and reader work with shared meanings, she suggests that interrogative texts are far more complex, dependent on a range of narrative strategies that prohibit the construction of a single subject position. With the interrogative mode, the text may call attention to its own textuality so at times the reader is distanced from the world of the text rather than drawn into it (Belsey, 2002). The reader is likely to be confronted with contradictions and questions that have to be negotiated in order to
139 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology establish a subject position. Rather than merely offering the reader allegiance/alliance with a single subject position, the interrogative mode presents the reader with a choice of narrative points of view. This suggests the importance of attending to understandings of narrative voice which include “who speaks”, and how they speak. When there is an exchange of voices represented, the reader is offered opportunities to weigh one voice against the other, and one set of values against the other (Herman & Vervaeck, 2001). With multiple voices, texts no longer provide the hierarchical relationships of the declarative mode which deliver subject positions and ideologies to a reader, but provide a horizontal relationship where boundaries between subject positions and ideologies are blurred.
Beyond narrative voice, but closely connected with it, are the concepts of point of view and focalisation . Point of view is concerned with the particular perspective the narrative is presenting, or the different ways aspects of the story are presented.
According to Stephens (1992), point of view is the most important strategy of narrative presentation, capable of both constructing subject positions and inscribing ideological assumptions. Texts, in Althusser’s terms (1971), interpellate the reader as subject, and interpolate the reader in the narrative by presenting events from a particular point of view. The narrative effects created by point of view can, for example, position the reader “to feel that he or she has a window onto a believable world… [and] encourage the reader to take on certain values and assumptions during the narrative” (Moon, 2004, pp. 95-96). Narrative point of view is particularly effective in positioning readers because it allows readers to share characters’ sense- making processes of the fictional world.
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This is achieved through the narrative device of focalisation which for Stephens
(1992, p. 6) is “crucial to the analysis of subjectivity and ideology in narrative fictions”. Focalisation is the process whereby someone (a focaliser) perceives something (what is focalised) and determines what is presented to the reader
(Herman & Vervaeck, 2001, p. 70). Australian environmental texts for children and young adults adopt a range of focalising strategies and consequently offer a range of subject positions. In children’s environmental narratives which are told in the first person, the focaliser is often a child of about the same age as the implied reader, or even a small or young animal. Children’s texts written in the first person attempt to place readers in the same subject position as the focaliser, that is, to see what the narrator/focaliser sees, and to believe what s/he says about the people, places and events in the narrative. The potential of first person narratives to position readers in this way is strengthened by the stability of having only the perceptions of the focaliser, only the one point of view, no matter how child-like, offered.
It might be expected that if a role of children’s literature is to socialise children into relating with the environment in certain ways, then some of the texts concerned with human engagement with the environment would adopt the use of an external focaliser, an omniscient narrator with an authoritative point of view that offers readers no opportunity for, or need to, challenge or resist the ideologies inscribed in the text. By offering the socially accepted ways of thinking about an environmental issue or concern from a single perspective, readers are positioned to align themselves with the ecological subjects who resolve the issue in the text.
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A text need not be focalised from one perspective . Multiple perspectives may be presented when shifts occur between an internal focaliser, a character or characters within the fictional world of the text, and an external focaliser, the narrator of the text.
A feature of some environmentally themed children’s literature is the use of shifts in focalisation, from a third person narrator as focaliser, to a central character, frequently a child or even a young animal as the focaliser. The narrator and the character take on certain subject positions and act as “ideologues” whose points of view are being presented (McCallum, 1999, p.31). The often didactic nature of children’s environmental narratives means the narrators and character act as sources
“of certain ideas and opinions, as examples to follow or cautionary figures to learn from” (Nikolajeva, 2003, p. 8). Point of view and focalisation are without doubt powerful narrative strategies in the construction of subject positions. Other narrative strategies have potential to influence subject formation such as metaphor, metonymy, irony and intertextuality.
For young readers, the most familiar use of metaphor in the construction of ecological subject positions must be that of the eco-warrior. Bindi Irwin, heir apparent to Australia Zoo, and daughter of Steve (whose “fight” to save the environment resulted in his death), assumes an ecological subject position as the ultimate eco-warrior, helping animals in their struggle for survival. Child audiences are offered, by her television show and its spin-offs, opportunities to assume the position of eco-warriors in their daily lives. It may be expected then, that this and
142 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology other metaphors may construct ecological subject positions in this study’s focus texts.
One function of ecocriticism is “to examine how metaphors of nature and land are used and abused” (Howarth, 1996, p. 81). Similarly, it is a responsibility of ecocritics to identify “metaphors that set up human beings apart from the environment and others that display them as an integral part of the world system”
(Harré, Brockmeier, & Mühlhäusler, 1999, p. 117). Poststructuralist methods of textual analysis facilitate the examination and questioning of metaphors in terms of the limited realities that they offer and the particular values that they legitimise.
Poststructuralist perspectives enable the examination of the ideologies inscribed in dominant metaphors; metaphors that have become naturalised; and which, for example, construct certain anthropocentric subject positions such as “managing” the environment.
Consideration of the use of metonymy is also critical in the examination of subject positions. Closely related to metaphor, and often indistinguishable from it, metonymy links two things through a shared property (Stephens & Waterhouse,
1990). Like metaphor, metonymy involves codes, “social systems of categories and their components” (Misson & Morgan, 2006, p. 160). Metonymic associations can be constructed out of any number of associated elements or parts that stand for the whole, for example, an uncared for garden might be used metonymically to represent a neglected environment.
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Where metaphor and metonymy operate through similarity to enhance meaning, irony is “the mode of the unsaid, the unheard, the unseen” (Hutcheon, 1995, p. 9).
Irony involves negotiating a meaning, it comes into existence as a process “between people and utterances and sometimes between intentions and interpretations”
(Hutcheon, 1995, p. 13). Understood as a process, irony is far more complex than a simple focus on irony as the intentional product of an ironist who uses words to suggest a meaning other than the initially obvious, permits. For Hutcheon (1995, p.
58), irony comes into existence “in the dynamic space of the interaction of text, context, and interpreter (and, sometimes though not always, intending ironist)”. The inclusion here of the “interpreter” or reader in attributing irony clearly suggests how important irony is to the shaping of subjectivities. If irony is weighted towards the unsaid, the unheard or the unseen, the reader can be active in shaping a subject position not explicitly offered by the text, or in shaping a subject position in opposition to that offered by the text. Through the construction of conflicting positions, irony can, therefore, be provocative, working against the dominant ideologies inscribed in subject positions. The potential of irony to subvert authority in this way is significant for this study because of the contribution it can make to the construction of multiple, unstable, subject positions that readers can negotiate.
Just as irony has the potential to offer multiple and fluid subject positions for readers, intertextuality similarly opens the way for the provision of shifting rather than fixed subjectivities. Intertextuality, in its simplest form, is the inclusion of a reference to one text within another text, or in its more complex renditions, familiar stories are retold, archetypal stories are reworked with contemporary interpretations
144 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology or narratives associated with particular genres are re-presented in other genres
(Stephens, 1992).
As with irony, the reader is actively involved in the process of negotiating meaning.
Instances of intertextuality compel readers to negotiate meaning which is created “in the space between the focused text and its intertexts and is the product of their interrelations” (McCallum, 1999, p. 14). This interactive process is an exercise in intersubjective relations engendered by the text and its intertextual orientation.
Multiple voices, discourses, and subject positions made available to readers through the strategy of intertextuality, present opportunities to appraise, choose or resist subject positions offered.
One further narrative strategy that is useful for the textual analysis undertaken in this study is narrative resolution or closure. The didactic purpose of socialising children in accordance with the ideologies of a text, presupposes a tidy ending in children’s literature because tidy endings imply fixed meanings and the chance to offer single, stable, subject positions. Likewise, in texts that follow the narrative pattern of developing maturity, in this study, texts which explore a character’s developing ecological subjectivities, if the central character’s “personal conflicts are brought into balance”, the tidy ending can offer structural closure as well as psychological closure (Nikolajeva, 2003, p. 7). Tidy endings, therefore, offer readers apparently stable subject positions aligned with the main characters.
On the other hand, dissonant closure offers discrepancies and indeterminacy between
“what has actually happened and what might still happen” (Nikolajeva, 2003, p. 7)
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Open endings permit multiple readings; offer readers imaginative opportunities; and allow for multiple reader positions, including those which question or challenge the subject position of the main character/s. For example, in texts where the main character engages with the environment in abusive or uncaring ways, readers may challenge the outcomes of dominance.
The narrative strategies discussed here also find their way into picture books where they complement, contrast, or extend the meaning created by the verbal narrative and the illustrations. They also, therefore, contribute to the construction of subject positions.
Visual Methodologies
In contemporary Western culture there is increasing emphasis on the visual, almost to the point that it may be assumed that to see is to know (Berger, 1972). It could be taken for granted then that children’s environmental picture books would be popularly conceived as an appropriate way for children to experience seeing and knowing the environment. Superficially, picture books may appear to be a simple genre for educating children, yet Mallan (1999) refers to the “cosiness” of picture books as illusory. Despite what the uninitiated might assume, children’s environmental picture books are neither innocent, nor uncomplicated for they can deal with culturally significant issues such as human engagement with the environment in complex ways. Just as verbal texts are ideologically laden, visual texts are bound up with the ideologies of the culture in which they are produced, circulated and read (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). Environmental picture books, as social constructions, help to socialise children into culturally approved ways of knowing and consequently interacting with the environment. Within the constraints
146 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology of the limited number of pages available to the genre, environmental picture books are able to offer readers ecological subject positions that are inscribed with certain culturally endorsed or contested environmental practices. Indeed, each of the following chapters of textual analysis discusses the ways in which picture books construct, advocate, and/or contest particular ecological subjectivities in accordance with the tripartite framework that guides this study. The careful scrutiny of picture books is particularly critical to the analysis in Chapter 7 because picture books allow representations of the environment without human presence/in its own right, therefore opening up the possibility of offering the reader a visual account of ecocentric understandings.
When choosing an appropriate methodology for the analysis of picture books it seems appropriate to be guided by Nodelman (1992, p. 153) who suggests that picture books “contain at least three stories; the one told by the words, the one implied by the pictures, and the one that results from the combination of the two.”
Nodelman’s comment implies that it might be possible to separate each component in an orderly fashion to analyse picture books. Earlier in this chapter, I examined theories of narrative and how various narrative strategies contribute to the construction of subject positions. Therefore, it is not my intention to revisit these strategies here with regard to the verbal narratives in picture books. Nodelman’s second story, the one implied by the pictures, can be analysed using visual semiotics as a way of understanding “what is seen and how it is seen” (Rose, 2001, p. 6).
Although associated with structuralist methods, visual semiotics can provide useful access to the examination of how subject positions might be created by the illustrations in picture books. Aspects of Nodelman’s third story, the “one that
147 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology results from the combination of the two”, are critical to this study, for it is the dynamic interaction between words and illustrations that creates a synergy where the combined effect is greater than the sum of the parts and opens up what Sipe (1998, p.
103) posits are inexhaustible “possibilities of meaning in the word-picture relationship”. I have no intention of pursuing Sipe’s inexhaustible possibilities of meanings, but I indicate very briefly the implications for subject positions that might be created by the active relationships between words and illustrations, suggested by
Nikolajeva and Scott (2006). The final influence on my choice of visual methodologies focuses on how picture books, as aesthetic texts, have particular ways of offering readers subject positions.
Visual semiotics afford a way of understanding two characteristics of picture books that are relevant in understanding the construction of subject positions, perspective and modality. Perspective in picture books is significant because readers occupy dual positions, being placed physically outside the text, but also in their imagination within the world created by the text. For example, in first person narrated picture books the reader has a “physical external perspective and thus sees what the character cannot see: the character her/himself in the scene” (Stephens & Watson,
1994, p. 28).
This double perspective provides readers with more information than would be provided in a purely verbal narrative where the first person narrator also acts as focaliser. Readers are being offered choices of positions. According to Stephens and
Watson (1994) they might assume positions as detached observers, choosing to judge and assess what is going on, or they can identify with a character and take up
148 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology the subject positions of the characters with their inscribed ideologies (Stephens,
1992). In picture books, perspective entails features such as angle or point of view, and the distance readers feel from the scene. Choices of close-ups, wide-shots, mid- shots, and long-shots, as well as differing angles, contribute to readers identifying with what is being presented. For example, in Chapter 6, the text Islands in my
Garden (Howes & Harvey, 1998) is analysed with respect to the way perspective offers readers positions aligned with the central character who is acting as a quasi- ecologist.
Just as Belsey (2002) argues that mode in narrative fictions can influence the construction of single or multiple subject positions, modality in picture books can similarly influence positions created. Visual modality can be understood as a socially coded convention, with “culturally and historically determined standards of what is real and what is not” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, p. 168). The “truthfulness” of illustrations is determined by “modality markers”, culturally acceptable indicators for expressing meaning (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996). Readers share produced truths or distance themselves from other statements (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996).
Illustrations in children’s environmental picture books can be constructed as representing a truthful account of the real world as though the way it is depicted is the way it actually exists. Naturalism, what appears closest to what is seen by the eye, is considered high modality. On the other hand, low modality decreases the truthfulness or how real illustrations appear to be. In the case of children’s picture books that feature the environment, an apparent objective reality may be privileged.
Often this is achieved by “focusing on claims to truth, or to scientific certainty, or to
149 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology the natural way of things” (Rose, 2001, p.154). Scientific authority and the natural ways of things, for example, are discussed in Chapter 7 in relation to Leaf Litter
(Tonkin, 2006) with its realistic illustrations and attention to intricate detail in the visual replication of the leaf litter ecosystem.
The dynamic interaction between verbal text and illustrations has been examined by
Nikolajeva and Scott (2006) who draw on a metalanguage and system of categories to describe the variety of interactions. Complex works slip between categories and may have internal contradictions. A system of categories provided by Nikolajeva and
Scott (2006) details how words and illustrations can be: consonant and symmetrical
(tell the same story); complementary (fill each others gaps, that is, words and pictures interactively support each other); enhancing (provide alternative stories); counterpointing (tell different stories, even contradictory ones). While it is this last category that is most apparent in many contemporary, post-modern picture books, the interaction created in children’s environmental picture books is often symmetrical or complementary. For example, in Rachelle Tonkin’s Leaf Litter
(2006), the illustrations, as noted above, are naturalistic, crammed with detail, complementing the verbal narration which speaks with reliable, adult authority.
Verbal and visual narratives combine to form a stable subject position.
Counterpointing, on the other hand, offers opportunities for intersubjective relations as readers move between perspectives. For example, in Chapter 5, I analyse two texts, At the Beach (Harvey, 2004) and In the Bush (Harvey, 2005) where ironic counterpoint comes into play. The verbal narrative appears straightforward, but the illustrations present an opposite reality. The humour and irony provided by pictures
150 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology create opportunities for subject positions different from those created by either the verbal or visual narratives independently.
The ecological subjectivities suggested by the picture books in this study are inextricably linked with their potential to offer aesthetic experiences, for, as Misson and Morgan (2006, p. 45) propose,
in making us see the world in particular ways, it [aesthetic experience] draws our attention to and makes us value certain things, such as emotion, individual experience … by involving us affectively, it creates attitudes and orients us into reacting positively or negatively towards the actions, ideas, or attitudes represented in the text. We are positioned by the text into seeing and valuing in particular ways what it shows.
It is the sensory, formal, expressive and technical properties of picture books that
Mallan (1999) considers crucial to the creation of aesthetic experiences for readers.
Therefore, the analysis undertaken seeks out, for example, sensory elements such as: colours which can provoke emotional responses; organic shapes which can evoke living organisms; lines which can suggest movement; and texture which invites a tactile response. The formal properties of the focus texts are scrutinised by paying attention to aspects of composition such as: placement in relation to informational values attached to zones (left to right, top and bottom, centre and margin); elements which attract attention because of their relation to foreground or background, relative size, tonal contrasts, difference in sharpness; and framing which either contains elements or liberates them (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996).
Picture books, as aesthetic texts, propose sophisticated ways of seeing and knowing, ways that do not necessarily privilege intellectual engagement over sensory or affective responses. It is not my intention to consider these two elements of aesthetic
151 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology experience as binary oppositions; rather, my aim is to take the more useful approach nominated by Misson and Morgan (2006) who see the tense interplay as complementary. Picture books, by involving readers in a dynamic intellectual and affective interchange, require significant investment in the text but afford readers pleasurable experiences. The pleasure derived from this investment is important for reader positioning in that it allows readers to be complicit in producing their subjectivity (Misson & Morgan, 2006).
Aesthetic texts, however, are not neutral for they carry the cultural assumptions and ideologies inscribed in other texts. Environmental picture books, for example, can embody socio-cultural notions of what is considered beautiful in the environment and therefore worthy of conservation. Social beliefs persist that beauty, truth and goodness are linked in a causal sequence, that is, if something is beautiful, then it must be true, and if it is true it must be good (Misson & Morgan, 2006). It is possible, therefore, to presume that the pleasure of a text aligns readers with the implied ideological assumptions carried by the text. Nevertheless, Misson and
Morgan (2006 p. 29) contend that “it is a fundamental mark of the aesthetic that however emotionally carried away we may be, there remains an appraising, evaluating objective element operating alongside the emotional experience.” This productive interplay is particularly critical to the construction of ecological subject positions in the picture books analysed in Chapter 7.
Understandings of theories of narrative, as well as visual semiotics and the aesthetic properties of picture books, provide functional ways to approach textual analysis.
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However, poststructural perspectives enable the critique of environmental discourses that encompass ideologies that pertain to gender or race.
Ecofeminist Perspectives
As discussed in previous chapters, ecofeminism, as a field of environmental ethics, applies feminist theories to the interpretation of human interactions with the environment, and emphasises the examination, disruption and replacement of patriarchal world views. Ecofeminist approaches decry the androcentric practices that some ecofeminists claim have contributed to the environmental crisis (Warren,
1998). New ways of living with the environment that do not involve patriarchal oppression are envisaged. However, ecofeminist understandings can not be regarded as a homogeneous cluster offering a unified perspective, for disparate understandings of the association between the patriarchal oppression of women and their correspondence with androcentric environmental relationships exist.20
Ecofeminism is, therefore, a slippery and unstable field, and it is irrelevant here to argue in favour of one of the plurality of positions proposed by ecofeminist scholars such as Cheney (1989), Kolodny (1996), Plumwood (1993), or Warren (1998). It is more profitable to note certain implications of ecofeminist approaches that could be useful in the analysis of various ecological subject positions offered by the focus texts. For example, ecofeminist approaches to texts, like feminist readings of texts, problematise the dualisms that generate beliefs in the superiority or dominance of one item when it is placed in opposition to another then regarded as inferior and subservient. An interest in the binaries of male/female with their culturally
20 New gender relations might also argue that this oppression is not now as vehement in Western contexts (Mallan, 2009). 153 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology associated beliefs is extended to the interrogation of other binaries associated with human interactions with the environment.
Ecofeminist examination of binaries includes their application in the fields of science and ecology (Hay, 2002). Binaries such as living/non-living, human/animal, promote beliefs in the dominance and superiority of the primary term. In place of dichotomous concepts favoured by science such as subject/object, knower/known,
Hay (2002) suggests, perhaps in a totalising way, that ecofeminists favour ideas of union, engagement, and empathy. It could be argued that such ideas are more in keeping with ecological awareness.
As discussed in Chapter 2, figurative language, particularly metaphor and metonymy, constructs associations between the environment and living entities.
Since the 1980s, ecofeminists have drawn attention to the feminisation of the environment through metaphors and “essential” female metonymic associations with the environment. In Chapter 7, ecofeminist understandings influence my analysis of
The Hidden Forest (2000) which highlights the young character Sophie and her comfortable links with the environment.
Ecofeminist analysis, with its commitment to ways of highlighting discrimination, can also investigate textual representations of human engagement with the environment from other perspectives such as environmental justice. This standpoint recognises that environmental issues are resolved so as not to privilege or disadvantage one group of humans over another, particularly in relation to class or ethnicity (Attfield, 2003).
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Postcolonial Perspectives
My inclusion of postcolonial approaches may well provoke the question, “why?”, if
Howarth’s (1996, p. 80) statement that “postcolonial studies have a strong regional emphasis, but they dwell on political or cultural spaces rather than their physical environs” is still considered to be valid. However, I contend that an ecocritical approach can be strengthened and enriched by the inclusion of postcolonial methodologies which explore relationships between social constructions of culture and land use and abuse. My particular concerns are, of course, how ecological subjectivities might be shaped by colonial and/or postcolonial understandings.
Postcolonial criticism enables different approaches to textual analysis by taking into account the marginalisation of voices and perspectives of those who do not conform to Eurocentric or Western norms and practices. As Said (1978) argued, a Eurocentric universalism takes for granted a hierarchy or superior European way of informing the rest. A postcolonial reading, therefore, examines texts with regard to how binaries are constructed, particularly the binaries colonialism was built on: colonial
(civilised) in opposition to colonised (primitive, barbaric). Beyond an examination of binaries, and with particular relevance for this study, are the ways in which subject positions are created, how non-Aboriginal readers are positioned to align themselves with Aborigines; how Aboriginal relationships with the environment are represented alongside non-Aboriginal relationships with the environment; how Aboriginal people are constructed as subjects, for example, as non-homogeneous groups
(Bradford, 2001).
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In an analysis of ecological subjectivities in Australian environmental texts for children, Bradford (2008) applies postcolonial ways of reading to the silences and/or privileging of western, Eurocentric ways of knowing about the environment.
Indigenous relationships with the environment are not acknowledged in most
Australian environmental children’s texts where Eurocentric ways of relating with the environment are assumed as the norm (Bradford, 2008). In other texts, which draw on the wilderness trope, Bradford argues that Indigenous associations with ancestral lands are denied. The book, Discover & Learn about Australian Forests and Woodlands by Pat Slater and Steve Parish (2002), for instance, includes references to Aborigines but in such a way as to homogenise their cultures, relegate
Indigenous cultures to a remote past, and privilege Western scientific understandings over Indigenous understandings. Similarly in Endangered by Rick Wilkinson (2002) and the endangered species trilogy by Gary Crew (2003, 2004) I Saw Nothing , I Said
Nothing , I Did Nothing , Indigenous understandings, while acknowledged, are demeaned by the authoritatively privileged ecological understandings of scientists, zoos and wildlife institutions.
Bradford (2001) suggests criteria for the examination of texts written by Indigenous writers, some of which can be utilised for this study. These include scrutinising texts to determine if: Aboriginal discourses are used, therefore (re)attributing value to
Indigenous languages; subjectivities are formed within and between cultures: the complexity of subjectivities is foreground rather than treating Aboriginal experiences as homogeneous (Bradford, 2001).
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More recently, to demonstrate cross-cultural possibilities, Bradford (2008) analyses
Creatures of the Rainforest (Brim & Eglitis, 1995), an alphabet picture book. This text includes illustrations by the two artists, but it also includes captions in Djabugay that are translated into English. A noteworthy feature of this text is the collaborative and consultative processes engaged in its production between Indigenous and non-
Indigenous artists, the artists and the Indigenous elder Uncle Roy Banning, and Anna
Eglitis and the British Anthropologist Michael Quinn who studied Djabugay language under the guidance of Uncle Roy Banning and other elders (Bradford,
2008). Furthermore, Bradford proposes this collaboration is confirmed by the dialogic effect created by the paired illustrations, the use of both languages, and the combination of scientific epistemologies and Indigenous knowledge. However, for
Bradford (2008, p. 13) a further significant feature of the text is its affirmation of
“Indigenous continuity and survival” through references to Indigenous performances of the Mosquito Dance.
The chapters of textual analysis that follow take up, in a limited number of instances, both postcolonial readings and examination of postcolonial texts.
Textual Analysis: Degrees of Acceptability
The final guidelines that are pertinent to textual analysis are concerned, or rather not concerned, with validity and reliability. “Validity is the question of what standards the research must meet in order to count as qualified academic research. By measuring research in relation to certain criteria, it can be evaluated as good or bad”
(Phillips & Jørgensen, 2002, p.171). Reliability concerns the replication of procedures under the same conditions to produce the same results. Measures of
157 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology validity and reliability that may be used to confirm other research methodologies findings are not appropriate for measuring the outcome of textual analysis of narrative literature. Textual analysis is subjective and dependent on temporal, socio- cultural contexts. However, this does not mean that textual analysis can be undertaken without regard to certain criteria. As textual analysis provides an account that is rhetorical, it tries to be persuasive and convincing in its meaning-making, therefore certain features can be noted and used to ascertain the integrity and rigour of the account rather than its validity or reliability.
Textual analysis or close critical reading is not aimed at providing definitive answers. As has been stated previously, textual analysis can provide multiple possible readings, but not an infinite number of possible readings. There are relevant and coherent readings and those that are marginal and/or inconsistent, or simply misguided. Eco (1992, p. 149) suggests “degrees of acceptability”, while (McKee
2003, p. 80) suggests “likely interpretations”. To achieve a sure degree of acceptability three criteria will be used (Phillips & Jørgensen, 2002, p. 173). Textual analysis will be based on a range of textual features rather than just one feature. It will also be comprehensive and account for textual features that conflict with the analysis. Perhaps, most significantly, textual analysis, in this study, is theoretically informed by complementary critical perspectives that draw attention to ecological subjectivity and related issues.
Close critical reading initially involves establishing an appropriate distance between analyst and text. Eagleton (2003, p. 93) suggests that there is neither a fixed nor ideal distance but rather a constant focus-changing, a process of swooping in and pulling
158 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology back, looking for particular details while at the same time being conscious of the text as a whole. A second guideline involves the search for hidden or assumed motivations within texts, not what is stated overtly, but what is taken for granted, what is invisible rather than visible (Culler, 1992; Rose, 2001). For example, the ambiguity of the narratorial voice in The World We Want by Toft (2004) and the complete absence of human beings in the illustrations may promote an ideology of misanthropy as already discussed in Chapter 1. Further useful guidelines are suggested by McKee (2003, p. 115) when he posits three strategies for determining dominant discourses in texts that can be applied to the examination of ecological subjectivities: (i) looking for examples of exnomination , that is dominant ideas that become common sense, that “don’t draw attention to themselves by giving themselves a name”; (ii) performing a commutation test or role reversal, does it still appear “normal” if other entities are substituted?; (iii) looking for structuring absences, what is excluded from the text. Finally, textual analysis will be presented in a transparent way, with the reader having access to copies of the material itself or at least longer extracts in the presentation of the analysis.
Summary
In this chapter I have presented an account of the theoretical perspectives that inform the transdisciplinary approach to the textual analysis undertaken in the next three chapters. The study is situated within a predominantly poststructuralist framework and I have demonstrated how my methodology draws on ecocriticism, narrative theory, visual semiotics and aesthetics to guide the textual analysis. Two critical theories, ecofeminism and postcolonialism, provide further perspectives for examining power relations, and gendered representations, as well as making visible
159 Chapter 4: An Ecocritical Methodology the explicit and implicit ideological working of the texts with respect to subject positions. My inclusive theoretical approach is not undertaken in the interests of political correctness, but from a genuine interest in what each brings to this study of contemporary ecocriticism of Australian children’s literature.
The construction of the ecocritical methodology discussed in this chapter satisfies the third of the four objectives of this study, namely, To develop a transdisciplinary methodology that will facilitate close ecocritical reading of the focus texts .
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Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth: Bringing It Under
Control?
[C]risis thought has moved from describing an environmental apocalypse ahead to exploring crisis as a place in which people presently dwell… society has entered a time in which environmental crisis seems increasingly a feature of present normality, not an imminent, radical rupture of it. (Buell, 2004, p. 177)
This chapter begins the detailed analysis of selected texts of Australian children’s literature (1995-2006). As discussed in the previous chapter, poststructuralist perspectives admit the impossibility of objective and definitive readings. The textual analysis begun here is undertaken as an interactive and interpretive process which offers provisional readings only. The strategies of analysis set out in Chapter 4 are not all applied to each and every text in this chapter, but those included in the analysis presented here are deemed most appropriate for the narrative construction of ecological subjectivities in the focus texts.
The six picture books and two novels for young adults that are analysed in this chapter share general characteristics with the texts analysed in Chapters 6 and 7, as the selection of the focus texts was guided by the Criteria for Selecting Texts set out in Chapter 1. The purposeful selection of the focus texts for this study specifically aligns the texts in this chapter with a component of the tripartite framework developed in Chapter 3, that is, unrestrained anthropocentrism. However, it is acknowledged that this seemingly tidy allocation is a convenience that might not be agreed upon by other ecocritics.
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The equivocal note in the chapter’s title indicates that control over the environment may not always produce results favourable for humans, while the epigraph confirms environmental crises have become an accepted part of daily life. Daily confrontation with environmental crises or living with ecocatastrophe, as discussed in Chapter 3, may be understood as an outcome of human dominion over the environment. I propose that the texts analysed offer diverse representations of daily confrontation with ecocatastrophe, or what has been referred to as “the down side of dominance”
(Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 2004, p. 45). I also propose that the focus texts attempt to confront the folly of human attempts to live all over the world and bring it under control. My argument is, that the focus texts offer readers positions from which to reflect on environmental crises, and/or critique the implied cause, the Western assumption that development can take place at any environmental cost. The texts, therefore, from my reading position, function to challenge ideological assumptions that unrestrained anthropocentrism is an appropriate approach to human engagement with the environment. To reiterate, however, the purpose of this study is to determine how strategies lead to possible and /or privileged subject positions on offer: positions which may or may not be taken up by other readers.
The note of ambivalence in the chapter title is twofold. It also suggests that the construction of subject positions which enable the critique of dominion may be problematic. Using the transdisciplinary methodological approach developed in the previous chapter, the textual analysis demonstrates the inconsistencies in the texts; how various narrative strategies construct subject positions where human dominion, with its anthropogenic impact on the environment can be contested; or conversely where the positions offered may be ambivalent, so that they offer contradictory
162 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth positions that endorse dominion. Postcolonial and ecofeminist perspectives add a further dimension to the textual analysis and enable the critique of the subjectivities constructed.
In the first group of texts considered, the picture books Tasmanian Tiger (Isham &
Isham, 1996), Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (Bruce & Wade, 2000), and Uno’s
Garden (Base, 2006), species loss works as a metonym for ecocatastrophe. I propose that narrative elements in these texts, for example, the laboured intertextual references in Where Have All the Flowers Gone? , the mysterious riddle and treasure hunt in Tasmanian Tiger , and the numbers game in Uno’s Garden by Graeme Base
(2006), complicate and destabilise opportunities to critique unrestrained anthropocentrism.
When confronted with the consequences of breaching ecological limits the characters in the picture book The Tower to the Sun (Thompson, 1996) display human ingenuity to escape the effects of ecocatastrophic pollution. Visual and verbal intertextual references offer reading positions which enable the critique of the socio- cultural values associated with dominion over the environment. However, it can be argued that the human ingenuity represented in the text is, in itself, an act of unrestrained anthropocentrism.
A superficial reading of two picture books, At the Beach (2004) and In the Bush
(2005) by Roland Harvey, implies the denial of the ecocatastrophic consequences of unrestrained human interactions with the environment. I propose an alternative reading that highlights the satirical humour in the interplay of verbal and visual
163 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth narratives. Read ironically, the texts offer multiple subject positions which present opportunities for readers to confront the folly of unrestrained anthropocentrism and interrogate dominion.
Airdancer of Glass (Bateson, 2004) offers a fusion of ecocatastrophe and ecocentrism. The juxtaposition of alternative scenarios, controlling the environment or living as part of it rather than apart from it, provide opportunities for negotiating different patterns of engagement, one of which is evocative of some aspects of contemporary Western society.
The final text analysed, Yoss (Hirsch, 2001), can be read as the character’s development from youth to adulthood and so conforms to the rite of passage narrative structure of separation, liminality, reintegration into society (Turner, 1969).
However, when read as an environmental allegory, readers are offered opportunities to identify with the central character and may choose to assume positions as ecological subjects who challenge the manifestations of dominion associated with late capitalism, namely growth, development and over-consumption.
Encounters with Ecocatastrophe
The picture books Tasmanian Tiger (Isham & Isham, 1996), Where Have All the
Flowers Gone (Bruce & Wade, 2000), and Uno’s Garden (Base, 2006) provide representations of species loss as anthropogenic, the consequence of population growth, and unfettered development, and it might be expected that their purpose is didactic, to socialise children into less destructive ways of interacting with the environment and its living inhabitants. It could be assumed from looking at the titles
164 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth or the cover illustrations, that in these texts, child characters may be “activists, victims, perpetrators, observers”, while readers will be offered positions as ecological subjects “who will assume responsibility for individual and collective action” (Bradford, 2008). The formation of ecological subjectivities, however, is not unproblematic as I demonstrate in the following textual analysis.
Tasmanian Tiger represents species loss by drawing on the exemplar of the eponymous Tasmanian tiger, an Australian thylacine 21 that is now presumed extinct.
The eradication of the species was consciously and conscientiously engineered by the settler inhabitants of the island state of Tasmania, situated to the south of mainland Australia. From the 1830s to the 1900s the Tasmanian Government paid a one shilling a head bounty to farmers who perceived the tigers as a threat to livestock
(Stedman, 2007). Consequently, about 2000 tigers were killed, with the presumed last of the species dead in captivity in 1936. Reported sightings from time to time have generated curiosity regarding the authenticity of sightings, an interest in understanding the distinctive features of the species, and above all an earnest, but possibly futile, hope that it is not an extinct species. 22
The ambiguities and contradictions surrounding the folklore of species loss are represented in Tasmanian Tiger but the text, situated in what Belsey (2002) would
21 According to a peritextual account inside the cover of Tasmanian Tiger the thylacine is “a wonderfully bizarre animal. As a carnivore, about the size of a large dog, it has powerful jaws that can open to a wide 120 degrees. But the tiger is also a marsupial with a pouch to carry its young and a rigid, kangaroo-like tail. The name ‘tiger’ derives from the distinctive dark stripes along its back” (Isham, 1996). 22 This hope is expressed in another peritextual statement: “It is the fond hope of many Tasmanians that a real piece of evidence will one day verify the Tasmanian tiger’s continued existence” (Isham & Isham, 1996).
165 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth categorise as the declarative mode, presents a single unified subject position to readers. As Belsey (2002) would propose, readers are invited to perceive the “truth” of the text, by sharing the apparently noncontradictory interpretation of the world proposed by the text. For example, the front cover has a centrally placed image of two white Australian children looking into the foreground, where a Tasmanian tiger stands with its head half turned, as if alerted to their presence. This portrayal, with its realistic colours and the life-like detail of the tiger’s features and markings, is surrounded by silhouettes of easily identifiable Australian fauna and flora. From its cover, Tasmanian Tiger suggests an obvious reading, one where readers share understandings with the two child characters depicted. The cover offers readers alignment with the children whose sighting of the tiger will presumably form the narrative contained between the covers.
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Figure 5.1 The cover of Tasmanian Tiger
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For Belsey (2002, p. 63), this style of intersubjective communication “is the guarantee not only of the truth of the text but of the reader’s existence as an autonomous and knowing subject in a world of knowing subjects”. As an example of classic realism, Tasmanian Tiger addresses readers as subjects who are likely to freely accept the subject positions on offer to them. The children, holidaying in
Tasmania with their father, work as quasi-ecologists, photographing tracks and making plaster casts of footprints that confirm their initial sighting of a thylacine.
The prospect of this detective work turning into a more rigorously ecological study is lost, as the children’s pursuit sees them purchasing a plethora of Tasmanian tiger souvenirs: key ring, comb, earrings, patches, magnets, signs, stamps, postcards.
When, in the last illustration, an aerial perspective shows the children, sitting on the floor, surrounded by their tiger evidence, their purchased artefacts reinforce an understanding that this is all that is left of the tiger. Child readers are positioned to align themselves with the child characters in their acceptance that contact with an actual Tasmanian tiger may be as ephemeral as the souvenirs.
Declarative texts, Belsey (2002) suggests, provide obvious readings within certain ranges of meaning in accordance with current dominant ideologies. Accepted beliefs about the extinction of the thylacine are reinforced in Tasmanian Tiger . As a way of contextualising the tiger’s extinction and laying blame irrefutably with white settler dominion of the environment, each full page illustration of the children, as they pursue their tiger, is bordered by smaller illustrations which supply the details of the thylacine’s demise. For example, on one page, a white settler aims his rifle towards the diagonally opposite corner where a tiger skin is stretched out, while a live tiger is seen in a thriving Edenic habit in the corner above (p. 19). This spatial arrangement
167 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth constructs the past as peripheral to the centred present. It confirms for readers the truthfulness of accounts of the thylacine’s eradication but also positions readers to accept accounts of settler dominion over the environment.
The hierarchical domination of humans over the environment is paralleled with the control humans had over other human beings, in the illustrations of the children’s visit to Port Arthur (a penal settlement distinguished by the harsh punishment meted out to prisoners). The green trees surrounding the church ruin contain human faces contorted in pain. On the same page, a peripheral illustration of the settlers’ tea tray, is a metonymic representation of the influence of colonial dominion in civilising both the wayward felons and the environment.
The juxtaposition of periphery and centre continues with images of the domestication and commodification of the environment as a tourist destination and consumer product as well as the successful Tasmanian conservation movement. The children holiday in a pleasant Tasmanian environment where they play on a beach with a pristine mountain environment as a scenic back-drop, explore a cave, hike and camp. These scenes are reminiscent of what Scutter (1993) might suggest is a typically Australian contemporary pastoral. The harmony of the pastoral interlude is disrupted, in the next illustration, by contradictory representations of the local fauna.
The corner images of a wombat, possum, echidna, and kangaroo surround an illustration of these species commercialised as earrings, tea towels, counting charts, puppets, and plates. The impact of tourism on the environment is seemingly less harmful to the fauna and flora than colonial relationships with the environment, but it may be as exploitative because tourists, as the new colonists, consume the
168 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth commodified species as an alternative to conserving species . The representation of harmony is superficially deceptive and belies the tensions between enjoyment and exploitation.
A further underlying tension exists within the paradisical absence of Indigenous presence which, from a postcolonial perspective, contributes to the periphery/centre dialectic. The Indigenous population is positioned as nonexistent as there is no acknowledgement of the existence of an Indigenous people or their descendents, reinforcing terra nullius – emptiness. A toy goanna, only half shown climbing up the wall, is painted in a style appropriated from Indigenous art works. This image carries a metonymic association of the exotic “Other” whose art (like the environment) is also exploited as part of the economic imperative of tourism.
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Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 5.2: The children and the souvenirs
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The children’s passive role as observers contributes to the ambiguous contestation of ecocatastrophe. They are denied an active role. Images of Tasmanian hills, with the land cleared and fenced for cattle grazing, are surrounded by images of logging, and flooded forests are representative of the ecological crises addressed by environmentalists since the 1970s. Acknowledgment of these campaigns is omitted from the text, but conservation of species is signified by a central illustration of the children observing a bird with banded leg, surrounded by smaller images of an egg, a chick, a bird flying, and a bird being banded by an ornithologist.
Further diminishment of the prospect of the children developing an agential ecological subjectivity is reinforced by the appearance of the adult male expert.
When a mysterious man in the black hat appears, the girl’s focalising narration adds suspense to the story when she says to her brother, “Did you see how that man stared at us!” (1996, p. 9). Adding to the suspense is the secrecy advised by a Ranger,
“Finding a surviving thylacine is likely to bring swarms of curious people tramping through the bush, endangering its habitat and survival” (1996, p. 13). When, in the final stages of the narrative, the Ranger introduces the children to the mystery man he is found to be “an expert in this kind of investigation” (1996, p. 30). The children’s search is set up to be frivolous and naïve, as they neglect their only piece of authentic evidence and relinquish their agency to the adult authority, the ecologist.
Woven throughout the narrative is a quest, to locate an actual buried treasure – a gold, garnet and sapphire thylacine wrapped in hand painted silk in 3 ceramic nesting
170 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth pots. 23 The challenge to locate the prize destabilises the subject positions offered by overwhelming the ecological quest with an unrelated treasure hunt. A verbal riddle where each contradictory clue builds on the previous to help locate the treasure interpellates and interpolates readers into the text. The riddle is a verbal paradox,
“enough for one too much for two and nothing at all for three (1996, p. 8); “what force of strength cannot get through, I with gentle touch can do (1996, p. 22); and
“when first I appear I seem mysterious yet when I’m explained I’m nothing serious
(1996, p.31). The repetition of the narrative conundrum, however, overrides the potential the text has to pursue environmental issues.
Ecocatastrophe, represented by the loss of uniquely Australian species of flora, is explicitly constructed within the discourse of breached limits in the picture book
Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (Bruce & Wade, 2000). By verbally and visually representing the causal relationship between the rapid establishment of a new housing estate and the destruction of previously pristine flora and fauna habitat, the text is an unequivocal statement about development that is insensitive to environmental considerations. As a daily experience then, ecocatastrophe is signified by what is known colloquially in Australia as the “urban sprawl”. 24 The text thus problematises long-established white Australian expectations of ownership of individual dwellings. Yet, paradoxically, the text offers readers ambivalent and competing subject positions: one as a subject who watches and observes, a passive spectator who accepts the inevitability of ecocatastrophe; and one as a subject who
23 A web site associated with the text states that the treasure was found in 1999, in George III Mountain, Tasmania. 24 Until recently Australian suburbs were characterised by individual houses on large allotments. Plentiful land supply meant major cities spread over large distances. Currently there is a move towards low-rise multiple dwelling on suburban allotments and high-rise city apartment living. 171 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth can play an active role in the achievement of a less ecocatastrophic world, alluded to in the dedication, “For Dakota, Ella, Gemma and Stephen. May you inherit a better, greener world. Love J. B.B.”
The back cover sets up the position as spectator for readers before the text is even opened. The question, “Where do the wildflowers go when native bushland is turned into housing estates?”, is immediately followed by the imperative command to
“Follow the changes as Red Hill is turned into housing land and see what happens to some of Australia’s beautiful wildflowers” (2000, unpaged) The authority of the publisher’s peritext positions readers as observers, while interpellating them as subjects who are complicit in the formation of their subjectivity (Belsey, 2002).
Furthermore, the “Once upon a time” format of the opening line, shown below as
Figure 5.3, appears to interpellate readers. Traditionally, this introduction suggests to a reader or listener a passive reading position where the child reader submits to the authority of the text or adult reader who provides the narrative. However, the relationship between the fairy tale opening and the subsequent story complicates the passive-active subject positioning of the text. The narrator’s longing for an Edenic environment is at odds with the economic imperative of advanced capitalist societies that unfolds.
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available from the QUT library.
Figure 5.3: The opening page of Where Have All the Flowers Gone ?
Further subversion of the passive reading position is prompted by the intertextual reference to the protest song of the same name. As suggested in Chapter 4, intertextual references offer opportunities for meanings carried by other images and texts to inform the reading of the focus text. With knowledge of the eponymous
1960s song, by Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson, readers could negotiate a meaning that took into account the actions of a youthful generation in the 1960s and early
1970s, that challenged authority, questioned capitalism, and opposed the Vietnam
War. Such understandings would provide readers with opportunities to engage intertextually and create spaces where readers could negotiate more active roles as ecological subjects who set out to change current environmental practices.
However, even without this intertextual knowledge the repetitive question and answer verse structure of the song provides the text with a convenient and familiar narrative structure that catalogues the disappearances of Australian species of flora.
The refrain lines of the song, “When will they ever learn?” [my italics] with the
173 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth constant repetition of the third person plural, “they”, position readers as outsiders or observers watching someone other than themselves. In the last verse, however, readers are interpolated by the change to the use of the more inclusive first person plural, “we”. Responsibility for the loss of flora is placed as a shared human responsibility between participants in the text (be they the land developers, or those who aspire to buy and live in the built houses) and readers. The text, however, offers no active oppositional roles with which readers can identify. Opportunities for intersubjective relationships between readers and those who might challenge the housing development in the text are lost.
The text offers a single limited subject position, common to classic realism and the declarative mode (Belsey, 2002). Visual narrative elements represent the actual world as accurately as possible to offer readers a single, stable subject position as observer, who gauges the truth of the text by the accuracy of its representations. The first twenty-three pages of the book catalogue the twenty species of flora found in the Red Hill area before the land was cleared for a housing estate. The botanically precise illustrations show the range of colours, textures, and forms of the flowers, together with the fauna they attract. The importance of biodiversity is depicted in the fragility and delicacy of each illustration: one yellow wattle stem has a hovering bee about to settle; a green frog sits on a branch of native heath; and a honey-eater feeds on a stalk of banksias.
From the opening page, with its abundance of flowers, this page-by-page cataloguing of each of the individual flowers portrayed in the first illustration, provided as Figure
5.3, foreshadows the total destruction which occurs as the land is cleared for the
174 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth housing estate. The chronicling of that development in the following pages allows the repeated questioning, “Where has the boronia gone ... Where have the Christmas bells gone?” This rhetorical strategy is complemented by the illustrations that depict each progressive stage, initially of the land being cleared, then by a series of postcards which show the houses under construction.
The postcard format unambiguously positions readers in the passive role of recipient of a card from somewhere other than where readers are located. However, the postcard format is usually associated with scenic natural features and evocations of the “wish you were here” variety. Interpreted ironically, the format acts as a social marker or socially agreed upon code (Hutcheon, 1995) to trigger an inferred meaning different from that normally anticipated. The postcards stress the unattractive features of the 200 home sites that replaced the natural home of the local flora and fauna and suggest an “aren’t you glad you’re not here” message.
Similarly, when interpreted ironically, a montage of black and white signs with real estate jargon, “BREATH TAKING VIEWS AT BEACON HILL!/ YOU WILL BE
ON TOP OF THE WORLD/BUY NOW PLAY LATER/ NEW RELEASE
PENINSULA VIEWS/ MEET REPRESENTATIVE ON SITE/ Landmark
Developments”, invites readers to see the ironic undertone of these enticements.
Thus the ironic mode opens up a more active subject position. The answer to the titular question is provided verbally and visually in the final illustration included
175 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth here as Figure 5.4. The postcard shows a barren estate of McMansions 25 that has smothered the environment, figuratively represented with the lifted corner of the card revealing a flattened grey spider flower.
This image is not available online.
Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 5.4: The concluding page of Where Have All the Flowers Gone ?
To this point I have argued that readers are offered predominantly passive positions as ecological subjects who might accept that ecocatastrophe happens elsewhere.
However, like other children’s picture books, the peritextual features included inside the back cover contain ecological and historical information that appeals to readers to take up an active ecological subjectivity. The back pages declare that this is “the sad but true story of the destruction of a hill of virgin native bushland overlooking the ocean on Sydney’s northern beaches” (2000, p. 40). Further factual evidence reveals that despite protests from local citizens with the support of the local government to stop it, the New South Wales government allowed the development to proceed. Concerned citizens and their elected local government representatives have
25 A McMansion is usually inappropriately large for the size of the block, and in an architectural style unsuited for environmental conditions. It takes its name from the number built, and the speed of construction akin to the production line format of McDonald's fast food outlets. Ironically, the health risks associated with the food chain’s products parallel the risks to the environment of this style of architecture.
176 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth been denied control over their local environment. The peritextual comments condemn the state government and the land developers act of unrestrained anthropocentrism in their approval and establishment of the housing estate.
By referring to the extratextual world outside the text in these ways, the peritext of
Where Have All the Flowers Gone? shifts the text into what Belsey (2002) would claim as the imperative mode. Censure is supported by a rationale and strategies for change. The transition from “they” to “we” in the song underpins the question and answer segment included in the page of background information. “Why conserve
Australia’s native plants?”, is answered using the imperative, “Australia must conserve its rich and diverse plant heritage”. This statement recognises the ecological necessity of biodiversity, however, the use of the imperative mood suggests action needs to be taken by readers. “Why are we losing our native plants?”
Familiar conservation strategies are put forward in response to the final question as to how preservation can be achieved: “ Keep pets out of national parks, plant a variety of native plants, don’t dump garden plant matter into the bush, join a conservation group, conserve natural resources and preserve bushland as close as possible to its pristine state – the way it was originally” (Bruce & Wade, 2000, p.
40). By exhorting readers into a position of struggle against what is happening in the world outside the text, the text explicitly offers the ideal reader a position as an active ecological subject prepared to take on ecocatastrophe.
The picture book, Uno’s Garden (Base, 2006), is informed by the discourses of environmental crisis which, as noted in Chapter 3, challenge theories of continued growth and development and highlight the potentially ecocatastrophic consequences
177 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth of unrestrained anthropocentrism. These discourses can, but do not necessarily, privilege a model of ecological equilibrium which suggests that it is possible for humans, when confronted with ecocatastrophe, to take action to restore environmental balance. Accordingly, I argue that in Uno’s Garden the child characters’ interactions with the environment suggest obvious readings and meanings which in turn offer readers ecological subject positions inscribed with the ideological and ecological assumptions of discourses of environmental crisis.
Nevertheless, I suggest that elements of what Bradford (2003) has identified as narrative incoherence undermine the characters’ restoration of the environment to its previously pristine state and ultimately destabilise the subject positions offered.
The illustrations in Uno’s Garden show the initial pristine environment as fantastically exotic, with brightly coloured plants and imaginatively named animals such as “moopaloops”, “lumpybums”, and “frinklepods”. This and the representation of humans as slightly childish and muppet-like preclude the text’s categorisation as what Belsey (2002) calls classic realism. However, I suggest the text invites readers to “perceive and judge the ‘truth’ of the text” in ways that Belsey (2002, p. 63) suggests shape subjectivities.
A playful narrative element is used in the representation of the consequences of unrestrained anthropocentrism and species loss in Uno’s Garden . On the title page, a trustworthy and commanding narratorial voice compels readers to participate in a numbers game which makes the ecological principles of equilibrium explicit:
The animals go by one by one A hundred plants, then there were none And all the while the buildings double… This numbers game adds up to trouble But if you count with utmost care (And trust me that they are all there) You’ll go from ten to nothing, then The whole way back to ten again! (Base, 2006, unpaged) 178 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth
Readers’ active engagement in confirming the accuracy of this peritextual statement, offers him/her a position as an ecologist who uses numerical data to understand environmental problems and confirm solutions. The scientism of the text’s approach is further emphasised by the inclusion of smaller illustrations (in the top corner of each right hand page) that resemble mathematical formulae. On the opening page, for example, when Uno first arrives in the forest there are 10 Moopaloops and 10 of each of the 10 species of plants (100 in all), illustrated: by the middle pages there are
0 animals, 0 plants and 512 buildings; on the final pages there are 10 moopaloops, 10 sunnycaps, and 10 castles.
The game provides an instance of intersubjective communication, of shared understandings of the empirical truth about the world represented in the text. As
Belsey (2002, p. 64) has proposed in relation to classic realism, acts of intersubjective communication of this type guarantee “the reader’s existence as an autonomous and knowing subject in a world of knowing subjects”. The game, by interpellating and interpolating readers so that they “freely accept their subjectivity and their subjection” constitutes an ideological practice (Belsey, 2002, p. 64). The fun of playing with numbers, subtraction, reducing series of squares, and doubling, is inscribed with the ideologies of ecological equilibrium which support human ability to restore the balance.
The numbers game, however, has another function and that is to highlight the extinction of a single species. The subject position as ecologist allows readers to reflect on how the snortlepig has become extinct. The colonisation of the forest brings about the extinction of the “completely ordinary Snortlepig”. The snortlepig’s
179 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth qualities, emphasised verbally through the qualifiers such as “completely ordinary” and “funny-looking”, and visually by its dull colours and timid habits (in most illustrations it is half hidden from view), draw attention to the complexities of species extinction. Assumptions about the species which merit concern are challenged. As discussed elsewhere in this study, species that gain attention because of their attractiveness (an Australian example is koalas) make media headlines. The
Snortlepig’s ordinariness and lack of obvious usefulness for the “humans” suggest that this little creature is easily overlooked. Here readers have opportunities to negotiate meaning by relating intersubjectively with the characters within the text.
Readers’ ecological subjectivities may be oppositional to the characters, who record the loss of the snortlepig but neither reflect on its disappearance nor try to do anything to prevent it.
The convincing and reliable narratorial voice and the stylistically extraordinary but numerically dependable illustrations in the first half of Uno’s Garden provide readers with a position as a witness to a condensed history of the Western world’s dominion over the environment that begins with the opening illustration which shows “a beautiful day at the very beginning of spring”.
The bountifulness of spring, represented visually by an abundance of lush green trees, ferns and grasses, is in keeping with the cornucopian environments of
Promethean discourses, but is also in line with shared Western cultural values about the season of spring, and its promise of fruitful beginnings, as well as Christian understandings of the Garden of Eden. Metonymically, the title suggests the domestication of the wider environment beyond the garden. Both Christian and
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Promethean discourses share ideological assumptions that humans’ role is to have dominion over this bountiful environment and these ideologies are inscribed in the opening illustration which shows Uno, dressed in khaki and clutching a hiking stick, walking into the forest. Uno’s attire resembles a boy scout’s uniform but its khaki colour also alludes to the British Empire, and his arrival in the forest is reminiscent of the pith-helmeted European explorers at the forefront of white, male, colonial expansion. This visual allusion in the opening illustration serves as a prescient warning, and it is emphasised throughout the first half of the narrative which focuses steadfastly on the representation of the ever expanding Western manipulation of the environment to suit human purposes . The sustained visual allusion positions readers to share the implied meaning that the ecocatastrophe which occurs is brought about because of Western interactions that bring the environment under control.
On every double-page spread that follows Uno’s initial domestication of the forest into a garden, levels of anthropogenic impact are represented. One brightly coloured illustration, evocative of the pastoral trope, suggests the carefree holiday enjoyment of the tourists. Proportionally, however, the tourists dominate the frame as they trample all over the shrinking forest. Visually the forest diminishes further, as a steam train, metonymic of industrialisation, moves across the double page, and comparable with the transformations brought about by the industrial revolution, the village in Uno’s Garden becomes a town, and the town a city. Thus the spatial inversion visually encodes the effects of unrestrained anthropocentrism and how it contributes to the environmental crisis.
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Unlike the characters in the text, who with resolute determination continue their expansion and exploitation, the visual perspective of each illustration places readers outside the frame where they are able to see the development and expansion as well as the impact this human manipulation has on the environment. Each successive visual representation works with and against the Promethean promises and Christian ideologies inscribed in the opening illustration. In this way, readers’ positions as witnesses also offer opportunities for reflection and critique.
Successive illustrations that show the city, initially positioned on the horizon in the top third of the illustration, spread down to cover the whole double page spread strengthen this position for readers. With its skyscrapers, factories and smoking chimney stacks, and dank polluted river filled with the remnants of consumption, the city dominates the population whose heads are only just visible over a brick wall at the bank of the river. At this point, the inhabitants are clearly living with ecocatastrophe but are seemingly oblivious to it until thick, grey smog smothers the now lifeless landscape. Readers are interpolated by the visual perspective but also by the verbal narrative. When the people look out from geometrically precise and uniformly uninteresting buildings, and ask, “Why do we live in a place like this? ...
There are no trees” (2006, unpaged), readers are well positioned to provide the answer: unrestrained anthropocentrism.
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This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 5.5: An encounter with ecocatastrophe in Uno’s Garden
However, it is this narrative turn that precipitates my concern with the elements of narrative incoherence that make the subject positions offered by the text ambiguous.
As suggested by Bradford (2003) and discussed in Chapter 3, narrative incoherence is a feature of children’s environmental picture books. I suggest in this instance the sources of incoherence involve representations of the restoration of balance: firstly, in the effort or lack of effort made by the characters to achieve balance; and secondly, in the representations of the environment itself. The previously offered positions of ecological subjects concerned about species loss who are willing to take responsibility to return the environment to a state of bounty and harmony are destabilised by these features of narrative incoherence.
Until the narrative turning point, the inhabitants in Uno’s garden display no awareness of the inappropriateness of their interactions with the environment, nor do they show any remorse or concern for intergenerational justice. They respond to their creation of environmental ecocatastrophe with an act of abandonment. Yet, after the narrative turning point, the responsibility for restoration is placed squarely on Uno’s children who, having “their chance to start over… are very careful to keep the
183 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth numbers game under control” (Base, 2006, unpaged). According to the ecological numbers game, the population figures for the characters keep pace with environmental restoration indicated by an equal number of plants and animals.
This is all achieved from the “little collection of trees and plants”, a forlorn assortment of 1 leefytree [sic] and some 9 assorted pot-plants (each a specimen of the 9 threatened flora in the first part of the story). With no more than some “care for the little collection of trees and plants” that have survived the ecocatastrophe, and the observation and meticulous recording of the return of each species, the forest slowly returns. The characters’ actions are disproportionate to the scale of destruction to be redressed. The mathematical reliability of the reverse-ratio numbers game is thrown into doubt.
The rejuvenation of the forest has another problematic aspect. In the final double page scene where “the forest and the city found themselves in perfect balance” it is again “a beautiful day at the very beginning of spring” (Base, 2006, unpaged). The textual representation of the perpetuity of environmental cycles implies that regardless of the degree of positive or negative human impact the environment will recover and regain its former beauty. This Edenic outcome undermines the text’s potential to offer readers positions as ecological subjects willing to assume responsibility to ensure environmental balance.
These incongruities are overturned by the verbal and visual narrative complementarity in the tidy ending of Uno’s Garden . The final illustration interpolates readers into the scene where Uno’s grandchildren’s grandchildren are
184 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth crowded around a campfire listening to stories. The stories are about “the days when an extraordinary creature had lived in Uno’s garden” (Base, 2006, unpaged). The child characters’ positions of hope for environmental balance are consolidated by the words, “they never stopped believing that one day they would see a real, live
Snortlepig for themselves” (Base, 2006, unpaged). Readers’ positions of hope are consolidated by the illustration, for the story-teller’s finger leads readers’ eyes to the shadow of the Snortlepig on the door of Uno’s original hut.
As discussed in Chapter 3, one component of the conceptual framework acknowledges that some environmental discourses are underpinned by the
Promethean assumptions that humans are capable of overcoming environmental crises (Dryzek, 2005). Human self-interest, ingenuity, and confidence in competitive approaches to remedying problems, will enable human adaptation to challenging environmental conditions (Buell, 2003).
A sophisticated representation of human ingenuity and optimism in the face of an irrevocably altered environment is represented in the picture book The Tower to the
Sun by Colin Thompson (1996). This text encourages reflection on the complexities and subtleties of innovative solutions to environmental crises. However, like the texts discussed in the previous section, this picture book invites contradictory readings, those which highlight triumphant inventiveness as a way to adapt to ecocatastrophe, and those which challenge assumptions of human ingenuity and adaptation, within a framework of unrestrained anthropocentrism.
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At one level the text tells of an ingenious endeavour, by the richest man in the world, to build a tower so that everyone may once again see the sun, which has disappeared behind heavy brown smog. The narrative is consistent with the ideologies of industrialism which suggest that mechanisation ensures prosperous futures and any problems encountered will create solutions. When, for example, the great tower requires “the greatest machine ever made” to build it, one is engineered (1996, unpaged). The richest man in the world and his young grandson epitomise capitalist entrepreneurs, who, in the final page of the text, allow everyone to climb the completed tower to see the sun once more. From this reading, the text seemingly offers readers positions as ecological and industrious subjects aligned with the ideologies of late capitalism, that is, human ingenuity will ensure manipulation of the environment to overcome environmental destruction. At another level, the textual representation is more complex than this and engages readers intersubjectively with opportunities to question Promethean assumptions that may result not in benevolent resolutions to degraded environments, but in ecocatastrophe.
Intertextual references in The Tower to the Sun comprise an allusion to The Tower of
Babel , an oil painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563), which itself links intertextually, the Roman Empire and the Biblical Tower of Babylon (Genesis 11).26
Readers of The Tower to the Sun must negotiate meanings created in, what
McCallum (1994) states, as “the space between the focused text and its intertexts”
(p. 14) . For example, in one double-page spread, (see Fig. 5.6), the tower to the sun is represented as an adaptation of the Brueghel painting. The name Hotel Bruegel
26 In the Biblical story, The Babylonians’ excessive pride in their achievements incurred Godly intervention and resulted in the abandonment of the building project. 186 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth appears on one of the buildings included in the tower as well as the name Hotel
Babel in the lower left hand corner of the frame. Brueghel’s painting represents the
Biblical tower constructed by the people of Babylon to signify their united, cultural achievements as city builders whose superior skills would enable them to build a tower to heaven. Yet the Roman architectural style of the ascending and incomplete spiral structure of the tower in Brueghel’s painting, which appears to have unstable foundations, signifies the hubris of the Roman and Babylonian people.
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Figure 5.6 A Section of the Tower
By negotiating meaning in the spaces created by the multiple intertextual references that represent different peoples and time-frames, readers’ intersubjective relations generate opportunities to critique current social values (Stephens, 1992). In this instance, the meanings negotiated can include scepticism about current human accomplishments that subjugate the natural environment. The excessive pride associated with the fall of the empires associated with the intertexts, undermines the belief in human infallibility that is coupled with building the tallest tower, inventing the biggest equipment needed to construct it, and spending the fortune of the richest man in the world.
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The text does not rely solely on intertextuality to offer readers multiple subject positions. Further intersubjective possibilities involving irony are opened up in the dynamic interactive spaces between “text, context, and interpreter (and, sometimes though not always, intending ironist)” (Hutcheon, 1995, p. 58). Such spaces are opened up for readers when contextual shared knowledge, beliefs and values, enable irony to happen (Hutcheon, 1995). For Australian readers, the text’s opening pages establish the setting as the Central Business District of Sydney. Yet the familiar is destabilised by the unfamiliar, a fog bound, treeless city where a deserted Cahill expressway inundated with harbour water cuts through the centre of the city. The familiar monorail is powered by unfamiliar sails and glides by on its way to Tokyo
(“Overland Express 14 days or your money back”) and atop Centrepoint Tower a bogus replica of the Microsoft flag, with the addition of Asian script, flies strongly.
This is an imagined Sydney of the future but the indicators suggest it is not the secure and comfortable future promised by Promethean thinkers. On one level, this illustration functions narratively to establish the scene and set up the need for the tower to the sun. On another level, irony works through what is included (the urban trappings of late capitalism) and what is omitted (people), to alert readers that the consequences of unrestrained anthropocentrism may not be presented as stable and affirmative.
The illustrations of the pollution caused by the building of the tower, for instance, create an opportunity for ironic reflection on the destructive potential of technology.
The tower is an amalgam of world’s famous landmarks, jumbled together in an unstable, spiral structure. It rises through the smog presumably generated by hundreds of years of environmental abuse brought about through the construction of
188 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth these other edifices to human superiority over the environment. Its unsteady structure and conglomerate composition forewarn ecocatastrophe on a global scale.
The first stage of construction of the tower being built on “the biggest rock in the world” offers an additional ironic interpretation. The reference to “the biggest rock” resonates with the Australian obsession with big landmarks. Tourist attractions usually located on major highways across Australia celebrate “bigness”, including, the “Big Pineapple”, the “Big Banana”, and the “Big Merino”. Most of these tourist attractions have fallen into disrepair and are now considered laughably unsophisticated testaments to bigness or Australia as a big environment. An ironic reading links the building of the biggest of towers with the ultimate failure of these other symbols of human ingenuity. This tower will end up eventually, derelict and beyond its usefulness. An ironic reading in this instance destabilises the presumed chances of success, destabilising faith in human ingenuity. This ironic interpretation functions to offer readers, what Hutcheon (1995) calls, an oppositional reading position.
A nexus between irony, postcolonialism, and ecofeminism also provides opportunities for oppositional reading positions, opportunities to examine and challenge the assumptions of human ingenuity as a solution to the potential consequences of unrestrained anthropocentrism. Illustrative attention to realistic detail makes the biggest rock easily recognisable as Uluru, 27 but the grandfather and son see the rock only as providing a solid foundation that will give them some
27 Uluru, a significant Australian tourist attraction, is located in Central Australia. It was formerly known by the name given by colonial settlers, Ayres Rock. It was returned to the Anangu People and resumed its traditional name in 1985. 189 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth needed altitude. They can be compared with colonists who took control of land with equal disregard for the Indigenous “relatedness” to Uluru. The lack of acknowledgement of Indigenous presence is an instance of privileging Western,
Eurocentric ways of dominating the environment, common to most Australian children’s environmental texts (Bradford, 2008). An ironic reading shows up the folly of its use as the foundation for the tower because Uluru, restored to the
Anangu, has extreme significance as a sacred site, not a place to be wandered over or climbed.
Irony also supports an ecofeminist reading which encourages consideration of the illustrations which show the tower builders collecting resources of previous civilisations and cultures. The Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Taj
Mahal are all gathered up in the construction process. The inclusion of these edifices in the tower to the sun on “the biggest rock in the world” thus reaches beyond adaptation to ecocatastrophe; it signifies the Western patriarchal creation of ecocatastrophe over time.
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Figure 5.7: The final illustration from The Tower to the Sun
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A further allusion to the creation of ecocatastrophe is provided by the final illustration (Figure 5.7). The illustration of the line of people queuing to climb the tower is reminiscent of aerial views of the Great Wall which tourists now walk along. However, this queue of people is waiting to climb a monument that will metonymically represent the folly of neglecting the environment.
The analysis above has demonstrated how the characters in the texts have encountered diverse aspects of ecocatastrophe and, as ecological subjects, have or have not responded to what confronts them. The analysis that follows is of two picture books which appear to deny ecocatastrophe altogether.
Denial of Ecocatastrophe
As noted in Chapter 3, one feature of the environmental discourse of Promethean growth is the denial of the possibility of the catastrophic outcomes of human impact on the environment (Dryzek, 2005). The discourse of Promethean growth, oppositional to the discourses which advocate environmental limits, is shaped by assumptions about “unlimited natural resources, unlimited ability of natural systems to absorb pollutants, and unlimited corrective capacity in natural systems” (Dryzek,
2005, p. 51). A discourse that denies limits, that is, the carrying capacity of ecosystems, constructs the environment as bountiful, an environment where humans, motivated by self interest, exploit it at will.
Such an environmental discourse is an apparent feature of two texts written and illustrated by Roland Harvey, At the Beach: Postcards from Crabby Spit (2004), and
In the Bush: Our Holiday at Wombat Flat (2005). Ostensibly these texts focus on a self-interested family’s pursuit of holiday enjoyment in two contrasting, Australian
191 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth environments. Mum, Dad, Henry, Penny and Frankie espouse a laissez-faire position that suggests they need take no responsibility for either environmental destination which exists to serve their need and purposes. For example, at the beach the family partake of such familiar beach pastimes as digging holes, sandcastle making, skimboarding and swimming, while in the bush they do a “squillion other things” without regard for the environmental consequences.
Another possible critical reading, taking a tropological approach as discussed in
Chapter 2, constructs the environment in the terms of plenty favoured by the traditional pastoral or marine pastoral, where careworn families escape the city to seek the benefits of renewal offered by a pleasurable interlude in a rural or aquatic environment. The texts succinctly capture what Scutter (1993) recognised as a distinctively Australian feature of the pastoral, the holiday. The texts also conform to
Love’s (2003) interpretation of the pastoral retreat fulfilling a psychological need.
The destinations encapsulate what some Australians may see as a need to connect with the coastal strip, or to experience the bush. The environments depicted in both texts seemingly teem with opportunities for the characters to escape the pressures of the city. The physically-demanding activities such as horse riding, skiing, canoeing, and sailing offer an antidote to urban life. The texts conclude according to pastoral conventions. The final illustration, showing the family returning home from the bush, sees them contentedly travelling in the car, while the return from the beach shows the happy family tumbling out of the car and gleefully running towards the front gate.
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Reading these texts as explicit approval of dominion or as contemporary Australian pastoral and/or marine pastoral tropes predisposes consideration of the environment as a resource or commodity, a source of frivolous experiences. If read in this way, the illustrations support the European pastoral tradition and it would seem that the white families represented could sustain such treatment of the environment indefinitely. Readers could align themselves with the main characters thus assuming a position inscribed with Western values of dominion.
A more critical and productive reading, in terms of the focus of this chapter, takes into account how the light-hearted, humorous verbal and visual encoding of the playful and often mischievous adventures of the likable family, aligns readers only momentarily with the characters as they run amok in, above, and under an environment. A reading informed by the approach developed in Chapter 4, draws into focus the characters’ lack of regard for the environment as well as their denial of the potentially ecocatastrophic consequences of their behaviour. With this reading approach, the characters’ frenetic activities appear ridiculous and readers are consequently offered multiple ecological subject positions from which to consider the problematic aspects of the characters’ dominating interactions with the environment.
My approach to these texts, however, does not dismiss notions of the pastoral categorically. Stephens (1992, p. 116) suggests that “intertextuality frequently takes the specific form of a parody or travesty of a pre-text, and its purpose often seems to be an iconoclastic gesture attempting to subvert what is perceived as a dominant discourse”. In this instance, if the pastoral genre is considered as a pre-text, the two
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Harvey texts are travesties, which subvert the pastoral through various verbal and visual strategies. Small, cartoon-style illustrations, drawn with pen and ink and watercolour wash playfully mock traditional pastoral paintings, with their richly colourful bucolic scenes of peaceful abundance. Where the pastoral painting captures a serene moment in time, the covers of each text function as temporal indicators, encompassing the extended holiday time that is contained within the pages. As well, the covers suggest the continuing and unrelenting onslaught of numerous, happy holiday makers, insensitive to the environmental impact caused by their repeated and invasive activities. Subversion of the pastoral in this way sets up negotiable subject positions for readers.
This image is not available online.
Please consult the hardcopy thesis
available from the QUT library.
Figure 5.8: The front cover of At the Beach
If irony is understood, as Hutcheon (1995, p. 11) has claimed, as “an interpretive and intentional move” the covers provide abundant material for readers to engage in interpretive play (see Figure 5.8) . A frenzy of day-time human activity dominates the front cover of At the Beach : adults and children occupy both sand and water, but closer inspection of the bustle and commotion reveals several shark fins in very close proximity to the swimmers, while another shark, with its jaws full of ragged swimming costume, thrusts its upper body towards a man running from the water
194 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth with his shredded board shorts well below his buttocks. The back cover contrasts the day time scene by depicting more relaxed families lolling on the sand to watch the full moon over the sea unaware of the crabs with claws extended moving towards them.
While the covers work with linguistic and visual hyberbole to imply the irony of excessive enjoyment, the end papers subtly mock Western traditions of spatiality and satirise the consequences of living all over the earth. For example, the endpapers of both texts use maps to depict a multitude of occurrences of human impact on the environment, or rather, the signifiers of colonial settlement. Humorously, the compass points In the Bush are given as: N = Nowhere; [East] Sunrise; [West]
Sunset; S = Somewhere, suggesting an irreverent approach to the precision of map- making. Less light heartedly, the cadastral style of the maps indicates ownership, with named sites indicating the impact of human habitation on natural environmental features. The map of Crabby Spit concentrates on the identification of locally significant social or recreational landmarks – the shops, pub, cinema, bowls club, and graves. Similarly, the map depicting the route to Wombat Flat, mentions topographical features such as “the high plateau” and “black gorge”, but has a profusion of cultural sites frequently prefaced with the qualifier “old” – the old town, the old pub, a 5000 year old quarry, old sports oval, and again, an old cemetery. The maps are expressions of colonial relationships with the environment as distinct from
Indigenous relationships with the land which encompassed ideas, beliefs and relationships other than ownership. Thus the impact of colonial settlement is represented spatially, but the reiteration of time in colonial terms also serves to mock the geophysical age of this site in the fictional Australian bush and perpetuates the
195 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth concept of terra nullius that denies an Indigenous presence before white settlement.
Indigenous presence is only mentioned in the end-paper maps of At the Beach where an “ancient midden” is labelled, but not acknowledged further. A postcolonial reading of the cadastral maps exposes a lack of inclusion and the absence of understanding what Martin (2008b, p. 61) has proposed as Indigenous “relatedness” to all aspects of the environment.
The visual narratives of both At the Beach and In the Bush continue to lampoon settler relationships with the environment throughout the texts. The double page spreads of each text maintain the representation of human occupation of the environment. Despite their miniature cartoon scale, human characters swarm all over
Crabby Spit and Wombat Flat. Camp grounds in both locations, as seen in Figure
5.9, exhibit a proliferation of the accoutrements of living in temporary and transportable holiday accommodation: caravans, trailers, tents, and campervans. Like the proverbial, “everything but the kitchen sink” the campers have brought a myriad of items, from lawnmowers to televisions, to make their holiday space/place more like their home and in doing so have tainted the pastoral with their urban patterns of behaviours.
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 5.9: The campground in At the Beach
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The use of multiple narratorial voices in the texts also supports my ironic reading.
The Crabby Spit holiday is narrated by the holidaying children, Penny, Frankie and
Henry, whose postcards to “Dear Grandma”, with their emphasis on human dominated holiday activities, expose the folly of living all over the earth. Penny writes of her ambition to be “a hang-gliderer”[sic] or “ a world champignon [sic] at
Frisbee” while the imaginative Henry sees ufos and finds “a really dark cave which I think would have been used by pirates!”. Frankie, as the youngest of the children, is concerned with learning to swim, games of beach cricket, and staying up late to see
“a very big [bon]fire” on the beach. Similarly, the narratorial role of the children in
In the Bush serves to ridicule human dominion over the environment. The children’s words, contained in a band along the bottom of each page, are enhanced by the inclusion of miniature illustrations. When Henry enthuses, “And a swarm of hoons 28 set up camp next to us”, the miniature illustration, showing a caricature Australian male with portable music player, directs readers back to the main illustration above in search of the hoons. Harry’s choice of the word “swarm” is apposite because the hoons have colonised the environment with a converted bus, trail bikes, a generator, amplifiers, a fridge, and a beer filled esky. To complete the metaphor, one “hoon”, carrying a can of beer and a chain saw, walks towards a tree in which a koala can be seen peering through the branches. The anticipated buzzing sound from a chain saw suggests an act of particularly insensitive environmental destruction.
The child characters’ verbal narration in both texts, not surprisingly if it is to be believably child-like, reflects unsophisticated understandings of ecological
28 An Australian colloquial term for a loutish, “foolish or silly person, esp, one who is a show-off” (Macquarie Dictionary, 2007) 197 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth discourses. The verbal humour that infuses an otherwise serious ecological discourse is achieved through blending some scientifically accurate identification of animals, plants, and environmental features, with childlike naivety, and self ridicule. For example, ecological discourses are subverted by Penny’s hand printed labels which identify, “the banksia forest”, “the swamp nests”, “the sand dunes”, the heathland wildflower reserve, and “the rock pool”. Penny also provides the written details for the endpaper maps, “from the original survey by Roland 1066-7, of In the Bush. The distinctive ecological features of “wombat wilderness” include “157 undiscovered species of plant and 24 unknown animals and mosquitoes”. Penny’s attempt to imitate the scientific authority of facts and figures is humorously undermined by her
“undiscovered” and “unknown”, together with her inclusion of the troublesome, but ever prevalent, mosquitoes.
The verbal narrative supplied in the postcards by the two older children, Penny and
Henry, in At the Beach , can be interpreted as satirical ecological discourses. The postcards detail the children’s immersion in the environment, some contain identification of animals, and in others the children act as environmental observers :
“I saw a giant octopus” , “We saw seven starfish”. The children’s observations, however, are interspersed with other confusing details, “I saw pelicans and swamphens and Hannah Coleman. They were catching fish and eating them whole.
Yuck!!!” The youthful, grammatical inconsistencies infuse humour into ecologically accurate details. The relationship of the verbal and visual narratives also helps to satirise ecological discourses. In an early postcard from Crabby Spit, Henry states he saw “2 giant crabs”, but the illustrations reveal one is over the welcome to Crabby
Spit sign, while the other is atop a mobile van which sells cooked crabs. Both Penny
198 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth and Henry include, with their written messages, hand-drawn illustrations where their attempts at ecological accuracy are parodied by the inclusion of humorous details such as Penny’s “glow-in-the dark crab” which holds the youngest child Frankie in one of its claws. Here, the children’s confused addition of the simulations to their ecological observations is another form of satire, with the text suggesting the simulations may be of equal if not more interest than the living creatures.
Contradictory ecological statements are also created between the illustrations and the accompanying verbal narrative. The children’s reported lack of visual evidence,
“Dad said there were feathertailed gliders about but we didn’t see any”, contradicts the readers’ view of feathertailed gliders playing in a gum tree.
The visual representation of ecosystems in both texts relies on the use of the traditional elements of composition such as colour and perspective. While colour is used conservatively in both texts, to suggest accuracy of ecological detail, the water colour wash medium captures colour variations in earth, water, and foliage; perspective and scale that bind humour with ecological understandings to encourage a satirical reading. The use of an aerial perspective allows readers to look down on the hectic scenes of recreational use of the environment. The position of omniscient observer afforded the readers significantly permits all components of the ecosystem to be viewed simultaneously, and in relation to each other. The total dominance of the humorous human interaction, or lack of interaction, overwhelms the living beings and physical elements of the environment thus providing readers with opportunities for reflection and inviting the question: Is this human behaviour destroying the environment?
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In At the Beach , one double page spread depicts a seemingly harmonious marine ecosystem, with humans messing about in boats drifting on turquoise water, which surrounds a rocky outcrop complete with seabird rookery. Happily smiling and humorously active humans exude contentment, as pelicans catch and swallow fish, and smiling dolphins frolic around the bows of sailing boats. In contrast, ecosystem disharmony is also recorded. Detailed examination reveals that the humorous depiction of a semi-clad couple on the stern of a pleasure boat belies the detritus, cans, bottles, plates, which they have carelessly thrown overboard. The pelicans attempting to roost on the rocks seem to teeter precariously, unable to settle while all around them bird watchers peer through binoculars.
A similar aerial perspective or “bird’s eye view” presented in In the Bush positions readers to see the extent of the human occupation of a bush ecosystem of earth, trees, creeks, and rock pools. What is humorously depicted as pleasurable human activity can also be seen from this point of view as environmental annihilation, with not a space spared the impact of humans. Trees are felled for firewood, domesticated animals such as horses and dogs occupy more space than local species, which are represented by tiny fish in the rock pool, four koalas precariously positioned in one disproportionately small, scraggy eucalypt, and one timid possum peering out from another eucalypt. The limited number of Australian species and their disproportionate scale, emphasise the perilous ecological situation the fauna occupy.
One double page spread in each text offers a more expansive view of the habitats, thereby enabling closer examination by readers. In At the Beach a cut-away perspective allows a view of a cross section of coral reef. On these pages proportion
200 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth is reversed so that the marine habitat takes up most of the page while the human anglers and snorkelers are depicted happily entertaining themselves in a small band at the very top of the pages. This privileging of the marine environment encourages readers to look carefully, and once again the humour is double edged: an octopus juggles human skulls, while a shark bites the fisherman’s catch; a propeller falls off a boat but it will add to the other debris on the sea bed, a lawn mower, skulls, and pirate treasure; environmental destruction is assured as an anchor is seen dragging over the coral.
In the same way, the cut away illustration in In the Bush permits observation of the underwater creek habitat. Juxtaposed horizontally, in almost perfect halves of the double page, the busy above water scene shows rafting, canoeing, and “bombing”
(human bomb diving), while below the surface, the water has been so stirred up that its murky depths reveal only two small fish, two crayfish, and two platypuses, one of the most distinctive Australian marsupials. 29 Once again the humorous portrayal of human overactivity and dominance which denies the consequences, throws into relief the prospect of those consequences.
The analysis above of At the Beach and In the Bush provides an ironic reading to demonstrate how exaggerated verbal and visual humour can throw the characters’ lack of regard for the environment into focus. With this reading approach, I argue that the characters’ frenetic activities appear ridiculous and readers are consequently offered multiple ecological subject positions from which to consider the problematic
29 A platypus is an egg laying monotreme, with a duck bill and web feet. These unique characteristics have made it the subject of humour and ridicule in literary representations. 201 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth aspects of the characters’ dominating interactions with the environment. Read ironically, the characters’ denial of the potentially ecocatastrophic consequences of their behaviour highlights the folly of unrestrained anthropocentrism and offers readers opportunities as ecological subjects alert to the possibilities of confronting and critiquing unrestrained anthropocentrism.
In the terms of the title of this chapter, both of the texts analysed immediately above appear literally to embody “Living all over the earth”. Both texts, however, do it without the purpose to dominate that is the focus of the other texts analysed earlier in this chapter. Irony contributes to their unintentional dominion. Other narrative strategies are employed in texts with characters who contest the causes of ecocatastrophe.
Hybridising Ecocatastrophe with Ecocentrism
The picture books discussed above construct encounters with ecocatastrophe or denial of ecocatastrophe. The young adult novel, Airdancer of Glass (Bateson,
2004), draws on apocalyptic tropes to construct a scenario where encounters with ecocatastrophe are a daily feature of life for some of the characters. Juxtaposed with these encounters are descriptions of an alternative life-style that encompasses an ecocentric regard for the environment, where characters live as part of the environment rather than apart from it. The juxtapositioning of ecocatastrophe and ecocentrism affords readers opportunities for intersubjective relationships with the characters. Intersubjectivity opens up spaces for readers to assess one life style against the other; to critique notions of unrestrained anthropocentrism; and by inference, critique aspects of contemporary western society. The textual
202 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth representations of the dichotomies between rich and poor, overindulgence and poverty are recognisably similar to those that exist in the twenty-first century.
Three groups of people, who live in three different but interconnected environments, are contained within the narrative. The central character, Lulianne, is the eponymous airdancer, an acrobat who performs death-defying feats high in the air. The text begins with her arrival at Tip, an area resembling a refuse dump, that was created by the “Contaminations” that surround the settlement of Glass (so called because of its clean and shiny glass fronted, high-rise building). The third area is Clan, a remote settlement in the mountains established by a select group who escaped Glass hoping for a better future. The strategies of multiple focalisation and narrative voice permit readers multiple subject positions, which they may take up or resist, as they engage with the characters in each of these environments.
The residents of Glass, known as the “Fatters”, live in a patriarchal and technologically advanced society. They participate in a self-indulgent life-style in gated communities, surrounded by surveillance and “patrolled endlessly by white- shirted security” to protect them from the impoverished residents of Tip (Bateson,
2004, p. 23). The Fatters, who have no regard for the effects their hedonistic life- style has on the environment, are represented as environmental vandals who have no sense of themselves as ecological subjects. Yet in the text they are never given a voice. Readers find out about Glass and its residents through information provided by the narrator; those who suffer because of the residents of Glass and their life- style, the Tippers; and the more ecologically aware Clan members, Egan and Aunty
Teece.
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Readers’ knowledge of Glass is supplied by characters, like Lovie, a resident of Tip, who tells Lulianne, “There are more worker robots than Fatters. They do everything.
The Fatters just sit around, eating, talking and playing. They play , Lulianne. Not dice games, more stupid than that. They have drinking games. They play chasey, like little kids” (Bateson, 2004, p. 129). Similarly, Egan conveys knowledge of the
Fatters who have distanced themselves so far from the natural environment that they are prepared to poison it to keep control over non-residents such as the Tippers, “The
Aunties reckon they do it as an other way of keeping everyone in control. You can’t plant in ground so poor and constantly poisoned” (2004, p. 69). In constructing subject positions for themselves, readers can accrue the narratorial descriptions and the characters’ perceptions and choose whether to align themselves with the residents of Glass and their life-style, or the Tippers, or the members of Clan.
Lulianne, as focaliser, directs empathy towards the residents of Tip, and nearby
Casino who rely on “dope” and “voddy” to deal with the harsh living conditions.
Children run like packs of animals scrounging what they can. Egan, visiting Tip from Clan, states,
Who’d live in Tip?… Sure, it was busy. It hustled. There were things to scavenge. There was Casino, the groggers, the Market, but there was also stench and noise, the depressing ever-present hunger, and the mean grubby lives. Above it all, Glass a reminder of everything you didn’t have. (Bateson, 2004, p. 23)
The Tippers are forced to lead a day to day existence, scavenging foodstuffs dumped by the self-indulgent residents of Glass. As a result of this their priorities are not with conservation of the environment. They have no sense of themselves as ecological subjects. They are depicted in the narrative as complacent about Tip. They wait for the day when the Fatters will die and they could take over Glass. The
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Tippers’ apathy complicates the ecological subjectivities on offer. Their environmental apathy is understandable when their first priority is survival, but inaction is not an option for the charismatic Amos who is training some of the Tip residents to rebel against the Fatters. Readers are offered complex choices of subject positions between environmental complacency and agency.
When the aging Fatters, in a bid to secure a future for themselves, steal some of the
Tip children, Amos’s plans are put into effect to save the children. In a retrospective comment, reflecting on the outcome of the rescue bid readers are told by an extract from “The Lessons of Amos from North Tip, Healer and Revolutionary”,
It’s always your choice,’ I told the children. ‘It has to be your choice. Some of you will walk away, go back to the despair and loneliness, the voddy and the dope. It has to be your choice. If I make you do something, I’m no better than the Fatters in Glass. You must take responsibility. It’s your life.’ No one had ever told them that before. (Bateson, 2004, p. 123)
Thus the text provides for an agential subjectivity that is rationalised in terms of conserving resources (albeit their children). This save the children motive echoes with conservation pleas to “save the environment”.
Still another position offered by the text allows alignment with Clan, which signifies human resilience and survival to inhabit the environment while at the same time considering the environment before human needs. Egan, as focaliser, puts forward
Clan’s ecocentric perspectives. Originally a clan of a hundred or so people who escaped from the Fatters’ contaminations, Clan has also come to represent the area where they live in a relationship of closeness with environment that is not unlike the
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“relatedness” which Martin (2008b) describes as essential for Indigenous
Australians. This is expressed in the following excerpt:
Clan is all we have. Clan comes before each and everyone of us and is each and everyone of us. The Aunties tell us what is good for Clan because to be chosen as an Aunty you have to have seen life and gained wisdom, but even they will listen to opinions and ideas other than their own, because not one person or one group of people can ever be Clan. Clan is bigger than all of us but belongs to us all. (Bateson, 2004, p. 23)
Clan, then, is more than a place, it is a way of life and a way of being that is always part of Clan people no matter where they are. Egan is confident in his ecological subjectivity, “there were always things to see and hear and a dily bag at the ready for any new plants or small animals” (Bateson, 2004, p. 23). He has grown up with the
Aunties’ knowledge of the environment which has sustained Clan’s existence.
The matriarchal society of the Aunties draws on traditional tropes of female associations with the environment. Egan champions the Aunties’ knowledge throughout the text: their ability to know that frog noises near the creek mean the water was clean; their knowledge of healing potential of plants; and at all times their unselfish commitment to what is best for Clan. When Aunty Teece says, “We don’t ask what Clan does for us. We ask what we do for Clan” (Bateson, 2004, p. 43) she is subverting the words of President Kennedy’s inauguration speech which placed emphasis on what could be done for a nation, a cultural construction, whereas Aunty
Teece recognises the ecocentric principle of placing the environment before all else.
The Clan way of life, their way of being with the environment, is also privileged by the tidy ending. After the confrontation with the Fatters, Amos says “Out of these ashes, we’ll coax a new city, a city for us all, Egan. A beautiful place” (Bateson,
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2004, p. 151). This is confirmed by epilogue statements which detail knowledge of the interconnections of all environmental elements.
Airdancer of Glass is a text which allows readers to negotiate subject positions, to weigh up life style choices, actions and inactivity, and provides opportunities for interrogating the Fatters’ treatment of the environment which is evocative of the ideologies of individualism and self-indulgence of contemporary Western society.
The analysis which follows details how an allegorical text can offer readers similar subject positions.
An Environmental Allegory
The final text analysed in this chapter offers multiple ways of reading and the subject positions taken up or resisted by readers will vary according to their existing knowledge. Readers may empathise with the central character, Yoss, and appreciate his development in becoming the leader of a community which privileges the environment and/or they can read the text as an indictment of aspects of contemporary capitalist societies that are resource hungry, threatened by overpopulation, and the excesses of greed and competition.
One way to read Yoss (Hirsch, 2001) is as a rite of passage narrative, a
Bildungsroman, because the narrative relates the generically conventional maturation of the central and eponymous character who, at the age of 14 and like all the young males of his village, leaves for an overnight journey that symbolises a transition from boyhood to manhood. Read in this way, the text offers readers glimpses of
Yoss’s developing ecological subjectivity, confirming what McCallum (1999)
207 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth suggests about subjectivity and its affiliation with narratives of personal growth or maturation. The journey becomes more than symbolic as Yoss travels beyond the mountains that surround his village home in his search for self-fulfilment. Yoss seeks out the ways of the town, but he reflects on his negative experiences of the cosmopolitan world, and finally comes to appreciate and embrace the village ways of engaging with the environment.
For the purpose of this study, however, it is more profitable to read Yoss as an allegory; an extended trope that serves a didactic purpose which is to critique certain cultural practices that are harmful to the environment. The story, about a youth living in medieval times, who comes to understand and choose his preferred environment, can be read as a moral tale that not only suggests contemporary living with ecocatastrophe but also invites reflection on the practices that have created present environmental crises. The town and its dependence on commercial customs signify the voracious practices of late capitalism, and the simple life of the village models a more ecologically aware, human engagement with the environment.
The allegorical reference begins with the cover illustration of the Brueghel painting,
The Tower of Babel . The significance of intertextual readings in this instance, like those with regard to The Tower to the Sun (Thompson, 1996), is located in the process of the interactions between the text and its intertext (Stephens, 1992). It is also dependent, of necessity, on readers’ knowledge of the intertexts.
The intertextual significance suggests, as it did in the The Tower to the Sun
(Thompson, 1996), that the cultural group represented in Yoss (Hirsch, 2001)
208 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth privileges the artifices of culture over the natural environment. Similarly, it is suggestive of the hubris and excessive pride of previous cultures which led to their disintegration. To continue the intertextual allusion and construct positions for readers to critique the excesses of capitalism, the text uses the strategies of an external and authoritative narrator, combined with character focalisation, for as might be expected from the title, it is Yoss whose opinions are put forward as an accurate account of the events depicted.
Ascribed with authority and presumed truthfulness that readers may not question, the narrator describes an environmental paradise, a village well favoured by natural resources, abundant streams which “flowed out of the mountains and in the spring they turned into torrents of melted snow” (Hirsch, 2001, p. 3). The environment that
Yoss leaves is protected and isolated from the outside world, so
that the clouds on the crags might just as well have been an ocean encircling it, keeping all but them most hardy and adventurous travellers away. But to the people of the village, every peak, every crevasse, every ledge in the mountains had a name, and the names, taken together, told a history of the people in this place, of the hardships they had overcome and of the legends they had created. (Hirsch, 2001, pp. 3-4)
The villagers close affinity with the environment has developed from knowledge of the outside world that it has drawn upon, but not fully embraced, to reach a level of existence that suits its residents. It is described as harmonious and democratic.
Readers might assume, because the speaker of the village is male and the narrative is concerned with male rites of passage, that the village might be a patriarchal society.
However, the village does not display characteristics common to patriarchy, those are a feature of the town.
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Initial descriptive passages from the outskirts of the town relay a sense of excitement. As he catches sight of its shadowy outline on the horizon,
in the blue distance, with spires poking out of it like thorns ... Already, the boy felt as if he had come upon a world of infinite activity. In the village, he only had to raise his eyes to the mountains to find emptiness. Here on the plain, there was not a single place he could look without seeing another person. (Hirsch, 2001, p. 41)
The town to which Yoss travels is, however, a living ecocatastrophe, swamped by its human population. Yoss soon realises this and readers are interpolated into a discourse of revulsion that Yoss shares. The following third person focalised account gives insights into Yoss’s awareness of the pressures and congestion of overpopulation:
There was not a single place he could look without seeing another person … They lay in the gutters, stood by the walls, crossed in front of the mule, ran behind it. Yoss didn’t discern them as soldiers, or beggars, or graders, or peasants, he merely saw people , people, everywhere, moving and turning and shouting. (Hirsch, 2001, p. 41).
This scene presents Yoss with a direct contrast to the village he has come from where everyone not only knows every one by name, but all their stories and occupations. The town’s overpopulated environment offers its inhabitants a contaminated way of life, a cacophony of human calls and cries, and a constant clatter of hooves and carts, but above all, the town is foul smelling with a stench that
Yoss considers, “vile dark and rotten. What evil things were in it, he could only imagine” (Hirsch, 2001, p.41).
Yoss is forced to live with the causes of such an ecocatastrophe: disrespect for animals and human beings, greed, and slavery. His introduction to the town, “a world without limits” is initiated by the rogues who way-lay him on the road,
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Conrad, and Gasper, his lackey (Hirsch, 2001, p. 29). Conrad, who threatens to whip
Gasper, in the same way that he whips the broken down horse, is cruel and only conscious of one thing, money.
Greed saturates all levels of society. Yoss comes to know the ways of capitalism in the merchant’s yard, the sacks and barrels and wagons represent commerce, and
Yoss is initially overwhelmed by “the sense of wonder in it.” (Hirsch, 2001, p. 140).
The merchant (Siebert) has a love of trading and money, and the narrative details the transactions in the Exchange where trade deals are done. But the Siebert uses deceitful tactics to better his position within the Exchange when the leading merchant Grossfuss is dying. The merchants all act opportunistically but Siebert outshines, “after all, they were still merchants, even if it was one of their own brother merchants who was dying, and the nature of merchants is to seek opportunity in every event, and few events bring opportunity to one person without bringing loss to another” (Hirsch, 2001, p. 187). The competitive drive of capitalism is depicted as having no moral responsibility towards others, only self-indulgence.
Self-indulgence, in the form of increasing wealth beyond material comforts, leading to the gross excesses of over-consumption, is represented by the merchant’s house and his fine possessions, including his wife. Everywhere, in the descriptions of the contents of the house, gold signifies wealth, but this is nowhere more apparent than in the descriptions of the merchant’s wife who, when Yoss arrives in the house, is having her portrait painted. In the portrait “her dress was of an orange velvet, and the bodice was trimmed with pearls and gold thread … She wore yellow slippers embroidered in red with a pattern of roses picked out in pearls” (Hirsch, 2001, p.
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112). The backdrop to the portrait is rich yellow curtain: “The woman had chosen it because its colour represented charity. Her husband had agreed to it because yellow, to him, represented gold” (Hirsch, 2001, p. 173). The hubris the merchant feels about the painting reinforces what is suggested by the cover, a disapproval of these life- style choices.
In the ultimate act of consumption, the ownership of one human being by another,
Siebert buys Yoss as a slave. This acknowledgement of slavery’s contribution to the growth of civilisations like the Romans, and the growth of capitalism in the United
States and elsewhere, carries a sense of misplaced entitlement, the right to buy anything. Yoss, as a human resource, is another of the merchant’s possessions. It is this demeaning position that finally pushes Yoss to challenge his master and all that he represents and in so doing, Yoss gains an agential subjectivity and returns to life in the village where, returning with wisdom, he becomes speaker of the village.
Despite the Bildungsroman like closure, undoubtedly Yoss’s choice to return to the village lifestyle endorses a view of living simply and harmoniously with the environment. The village is, after all, isolated from the world by the ring of mountains. Yoss, like some of the characters in Airdancer of Glass (Bateson, 2004), retreats to an existing and well established, alternative life-style in a small scale community. The presumed happy-ever-after ending raises questions about the practicability of larger scale community action, and more proactive acts that attempt to redress the causes of the ecocatastrophe represented.
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An allegorical reading of Yoss (Hirsch, 2001) invokes an anti-capitalist ethos. The journey that Yoss undertakes serves as a metaphor for a series of complex transitions, each of which is inscribed with ideological assumptions about human engagement with the environment. The town represents trade, the basis of which is natural resources which are in plentiful supply. The capitalist system which drives the town is represented as insensitive to both human needs and the needs of the environment.
Summary
The texts examined in this chapter are aligned with the component of the conceptual framework, Unrestrained Anthropocentrism . They embody variations of this chapter’s title in that they represent attempts to live all over the earth. They also represent the consequence of trying to bring it under control, what is called in this study “ecocatastrophe”. In broad terms the picture books depict ecocatastrophe as follows: daily encounters with ecocatastrophe are implicitly represented where species loss functions as a metonym for ecocatastrophe; a more explicit representation presents human ingenuity in the face of ecocatastrophe; in another ecocatastrophe is denied; and finally, in two young adult novels the causes of ecocatastrophe are contested.
The analysis contributes to the accomplishment of the aim of the study by demonstrating that there are contradictions and inconsistencies in the ecological subject positions constructed in the texts. Narrative strategies work both to construct and offer stable subject positions which contest dominion, and/or conversely, contradictory positions that endorse dominion. With regard to the two young adult
213 Chapter 5: Living All Over the Earth novels, readers, if they choose, have opportunities to align themselves with central characters whose growth to maturity includes an awareness of their developing ecological subjectivity.
As suggested by the analysis, the texts, like a wider range of environmental texts, imply human accountability to the environment. The texts analysed in Chapter 6, on the other hand, explicitly model and advocate sustainable environmental practices.
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215 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability
Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability: Balancing Control with
Consideration?
Learning to live sustainably on the only planet we’ve got is a non-negotiable imperative if we want to avoid an accelerating descent into resource wars, collapsing eco-systems and traumatic social and economic decline. (Porritt, 2005)
This chapter continues the critical work of textual analysis begun in the previous chapter. In keeping with the critical work undertaken in Chapter 5, the analysis undertaken here is guided by poststructuralist perspectives that do not attempt to provide objective and definitive readings. Once again, the analysis provides provisional readings only which have been arrived at using a combination of the strategies of analysis set out in Chapter 4 to examine the narrative constructions of ecological subjectivities.
The five picture books and two novels for young adults that are analysed here share general characteristics with the texts analysed in Chapters 5 and 7, as the Criteria for
Selecting Texts determined in Chapter 1 were applied to the selection of texts for this chapter. The focus texts here are specifically aligned with a component of the tripartite framework developed in Chapter 3, that is, restrained anthropocentrism. It is acknowledged, however, that this arrangement while expedient may not be the same reached by other ecocritics.
As elaborated in Chapter 3, restrained anthropocentrism, or in its contemporary guise, sustainability, assumes that human control over the environment needs to be moderated by consideration for the environment. The epigraph succinctly explicates the central concern of sustainability that if humans are to be assured of favourable
216 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability conditions for survival then sustainability must be enacted. Conversely the implication is that lack of agency, towards sustainability, threatens human survival.
The use of the first person plural in the epigraph, like that in the epigraph which began this study, calls readers into positions of participation, either as individuals or as members of collaborative communities of practice, to alleviate the impact of anthropogenic environmental damage and assure a positive future. Like the preceding chapter and the one that follows, the trace of equivocation suggested by the question mark has a twofold purpose: to suggest the fluidity and complexities of sustainability as an environmental position; and to imply that representations of sustainability may not be undemanding.
In the previous chapter I examined how representations of the negative outcomes of reckless human dominion over the environment invite readers, as ecological subjects, to critique unrestrained anthropocentrism. Nevertheless, the analysis demonstrates that position is not guaranteed. Representations of ecocatastrophe in the texts are not unproblematic. I also posited that in The Tower to the Sun (Thompson, 1996) humans adapted to their less than favourable circumstances, but did not change their behaviours in favour of the environment. In Uno’s Garden (Base, 2006) and
Airdancer of Glass (Bateson, 2004) characters acted to improve their circumstances by changing their environmental practices. However, in those texts, it was the characters’ confrontations with lived ecocatastrophe, or in the case of Yoss (Hirsch,
2001), its allegorical representation, that directed their actions.
In the focus texts in this chapter, the characters do not confront ecocatastrophe but they develop as ecological subjects through their participation in environmentally
217 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability friendly and sustainable practices. Two principles of sustainability direct the characters’ actions. Firstly, The Singing Hat (Riddle, 2000), Islands in my Garden
(Howes & Harvey, 1998), My Home in Kakadu (Christophersen & Christophersen,
2005), Hope Bay (Plüss, 2005), and Blueback (Winton, 1997) depict characters who adhere to the Greenpeace principle that “caring for the environment starts in our own back yard” (2008a). Secondly, the central character in Belonging (Baker, 2004) and the characters in The Shy Mala (Stafford & Zielinski, 2006) represent ecological subjects who act in cooperation with groups such as local councils and businesses to enact sustainable practices in their immediate environment. This cooperation encapsulates another Greenpeace principle that “when local groups and communities get together and solve their problems, it is a reminder of the enormous power of the few to achieve social and environmental goods that benefit the whole community”
(2008b). Under consideration here is the idea of not just individual agency but communities of individuals who act collaboratively with shared intentions to enact sustainability.
In the focus texts, the characters develop as ecological subjects intersubjectively through their relationships with other characters and/or their interactions with the environment. Part of their developing ecological subjectivity involves what Stephens
(2002) has called “other regardingness”, in this instance, consideration for the environment. By constructing situations where characters act in accordance with environmentally sustainable practices, the texts function as models (Altieri 1994;
Stephens 2002) that offer readers insights into how the characters construct themselves and are constructed as ecological subjects. The analysis makes explicit the ways in which the characters, as ecological subjects, reflect on environmental
218 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability situations and participate purposively to uphold moral and political values of heterogeneous communities. Narrative strategies such as focalisation enable the texts to offer multiple subject positions which invite readers to negotiate their own ecological subjectivity. Furthermore, the notion of characters as sole vehicles for advocating sustainability is extended through the use of metonymy and analogy in some of the focus texts.
Individuals Enacting Sustainability
Each of the texts analysed here contains character focalisation to position readers to align with the ideological positions held by the focalisers. In these instances, the characters’ ideological positions embody tenets of restrained anthropocentrism, as articulated through the discourses of sustainability such as personal responsibility for, and active engagement with, environmental protection. By looking after their own immediate environments and/or the entities within those environments, the characters are contributing to sustainability of the environments in which they live.
The award winning picture book The Singing Hat (Riddle, 2000) 30 is a text about the choices involved in an act of care and consideration for a living creature. The central character, Colin Jenkins, initially has his position as an ecological subject thrust upon him. He is unwittingly accommodating when, while taking a lunch time nap under a tree in the park, a bird builds a nest on his head. The text presents the complexities of the choices that Colin has to face when he decides to leave the nest, complete with bird and egg on his head. Colin’s negotiation of his position as an
30 Wilderness Society Environmental Award for Children’s Literature, 2001
219 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability ecological subject poses more questions than it answers. Readers are not offered restricted identification with a single, established and stable subject position. A sophisticated blend of verbal and visual narrative strategies invites readers to engage with a range of subject positions offered, some of which do not advocate the agency required to enact sustainability. In this way readers are active participants in the creation of their own ecological subjectivity.
The cartoon-like illustrations construct Colin Jenkins as a most unlikely ecological subject for a children’s picture book: an adult male businessman who works in a city office block. Faced with the dilemma of abandoning the bird and nest (metonymic for the environment), Colin chooses to care for the nesting bird. Colin’s ecological subjectivity is not pre-existing; it is constructed partly intersubjectively with the people he encounters. For example, as Colin goes home on the train, the visual perspective positions readers to shift between Colin’s point of view and the passengers’ point of view. From Colin’s point of view (see Figure 6.1), readers can see the passengers’ faces as they “looked at him in ways that he had never been looked at before” (Riddle, 2000, unpaged). From the passengers’ point of view,
Colin, with the bird’s nest on his head, looks ridiculous.
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This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 6.1 The passengers on the train
After choosing to leave the nest in place atop his head, Colin’s willingness to safeguard the future of the bird and its egg is challenged repeatedly. Colin stands fast, however, because as he says, “it has fallen upon me to care for this nest”
(Riddle, 2000, unpaged). The seriousness of his sense of duty is greatly mocked by the word play (fallen upon). He chooses to reject his business-suited career in the corporate world, with an employer whose speech bubbles are full of columns of figures, metonymic of the ideologies of capitalism. Colin’s resolution does not waver, despite being shunned. When one of his old friends tells him, “it’s not wise to interfere with nature”, the reader is positioned to share Colin’s predicament and invited to answer the question Colin asks as his friend walks away from him “But what would you do?” (Riddle, 2000, unpaged).
Aspects of the narrative encourage an empathetic position towards Colin’s ongoing predicament. However, they provide more questions than answers. In one illustration, Colin is followed by a man “who might have been an ornithologist”.
Colin’s stance as an ecological subject is confirmed by the man’s comments: “I can’t
221 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability tell you how fortunate it is that these birds are still with us! Not a lot is known about them because sightings are so few. But what we do know…” (Riddle, 2000, unpaged). The dialogue recognises the authority of ornithological knowledge and gives credence to Colin’s actions within the concepts of species protection and sustainability. However, the trustworthiness of the ornithologist is undermined when the man’s assurance that, “The birds have gone, but they may return. That is, if I know my facts about these birds” (unpaged) is contradicted by the narratorial voice stating Colin “never saw either bird again” (unpaged). The authority of the narrator thus challenges the authority of the ornithologist, and readers, confronted with the choice of whom to believe, have to decide for themselves if Colin’s attempts to save the bird may have been in vain.
Contradictory representations of the bird also contribute to the instability of Colin’s position as an ecological subject and offer readers more choices. The bird’s threatened ecological status is affirmed by the ornithologist as “possibly the rarest in the world!” (Riddle, 2000, unpaged). This construction of the bird as a threatened species and its inability to find an appropriate place to build its nest invoke Colin’s sympathy. Visually, however, the illustrations create the bird as inconsiderate, uncompliant, and resistant, with no interest in fitting tidily into Colin’s life. Further complexities arise in the illustration (see Figure 6.2) where Colin is talking to his boss, the bird’s speech bubble, “Tweet tweet twitter twit!” is juxtaposed with the speech bubble of Colin’s boss which has columns of figures in it. Read with intertextual knowledge, the bird’s final “twit” is a vindictive exclamation, levelled at the businessman who represents contemporary capitalist obsessions with money. As a metonym for the environment, the bird vocally protests about the causes of
222 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability environmental abuse. These illustrations of the bird, however, offer both anthropomorphic and anthropocentric subject positions: the bird is being represented as a recalcitrant child, and through this act of anthropomorphism, human perspectives are being privileged.
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 6.2 The vocal bird
The text’s ending is open, leaving readers further choices. Colin is represented as an ambivalent ecological subject who “felt a near avalanche of relief” (Riddle, 2000, unpaged) when the bird and its fledgling fly away never to be seen again. Colin’s commitment to consideration for endangered species as a long term practice is uncertain. The nest becomes no more than a “pretty ornament that delighted everyone” (Riddle, 2000, unpaged). The bird’s nest, with its metonymic associations with an environment that will support future new life is reduced to a trinket that satisfies human needs. The nest/environment has been replaced to fit back into human convenience, something decorative within culture. Ambiguities are introduced when “from time to time he would find the most beautiful and improbable things…” in the nest beside the window (Riddle, 2000, unpaged). These gifts are presumably tokens of thanks from the bird and its chick that he saved, but again human ways of being are privileged. Throughout the text, the dilemmas Colin
223 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability faces offer a range of conflicting choices that afford opportunities for readers to take up or resist the ecological subject positions on offer.
Where The Singing Hat provides readers with the dilemmas an adult faces as an ecological subject, the next picture book analysed has a character that youthful readers might more easily identify with, a young child.
Islands in My Garden (Howes & Harvey, 1998) is a picture book about a young child’s suburban garden. The possessive “my”, rather than the definite article, is used throughout the narrative, implying the childish pride that might be apparent in the
“show and tell” event familiar to young school children, as well as possession. The opening double-page spread gives visual emphasis to the family’s personal commitment for living sustainably. For instance, the illustrations depict wise use of resources, recycling building materials, and vegetable growing. However, despite the cartoon-like illustrations, the text is what Belsey (2002) might classify as declarative, constructed to offer subject positions which endorse current dominant ideologies, which in this example are to do with the principles of sustainability. The garden is a metonym for the planet, and the ecological awareness and actions of the family and child jointly construct a subject position that supports sustainability for survival.
The ecological subjectivities constructed in Islands in my Garden (Howes & Harvey,
1998) are seemingly predictable and stable, but they are not unproblematic. The child character, as focalising narrator, takes up two culturally accepted but ideological positions, that of explorer and ecologist, as he leads his companions and also readers around the garden.
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Throughout the text, the children are depicted playing in a cardboard box which has a large sail attached. The “boat” provides the child characters with a playfully convenient vehicle in which to move about. The reader is interpolated in this activity by the focaliser’s direct address, “There are islands in my garden, / In a big green grassy sea” (Howes & Harvey, 1998, unpaged). The little boat is named the ‘Tom
Thumb’, after the iconic 180 centimetre boat that Matthew Flinders captained on a voyage to explore the south coast of New South Wales in 1796. The name of the boat constructs its crew (both characters and readers) as enthusiastic explorers.
However, these are not explorers who are charting unfamiliar territory, for the back garden is familiar territory for the child, thoroughly explored, settled and reshaped. If read ironically, through its allusive reference, the text challenges colonial practices of appropriating the land, settling and shaping it to serve human purposes, the unrestrained anthropocentrism practised at the time of Western/First World expansion and as discussed in Chapter 3 associated with the causes of current environmental crises. The position of explorer, with its ideological assumptions of conquest, is further complicated by the inclusion on some voyages of exploration, of botanists, for example, Sir Joseph Banks, who were keenly interested in collecting and examining local animal and plant species. However, their interests lay in the uniqueness of the odd or the new, and plants and animals collected were later regarded and displayed as trophy collections.
The position of explorer is displaced by the roving ecologist. The child character takes on the agential role of an ecologically conscious television presenter such as
David Attenborough or David Bellamy. Ecological discourses and practices that privilege the study of relationships between beings and their habitat are invoked by
225 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability the focaliser who repeatedly exhorts his companions and readers to “take a closer peek” as the boat sails around the backyard (Howes & Harvey, 1998, unpaged). The repetition of the phrase, “it looks just like [a bunch of rock, a place to play, a pile of muck] turns consistently on the conjunction “but” to reveal what was previously hidden from view. The use of the imperative tense compels readers to join in, to “get right down … poke … sneak up … and lie” (Howes & Harvey , 1998, unpaged).
In playing this role, the child character is emphasising ecological principles that everything is connected to everything else, the importance of understanding that all beings have a place in a healthy ecosystem . Readers are positioned as quasi- ecologists who understand the need for consideration of the environment, its living beings and physical elements. The ecologist’s ability for close investigation of the interrelationships between living being and habitat is imitated by the child character who uses phrases such as, “There’s a slimy trail, / some golden threads/ and tiny trees in rows” (Howes & Harvey, 1998, unpaged). These words are complemented by the illustration which draws attention to the slugs, insects and fungi that the words describe. The focaliser draws on ecological discourses to highlight the importance of understanding and preserving the “bunch of rocks”, “pile of muck” and “old dead log” as sites of biodiversity. Indeed the child narrator stresses this in the opening lines, “The islanders are bugs and birds/ and frogs and worms / and furry things… and me” (Howes & Harvey, 1998, unpaged). The child’s inclusion of me in this order of beings, places him as one of the creatures, a recognition of ecological equality or oneness that does not assert a position of human superiority.
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Readers’ positions as quasi-ecologists are complicated by humour which serves a dual function in the text. Its appeal to young readers consolidates their position as ecologists, aware of ecological interconnectedness. However, via caricature, irony and homonymic playfulness the position of quasi-ecologist is destabilised. The double-page spread that appears both before the title page and after the narrative exemplifies this (See Figure 6.3). The illustrations complement and extend the verbal text by magnifying the creatures in focus: offering exaggerated feelers; legs; and markings on ants, ladybirds, snails, dragonflies and a myriad other living beings.
This cartoon-like exaggeration undermines readers’ positions as ecologists by subverting the accuracy of recording that is a prerequisite for authentic ecological studies.
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 6.3 Islands in My Garden
Similarly, playful and humorous attention to homonymic aspects highlights the similarities and differences, and implies interconnections between humans and living beings, but ultimately has the potential to throw this ecological study into disrepute.
The insects appear to be labelled with the commonly accepted names: a fiddler beetle, a harlequin bug, a feathertail glider. Closer examination reveals: bee 1, a bee on a flower and bee 2, the letter B: slater 1 is a slater (a roof tiler), slater 2 is a bug.
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Read ironically, the humorous approach to labelling subverts serious ecological methods of classification.
The superiority of human behaviours and attributes is reinforced throughout the text by the playful personification of insects and animals. Several small, clothed creatures cycle, fly a zeppelin and kites, snorkel, skip and run through the backyard environment. The personification of the creatures in this way subverts the boy’s inclusive proposal, that he is one of the creatures, and reasserts human dominance, making the animals human, not the reverse.
The island metaphor sustained throughout the text offers a double meaning, leaving readers with choices of ecological subject positions. The child narrator’s words, “my garden is an island” are accompanied by an illustration evocative of the walled space of the backyard identified by Scutter (1993) and discussed in Chapter 2, as a retreat or escape from the frenetic city which surrounds it. However, the illustration also depicts what surrounds the fenced garden. From a reader’s perspective, the “bird’s eye view” is all encompassing. The garden of the young narrator is isolated, and there are no indications that the action taken in the back yard has been taken up beyond the fence, as a broader concern on a small community scale. The aerial view of the garden in relation to the terrace houses, factories, workshops, school and car yard which surround it offer ambiguities in relation to the mantra, “think global act local”. The garden as island is surrounded by a sea of unsustainability which goes largely unchallenged. However, some subversively humorous signs on the service
(gas) station, “FOSSIL”, and on the bowser the brand name “BAD”, offer readers
228 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability opportunities to reflect on the meanings of these signs, and their metonymic significance which extends beyond the garden to the world.
The final illustration, with its ultimately bleak depiction of the island of sustainability surrounded by a sea of less sustainable practices, allows readers to choose how they respond to it. This ending does not encapsulate the reassurance of sustainability that accompanies the Western/First World assumption that sustainability is the only hope for a harmonious future, if it is taken up by everyone.
The ending offers readers a visual choice of whether or not to become an ecological subject concerned about the environment and prepared to enact sustainability.
Another picture book that represents a child’s perspective on their immediate environment is My Home in Kakadu (Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005) 31 .
The text recognises the contribution Indigenous understandings make to the ecologically sustainable use of the Australian environment. The analysis that follows is guided by the postcolonial way of reading recommended by Bradford (2001) and outlined in Chapter 4, Postcolonial Methodologies , which suggests examining how non-Aboriginal readers are positioned to align themselves with Aborigines; how
Aboriginal relationships with the environment are represented; and how Aboriginal people are constructed as subjects. Therefore, the analysis below demonstrates how the picture book represents Tarrah as an ecological subject, how her ecological subjectivity is constructed, and how readers are offered positions aligned with her.
31 In Chapter 1, I acknowledged the language group and tribal area of the author, Jane Christophersen, and illustrator, Christine Christophersen. 229 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability
This text differs from Islands in My Garden (Howes & Harvey, 1998) on three counts: firstly, it is a “true” story; secondly, it is narrated and focalised by an
Indigenous Australian child; and thirdly, the family home exists in a heritage listed
National Park, not a densely populated city suburb. Where Islands in My Garden uses verbal and visual narrative strategies which construct ecological subject positions inscribed with Western understandings of ecology and the need to act to protect the local environment, My Home in Kakadu uses similar strategies to create ecological subjects inscribed with aspects of Indigenous ways of engaging with their local environment. My Home in Kakadu is not a creation story 32 and consequently does not set out to present a view of Indigenous ‘relatedness’ in terms of what
Martin (2008a) describes as three knowledge bands: ways of knowing, being, and doing. It does, however, represent one characteristic of that relatedness, what Martin states is
‘growing up the country’ where it is the role and responsibility of people to understand and live in relatedness to take care of certain parts of the land, and the animals, plants, skies, climate and waterways within. In western scientific understandings this is an ecological system in which every part is somehow connected, or related to everything else. (Martin, 2008a, p.29)
This Indigenous picture book, therefore, like Islands in My Garden (Howes &
Harvey, 1998) analysed above, advocates sustainable human engagement with the environment, and offers readers intersubjective experiences with characters who model ways of enacting sustainability.
32 As stated in Chapter One, Parameters of the Study , it is not within the scope of this study to examine the construction of ecological subjectivities in the Creation or First Stories of Indigenous Australians. 230 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability
Peritextual features locate My Home in Kakadu squarely in Belsey’s (2002) declarative mode. While it is not a fictional narrative, the text functions in the same way as classic realism to construct a single, stable subject position for readers which is aligned with the young person whose home is the focus of the text . The front cover depicts a naïve painting where a young girl, holding a small animal in one outstretched hand, looks out of the illustration directly towards readers, inviting them to join her in the frame. Her home is depicted in the painting as surrounded by an expanse of grass where wallabies graze, eagles fly in the sky, and a frilled lizard and dragonfly move out of the painting’s frame. Readers can predict that the story will be told from the youngster’s point of view and they will be taken along with the girl as she reveals her home to them. The animals and birds depicted indicate that the child’s home offers a different range of animals and birds from those found in the local environments of many Australian children. The illustrations of the uniquely
Australian fauna excite readers’ curiosity and invite them to learn more about the
Kakadu environment.
The back cover confirms this assumption. The imperative tense impels readers to
“Join Tarrah as she goes out with her family gathering bush tucker”, but also immediately indicates an Indigenous dimension, alerting readers that the story originates with one of Tarrah’s grandmothers, “a respected elder”, and will reveal
“the beauty of life in Kakadu National Park and the significance of the changing seasons to those who live there.” The cover, with its realistic yet naïve painting, the exhortation to readers, and the authoritative explanation of the story’s foundation, function to align readers with the young child, and has prepared them that her point of view may not be traditionally Western.
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Other peritextual features strengthen readers’ willingness to accept the text’s
Indigenous perspective. Inside the back cover, both author and illustrator are pictured and give accounts of their reasons for creating the text. Jane Christophersen, as author, stresses that her concerns, rooted in Indigenous knowledge, “the wonders of daily life in the bush such as hunting or learning how to read animal tracks”, are not just for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her stories exist in the spirit of intergenerational justice for all Australians, to ensure the importance of learning about and caring for the environment. Readers are being offered a single and stable position where they are invited to be learners, willing to learn from Indigenous knowledge.
It is Tarrah, as narrator and focaliser, who shares her daily life in Kakadu Park with readers. A photograph, placed before the title page, shows Tarrah holding Mary, the possum. As Belsey (2002) proposes, the reality of the text, in this instance implied by the photograph’s high modality, suggests obvious readings, and positions readers to accept what they are being told. The photograph implies that Tarrah is trustworthy, and knowledgeable about the environment and its inhabitants. As an ecological subject, she appears confident and comfortable with the possum. The text holds up Tarrah’s ecological subjectivity as a model for readers which, according to
Altieri (1994) Stephens (2002), thus allows readers opportunities to see how Tarrah constructs her ecological subjectivity.
Tarrah begins the narrative by introducing herself and establishing her credentials as an ecological subject with an expression of her love for “the many animals found in
Kakadu” and her ability to feed the wallabies “who get in through the fence”
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(Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005, unpaged). Her daily routine includes a bus trip to school, but a bus trip that offers the possibility of seeing crocodiles or wallabies. Tarrah’s powers of observation, however, are not restricted to these most obvious creatures, for she also notes that when the roadside trees are flowering she and her family will be eating “juicy plums”. From here, Tarrah’s narration, as it sets down layers of details of seasonal changes and the impact they have, demonstrates the depth of her understandings of the environment.
For Tarrah, there are six seasons in Kakadu, not just the two that non-Indigenous people might describe: the Wet and the Dry. Readers’ acceptance of Tarrah’s understandings is directed by peritextual information which describes the six seasons using Buntij language alongside English. The descriptions detail the characteristics of each climatic variation and the foods associated with it. For example,
“Banggereng – March to May” is a time of “Knock-em down rains. Yamitj, the long- horned grasshopper, sings out that the yams are ready to dig up” (Christophersen &
Christophersen, 2005, unpaged). These details, provided presumably by Jane
Christophersen, are well understood by Tarrah who incorporates into her narrative how she acquires this knowledge. In other words, the text demonstrates how Tarrah’s ecological subjectivity is constructed intersubjectively through her relationships with her parents and extended family.
Tarrah narrates how she and her family engage with the environment. She goes fishing with her family, but also finds waterlilies which she harvests, then chews the crunchy stems that taste like celery. After the Wet, she and her family gather water yams that grow around the edge of billabongs. Tarrah carefully details how the yams
233 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability are collected and cooked in the ash from a fire created in a sand pit. This information, told in a child’s voice and language, allows Indigenous ways of gathering and eating food to be placed before readers so that they can see the environment from Tarrah’s perspective, not sensational or extraordinary, something to be surprised or alarmed by, but an everyday occurrence.
These traditional ways of engaging with the environment are part of Tarrah’s life and she acknowledges the sources of her understandings with respect. For example, her two grandmothers are elders of two clans that are traditional owners of Kakadu, the
Buntij and the Murrumburr (Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005, unpaged). For
Tarrah, they are “important teachers and they show us the different tracks made by buffaloes, pigs, horses, dingoes, goannas and snakes” (Christophersen &
Christophersen, 2005, unpaged). Her father teaches her and her brothers about the smells and tracks of crocodiles, while later in the text the whole family goes camping so that the children can learn how to cook bush tucker. As Tarrah’s mother states,
“It’s important for you to learn the right way to clean and cook and the proper way of sharing” (Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005, unpaged). All this instruction is not depicted as anything out of the ordinary; it is considered essential learning which
Tarrah and her brothers need if they are to understand their relatedness to everything in the environment. Tarrah’s development as a mature ecological subject is assured because of her family’s commitment and involvement with sharing their ways of engaging with the environment.
The illustrations, which complement the verbal text, offer readers further opportunities to identify with Tarrah’s perspective. Varying in size and placement,
234 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability and painted in colours that encapsulate the strong colours of Australia’s most northern areas, the illustrations allow readers to judge and confirm the truth of what
Tarrah is telling them. By being well contained within the page and surrounded by white space, the illustrations place readers outside the text, but the front-on, mid- distance perspective means readers can be part of the scene too (see Figure 6.4).
Tarrah is in each image, enacting sustainability: fishing, tracking, cooking, gathering bark, wood and leaves. She and her family maintain traditional Indigenous ways of engaging with the environment.
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 6.4 Tarrah and her family
The ending of the text restates Tarrah’s confidence in her position as an ecological subject: “I know I’m very lucky to live here and as I grow up I’m learning all about the animals, insects, birds and wildlife of the Park … I love my home in Kakadu”
(Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005, unpaged). However, an equivocal note is added by her question, “When I see the tourists travelling through Kakadu, I wonder if they think it is beautiful? (Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005, unpaged).
While they may not be able to engage in the sustainable practices that Tarrah and her
235 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability family enact, Tarrah’s sincere hope is that non-Indigenous tourists will share her love for Kakadu, even though their engagement with it is only temporary. Readers’ engagement with the text is only temporary, but the opportunities they are offered to align themselves with Tarrah present them with spaces in which to consider their understandings of sustainability.
The analysis above examined developing ecological subjectivities and agency in three picture books. The analysis of two young adult novels that follows examines the construction of the ecological subjectivities of the central characters, Possum in
Hope Bay (Plüss, 2005) and Abel in Blueback (Winton, 1997). Both Possum and
Abel live in out-of-the-way coastal environments, and both young people relate intersubjectively with supportive, ecologically conscious adults. The texts represent the multiplicity of choices the young characters confront as they develop into mature ecological subjects. The texts position readers to empathise with the characters as they enact sustainable lifestyles but also negotiate shifting anthropocentric and ecocentric sensibilities.
Personal responsibility towards the environment is represented in the award winning, young adult novel, Hope Bay by Nicole Plüss (2005). 33 Olga, the main adult character, enacts sustainable principles in her daily life. In the contemporary time frame and setting of the text, she lives frugally, eschewing modern conveniences, leaving very light ecological footprints on the island where she lives with her sister
Stella. Olga has a well developed sense of herself as an ecological subject and faith
33 This text was awarded the Wilderness Society Environment Award for Children’s Literature, 2006 .
236 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability in her own agency. Each day she feeds a pod of dolphins that swims up to her as she stands in the shallow waters of the bay. Possum, a young girl who lives on the island with her family, shares Olga’s interactions with the dolphins and yearns for the confident ecological consciousness she recognises in Olga. The narrative traces
Possum’s developing ecological subjectivity as a consequence of her close relationship with Olga, the tourists who visit the island, and her own interactions with the environment of Hope Bay. Possum struggles with her ecological subjectivity – her interactions with the environment comprise a tussle between preserving the environment as she knows it, and the burgeoning tourist industry which will ensure a family income.
The text interweaves two time frames (World War II and the present) and two settings (Rotterdam and Hope Bay, Australia), and has two focalisers (Olga and
Possum). It is not the purpose of this analysis to linger on Olga’s accounts of
Rotterdam in WW II, but the narrative interweaving reveals Olga’s ecological consciousness is constructed as a response to her wartime experiences. Olga’s use of the environment as an escape from her past draws on the marine pastoral discussed in Chapter 2. Unlike the temporary escapes that this trope valorises, Olga’s marine experiences are a permanent part of her life and her ecological agency has an enduring two fold purpose, to sustain herself emotionally, as well as to sustain the environment of Hope Bay.
Olga’s bond with the environment is represented metaphorically and positions readers to empathise with Olga’s need for the environment. At one point, female reproductive capabilities are invoked: As Olga emerges from the bush, the narrator
237 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability comments: “the bush decided to deliver Olga” (Plüss, 2005, p. 110). A short while later, a different metaphorical union, as dancing partner, is included in Possum’s thoughts as she watches Olga embracing a tree:
With each breath they grew stronger until not even the earth would hold them. Dirt slipped from their roots. Upper branches swung free. The bush faded into a wash of green and grey as they swayed together, floating in and around the other trees and rocks. Weight and counterweight. Dip and turn. The skirt of thick roots brushed the earth. The heavy green headdress rushed in the wind… An old woman and a tree danced as one. (Plüss, 2005, p. 113)
Olga’s oneness with the environment is a strong component of her ecological subjectivity, but she too wrestles with conflicting positions. Olga wants the dolphins to come to her so that she can feed them: she wants to feel that she has some control over them, despite her sister Stella’s protests that they are wild (p. 63). Later in the narrative, Possum acknowledges that Olga “understood the madness of needing to be close while knowing that she never could be” (p. 112). Finally, in death, Olga becomes one with the environment, when Stella and Possum scatter her ashes into the turbulent sea on the far side of the island.
Possum’s ecological subjectivity develops across a series of narrative events. It is fluid, in keeping with her age, and her sense of self as an ecological subject shifts between simplistic understandings and more complex appreciation. Initially, Possum sees her ecological self as lacking sensitivity that can transcend ordinary emotion.
She wishes she were able to “feel” the presence of the dolphins and understand what she perceives as the magic of it (p. 13). At times, her pursuit of an ecological subjectivity is singularly focused, but misguided. For example, she shows a lack of compassion for an old woman on the jetty who takes the small fish for bait. At other
238 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability times, the singular focus makes Possum behave as the eco police, when she berates honeymooners who have picked a flower on the hillside.
By naming the dolphins, Possum anthropomorphises them: the similarities to humans in the dolphins behavioural patterns – caring for their young, living in communal groups, and communicating to one another – are reflected in the names she chooses for them: the oldest male is grandfather; the scarred male veteran is
Warrior; the Mother is Blossom; the single young males are Splish, Splash, and
Spray. Initially she chooses the name Tulip for Blossom’s calf, but towards the end of the novel she questions the naming process. Possum realises that choices made to name the dolphins, as well as luring them in to be fed, are attempts to domesticate them. Despite Possum’s strong desire to connect with the dolphins she realises, when trying to tell the unconscious and dying Olga what has been happening in the bay, that she “could hardly speak on behalf of the dolphins. She didn’t know how they were feeling or if they even had feelings. The only feelings she could speak of were her own” (p. 214). At this point, Possum displays well considered ecological sensitivity and awareness.
Possum’s ecological subjectivity is complicated by the potential the dolphins have for the growth of tourism in the bay. From her perspective, it is permissible for her to feed the dolphins: she lives there, but she does not want the tourists to feed them, she wants a monopoly on her special relationship with them. Possum’s behaviour is consistent with the solipsism of adolescence. Possum’s personal growth in understanding is indicative of the ethical dilemmas inherent in all instances of cetaceans as spectacle, particularly when they are in their natural habitat. Possum
239 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability recognises that she shares a desire with the tourists: the wish to come to the island and see these things because the dolphins are “a sign that not all was lost. That the relentless laying of concrete and stacking of bricks hadn’t wiped out everything.
There were pockets of resistance. Small outposts of wildlife” (p. 190).
Hope Bay offers readers an open ending. Possum is aware that human contact is the greatest threat the dolphins face and she struggles with the choice she must make between her own selfishness and abandoning her connections with the dolphins. In the novel’s last page, Possum lays out her desires for readers to consider, but leaves her decision about how she will act upon them, unstated:
She wanted this young dolphin to be part of her life. To watch it surge through the water towards her without fear. To feel the exhilaration of a wild creature at her side. She wanted to name it the way people do. Claim it as hers. She wanted to believe that with new life there was also the chance to get it right … She stood in the place where Olga had been. The bracelet was around her own wrist. The choice was hers alone. (p. 268)
Here, Possum is faced with what she wished for in the opening pages, the chance to act as a confident ecological subject. With the ability “to call” the dolphins to her,
Possum wants the experience, “to watch” and “to feel the exhilaration” but her thoughts describe the dilemma she is mentally trying to process. She articulates the emotional need to keep the newly born dolphin in her life, through her repeated use of “wanted” and her desire to name the dolphin as a sign of possession. Her developed sense of self as an ecological subject exists in the acknowledgment that she has a choice with regard to the dolphin’s survival. She realises that choice is hers to make, and it may be different from Olga’s.
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Generations sharing environmental concerns are a feature of Blueback (Winton,
1997). In a secluded part of the Western Australian coastline surrounded by National
Park, and with only rainwater and no mains electricity, Dora and her son Abel rely on what they can grow on land and harvest from the sea. Placing their livelihood second to conservation, they enact sustainability by recycling kelp and fish for fertilisers for the orchard, and harvesting only enough abalone to make a living and
“leaving the rest to breed and grow” (Winton, 1997, p. 8). The text traces Abel’s growth from boyhood to adulthood, using the vehicle of his ecological subjectivity, which develops through his intersubjective relations with his mother, his social experiences with other characters who inhabit the bay, and also interdiscursively through his studies as a marine biologist. As a classic realist text, with a third person narrator, and focalised through Abel’s eyes, Blueback offers readers positions aligned with the young man as he reflects on and comes to understand his engagement with the environment, an engagement that is realised in anthropocentric practices guided by ecocentric understandings.
Before turning to the analysis of the narrative construction of Abel’s ecological subjectivity, however, two epigraphic quotations that precede the narrative foreshadow the ecological subjectivities of the main characters .
….for today, for a while, his eyes are open harbours And the dolphins of his thoughts cannot obscure (look down) the coral bones of all our ancestors. Randolph Stow Portrait of Luke
… As for us We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from. Robinson Jeffers Carmel Point (Winton, 1997, unpaged)
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The quotations, through the metaphoric linking of coral, bones, rock, and ocean, together with the imperative “We must Uncenter … We must unhumanize our views a little” imply an ecological subjectivity that acknowledges humans are not the centre from which all else radiates. It is inferred that humans are linked to everything else in the environment, through their origins in an ancient, marine world. These quotations suggest ecocentric perspectives may be inscribed in the narrative and provide opportunities for readers to consider alternatives to anthropocentrism.
The authority of the third person narrator affords readers an understanding of Abel’s developing ecological subjectivity which has been nurtured through his relationship with his mother: “Everything he knew on land or under the sea he learned from her”
(Winton, 1997, p. 6). Dora’s ecological subjectivity is metaphorically linked with the environment - “[Abel] “liked to watch his mother cruise down into the deep in her patchy wetsuit. She looked like a scarred old seal in that thing. She was a beautiful swimmer, relaxed and strong” (Winton, 1997, p. 6). Elsewhere, Abel reinforces this sentiment by describing his mother floating in the ocean with her trailing hair looking like kelp (p. 31). Dora Jackson, echoing the epigraphic quotations, speaks of her understandings of the sea, “‘We come from water,’ she whispered. ‘We belong to it, Abel.’”(p. 145).
Ultimately it is Dora’s well developed ecological subjectivity that contributes to the sustainability of the environment. Through an act of unselfish ecocentrism, she donates her land to extend the national park so that future generations may enjoy the bay, not as owners having dominion over it, but more as friends understanding and appreciating it, and experiencing a connection to it. Dora mounts a five year
242 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability campaign to save the bay from developers who envisage Dora’s land and water frontage as the ideal site for a hotel, golf course, swimming pool and marina. The fat blue face of the groper is used on the hundreds of letters Dora writes to politicians, businesses and scientists. In keeping with the tenets of sustainability, where individuals act together with governments, the recipients of Dora’s letters enact legislation which establish the bay as a marine sanctuary.
However, it is Abel’s growth as an ecological subject that offers readers opportunities to align themselves with him and take up the positions he assumes. For
Abel, the sea is a life force. When diving for abalone he feels it “pulsing under him”
(p. 4). The interconnectedness of human and non-human is expressed by Abel as part of his being and belonging, an experience for both him and his mother. They remember his dead father through a peppermint tree, “stout and sinewy” with fragrant leaves (1997, p. 51). Abel presses “his cheek against the rough bark” (1997, p. 51) and later hugs “the thick trunk” (1997, p. 136). These strong metaphorical connections woven through the narrative persuade readers of their authenticity and suggest the validity of ecocentric perspectives.
Alternatively, readers are told of Abel’s more practical actions. As an ecological subject, he enacts sustainable practices and models his agency for readers. He takes only “a couple of abalone from each clump, leaving the rest to breed and grow”
(Winton, 1997, p. 8). Each day, after breakfast, Abel collects seaweed from the beach to put on the fruit trees in the garden. Similarly, he and his mother use pilchards and fish dug into the sand as fertiliser for “the fig trees and the apricots.
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There were orange and lemon trees in the orchard as well as olives and mulberries …
Abel and his mother lived off the sea and the land” (p. 19).
Through the third person narrator, readers are alerted to what Abel thought about the environment as a young child: “Abel loved being underwater. He was ten years old and could never remember a time when he could not dive … His whole life was the sea or the bush” (p. 13). When Abel is sent to boarding school, as he leaves the bay he laments, “I’ll wither up and die away from this place … This is my place. This is where I belong” (p. 52).
Readers are also privy to Abel’s experiences of the bay as a changing environment threatened by toxicity, climate change, anthropocentric greed, and the type of tourist development of the bay that is redolent of capitalist enterprises given free reign.
Pilchards die in their thousands along the nearby coastline, the puzzle of the deaths is beyond rationality, the ocean is described as “sick” (p. 106). The break-up of an oil tanker causes pollution that moves beyond Longboat Bay and threatens other marine and coastal habitats. Climate change results in seasonal disturbances such as the wild storm that exposes the whale bones from the bay’s earlier existence. When Costello the fisherman arrives in the bay, driven by greed he plunders the reef, and exhibits callous disregard for marine life by his inhumane treatment of a tiger shark. This incident teaches Abel “that there was nothing in nature as cruel and savage as a greedy human being” (p. 91).
As an adult, however, on his return to the bay, the environment impacts all his senses:
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At sunset he stood on the jetty and watched a big blue shadow circle beneath him and peel off into the golden light. The wind luffed at this hair. Cicadas in the dry grass clicked their tongues. Crabs bubbled and clattered across the rocks. Whalebones made a chain all the way along the beach, yellow in the sunset. Abel felt the place was calling him; it made him dizzy. (1997, p. 136)
The narrative description once again is reminiscent of the opening epigraphs. Human and marine interconnections offer Abel (and readers) an experience that is more than scientific, rational knowledge. Abel casts in doubt the value of his scientific training as a marine biologist to explain the environment, and throws into focus the unreliability of conceptualising environmental issues as scientific phenomena alone.
He values intuitive, experiential and practical knowledge which he articulates thus:
All these years I just wanted to know about the sea. I’ve been everywhere, I’ve studied, I’ve given lectures, become a bigshot. But you know, my mother is still the one who understands it. She doesn’t go anywhere at all. She grows vegetables and eats fish. And she’s saved a place. I’m a scientist, a big cheese, but I’ve never saved a place. She learnt by staying put, by watching and listening. Feeling things. She didn’t need a computer and two degrees and a frequent flyer program. She’s part of the bay. That’s how she knows it. (1997, p. 129)
The sensory impact of the environment on the adult Abel is a continuation of his childhood responses to it. He reiterates the embodiment or immersion in the environment with which the narrative began, when as a young child he first met the eponymous groper while diving with his mother. As well as being an agent for sustainability, Abel’s ecological subjectivity is shaped be ecocentric perspectives that move beyond an anthropocentric appreciation of the intrinsic value of the environment towards ecocentric understandings that recognise humans as part of the environment not apart from it.
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The textual analysis above demonstrates how the dominant environmental discourse of sustainability informs the construction of individual ecological subjects who reflect on, and take action to conserve, certain environmental conditions. The analysis that follows demonstrates how groups of individuals can act collectively to achieve sustainable environmental practices.
Communities of Participants Enacting Sustainability
The two picture books analysed below represent differences in characters’ developing ecological subjectivities. Tracy, the central character in Belonging
(Baker, 2004), develops her ecological subjectivity as a result of her concern for her immediate environment. She relates intersubjectively with others who share that concern and in acts of collaborative, community practice they rehabilitate an inner urban area. In contrast, the characters in The Shy Mala (Stafford & Zielinksi, 2006) live in a remote area of central Australia but also work in collaborative partnerships to ensure the survival of an endangered species.
In declarative texts, Belsey (2002) suggests, the apparent truthfulness of the texts encourages readers to take up the subject positions constructed in the texts. The carefully controlled, naturalistic collages of the picture book Belonging (Baker,
2004), construct a reliable view through the window frame of an inner city terrace house to the front garden, with narrow streets and a conventionally bland cityscape beyond that is recognisably Sydney. The achievement of an identifiable urban environment is critical because Belonging is a narrative told through illustrations alone. This is not to say it is a wordless picture book, rather, words embedded in the illustrations form part of the pictorial narrative that portrays how urban renewal can be achieved. If the attainability of the transformation that occurs is to be believed,
246 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability the reader needs to accept the truthfulness of the illustrations and what they make explicit and imply about ecological subjects as members of collaborative communities.
The juxtaposition of the cover illustrations positions the reader to assess what is preferable against what is not. On the front cover (see Figure 6.5), an aerial perspective shows rows of dull, corrugated iron roofs and uniform high-rise windows, the outcome of development and human apathy towards the environment.
The back cover offers readers an uplifting contrast. The inner city slum has been transformed into a visually appealing urban area with tree-lined streets. The process of transformation forms the visual narrative contained within the covers.
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 6.5 The front cover of Belonging
Each of the illustrations contained in the text positions the reader to share the same view as the owner of the room, the central character, Tracy. The text follows Tracy’s growth from babyhood to maturity as indicated by the objects in the foreground of each illustration: for example, a new baby card, a mug with coloured felt pens, soft
247 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability toys, a hand drawn ruler on the wall to measure a child’s height. Tracy herself looks out through the window at age 10, and again as an adolescent, although in this illustration she is more self-absorbed with her make-up mirror on the windowsill than with the view outside. However, these small changes contribute to a continual shift between the foreground, the window frame, and the background, the garden beyond, and thus draw the reader’s attention to noting carefully what has changed in each place.
It is in the process of observing the intricate details of the background, the change from bland and lifeless to vibrant and life-affirming, that provides the reader with a perspective on Tracy’s developing ecological subjectivity. Personal responsibility for the environment is initially assumed by Tracy’s parents and pertains only to their immediate environment, the front yard. As Tracy grows up, the scope of responsibility changes, to include Tracy, under the encouragement of the neighbour with his gift of a plant, together with more local residents.
Tracy’s agential development is a part of a burgeoning community agency. In one illustration, graffiti on a wall, “from little things big things grow”, foreshadows the importance of small action having ramifications, and the ultimate success of the transformative project. 34 While a sign on a building advocates “reclaim your street”, and a hand-painted stop sign on the road surface is joined with “who really owns the street”, local residents are depicted actively engaging in the regeneration of the streetscape and enjoying the newly created pedestrian precinct. Ultimately this space
34 The title of a song written by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly in the 1980s, tracing strike action by members of the Gurindji tribe which ultimately lead to the recognition of land rights and the return of land to them. 248 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability becomes the setting for Tracy’s outdoor wedding, an event shared by the local community who contributed so much over the twenty-two year period that is has taken to achieve this green sanctuary.
Community agency is represented through illustrations which provide evidence of local government support: a council truck delivers “local plants” and the street is officially closed to traffic; while in the same illustration, the word “Sorry” is written in the sky. The skywriting contextualises the illustration within the timeframe of
Indigenous pleas for an official apology for the stolen generations, 35 but also implies the need non-Indigenous Australians to apologise for the unconsidered treatment of the original environment and to act to make amends. In the upper quarter of the frame where the message appears in clear blue sky above skyscrapers, a ‘Coca-cola’ sign and a sign “the world’s biggest” contrasts with the lower half and right hand quadrant where the twelve year old Tracy works in the garden, and the allotment opposite is being transformed.
Furthermore, government involvement is indicated by the plants and trees that line the main road which leads, not to a space crowded with high-rise buildings, but to a park with a lake. Indicators of legislative support are also evident in the gradual diminution of visual advertising in the form of billboards and hoardings. There is a shift from an abundance of signs in the initial illustrations to a paucity of signs
35 “Sorry” has been the catchcry of those Australians who desire reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through an acknowledgment that European settlement was an invasion of occupied land rather than occupation of a “terra nullius”. In the first sitting of Federal Parliament in 2008, after being elected Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd apologised on behalf of the Australian government and non-Indigenous Australians. 249 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability because the signs have not been permitted and those that exist are partially obscured by vegetation.
Signage is also used, through its verbal text, to comment on contemporary consumer society, and indicate how sustainability of the environment may be aligned with a parallel increase in concern and care for human beings. The advertising signs in the earlier pages of the book suggest omnipresent and rampant consumption. Familiar advertising slogans proclaim: “Better than best”, “Buy one get one free”, “pay less, pay cash”, “grab a bargain, guaranteed lowest prices”. These signs are juxtaposed with the graffiti of those who are unable to keep up with the pressure to consume. In the earlier illustrations, on the walls that surround the space that is transformed, hand scrawled messages scream: “idiot, damage”, “pain”, while a homeless youth crouches below. With poses of desperation, head in hands, the foetal position, the illustrations of the youth are indicative of a society that fails to take responsibility for other human beings. The irony is further compounded by the initial purpose of the site which is “BRB smash repairs”. In the later illustrations, the Edenic setting is complete with an abundance of flora and fauna, and relaxed, companionable human beings.
Tracey’s growing ecological subjectivity parallels the transition from the front cover to the back. From the muted colours of the concrete and the rust of the corrugated fence with the only vegetation being weeds, the final collage is alive with trees and vegetation that create a welcoming and suitable environment for rosellas, lorikeets, cockatoos, and possums. The representation of Australian plant and animal species, with detailed accuracy, readily conveys the importance of creating an environment
250 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability that will sustain unique Australian species. Tracy’s ultimate contribution to enacting sustainability is the establishment of “Tracy’s Forest” on the site of a car yard which featured, almost out of view from the window, but which maintained a ubiquitous presence throughout the book. Tracy’s position as local native plant specialist ensures her role as advocate and agent for urban renewal, and the inclusion in the last illustration in the book of Tracy’s child, represent Tracy’s contribution towards and concern for her own and future generations.
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 6.6 The back cover of Belonging
Whereas Belonging is a text which represents collective involvement in urban renewal, The Shy Mala (Stafford & Zielinksi, 2006) 36 is set in a remote rural area of central Australia. Nevertheless, the picture book functions to raise readers’ consciousness about the need for species conservation and the successful strategy of
36 An alternative spelling is marla. In non-Indigenous terminology the mala is also known as the rufous hare wallaby. “Weighing less than 1.4 kilograms, [the mala] once inhabited the spinifex and hummock grasslands of the central deserts. It eats a variety of grasses, seeds, bulbs and sedges, plus some insects in the dry periods. The Mala was once a common species but suffered a population collapse in the mid-twentieth century due to a poorly understood combination of drought, fire, predation from feral cats and foxes, and competition from introduced herbivores such as rabbits” (Stafford & Zielinksi, 2006, unpaged) 251 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability the combined ecological agency acknowledged by the Greenpeace statement quoted at the beginning of this chapter, “when local groups and communities get together and solve their problems, it is a reminder of the enormous power of the few to achieve social and environmental goods that benefit the whole community” (2008b).
As the text opens, readers see why the mala is in need of conservation: threatening foxes (one looking directly out of the page, the other leaping across the page); and on the full page opposite, a large, feral cat menacingly staring with its amber eyes, its mouth open, striding towards the reader as if about to pounce. In the text, the combined efforts of Indigenous people and rangers involved in a collaborative project save the mala from these threats and she is taken from the western desert north of Alice Springs in central Australia to a reserve in south western Australia, where, as the text ends, the illustration reveals the contentment a mother and joey, sleeping peacefully in a secure setting.
Here, the analysis of this text is informed by postcolonial methodologies introduced in Chapter 4, and the Indigenous understandings of relatedness outlined in Chapter 3, in Contemporary Connections: Sustainability . In the same section of Chapter 3, it was also noted that the Australian Environmental Protection and Biodiversity
Conservation Act (1999) states among its objectives, the recognition of “the role of indigenous people in the conservation and ecologically sustainable use of Australia’s biodiversity; and to promote the use of indigenous people’s knowledge of biodiversity with the involvement of, and in co-operation with, the owners of the knowledge”. The focus of the analysis is on how the text, as a picture book based on a factual account, represents the inclusive practices advocated by Government
252 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability legislation, as well as the effectiveness of collaborative agency to enact biodiversity conservation which is an essential component of sustainability.
This focus enables the analysis of the same verbal and visual narrative strategies as the fictional texts already discussed in this chapter, to demonstrate how Aboriginal engagement with the environment is represented alongside non-Aboriginal engagement with the environment; how Aboriginal people are constructed as ecological subjects within the understandings prescribed by this study; and how readers are invited to share the subject positions of the participants in the text.
One of the strongest features of The Shy Mala (Stafford & Zielinksi, 2006) is the shared responsibility assumed by all groups involved in the efforts to conserve the mala species. Factual information about the conservation project, included in the peritext, indicates the inclusivity of attempts to save the Mala but also the collaborative agency enacted. Throughout this description, both government agencies and the Warlpiri people are represented as equal partners in the project.
Initially, to build up numbers of mala in their original habitat, the Warlpiri agreed to establish a captive breeding program and when this was successful,
they decided to send thirty mala to the Dryandra Woodland in the South west of Western Australia … The mala are kept in a special enclosure called Barna Mia, with restricted access to people, and fenced from predators like cats and foxes. Other species in the enclosure are boodies, bilbies, marl and mernine. The mala are now part of the western Shield program run by CALM (Department of Conservation and Land Management) … In late 2005 a number of mala were reintroduced into a fenced enclosure in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Anangu Aboriginal elders celebrated their return.
This excerpt from the peritext is significant for several reasons. As factual information, it sets up ways for readers to engage with the text. It provides readers
253 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability with an authoritative indication of the decision making power of the Warlpiri and their willingness to have the mala, a culturally significant animal for them, taken away from their traditional environment. Moreover, it acknowledges another tribal group, the Anangu, traditional owners of Uluru, as collaborative partners in the project. This acknowledgement establishes for readers that Aboriginal Australians are not represented as one homogeneous group; the appropriate differentiation between tribes is being made. Similarly, elsewhere in the text, it is stated that the
Nyoongah people of south-west, Western Australia, use the term “wurrup” to refer to the mala. This example, and the inclusion of Aboriginal languages alongside English in the peritext, is what Bradford calls an instance of “affirmative appropriation”
(Bradford, 2001, p. 141), and suggests that Western epistemologies are not privileged over Indigenous epistemologies.
Information included in the peritext also offers readers positions from which to examine Aboriginal relatedness to the environment. The foreword by Boori Pryor 37 , an Aboriginal writer and performer, expounds the timeless connections between
Indigenous Australians, storytelling, and an environment “shaped by scorching sun and crying rain that is only unforgiving if it is not being listened to by all things that live among its majestic sunsets” (Stafford & Zielinksi, 2006, unpaged). Such an environment is represented illustratively by the horizon being placed high in the frame so that more earth than sky is depicted. Throughout the text, as the mala journeys across Australia as part of a conservation program, the environment is represented in the same natural, rich, earthy hues. The predominant colours used
37 Boori Pryor is a descendant of the Birrigubba people from Bowen, North Queensland, and the Kungganji and Kukuimudji people from Yarrabah, North Queensland. 254 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability throughout suggest an immediate affinity with the desert environment. Beginning with the reddish ochres of the cover, with its gentle pastel depiction of the shy mala and its bands of human and animal footprints across both top and bottom, the illustrations represent the empathetic links between the environment and its human and non-human inhabitants.
Although the Western representational style creates European requirements of ecological accuracy to show the detail of the mala’s long feet, and long tail, eyes, ears and suggestions of its hair, it is the use of earthy fawns, yellows, and oranges throughout the text which respectfully signifies an Indigenous relatedness with all aspects of the environment.
Through the illustrations, readers are offered a view of the non-disruptive presence of the Warlpiri people in their land. Figure 6.7 depicts a Warlpiri woman sitting still enough for the mala to come close to approach her.
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 6.7 The shy mala
However, the text does not depict the Warlpiri passively accepting the mala’s fate.
The narration constructs the Warlpiri as ecological subjects with agency. They are
255 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability credited with recognising the need to act to do something for the mala. The narrative that accompanies an illustration of several community members seated with a
Ranger, “The elders held a meeting and spoke to the people. The people spoke to the
Rangers. They told of their fears” (Stafford & Zielinksi, 2006, unpaged) constructs the Warlpiri with agency.
Although it is the rangers who come to the desert and trap the mala and transfer it, the narrative is told and focalised through a narrator, with the suggestion of an
Indigenous voice. The verbal narrative of the mala’s journey which accompanies the illustrations is in the form of a third person narrator who also serves as focaliser.
There is a suggestion of an Indigenous voice, for the ecological details are not presented in a Western scientific voice. The register is that of a calm and serene narrative rather than an objective report. With a non-judgemental tone, the narrator adds details to the illustrations. The mala named Warla (the Warlpiri meaning is to depend on another for well being) is not sentimentalised. Ecological statements are straightforward, “Warla darted from her hideout and zigzagged across the desert./
She was a night-time animal, but she had no choice:/ she had to find another place to hide” (unpaged). The threat to her survival is bluntly phrased, “soon there would be few of her kind left” (unpaged). The mala is only personified to the extent that when trapped the narration states, Warla “became more and more stressed”. Later when being moved across country, “The movement of the vehicle went on and on. Strange smells and sounds surrounded her. She could only wait and hope for it to end.”
Although these are descriptions of human emotions, animals under duress exhibit physical signs of trauma.
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The narration also hints at the sanctity of the relationship the Warlpiri have with the threatened species. On one double page spread depicting two Warlpiri women and a girl surrounded by red earth and ant hills, the narrator says, “the Warlpiri people understood. The mala were their story and their totem. They had to hang on to the story for new generations” (unpaged). More than intergenerational justice, however, is alluded to, “It was secret, dreaming, ‘business’… celebrated in story, song and dance” (unpaged). These allusions rightfully acknowledge Indigenous ways but respectfully keep those practices out of the text.
The closure of the text provides readers with a position that celebrates the success of the mala’s journey and endorses the program. The final pages of the verbal and visual narratives depict Warlpiri approval of program. They are satisfied with the mala’s chances of survival. On the left hand page, where a male elder stares out beyond a reader’s right shoulder, the words state, “Satisfied, the elders stood up to leave.” On the right hand page, the mala is shown with her joey, and the words,
“Their totem was safe.” This conclusion restores custodianship to the Warlpiri and suggests to readers that this is the rightful way of being.
Summary
All of the texts in this chapter offer representations of the component of the conceptual framework, Restrained Anthropocentrism . The central characters in the texts act as ecological subjects who engage with their immediate environment, with consideration for it, rather than control over it. They enact sustainability either individually or in collaboration with cooperative communities. Critical to the picture
257 Chapter 6: Towards Sustainability books and young adult novels in this chapter is the notion of agency, which is a tenet of sustainability.
In contributing to the realisation of the aim of the study, the analysis demonstrates that the ecological subjectivities constructed in the texts can be considered to function as models for readers. The analysis makes explicit the ways in which the characters act as ecological subjects, who reflect on and purposively engage in sustainable ways with the environment. However, the characters actions are not the sole vehicles that endorse sustainability. Narrative strategies such as metonymy are also examined. The analysis, therefore, demonstrates, with regard to sustainability, how readers are positioned to negotiate their own ecological subjectivities through intersubjective relationships with the characters and engagement with the texts.
Sustainability, however, despite being the dominant, ideological environmental position of contemporary times, is not the only component of ecological subjectivities constructed in the focus texts of this study. Therefore, the construction of ecocentric ecological subject positions is discussed in the next chapter.
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Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism: Relinquishing
Control?
[There is] something hazardous in a time of ecological crisis, about living in a reference frame where one species takes itself as absolute and values every thing else in nature relative to its potential to produce value for itself. (Rolston, 2005, p. 99)
In this final chapter of textual analysis I examine texts which, I argue, as picture books, engage with ecocentric understandings. As discussed in Chapter 3, and indicated by the bracketing in the chapter title, ecocentrism, by demanding a standpoint beyond anthropocentric concerns, is a complex and contested environmental domain. Central to this complexity, as encapsulated by the epigraph, is the tenet of ecocentrism that humans are no more important than any other aspect of the environment. Consequently, what might be understood in poststructural terms as the decentring of human beings, finds expression in the ecocentric denial of humans’ hierarchical position of control over the environment that is so fundamental to either unrestrained or restrained anthropocentrism. However, in the context of this study, the question mark indicates that control may be as difficult to relinquish in textual representations, as it is in the actual world.
In this chapter, my analysis, in common with the analyses which precede it, is a provisional act of interpretation, shaped, in this instance, by the third component of the framework established in Chapter 3. The textual analysis undertaken in the two previous chapters discussed the narrative constructions of ecological subjectivities.
In Chapter 5, I proposed that representations of the negative aspects of human dominion over the environment positions readers to question the standpoint of
259 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism unrestrained anthropocentrism. In Chapter 6, I argued that representations of human agency, or acts of environmental conservation, invite readers to be responsible for action to ensure human and environmental survival.
Finally then, in this chapter I contend that the texts analysed offer ecocentric perspectives which position readers to reconsider anthropocentric standpoints.
Readers, as indicated in Chapter 1, being “agents of discernment” (McCallum, 1999;
Smith, 1988), may or may not, of course, take up the positions offered to them.
Rather than suggesting action to achieve ecocentrism, the texts advocate a rethinking of anthropocentrism. Whereas it may be impractical to achieve an ecocentric worldview, with its denial of human privilege, there is, according to Naess (1998) and Foreman (1998), perhaps the possibility for each of us to move in that direction.
Elsewhere in this study I have referred to Stephens’ (2006) suggestion that
Indigenous ways of understanding are associated with representations of ecocentric perspectives, and indeed in Chapter 6, the analysis suggested that My Home in
Kakadu (Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005) and The Shy Mala (Stafford &
Zielinksi, 2006) included ecocentric perspectives within a framework of sustainability. However, I also stated in Chapter 1 that it was not the place of this study to examine Dreaming stories that encapsulate Aboriginal Australians ecocentric perspectives. Therefore, no Dreaming stories are included in this sample of texts. I reiterate that my primary concern is for ways in which Western epistemologies support ecocentric perspectives.
The texts analysed in this chapter offer ecocentric perspectives in three ways, each of which is not unproblematic. Where the previous chapters discussed the narrative
260 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism constructions of ecological subjectivities in terms of intersubjective relations between characters and readers, in this chapter only one text, The Hidden Forest
(Baker, 2000), has central human characters. As a declarative text, The Hidden
Forest offers readers a subject position aligned with the central character, Ben, whose revelatory experience is provoked by the environment’s awe-inspiring qualities. The aesthetic properties of the text and peritextual ecological information encourage readers to share Ben’s experiences in an undersea forest of kelp, and consequently the re-evaluation of his anthropocentric actions.
Secondly, although the decentring or effacement of human presence raises some unequivocal challenges for environmental texts (Buell, 1995; Head, 2000; Hochman,
1997; Rigby, 2004; Stephens, 2006, 2008), I argue that the allocation of a “voice” to and/or the projection of an identity onto living beings allows them to be foregrounded, and the narrative strategies used to achieve this foregrounding contribute to the representation of an ecocentric perspective.
Thirdly, the texts are informed by culturally accepted Western epistemologies.
Where ecological understandings of ecosystemic balance imply the possibility of anthropocentric overconfidence in human ability to manipulate the environment, ecological epistemologies that stress the complexities of ecosystems and their inhabitants may also shape ecocentric understandings that decry the human arrogance associated with control over the environment.
In one group of texts analysed, human presence is evident but decentred. In Home
(Oliver, 2006) the “central characters” are a pair of Peregrine falcons and humans are
261 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism seen, from the falcon’s point of view, as other creatures, at the same time as the tall buildings of the cityscape are described as features of the natural environment. The verbal narrative of the marine creatures participating in a talent quest in Reef
Superstar (Killingeck & Toft, 2005) seemingly places the creatures in a human context, thus reducing the effectiveness of attempts to decentre the human. Similarly, in The Waterhole (Base, 2001) personification of animals in the verbal and visual narratives limits efforts to give the animals a voice not suggestively human.
Ecological understandings and Indigenous understandings combine in Creatures of the Rain Forest (Brim & Eglitis, 2005), a collaborative undertaking between an
Indigenous Australian and a white Australian, to provide readers with ecological knowledge across cultures that promotes awe and humility. I suggest that by not attempting to represent Indigenous relatedness, Brim and Eglitis are respectfully acknowledging the non-homogeneous aspects of Indigenous cultures.
The final group of texts are interactive picture books that offer readers active engagement. Turtles’ Song (Brown & Toft, 2001), The World That We Want (Toft,
2004), and Leaf Litter: Exploring the Mysteries of a Hidden World (Tonkin, 2006) offer aesthetic experiences facilitated, not only by the particular properties that these picture books display, but also by the persuasive potential of culturally privileged ecological discourses that shape these texts. Whereas ecological discourses may appear to provide dialectical engagements that work against the persuasive corporeal, immediate, and sensate experiences offered by picture books, in the focus texts the minutiae included as ecological detail is a type of knowledge which Fudge
(2001, p. 282) asserts “is relevant to aesthetic appreciation insofar as it helps us perceive and delight in a natural object’s properties that we would otherwise
262 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism overlook.” The ecological details incorporated in the verbal and visual narratives and/or in the peritexts offer readers an awareness of intrinsic value of animals and plants in their own right, their ability to adapt and survive. Therefore, I argue, that a position is offered to readers which corresponds to the ecological sublime posited by
Hitt (1999) and Lintott (2006). Rather than being an exclusively anthropocentric pleasure, the ecological sublime, by mixing awe with humility, can serve to engage readers in consideration of humans’ oneness with the environment.
Despite sharing Rigby’s (2004, p. 427) recognition that a human actant is “a necessary condition for there to be such a thing as literature” my analysis proposes that while it may not be possible to achieve total human effacement, it is possible to open up spaces that encourage readers to engage with ecocentric perspectives.
Regardless of human presence or effacement, the ideological persuasiveness of the eight picture books is political – the aesthetic posits a particular viewpoint, and that is an ecological consciousness that recognises ecological equality.
Raising Eco-consciousness: Shared Aesthetic Experiences
In Chapters 5 and 6, I discussed ecological subjectivity in Belonging (Baker, 2004),
Blueback (Winton, 1997), Hope Bay (Plüss, 2005) and Yoss (Hirsch, 2001) with regard to the personal growth and development of the central characters. In the discussion of Yoss , I considered the novel in terms of the rite of passage narrative structure discussed by Turner (1969) and Stephens (2008) as separation, liminality, and reintegration. Here I want to consider a picture book, The Hidden Forest (Baker,
2000), as a rite of passage text in order to understand the character’s transformation as an ecological subject for, as McCallum (1999) has suggested, representations of subjectivity are fundamental to stories that explore relationships between individuals
263 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism and their worlds. An examination of this text as a rite of passage narrative is a valid way to interpret the changing relationship between the central character and his world, or as an examination of the transitory stages in a character’s development from one ecological subject position to another.
Ben, the central character in The Hidden Forest (Baker, 2000), undergoes a transformation that involves a transition from an anthropocentric perspective to an ecocentric viewpoint, or what Stephens (2008) might suggest is a transition from ego consciousness to eco-consciousness. On the first double-page spread Ben wants, rather than needs, “something bigger” than the tiddlers that he catches in his net. In ecological terms, Ben is represented as showing callous disregard for the small fish and “empties them out in disgust to let them die” (Baker, 2000, unpaged). Ben is self-centred, selfish and a destroyer of living beings. He views the environment through an anthropocentric lens, seeing it as serving his needs. In the conventional rite of passage narrative it might be expected that Ben would move away from the ocean environment in order to return with these views changed. Instead of moving away from the original environment, however, Ben is represented, both visually and metaphorically, as separated or distanced from it by his small dinghy. When the fish trap is caught in the kelp, the dinghy flips over and Ben is thrown overboard into the unfamiliar environment of the sea. As a metonymic statement, Ben is marginalised by the sea, which for him is a hostile environment . At this point Ben is illustrated as a dead man floating, and the suspense created heightens the notion of the aquatic environment as unfamiliar and threatening. In the next illustration, the stillness is disrupted. Despite having made it back into the secure, man-made environment of the boat, Ben’s facial expression depicts the fear and horror he is experiencing.
264 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism
It is Ben’s friend Sophie, acting as a knowledgeable Other, who initiates Ben into a different way of perceiving the underwater world. As a young girl, Sophie’s experience and familiarity with the environment encapsulate metaphorical female- nature connections. Sophie has no fear of the environment, so she initiates Ben into the unfamiliar, underwater world, allaying his fears with her composure. She is responsible for Ben’s realisation that he too could be a part of, rather than apart from, the underwater world. His admission that the creatures he previously held in such low regard are “wonderful” is, for Ben, a declaration of his recognition of their rightful place in the “mysterious hidden world” that his newly-gained confidence allows him to experience for the first time.
However, an ecocritical examination of the text enables the investigation of the stages of Ben’s personal growth and the development of his eco-consciousness. Ben undergoes the perceptual shift from ignorance of the ocean environment to knowledge that the environment is awe inspiring. Initially, while still separated from the water by the dinghy, and before Sophie has coaxed him into the water, words and illustrations complement each other to represent Ben’s inability to see nothing beyond his narcissistic interests. He “gazes at the surface of the water but it’s like a mirror” (2000, unpaged), that is, it reflects his image and Ben cannot see beyond that. On the page immediately following, however, when the illustration shows him floating in the water, the verbal text indicates the turning point for Ben. The words,
“To his surprise”, indicate the revelation of what for Ben was previously unseen, “a mysterious underwater forest that sways back and forth with the rolling of the waves” (Baker, 2000, unpaged).
265 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism
Ben’s epiphany is followed by an experience that engenders feelings of wonder towards the underwater environment. In other words, Ben’s underwater experience with Sophie is an instance of the ecological sublime defined by Lintott (2006, p. 66) as “more complicated than that associated with the beautiful or picturesque… the sublime encompasses those things that are initially frustrating to understand.” Ben, now fully immersed in what was a fearful and frustrating environment, is inspired by the unscenic, not the picturesque of the traditional forest, or the beautiful of the scenic. As Rolston (1998) proposes:
Aesthetic appreciation of nature, at the level of forests and landscapes, requires embodied participation, immersion, and struggle. We initially may think of forests as scenery to be looked upon. That is a mistake. A forest is entered, not viewed … You do not really engage a forest until you are well within it … In the forest itself, there is no scenery. (p. 162)
Ben’s revelatory experience does not reinscribe human dominance, as the sublime, theorised in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, did. Ben’s experience promotes humility rather than arrogance, breaking down human/other living being binaries, and acknowledging the intrinsic worth of all entities. When Ben pulls up his fish trap, he releases his catch of fish, a starfish, an octopus, a hermit crab, not with feelings of disgust and superiority, but with feelings of humility and admiration: “He sees how wonderful these creatures are here in their mysterious, hidden world. He feels this is where they belong” (Baker, 2000, unpaged). He acknowledges the rights of the creatures to remain in their natural habitat.
Yet this ecocritical interpretation of Ben’s emerging ecological subjectivity does not fully contribute to an understanding of how readers’ ecological subjectivities might be shaped through engagement with this text. To address this aspect it is necessary to
266 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism consider the ways in which the text, as an example of a declarative text together with the special properties of the text as a picture book, and the sophisticated ways that the verbal and visual narratives combine, position readers to share Ben’s underwater experiences.
The fictional, underwater world of The Hidden Forest is ‘real’ only within the context of the narrative. For example, the “truthfulness” of the text may be judged by the illustrations of the underwater world which conform to the natural environment: the kelp sways under the influence of the ocean currents. The high modality of the illustrations affords degrees of reality and truthfulness. Similarly, the developing knowledge the characters have of their world can be a further marker of the truthfulness of the text. Ben’s transition from a position of ignorance and fear, to one of knowledge and fearlessness, confirms the text as an example of Belsey’s (2002) articulation of classic realism, a text which seemingly represents the fictional world with accuracy and truthfulness. As discussed in the previous chapters of analysis, and in Chapter 4, this type of text offers obvious readings where the appearance of truthfulness suggests a non-contradictory interpretation and a single and stable subject position is offered.
The illustrations of the moment of Ben’s sensory and illuminating experience provide another example of how the text’s truthfulness influences the stability of the position offered to the reader. The visual perspective, looking up from the depths, is enhanced by the strong lines of Sophie’s silhouetted body shape, and the straight buoy line. Tidal movement of the kelp is suggested by waving lines, and the golden colours move down the page from light to darker to achieve a high modality that
267 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism implies a credible reality. The forest metaphor is extended visually and verbally,
“Gigantic golden trees of kelp reach towards the sun /Shafts of sunlight/shimmer in their branches” (2000, unpaged). Readers are positioned as viewers of the text, but are also placed within the hidden forest of the text.
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 7.1 Sophie in the underwater forest
While the illustrations, through their high modality and visual perspective, position the reader to share Ben’s immersion in the environment, the words “[the kelp] like velvet swirling against his skin” contribute to an aesthetic reading. From long shots to close ups the underwater world is revealed as “alive” with “strangely beautiful textures” which are complemented by the three dimensional qualities of the intricately detailed collage. Each double-page spread glows with colours and seductive movement.
I have argued, thus far, that aspects of classic realism evident in The Hidden Forest provide a stable subject position aligned with Ben’s aesthetic experience and developing eco-consciousness. Now I propose that aspects of peritextual features
268 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism offer a similarly stable subject position influenced by the Western world’s acceptance of the cultural truthfulness of ecological epistemologies. If, as Carlson
(1995, p. 394) claims, “aesthetic appreciation of nature requires knowledge about nature and that relevant knowledge is paradigmatically provided by the natural sciences”, then the peritext of The Hidden Forest , shaped by ecological discourses, contributes to a heightened sense of the aesthetic.
Peritextual comments, placed in the acknowledgements before the title page, and after the narrative concludes, book-end the narrative. By disclosing the locality of the kelp forest in the fictional narrative, as the east coast of Tasmania, as well as including a footnote about Baker’s trips to the Tasman Peninsula to “explore at first hand the magic of kelp forests” (2000, unpaged), a transition from the fictional world to actual world offers opportunities for deeper ecocentric understandings. On a page that precedes the endpapers, ecological details relate the facts about kelp and its requirements and characteristics. For example, information is given about suitable water temperatures, ocean floor surfaces, kelp’s Latin name, Macrocystis pyrifera , as well as its common names, Giant Kelp or String Kelp, the time it takes to grow and length, and the locations of kelp forests in global oceans. Peritextual information, including a quotation from Charles Darwin which precedes the acknowledgements,
“The number of living things of all orders whose existence intimately depends on kelp is wonderful ” (2000, unpaged), implies the interdependence of all living beings and the non-supremacy of human beings. The emphasis on “all living things” denotes an encompassing position, one where humans are not necessarily singled out as more or the most important of living beings.
269 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism
The analysis above emphasises the implications of intersubjective engagement with the central character, Ben, a fellow human being, as well as the significance of ecological details in the text’s peritext. In the following group of texts analysed readers enter into a different style of relationship, not with other human beings but with other living beings and the physical elements of the environment.
Ecocentric Perspectives: Some Textual Possibilities
The analysis below considers how the focus texts attempt to represent ecocentric perspectives. Various ecocritical studies (Buell, 1995; Hochman, 1997; Head, 2000;
Rigby, 2004; and Stephens, 2006) acknowledge the difficulties associated with representation. Two interconnected concerns are central to these critical works: firstly, giving the environment a ‘voice’; and secondly, decentring the human.
Giving the environment a voice may be regarded as an attempt to instate a previously marginalised voice (Head, 2000). To incorporate a marginalised voice, in this instance, is problematic, with the difficulties arising from the necessity of projecting an identity onto the environment as a non-speaking Other. The risk involved is that the environment could be humanised or regarded as no more than a ventriloquist’s dummy (Hochman, 1997). Indeed, viewed anthropocentrically, the environment could be seen as dependent as the puppet is on its human operator to bring it to life.
However, Buell (1995) and Hochman (1997) suggest that a more strategically valid ecocentric approach is to cite the human voice speaking as, and/or on behalf of, the environment in cases of environmental law. In this instance, while the environmental
270 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism identity always remains fictive, it serves as a powerful ideological tool in the establishment of kinship between humans and the environment (Head, 2000).
If it is acknowledged that it is possible for the human voice to speak as, or on behalf of, the environment, the second concern is how it might be possible for literature to decentre the human, for literature cannot exist without some evidence of the human that has shaped it (Rigby, 2004). This difficulty is compounded by the reliance of fictional narratives on human subjects and their intersocial actions. In children’s literature this is even more problematic because of the “almost universal focus on narratives of human subjectivity and growth, with the concomitant demands of characterization, events, and narrative point of view” (Stephens, 2006, p. 40). How then might it be possible to decentre the human presence or, as Stephens (2006) has suggested, efface it entirely to create a text that constructs an ecocentric perspective?
In Chapter 3, I reviewed Stephens’ (2006) analysis of children’s environmental texts where human perspectives become “contingent, contextualised, and decentred, and human figures might be absent” (Stephens, 2006, p. 44). Key points that emerge from Stephens’ analysis which influence degrees of success in the construction of ecocentric perspectives involve register (a narratorial, celebratory tone); the use of the second person (the address to an audience as “you” is associated with environmental information books for children); human presence (as agents in texts) involves passive grammatical constructions; and the minimization of human subjectivity (Stephens, 2006, p. 45). Stephens (2008, p. 69) also proposes that picture books are well suited to represent ecocentric perspectives because of their potential to capture the “ haecceitas ” or “thisness” of the natural world through their
271 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism modality, as well as the convergences of the dual semiotic modes of words and illustrations.
Broadly speaking, the picture books discussed in the analysis that follows are information texts which fulfil Stephens’ (2008, p. 70) criterion that they “inform audiences about some aspects of the natural world and are primarily descriptive”.
Unlike the texts analysed in Chapter 6 which fall within Stephens’ category of
“consciousness raising”, the focus texts here have no central human characters and consequently do not explicitly advocate and enable agency. Where Stephens acknowledges slippage between categories, I propose the focus texts, in the analysis which follows, are a hybrid combination of information texts and consciousness raising texts, well suited to the dual purpose of giving the environment a voice and decentring the human.
Decentring the Human: Recentring the Environment
In this first group of texts, human presence is evident but decentred. This deprivileging of human beings involves what Head (2000, p.235) claims is a process
“characterized by a paradoxical combination of decentring and recentring : tradition given hierarchies are overturned - the assumptions on which they are based decentred – and a new, provisional platform of judgement is installed in a qualified recentring”. The process of recentring enables readers’ alignment with the non- human characters in the focus texts. Opportunities for perceptual shifts towards ecocentrism are contingent on how successfully this process is realised.
Two peregrine falcons which move from a desolate rural environment to the multiple spaces of an urban environment are the central characters in Home (Oliver, 2006).
Readers, positioned bodily outside the environment of the text, see at least one
272 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism peregrine falcon in each illustration. However, the perspective, in some of the illustrations, places readers alongside the bird, to see from its vantage point as it swoops over the city or sleeps in its new nest. The use of such a double perspective, according to Stephens and Watson (1994), allows readers to judge and assess what is going on but also promotes empathy with the birds. Taking up the bird’s point of view encourages readers to accept the process of recentring, and to internalise the text’s implicit ideology, that is, the ecocentric standpoint that validates the denial of a privileged position to the human beings (see Figure 7.2).
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Figure 7.2 The falcon’s perspective
Although the narration takes the form of third person focaliser, the human voice does not necessarily express a human point of view. The tone is neutral, factual, and unsentimental and acknowledges ecosystemic interconnectedness: “like all peregrines, they hunt birds for food” (2006, unpaged). One illustration depicts the falcon as it preys on a smaller bird. The birds are not anthropomorphised but nevertheless they are attributed humanising emotions. They experience characteristics linked to survival instincts: dreams “filled with strange sounds and flashing lights” (2006, unpaged), fear when threatened by other larger animals (the
273 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism children in the park) and the shiny beasts, whining and hissing and honking (the cars on one of the bridges that cross the city’s river).
Various present tense verbs capture the immediacy of the falcon’s movements. They accord with the spaces he finds himself in. In the open air he “soars, speeds, rockets, swoops, glides, flies”. In the confines of trees in the park, he “beats his wings and flaps away in fright”. When the bird needs to use different movement the verbs
“hovers”, “plummets”, and “darts” are used to describe it. Verbal metaphors describe the river as a “glittering snake”; the ledge on high-rise as a “new cliff”; spaces between high-rise as “deep narrow canyons”.
The text’s aesthetic properties provide opportunities for the reader to feel immersed in the birds’ environment. The text’s aesthetic appeal is created by elements such as texture (their feather patterns; the stones the birds nest on as they sleep perched on their newly found resting place, see Figure 7.3) and colour (the glistening buildings at sunrise, and the sun reflected on the river).
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Figure 7.3 The falcons’ home
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Peritextual features, however, work against the layered construction of an ecocentric perspective. The story of the falcons, the reader is informed, is based on “the true story of Frodo and Frieda, two peregrine falcons nesting atop a 27-storey inner-city riverfront skyscraper in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia”. Yet the factual information, for example, “one-tenth of peregrine falcons in eastern USA inhabit the city of New York” (2006, unpaged), makes explicit the premise that the falcons are a symbol of wildlife adapting to city life in a global context. They are cited as an example of “nature’s urgent wish to fit in” (2006, unpaged). The falcons, previously privileged in the verbal and visual narratives, are, in the peritext, made secondary to humans and their urban life style.
Additional ecological information about speed, hunting strategies, breeding habits, and development of chicks detracts from the narrative construction of a privileged position for the falcons. The factual detail could lead to an appreciation of the birds in their own right, but in the peritext the birds are anthropomorphised, described as a
“city-slicker, a speedster, a hunter, or a teacher” (2006, unpaged). The role of quasi- ecologist, that is so important to the creation of the reader’s sense of immersion in the texts discussed later in this chapter, is here only suggestive of studying the birds at a distance, the objectified item of scientific rather than ecological study.
The ecocentric perspectives of the earlier verbal and visual narratives in the text are overturned in the peritext, where a different medium is used. Photographs which appeared in a local newspaper of the peregrine falcons’ nest are accompanied by captions which give the birds speech and human social habits. A photograph of the two parents feeding the hungry chicks is captioned, “‘I only fed you a minute ago!’
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Dinner time at the peregrine falcon nursery” (Oliver, 2006, unpaged). A photograph of one of the chicks as it spreads its wings is captioned, “This must be how you do it.’ ‘The oldest falcon chick prepares to fly”. As it crashes into the ledge, “ ‘Ouch!’
A falcon chick nosedives before take-off”. The personification of the birds in this way once again reasserts the superiority of the human lens.
Similarly trite personification of the animal characters is initially evident in Reef
Superstar (Killingbeck & Toft, 2005). Although the illustrations include no human presence, the text’s attempts to represent an ecocentric point of view are complicated by two factors. Firstly, the third person narrator is obviously human, with a congenial tone, an upbeat tempo, and an ingratiating use of some end of line rhymes.
Secondly, the verbal narrative humanises the marine creatures by aligning aspects of their unique adaptations with human accounts of competition. Whereas the first of these strategies, by drawing attention to the humanness of the marine characters, undoubtedly limits the potential of representing an ecocentric perspective, the second, by highlighting the creatures’ inherent adaptation for survival, is more ambivalent in its attempts to construct an ecocentric perspective.
The opening sentence, “The sun awoke …”, is the initial indicator of how personification may endow physical elements of the environment with human qualities. This metaphorical language extends into the next instance, where, accompanying the illustration of two reef sharks on the next page are the words,
“The judges were ready, preparations complete …” (Killingbeck & Toft, 2005, unpaged). Thereafter the verbal narrative follows the pattern of the staging of a competition. Once the judges, crowd and competitors have assembled the show can
276 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism begin and the narrative signals the beginning with the question, “Who would be
‘Reef Superstar’?” As the contestants present themselves to the judges the narration informs the reader of the contestants’ special characteristics. In this telling it is the narrator who speaks, not the shark judges, and it is the narrator who therefore comments on the competitors biologically inherent ‘talents’: the Parrotfish can change sex; the cuttlefish can change colour; the clownfish can live inside the venomous tentacles of anemones. These innate animal characteristics are dismissed and reinscribed as “talents”. The narrative concludes with the announcement of competition winner, the mimic octopus, “One moment she’s a jellyfish,/ Next she’s a brittle star,/ A sea-snake, a stingray,/ a flounder,/ She’s quite spectacular”
(Killingbeck & Toft, 2005). The text seemingly conflates competition for survival in nature with human competition for recognition of the individual.
This could be read as a narrative representation of a Darwinian model of survival that emphasises the ability of living beings, be they vertebrates or invertebrates, to adapt in order to survive. As discussed in Chapter 3, Rolston (2005) suggests that living beings’ ability to adapt can be seen by humans as a way to appreciate the possibility of environmental intrinsic value that exists regardless of a human valuer.
An alternative reading, however, might assume that a human social order is being imposed on these inhabitants of the marine environment thus reducing Darwinian concepts of fitness for survival to the level of popular television talent quests. Such representation would appear to endorse anthropocentric ideas of human superiority or cleverness, the creatures’ innate habits being compared with human talent which is nurtured, practised, and ultimately becomes professional. The implication is that the sea creatures are like humans, conscious of a hierarchy of talentedness. The
277 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism narrative strategy of the talent quest and the assignation of a winner provide a viewpoint that is anthropocentric; ecocentric possibilities are thwarted.
In contrast, the visual narrative offers a level of reader engagement that proposes experiences of awe and wonder mixed with humility. Toft’s flair for using her favoured painting on silk technique creates a brightly colourful marine environment likely to arouse the reader’s interest and attention. The muted blues and purples of the underwater anemones of the end papers encourage the feeling that is so critical to aesthetic experience of a text, the sense of being immersed in the marine environment. Throughout the text the illustrations extend to the edge of each double- page spread, white space is left on alternate sides for the verbal narrative but even in this space marine creatures appear to swim as if still in the sea. Each page of the text has the brilliant colours, fluid movement and bold organic shapes outlined in gold that are characteristic of Toft’s opus. These stylised illustrations (see Figure 7.4), as
Head (2000, p. 237) might argue, emphasise only certain features of the marine beings and thus have a greater capacity than a more realistic or mimetic illustration to put the reader “in touch with the environment.” Every page invites a wondrous response as the reader engages with the illustrations.
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Figure 7.4 Reef Superstar
The ecological details contained in the peritext have the potential to add the increased awareness that I argue facilitates the ecological sublime which are elaborated in Chapter 3, Ecological Aesthetics . Here, the narratorial voice with its gimmicky register is abandoned in favour of an approach that provides ecological detail about “the adaptations that some animals have made to ensure their survival on the reef” (Killingbeck & Toft, 2005, unpaged). Nowhere in the two pages of details are human needs foregrounded. Only one sentence indicates the attraction tropical reefs have for human beings and that attraction is accounted for by their “dazzling colour and beauty, and by the abundance of exquisite marine life”, so ably encapsulated in the illustrations. The illustrations and the ecological detail in the peritext combine to endorse Rolston’s (2005) proposal discussed in Chapter 3 which acknowledges human construction of the ways of knowing and reporting/ecological epistemologies that describe the creatures’ intrinsic value, but nevertheless the features remain independent of human existence.
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Just as the representation of ecocentric perspectives in Reef Superstar is not unproblematic, The Waterhole (Base, 2001) is similarly not without contradictions.
An initial reading of The Waterhole (Base, 2001) might suggest that human presence has been totally effaced and consequently a reader’s ecological subjectivity will be shaped by close encounters with a rhinoceros, tigers, toucans, snow leopards, moose, catfish, pandas, ladybirds, tortoises, and kangaroos. Certainly, in each illustration, these creatures, associated with the earth’s continents and bioregions, dominate the central space. The visual positioning endorses ideas that animals, not humans, will be critical to the text’s verbal and visual narratives. A closer examination reveals that human presence is included in only five of the text’s 14 illustrations but is limited to miniscule, ethereal sketches almost out of sight on the page.
In the illustration of two tigers, for example, a pale Taj Mahal is situated close to the top left hand corner; a ghostly Great Wall of China is depicted in a similar position on the page that depicts the pandas; and the ultimate symbol of human desire to shape the landscape, the presidential faces carved on Mount Rushmore, is a shadowy presence on the page with the moose. The inclusion of these monuments to male humans’ self importance, and dominance of the environment, provides an androcentric perspective, but confines the illustrated monuments to an inferior position in each illustration, implying that humans need not necessarily occupy a hierarchical position of privilege over the environment.
On the cover and in the remaining illustrations, the space occupied by iconic monuments is given over to equally iconic environmental features, in the case of
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Australia, Uluru. 38 The absence of monuments in these illustrations implies that the human inhabitants of these countries, Indigenous and otherwise, have been effaced.
This interpretation is further supported by the text’s narrative structure that follows the natural environmental cycles that are dependent on the patterns of weather and climatic conditions. In turn these cycles determine the existence or non-existence of the waterhole which supports the animals; human presence is not a requirement for this process to occur.
The text provokes a sense of wonder about the value of water to ecological conservation in a global environment. Once again the generation of wonder involves deep engagement with the text which encourages the compliance of readers in the production of ecocentric subjectivities. The peritext proclaims the book is “an ingenious fusion of counting book, puzzle book, story book, and art book …” and demands readers pay careful attention to the visual representation of ecological details in either the illustrations or silhouetted in the borders (Base, 2001, unpaged).
For example, in the main illustrations, visual acuity in terms of colouring, markings, and skin and hair texture provides ecological detail and truthfulness of representation. The silhouetted borders on each double page spread feature miniature illustrations and labels of animals found in the particular environment. For example, a wombat, emu, kookaburra, dingo, and cassowary surround the ten kangaroos staring at the dry waterhole . A cut-out diminishing hole in each illustration gives the impression of the waterhole shrinking until it is bone dry in a deathly grey landscape, devoid of all life, except for traces of ghostly animals incorporated into the trees and rocks. Careful attention to the silhouetted borders
38 The Anangu, as traditional custodians of Uluru, have previously been acknowledged in this study. 281 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism reveals that the animals featured are all extinct. This illustration of a lifeless and impoverished environment leads to the climactic ‘ah!’ moment of the sublime of the next page: a glimmering, single water drop hitting bare earth (See Figure 7.5).
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Figure 7.5 The dry waterhole
There are, however, narrative inclusions that disrupt the potential of the ecological sublime and add degrees of ambivalence to the ecocentric perspective. Throughout the text, frogs take on the role of a Greek chorus, acting as interested spectators and players whose actions supply a non-verbal commentary on the central illustration.
On the title page, one of these frogs, dressed in bright floral shirt, looks out inquisitively and impishly, endorsing the verbal challenge to find the animals hidden in the illustrations. In the opening illustrations, he is joined by other frogs, some dressed, like the females in pearls and bows, or another in a one piece swimsuit, or still another in a one piece jumpsuit and wearing glasses. Others adopt lazy poses, lounging with front legs behind the head, while the frog from the title page adopts a louche pose sipping a drink from a straw. As the narrative progresses and the waterhole diminishes, the frogs offer a visually conveyed commentary, quizzically
282 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism looking at the waterhole, looking on sadly as it all but disappears and then, finally, when the waterhole has gone, not surprisingly in the Australian scene, the frog is seen exiting the frame with packed suitcase. When rain fills the waterhole, the personified frogs move beyond the Edenic environment to the sepia borders. The frog in the floral shirt still sits in jovial mood, with drink nearby. As observers, once more the frogs continue to contribute nothing to the environment, except reflect an attitude of acceptance. While this is suggestive of an ecocentric perspective that foregrounds recognition of environmental/natural cycles, anthropomorphising the frogs also implies that humans too can behave with the same disregard for the environment as the frogs. An ecocentric perspective bound with ideas of wonder and awe is entangled with the laissez-faire attitudes of unrestrained anthropocentrism; humans have no need to control their behaviours because the environment will right itself and return to a Cornucopian state regardless of how inhospitable it may have become.
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Figure 7.6 The waterhole
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The text’s difficulties in offering an ecocentric subject position are compounded by the generic overtones that emerge from one strand of the multi-stranded verbal narrative. The central animal characters in the text act as focalisers/narrators, and provide comments on the quality of the water in the waterhole. By giving the animals slick, human speech patterns the verbal narrative is evocative of those most anthropocentric genres, the fable, which points out human folly, and instructs children how to behave according to culturally sanctioned expectations.
The animals’ narration initially embraces an attitude of nonchalance and disregard, taking for granted the precious resource that sustains their lives. “Mmm, delicious!” says the Rhino, while the tigers say, “Goodness gracious, how very delectable!” The toucans, set against a background of the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, proclaim, “It’s party time, fellas! Drink up!” (Base, 2001, unpaged).
The turning point of the fable is provided by the words, “ But something was happening …” complemented by the illustration of the visibly shrinking pool. The animals’ ripostes range across a gamut of responses to the water crisis which parallel and therefore highlight human responses to contemporary water shortages. The snow leopards endorse a cautionary approach, “Hmmm. We must be careful, brothers”; the moose selfish and competitive, “Hey get your hoof out of my ear!”; the catfish mourn, “blub, blub, blub!”; the pandas show polite cooperation, “After you. No, no –
I insist”. On the eighth double page spread a ladybird respectfully proposes to
“establish a sub-committee to report on the water level crisis before the end of the financial year. All in favour say bzui.”
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The folly of all these approaches is revealed in the following illustration of the accusatory Galapagos tortoise, who poses the question, “Okay which of you wise guys hid all the water?”. By the next illustration, when the crestfallen kangaroos are left speechless, the omniscient narrator steps in with the comment, “There was nothing to say. The water was all gone” (Base, 2001, unpaged). At this point the text/fable connotes the effects of recklessness of unrestrained anthropocentrism.
Traditionally, the fable, with its casts of anthropomorphised animals, implies culturally sanctioned human behaviours. In this case, the illustration depicts diagonal sweeping raindrops falling on land that is sprouting grass shoots and flowers. It seems that rather than offer a moralising coda in the tradition of the fable, the text supplies a visual outcome which is reassuring albeit naïve. Restored to its pristine state, the environment, on the last double page spread, supports a disparate group of animals harmoniously lounging around the waterhole. This Cornucopian arrangement provides the type of neat ending that offers a single, stable subject position, that is, the ecocentric perspective that denies humans a position of privilege that encompasses degrees of control over the environment. On the other hand, like the use of the anthropomorphised frogs mentioned above, there is ambivalence in this ending that is problematic. Might it not also imply, through the use of that single raindrop to represent the power of the environment for rejuvenation, that the human reader may be positioned as an arrogant rather than humble ecological subject: a subject who thinks the environment will always be able to restore itself to a pristine state.
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The three texts analysed above, through a blending of aesthetics and Western ecological epistemologies, endeavour to offer ecocentric perspectives. In so doing they attempt an ecological subjectivity that relies on readers taking up these positions. Creatures of the Rainforest (Brim & Eglitis, 2005) encodes ways of seeing and knowing the environment that is not reliant on a solely Western aesthetic. As
Bradford notes (2008, pp. 113-114) Creatures represents and models “a respectful and dialogical engagement between Western and Djabugay epistemologies and modes of representation”. My analysis draws on Bradford’s proposal that the text’s cross cultural collaboration, between Brim and Eglitis, promotes understandings of the cultural constructedness of human engagement with the environment and the negotiation of culturally different ways humans engage with the environment. I argue that the text, shaped by ecocentric perspectives, drawn from European and
Djabugay ways, effectively decentres the human, and offers the reader an aesthetic experience enhanced by increased ‘knowledges’ of the environment.
The title establishes the privileged position that the creatures of the rainforest have in this picture book. There are no visual representations of humans anywhere in the text and the minimal reference to them occurs only in the context of Djabugay use of some animals and plants necessary for survival and ceremonial purposes. These instances imply that only what was needed was taken; for example, green ants/Djiliburay were used to treat fevers, xanthorrohoea/Bulnyan were cut to lengthen spears and make firesticks, and both zamia palm/Badil and quandong/Murrgan/ were used as sources of food (here I have followed the text’s
286 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism privileging of the English language word before the Djabugay word 39 ). Ceremonial associations with the mosquito/Ngugun connect the Djabugay to the ancestors who
“would cover themselves in mud and use wulmbarra (leafy branches) to wave away the mosquitoes” (Brim & Eglitis, 2005, unpaged). The references to human use of the creatures are so minimal and their placement within the text so unobtrusive that human presence is effectively decentred.
Other features of the text assist in the recentring process. The narrative structure is not dependent on representations of human actions. Even though the English language alphabet provides the text with its structure, the loosely alphabetic format ensures that the creatures maintain their position of privilege. The twenty-six letters of the alphabet provide a non-hierarchical structure that does not support a taxonomy that privileges, for example, vertebrates or invertebrates, marsupials over birds or insects. Occasionally the creatures’ distinctive features, for example, the long nose of the bandicoot, the red eyes of the green tree frog, or the scrub 40 habitat of the turkey, determine the creatures’ position in the alphabet. In the captions that accompany each illustration of the animals or plants, Western ecological epistemologies which value Latin names mingle with the Djabugay names for the same creature. With the exception of those instances mentioned above where the value to humans was acknowledged, the words that accompany each illustration focus on the distinguishing characteristics of each creature which give them intrinsic value in their own right.
39 Captions under each illustration reverse this order and place the Djabugay words before those in English. 40 Scrub is a term Australians use to indicate a particular kind of forest habitat, although it could also refer to the turkey’s habit of scrubbing the forest floor to gather earth and leaves for their nest mounds. 287 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism
The text, however, does not rely solely on the process of human decentring, to put forward an ecocentric perspective. In common with the texts analysed above,
Creatures of the Rainforest offers the reader engagement with an aesthetic experience enhanced by increased understandings of the creatures represented. The front cover invites a tactile response: pale shadowy plants and tree trunks form the backdrop to embossed creatures, a tree frog/Wubun, barramundi/Djilibiri, a turtle/Badjigal, and a goanna/Ganyal. The pale illustration of the shadowy plants extend to the back cover, where words interpolate readers, exhorting them to engage with the text to find the answers to questions posed,
Have you heard about the red-eyed green tree frog that likes to spend time in the canopy of a rainforest? Or the green ants that weave threads of silk … or the pigeons from New Guinea that feed on quandongs and nutmeg? (Brim & Eglitis, 2005)
Readers’ curiosity, piqued by the questioning, is further encouraged by the interpolation explicit in the following words “uncover the secrets of a Queensland rainforest with artists, Warrren Brim and Anna Eglitis”. Urged to be included in the company of the knowledgeable experts, readers are exhorted to undertake the cross- cultural “journey” in the rainforest.
Muted khaki and dark green organic shapes of plants and animals on the endpapers forecast the likelihood of an aesthetic experience. Throughout the text, the two illustrators’ works are placed on either the left (Eglitis) or right (Brim) page. An under-layer, on alternate pages, uses the same technique as the cover to trace the shadowy forms of the rainforest’s vegetation and animals. Eglitis’ artwork consists of “hand-coloured linoprints on paper” (Brim & Eglitis, 2005, unpaged). Her illustrations favour a restricted palette of colours, muted blues and greens, with some earthy browns that offer a stylised but realistic representation of the creatures or
288 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism plants in situ . Brim’s illustrations feature “hand-coloured linoprints on paper and acrylic paintings on paper” (Brim & Eglitis, 2005, unpaged). His illustrations in particular have tactile properties. He uses Djabugay colours and forms; strong reds, ochres, and black, contrasted with white dots and lines that curve organically, represent each of the focus creatures or plants. Both artists share the technique of white outlining that helps to foreground and highlight the creature or plant in focus.
The main illustrations on either page have a regular shape and are contained by white space, but on several pages smaller versions of the creatures are represented elsewhere on the page as if they have escaped from the main illustration inviting/compelling the reader’s eye to move back and forth; the red-eyed green tree frog/Wubun, for example, has jumped from his tree trunk position onto the page (see
Figures 7.7 and 7.8).
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Figure 7.7 Eglitis’ Green Tree Frog
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Figure 7.8 Brim’s Green Tree Frog
If the illustrations in Creatures of the Rainforest initiate the aesthetic experience as a way into ecocentric understandings, the captions and words beneath the illustration serve to confirm its passage. Visually the captions and the alphabetical labelling are aesthetically pleasing with an unpretentious font and green colour for the words in
English and brown for those in Djabugay. Heightened reading experiences are offered by the pleasure to be derived from the language sound and pattern as the reader is involved in a dialogical engagement with the Djabugay and the English languages. For example, on the flying fox/Guginy pages, the captions read Mulu guginy djulbin-mu nyirruying. Two flying fox hanging from a tree” while on the opposite page “Guginydju ma: bugang. Flying fox eats fruits.”
More than this, however, is the heightened sense of awareness induced by the ordered blending of the two epistemologies. In the one sentence two sets of ecological details are harmoniously combined. For example, when describing the
Goanna/Ganyal, both epistemologies are included: “The scientific name for this species of goanna is Varanus tristis orientalis, and in Djabugay country it is seen on
290 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism the ground, in trees and among rocks …” (Brim & Eglitis, 2005, unpaged). This text breaks down the dualism between European and Djabugay knowledges. Combined in the text in this way, the two epistemologies expose ecological interconnections and open up ecocentric possibilities.
Where the analysis above has focused on how the four texts attempt to decentre the human, as well as the potential for these picture books to offer the reader an aesthetic experience which may open up ecocentric spaces, the next group of texts attempt human effacement to realise the ecological sublime.
Human Effacement: The Ecological Sublime
The impossibility of human effacement is acknowledged earlier in this chapter.
There I referred to Stephens’ (2008, pp. 69-70) suggestion that some children’s environmental multimodal texts “gesture toward” the effect of “ haecceitas ” or
“thisness” while modifying language away from anthropocentrism. The texts analysed here make more than a gesture toward haecceitas . As picture books,
Turtle’s Song (Brown &Toft, 2001), and The World That We Want (Toft, 2004), have stylistically different illustrations to Leaf Litter: Exploring the Mysteries of a
Hidden World (Tonkin, 2006) but the illustrations in all three texts have the ability to promote
a kind of intensity, a sense that what we are seeing is saturated with significance and calls forth a heightened perception beyond what one expects in day-to-day existence. This intensity is attractive in itself because it provides us with heightened experience. It moves us, and so we want to involve ourselves with the things that are displaying the quality. (Misson & Morgan, 2006, p. 32)
The illustrations alone, however, do not facilitate the intensity of experience described here. These texts admit no human characters and either permit a human
291 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism voice only in the peritext or as a verbal narration that takes on a secondary position to the illustrations. The central position assumed by the environment demands readers’ full attention which is further encouraged by the interactive engagement that the texts require as the reader participates in the identifying, locating or counting demanded by the texts. Whereas Stephens (2008, p. 75) argues that this is an “an exercise in directional orientation [that] is all about the centredness of the viewer and thence models a hierarchy in which interactive participants mentally control represented participants”, I suggest this form of deep involvement of the senses – seeing, touching, hearing – offers the reader an embodied experience.
This is not the totally playful embodied experience that Holton and Rogers (2004, p.
163) claim has the potential to establish “more sympathetic and nature-friendly ways of dialoguing with the earth”. This kind of embodied experience involves studying the environment for increased understandings of it and, in so doing, what begins as an aesthetic experience of the picture book becomes, when readers are fully engaged with the text, concomitant with the ecological sublime.
The boundlessness of the natural world does not just surround us; it assimilates us. Not only are we unable to sense absolute limits in nature: we cannot distance the natural world from ourselves… Perceiving environments from within as it were, looking not at it but being in it, nature is transformed into a realm in which we live as participants, not observers… the aesthetic mark of all such times is… total engagement, a sensory immersion in the natural world. (Berleant, 1992, p. 169)
As discussed in Chapter 3, the ecological sublime involves understandings of the intrinsic value of all aspects of ecosystems, that the processes of adaptation and survival are characteristics that exist in the environment regardless of human description of them, and independently of human valuers (Rolston, 2005). All three
292 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism texts exhibit these understandings. In Leaf Litter the opportunities to experience the ecological sublime of the conventionally acknowledged beautiful marine environments is extended to include what might be considered the unscenic (Carlson,
1998; Fudge, 2001; Saito, 1998). I propose that all three texts, despite degrees of ambivalence, offer the reader opportunities to experience the ecological sublime that involves the sensations of awe and wonder of the Romantic sublime but replaces the arrogance of rationality over the environment with a humility and sense of oneness that are crucial to ecocentrism.
An immediate indication of the difficulty of attempting to efface human presence is evident in the title of Turtle’s Song (Brown &Toft, 2001). The title might suggest an act of anthropomorphism but the allocation of a singing voice to the turtle implies that, just as bird calls draw attention to birds as a part of the environment, the turtle too has a claim to an environmental voice. Ownership of the story is relinquished, handed over to the turtle, who throughout the narrative assumes the role of first person narrator: “ I am Turtle./My eyes are black, my shell is green./Wide ocean calls me, as I lie curled in the dark./Tides roar in my blood, surf pounds in my heart”
(Brown &Toft, 2001, unpaged). As narrator, the turtle offers the reader an ecocentric position through the repeated use of the “I” throughout the verbal narrative. The repetition of the “I”, used in an italicised font when it begins the narration on a new page, draws attention to the turtle, saying, listen to me, listen to my story. In the majority of sentences, this is followed by present tense verbs which suggest the actions of the turtle, “ I nose … I scrabble… … I drift (Brown &Toft, 2001, unpaged). This is not a personified turtle performing actions that suggest its likeness to humans; this is a turtle doing what it has to do to survive. The focus for her life
293 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism story is the relationship with the environmental forces she is bound to. Her story is told with an ecological regard that recognises the interconnectedness and interdependence of all the elements of her marine and land habitats. “Wide ocean calls”, “Wide ocean takes me,” “Moon calls me” (Brown &Toft, 2001, unpaged).
After each comment from the turtle, there is a repeated command, structured consistently throughout the text following the pattern established on the first page,
“Wake, little turtle, wake!” (Brown & Toft, 2001, unpaged). This command could be the turtle’s voice, internalising its struggle for survival, willing itself forwards.
Alternatively, while the persistent encouragement could suggest this is the voice of
“mother nature”, the commands could equally come from a gender neutral, omnipotent environmental force stronger than the turtle. Any one of these alternatives suggests that human behaviours are being projected onto the environment.
Earlier in this chapter I suggested narrative structure contributes to the construction of an ecocentric subject positions. Where I was critical of the convenient use of natural cycles in The Waterhole (Base, 2001) to provide a tidy, happy ending, the narrative structure of Turtle’s Song follows the authentic patterns of a turtle’s life cycle from her birth to her return to the same beach to lay her eggs. However, the turtle’s narration takes on anthropomorphised overtones that destabilise the ecocentric position offered by the life cycle structure of the narrative. The turtle’s recognition and description of her birth and growth to maturity are all too suggestive of recognisably human concepts, “As years pass I graze on the seagrass and grow”, reaches a climax as she comes ashore to lay her eggs, “ I have found it. I know this
294 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism place. The moon shines on the beach where I was born. I wait for the safe time.” As she swims away through the waves and surf, her recognition “ I am Turtle, old and wise”. Cultural conventions of growth and maturity suggested by the words are balanced by the natural conventions acknowledged by the powerful environmental forces that drive her, “Wide ocean calls me, roars in my blood, pounds in my heart.”
However, the ambivalent aspects of the turtle’s narration do not detract from the ecological implications that there is a vast scope of events beyond human cultural experiences. It is the illustrations in Turtle’s Song that encourage readers’ immersion in the sensory pleasures offered by the text (see Figure 7.9).
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 7.9 The young turtle
The illustrations are “hand drawn and painted on silk using a combination of a latex- based ink called gutta and dyes blended like watercolour” (Toft, 2004). This technique, of painting on silk, creates a texture which invites tactility. Stunning colours evoke the tropical habitat: the sea is the richest of deep blues; oranges, reds and pinks highlight the creatures of the coral reef; and the turtles are vibrant shades of green. All of the creatures are outlined in gold which highlights their brilliance,
295 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism richness and opulence and brings them into the foreground. The soft, organic shapes evoke the continuous, fluid movement of the creatures and the tides. Where the water is turbulent, patterns of busy circular shapes suggest the bubbling water, as the turtle surfs up a strong diagonal line.
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Figure 7.10 The surfing turtle
Just as the aesthetic properties of the text encourage more than one reading, peritextual features increase opportunities for rereading by interpellating the reader with “Turtle facts – did you know?” (Brown &Toft, 2001, unpaged). The presumed authority of the ecological detail confirms the turtle’s story. There is no relation to humans in this section. Ecological details stress the intrinsic value of turtles in their own right: “Sea turtles have lived on earth about 100 times longer than humans.” Sea turtles are represented as having value in their own right. Details of their abilities are included but not humanised: “Sea turtles’ legs have evolved into flippers to help them swim. Their shells are light and flat to make them more buoyant and to help them move easily through the water.” The ecological details compound the “ah!” moments offered by the illustrations and prompt a sense of the wondrousness of the
296 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism environment. The text that follows this page is explicitly concerned with raising readers’ consciousness about the turtle.
“Environmental Information” lists threats to turtles mostly from human beings, whereas in the turtle’s account these were acknowledged as only some among other dangers faced: “the nets of the fishermen … their hooks … their spears” are recognised as threats amongst many: “Crabs catch and crush… fish gobble, sharks shatter and crunch” (Brown &Toft, 2001, unpaged). The ecocentric perspective of the turtle is juxtaposed with the destruction caused by anthropocentric needs, food, turtle soup, jewellery making, leather, cosmetics and indirect responsibility through accidentally catching turtles in nets, the destruction of habitats and pollution in the marine habitat. This list of anthropocentric threats to the turtle is followed by details of human consideration and action that help to conserve turtles: people care, scientists research, concerned people form groups. Agency is advocated in broad terms, but there is also an implication that there is a need for a re-envisioning of anthropocentrism, and a move towards ecocentrism.
Upon opening The World That We Want (Toft, 2004) 41 readers might believe that this book, “dedicated to finding the balance”, may advocate and model the human agency and restrained anthropocentrism of the texts discussed in the previous chapter. The anthropocentric focus of the dedication almost precludes the possibility that this text could represent an ecocentric perspective. However, the title page with its murky, turquoise blue and ambiguously formed environment, that is neither land,
41 Winner of the Wilderness Society Environment Award for Children’s Literature, 2005.
297 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism nor water, is a reiteration of the cover with its complete absence of human beings, and the suggestion that the “we” of the title are in fact the animals represented.
Indeed, the animals do take centre stage as narrators throughout the text-multiple narrators speaking with a unified voice on behalf of tropical coastal, littoral zone, and ocean habitats that constitute the environment in Northern Queensland.
The verbal narrative in The World That We Want (Toft, 2004) takes the form of the children’s rhyme, This is the House that Jack Built . This may seem a strangely anthropocentric framing device, recalling a hierarchy of human domination of the environment. Yet the narrative repetition of “the world that we want” places the animals in the dominant position, and the text could be recognised as an example of ecocentrism in extremis , a world in which humans have no place. Critics who label ecocentrism as misanthropic might readily agree with this interpretation. However, unlike Jack’s rhyme which is written and spoken in the past tense throughout, the
“want” of The World That We Want suggests a utopian vision or desire for an idyllic environment. Through the rhyme, for example, “this is the mangrove that follows the river that weaves through the forest that filters the air that circles the world that we want”, the animals are pronouncing judgement and specifying their preferred world.
Their judgements suggest how the North Queensland habitats (the air, the forest, the river, the mangrove, the beach, the tide pool, reef, atoll, and ocean) should be united as healthy ecosystems where no one being or element is more important than another but all exist within a network of ecological connections.
A visual paradise is created by the illustrations which, like the other works by Toft described above, depend on fully saturated colours: rich blues, vibrant greens, and
298 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism shimmering gold capture tropical sand and sunlight. This non-realistic representation of the environment is not a failure to represent it, but an exaggeration, that serves to emphasise the beauty of the environment.
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Figure 7.11 From The World We Want
Visually, by extending the illustrations to the page edges, the text invokes the haecceitas of the rich, pristine ecosystems, inviting the reader to be part of the scene, aligned with the non-human inhabitants of the ecosystem. For example, the air, forest, and river pages are followed by a double-page spread of the coastal land habitat complete with creatures. On this double-page there is no narration, but the aesthetic properties of the illustrations provide a multi-sensory experience, and extraordinarily vibrant colours invite a tactile response. Similarly mangrove, beach, tide pool, are followed by another double-page spread of the littoral zone, again without narration. When reef, atoll, and ocean are added the pages open out to form a four page fold-out of the entire ecosystem, the world the creatures want.
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Furthermore, like Turtle’s Song this text invites multiple readings. Readers are invited to participate in the text, “As worlds unite/And habitats grow/ Find 45 creatures/Which ones do you know?” “You” interpolates readers as quasi-ecologists, studying the environment not necessarily to help it, but to understand and appreciate it from an ecocentric perspective. This engagement encourages readers to negotiate back and forth between text and peritext, consolidating the affective experience of the text with the cognitive experience of the peritextual details. For example, in the peritext that follows the conclusion of the narrative, there is an itemised list of factual information about the occupants of each habitat. Readers can scan the lists and, with increased understandings, return to the narrative to locate the creatures.
The two texts analysed above share representations of environments and their inhabitants that are accepted, from a Western standpoint, to have elements of conventional beauty. Leaf Litter: Exploring the Mysteries of a Hidden World
(Tonkin, 2006) represents a habitat that could be easily overlooked because of its ordinariness, even its unattractiveness. Where brightly vivid colours represent the beautiful and scenic coastal and marine environments of Turtle’s Song and The
World That We Want, muted, naturalistic colours allow representations of the unscenic habitat that exists “within a small patch of leaf litter beneath a single tree.”
Yet the stunning illustrations in this sophisticated picture book engage readers’ senses to rouse feelings of wonder and amazement that are heightened by the ecological details included in the verbal text.
Leaf Litter relies on the holistic metaphor of an ecosystem to show how living beings and physical elements of the environment are interdependent and contribute to the
300 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism survival of the whole environment. In this text, a whole world exists without human intervention. Illustratively, humans are effaced to enable the textual foregrounding of the interdependence of all the plants and animals. The narratorial voice, unlike that in the two focus texts above, speaks not as creatures of the environment, but on behalf of the environment, speaking about the life and death struggles of the inhabitants of the leaf litter. For example,
[A] brown snake has just woken from hibernation, feeling hungry. It smells the mice with its flickering tongue, then slides down the burrow, catches the father mouse and swallows him whole, head first … The small spotted bird is already dead, killed by a magpie when it flew too close to the magpie’s nest … a cicada nymph quietly sucks sap from a tree root. It’s almost fully grown and ready to crawl out of the leaf litter. (Tonkin, 2006, pp. 16-17)
The narration here is factual. Although “feeling hungry” and “the father mouse” anthropomorphise the creatures, the ecological interconnections emphasised throughout the verbal narrative do not sentimentalise the creatures. The language used confirms the visual foregrounding of the environment.
If the move away from an anthropocentric perspective is established by the complementarity of verbal and visual narratives, it is the haecceitas achieved by the illustrations that encourages readers’ immersion in the textual environment. To represent the haecceitas of the environment presumes high modality (Stephens,
2008) and this text achieves that through layering of technical properties. Most evident is the careful attention to botanical accuracy. The illustrative techniques are naturalistic. Realistic green and muddy brown colours represent dominant features of the habitat. More colourful features such as the rosella display vivid blue, yellow and red feathers. Movement within the leaf litter habitat is suggested by compositional elements. A butterfly flies out of a left hand upper quadrant of one illustration, and in
301 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism the same position on another page, an echidna noses under a log. The perspective is the same for each double-page spread, a frameless, long shot with front on perspective, and centrally positioned tree trunk. The repetition of this stable perspective allows readers to see the day and night changes, as well as to compare the seasonal variations permitted by the narrative structure from autumn through to summer. I suggest that this repeated perspective, rather than offer readers a place as objective witnesses outside the environment, places them amongst the leaf litter of the text (see Figure 7.12).
This image is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT library.
Figure 7.12 Leaf Litter
Layered in this way, the technical properties add to the authenticity of the environmental representation and place readers as participants in the environment.
Close attention to the illustrations reveals the microscopic details of the habitat and its beings which further contribute to haecceitas . Active participation with the environment is encouraged by a camouflaged lift-up flap, one on each double page, which reveals what is not obvious on top of the leaf litter. Each flap is in a different place and sizes vary so that different areas may be revealed and a range of creatures
302 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism and habitats may be examined. For instance, one flap covers a complex termite colony with its chambers and twisting passageways, while another exposes a tiny hibernating lizard. These flaps enable a sense of discovery and exploration, an endeavour which is rewarded by a sense of amazement at how easily so much could have been overlooked.
Peritextual features in Leaf Litter encourage further engagement and immersion. For example, the leaves which create the leaf litter fall down one page of the peritext that precedes the narrative, while on the lower edge of the concluding peritext fragments of illustrations from the text imply that the reader is still in the habitat. On an opening page, comments endorse that careful engagement, “If you look closely you will discover a world of animals and plants living side by side, a busy secret world we hardly ever see … The more you look, the more amazing things you will find”
(2006, unpaged). This level of engagement is reiterated in the concluding peritextual pages which itemise ten “Things to Find” on each double page. For example, on pages 16 -17 among other things to find are:
Brown-topped toadstools with black gills. They release their spores and then turn into black mush within four days … Two moths in disguise … Green algae on the skin of the blue- tongued lizard. It will eventually make the lizard’s scales fall off. (Tonkin, 2006, unpaged)
Peritextual information supplements the ecological details of the illustrations. In the glossary, proper names, “tuan”, “Eltham copper butterfly”, “bursaria bushes” are used together with more general but physically accurate descriptors, “the small spotted bird”. On a concluding page, the value of leaf litter to the whole ecosystem is reiterated, with only the briefest reference to human need
Without leaf litter, there is nothing/ to stop the rain from washing the soil away./ There is nothing to stop the wind from blowing the soil away./ Leaf litter is home to thousands of 303 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism
different plants and animals,/ and protects them from the icy cold and the burning sun./ Without leaf litter, there is nothing for/ creatures to eat and nowhere for them to hide.(Tonkin, 2006, unpaged)
The details of the interconnectedness and interdependence of ecosystems, devoid of human presence, propose an ecocentric perspective. However, one small admission of the human dependence on leaf litter emerges in the concluding peritext:
Leaf litter provides nutrients to feed the trees so they can grow and give us the oxygen we need to breathe. Without these nutrients, the trees could slowly die. Leaf litter is fragile and easily destroyed, but is vital for our survival and for the future of the world. We need to learn to look after it (Tonkin, 2006, unpaged).
The difficulties of representing human effacement and relinquishing control are demonstrated in this extract where ecocentric perspectives have been replaced by anthropocentric concerns.
Summary
The textual analysis undertaken in this chapter examined the ways in which the texts seemingly advocate an alternative to anthropocentric practices. However, the analysis indicates the complexities associated with ecocentric perspectives: the difficulties of the process of decentring a human presence and recentring the environment (only one text has a central human character who experiences a change in his position as an ecological subject); whether or not the allocation of a voice and projection of an identity onto living beings and non-living entities is an anthropomorphic act.
On the other hand, the analysis suggests that the focus texts, as picture books, offer readers opportunities for aesthetic experiences which assist a potential transition
304 Chapter 7: The (Im)Possibility of Ecocentrism away from anthropocentrism towards ecocentrism. The particular properties that these texts as picture books display, and the persuasive potential of ecological details found in the peritexts, invite readers to experience the ecological sublime. Rather than being an exclusively anthropocentric pleasure, the ecological sublime, by mixing awe with humility, can serve to engage readers in consideration of humans’ oneness with the environment.
This chapter, aligned with the third component of the conceptual framework, finalises the textual analysis. The next chapter, therefore, concludes the study with a discussion of the study’s key arguments, the implications for praxis, and some suggestions for further research.
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Chapter 8: Environmental Futures
We cannot change what we do in and to the natural environment until we change what we think about it and about ourselves in relationship to it. (White, as cited in Callicott & Palmer, 2005, Volume 1, p. xxxiii)
It looks just like an old dead log But sneak up on your toes. There’s a slimy trail Some golden threads and tiny trees in rows. (Howes & Harvey, 1998, unpaged)
At a time when human and environmental futures are discursively constructed as being in jeopardy, there is, as the first epigraph implies, a perceived need to know ourselves as ecological subjects if changes to the ways we engage with the environment are to be effected. The words of the second epigraph, spoken by the child character in Islands in My Garden (Howes & Harvey, 1998), epitomises an ecological subject who knows how to read the environment, and to look beyond superficial appearances. The imperative (“sneak up on your toes”) contained in the second epigraph exhorts others to behave so that they too may become ecologically aware individuals who think about the environment and their engagement with it.
The second epigraph also demonstrates how Australian children’s literature constructs ecological subjectivities that are informed by, and inform, culturally desirable ways of engaging with the environment.
This final chapter addresses the fourth and final objective of the study, reviews its key arguments, considers the implications for praxis, and concludes with several suggestions for future research.
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I began this study by explaining how I took up the desired ecological subject position offered by Al Gore’s comments about his environmental film, An
Inconvenient Truth . Gore’s persuasive discourse positioned me as an ecological subject who should reflect on the negative impact humans have had on the environment. I argued that Gore’s language interpolated me, as part of the collective
“we” of humanity, to assume responsibility for the abuses of the past and to act to ensure future interactions with the environment are less destructive. Gore’s statement implied a shift from unrestrained anthropocentrism with its assumptions of dominance and disregard, to a position of restrained anthropocentrism which moderates control over the environment with consideration for it.
The process of textual analysis, undertaken in the preceding chapters, examined how ecological subjectivities constructed in the focus texts offer positions from which to reflect on human engagement with the environment. It was not the purpose of this study to determine unconditionally how verbal and visual narrative strategies lead to the construction of definitive subject positions. Rather, it was the purpose to determine possible subject positions, and desirable subject positions. Each of the three chapters of textual analysis pertains to the construction of subjectivities in relation to one of the positions identified in the conceptual framework developed from previous research into children’s environmental literature and studies of environmental discourses. These positions represent: (i) the consequences of unrestrained anthropocentrism; (ii) models of restrained anthropocentrism; and (iii) ecocentric perspectives. As has been stated throughout the study, the textual analyses offer provisional readings within the conceptual framework; it does not claim that this is necessarily the only plausible arrangement. Furthermore, the poststructural
307 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures assumptions underpinning this study deny any exact conclusions about the subject positions offered in the texts, nor is it presumed that readers will necessarily take up the positions offered to them.
Chapter 5 argues that the focus texts privilege reflection on environmental crises, and the implied cause, the Western imperative of economic growth and development. The argument also proposes that the texts function to challenge ideological assumptions that unrestrained anthropocentrism is an appropriate approach to human engagement with the environment. The analysis proposes that the texts represent variations of “the down side of dominance” (Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 2004, p. 45). Daily confrontations with ecocatastrophe highlight the folly of human attempts to live all over the world without regard for the consequences.
The transdisciplinary methodological approach to textual analysis demonstrates that these representations are not straightforward. Various narrative strategies construct subject positions where human dominion, with its anthropogenic impact on the environment, can be contested. Conversely, however, there are inconsistencies in the narrative constructions of ecological subject positions in the texts. For example, the group of picture books, Tasmanian Tiger (Isham & Isham, 1996), Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (Bruce & Wade, 2000), and Uno’s Garden (Base, 2006), represent one aspect of ecocatastrophe, that is, species loss. The analysis demonstrates that the narrative use of attention seeking features complicates and destabilises the ecological subject positions offered. In the humorous picture books,
At the Beach (Harvey, 2004) and In the Bush (Harvey, 2005), the characters deny the consequences of unrestrained human engagement with the environment. An ironic
308 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures reading of these texts, one which may not be accessible to readers, is needed to highlight the folly of unrestrained anthropocentrism. It is argued that the ingenious action of the characters in The Tower to the Sun (Thompson, 1996) may suggest that ecocatastrophic conditions can be circumvented rather than resolved. In the young adult novel, Airdancer of Glass (Bateson, 2004), the consequences of controlling the environment (reminiscent of Western contemporary society) are juxtaposed with scenarios of living in harmony with the environment. The analysis highlights the opportunities afforded readers to interrogate aspects of contemporary treatment of the environment in Western society but the outcome of the novel does not propose an unproblematic solution to environmental degradation. If read as an environmental allegory, the young adult novel Yoss (Hirsch, 2001) aligns readers with the central character who challenges the manifestations of dominion associated with over- consumption.
To summarise, the analysis in Chapter 5 demonstrates the constructed subject positions function to challenge dominant socio-cultural and political-economic conditions that are associated with unrestrained anthropocentrism, but those positions are neither uniform nor stable.
In Chapter 6, the analysis proposes that the subject positions offered conform to dominant environmental discourses and advocate models of behaviour in keeping with the agendas of global organisations and national, state, and local governments.
The analysis demonstrates that the focus texts represent restrained anthropocentrism in its contemporary form, namely, sustainability. It is argued that the central characters develop as ecological subjects who participate in sustainability, through
309 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures individual actions in their immediate environments or through collaborative actions with groups of other citizens acting as responsible ecological citizens. In The Singing
Hat (Riddle, 2000), Islands in My Garden (Howes & Harvey, 1998), My Home in
Kakadu (Christophersen & Christophersen, 2005), Hope Bay (Plüss 2005), and
Blueback (Winton, 1997), the characters develop as individual ecological subjects who model sustainable environmental practices in their own backyards. In Belonging
(Baker, 2004) and The Shy Mala (Stafford & Zielinski, 2006) the characters take on wider roles, collaborating with other community members to secure environmental rejuvenation or conservation. Although the analysis points out some inconsistencies and slippages in subject positions offered by the texts, readers are offered positions aligned with these central characters, whose agency provides a model for readers should they choose to assume similar responsibility for the environment. The analysis suggests that the multiple subject positions created in the texts by narrative strategies such as focalisation and metonymy invite readers to negotiate subject positions which accord with those demanded by the dominant environmental discourses of sustainability.
In summary, the analysis in Chapter 6 argues that the texts construct ecological subject positions which function to endorse the ecological agency advocated in discourses of sustainability. The ecological agents represented in the texts are put forward as models of behaviours crucial to ensure human and environmental futures.
Finally, in Chapter 7, the analysis argues that the focus texts represent ecocentric perspectives. The textual analysis argues possible ways that texts may overcome the inherent difficulties in representing ecocentric perspectives. The analysis suggests
310 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures that human decentring or effacement provides one approach, while an accompanying strategy necessitates the use of verbal and visual narrative strategies in picture books to represent concepts of intrinsic value that are not anthropocentrically based. The picture books offer readers opportunities for aesthetic experiences which may enable them to regard the environment from other than anthropocentric perspectives. Only one text, The Hidden Forest (Baker, 2000), has a central human character. Readers can be aligned with this character whose view of the environment is informed by ecocentrism. Human presence is decentred in Home (Oliver, 2006), Reef Superstar
(Killingeck & Toft, 2005), and The Waterhole (Base, 2001), but attempts to represent ecocentric perspectives are compromised by anthropomorphism in the texts. Western epistemologies are prioritised in Creatures of the Rain Forest (Brim
& Eglitis, 2005), where ecological understandings and Indigenous understandings are combined. However, a potential move towards valuable representations of the ecocentric understandings of Indigenous peoples is not developed. Turtles’ Song
(Brown & Toft, 2001), The World That We Want (Toft, 2004), and Leaf Litter:
Exploring the Mysteries of a Hidden World (Tonkin, 2006) invite readers to experience aesthetic pleasure which is enhanced by the inclusion of persuasive ecological details. It is argued that Western epistemologies can provide ecological knowledge that has the potential to generate a sense of awe and wonder about the environment and the creatures that are a part of it. The chapter argues that understandings of the wondrous capacities of the environment may provoke a humility that allows readers to acknowledge themselves as an equal part of, not a privileged position apart from, the environment.
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To sum up, the analysis in Chapter 7 argues that the texts, as picture books, are well placed to represent ecocentric perspectives. The analysis acknowledges the impossibility of effacing human presence completely, but considers how the aesthetic properties of picture books, when combined with ecological details drawn from Western epistemologies, construct ecological subject positions which advocate the radical perspective of ecocentrism.
Overall, the textual analysis proposes that the texts construct subject positions which provide opportunities for readers: to consider the consequences of unrestrained anthropocentrism and what has caused them; to align themselves with the dominant discourses of sustainability; and to look beyond anthropocentric perspectives. The arguments proposed by each chapter of textual analysis have implications for praxis which are discussed below.
Implications for Praxis
It was not the purpose of this study to link the arguments advanced with practical strategies for classroom implementation, or curriculum change. Nevertheless, in the section that follows, some implications for the study with regard to the role of children’s literature in environmental education are discussed.
Implications for Environmental Education
Undoubtedly, children’s literature currently plays a part in environmental education.
The number of environmental texts published each year and widely available attests to that. However, children’s literature may currently have a marginal focus in
312 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures educational curriculum documents, policy statements and classrooms. The study demonstrates that children’s literature has the potential to become a pivotal element of environmental education. Here, I wish to discuss this claim with reference to how the accounts of ecological citizenship constructed in Policy Statements and/or
Curriculum Documents conform to the ecological subject positions argued in this study. In this way I hope to demonstrate how children’s literature might play a major role in environmental education.
As stated in Chapter 1, the United Nations declared the years from 2005 to 2014 the
Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Environmental education, therefore, is very much a part of a world wide educational agenda. One tenet of education for sustainable development is respect. Humans as ecological subjects are expected to show “respect for others, respect in the present and for future generations, respect for the planet and what it provides to us … ESD wants to challenge us all to adopt new behaviours and practices to secure our future”
(UNESCO, 2005). For Tilbury and Wortman (2004, p. ix), “education enables us to understand ourselves and others and our links with the wider natural and social environment, and this understanding serves as a durable basis for building respect”.
Four goals which guide environmental education for sustainability (awareness raising, shaping values, developing knowledge and skills, and making decisions and taking action), are expressed in terms that resonate with aspects of an ecologically aware subject: “does it matter to me? … should I do something about it? … how can
I do something about it? … what will I do?” (Fien, 2004).
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Accounts such as these are echoed by the comments, included in Chapter 1, from the
Ministerial Advisory Committee for Educational Renewal (2006, p. 15) which emphasises respect, responsibility, the “integrity of all life on earth, [and] understanding and inclusion of all perspectives”. Most recently, the Melbourne
Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008) has, as one of its goals, that all young Australians become active and informed citizens who “act with moral and ethical integrity … work for the common good, in particular sustaining and improving natural and social environments … [and] are responsible global and local citizens.” Similarly, the Australian Government’s National Action Plan for
Sustainability (2009, p. 9) acknowledges the role that education plays in promoting sustainability: the plan “values the capacity for individuals and groups to reflect on personal experiences and world views and to challenge accepted ways of interpreting and engaging with the world”.
Emerging from these statements are understandings of responsible young people, who empathise with others, who are able to make decisions about environmental issues, events and actions, and who engage with the environment in culturally prescribed ways. Elements of these statements clearly indicate parity with the ecological subject positions argued in the textual analysis. For example, as a representative sample, the texts provide opportunities for readers to: consider environmental futures; think about the uncertainties and complexities of human engagement with the environment; reflect upon their positions as ecological subjects.
More specifically, as it was argued in Chapter 6, the texts model particular environmental practices that align directly with sustainability. The textual analysis in
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Chapter 5 and Chapter 7, on the other hand, argued that the texts propose challenges to “accepted ways of interpreting and engaging with the world”.
Australian children’s literature, therefore, can provide a useful and stimulating resource in education for sustainability. Education documents such as the National
Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools (2005, p. 22) imply this potential: “Resources will help people to explore values and develop responsible attitudes in relation to their fellow citizens and the environment, from local to global level”. More specifically this document states that “an entertaining and interesting narrative can be used as a gateway for students of all ages to explore environmental education for sustainability” (p. 21). The conduct of this study has implications for how children’s literature may be used as a resource in environmental education by opening up diverse ways for considering environmental texts.
The study demonstrates how ecocriticism provides ways of examining literary representations of human engagement with the environment. The theories of narrative, visual semiotics and aesthetics, in combination with postcolonial and ecofeminist perspectives that provide the methodological approach to this study, could be adopted and/or adapted for the purposes of environmental education. The transdisciplinary approach provides a theoretically convincing way to understand how environmental and narrative discourses construct subject positions, subjectivities, and agency in texts.
Environmental educators, working in collaboration with children’s literature scholars, could appropriate this study’s methodological approach to children’s
315 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures literature to provide new ways of reading environmental texts. Such an approach would raise critical awareness of environmental discourses and understandings of how positions are narratively constructed. It would also enable the examination of the implicit or explicit ideologies inscribed in the subject positions. The less explicit those ideologies are, the more need there is to highlight the narrative strategies employed. This critical aspect of environmental education could be applied to all texts, but is particularly important for picture books which are seemingly easily read, innocent texts.
This study’s approach to textual analysis could be used in environmental education to teach young people to understand their positions as ecological subjects. Young readers need to be able to make informed choices: to know they can accept, resist, adopt, or adapt the subject positions constructed by literary texts. Environmental education should make explicit the agency that environmental texts advocate so that young people can consider themselves as ecological agents who can reflect on and engage with the environment as ecologically aware subjects.
Ecocritical approaches informed by poststructural understandings can make accessible, to all those involved in environmental education, ways to read environmentally themed literature so understandings of the ways texts work can be encouraged.
Implications for future Environmental Education
As subjectivities are contingent on times and place and social context, it is expected that, as environmental conditions change and pressures from such current issues as global warming and climate change, population growth, and food shortages take the
316 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures predicted course, the ecological subject positions constructed in children’s literature will change to accommodate differing attitudes and plans of action. If sustainability is embraced and government legislation (supported by action on behalf of individuals, communities and businesses) accomplishes the desired effect, ecological subject positions may be similar to or different from those constructed presently.
Therefore, there will still be a place to incorporate children’s literature into environmental education.
Implications for Writers, Illustrators, Publishers
This study has implications for writers, illustrators, and publishers of environmentally themed children’s literature by encouraging them to reconsider ways of constructing environmental texts. By attending to the various environmental perspectives argued by this study, these producers of texts can provide multiple subject positions for readers to interrogate as they negotiate the construction of their subjectivities.
Future Directions: Suggestions for Further Research
It is apparent that environmental issues will continue to provide a source of concern that will find representation, in texts and other media, for children and young people into the future. Therefore, some possible suggestions for further research are set out below.
A study of constructions of ecological subjectivities in different genres and
other media
The texts analysed in this study were a selection of what was considered “literary texts”. A further study could be undertaken of the ecological subjectivities
317 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures constructed in textbooks that are used in classrooms in such disciplines as Studies of
Society and the Environment. A comparative study might consider how such texts conform, or fail to conform, to the subjectivities constructed in literary texts, and/or curriculum documents and government policy statements.
As children’s literature is only one of many types of texts that offer children ecological subject positions, studies could analyse other media. Indeed, the National
Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools (2005, p. 21) advocates using stories “from different sources, including the full range of electronic media”.
Popular television programs such as the wildlife documentary programme, Bindi the
Jungle Girl , or the magazine style programme, Totally Wild, Disney/Pixar movies such as Finding Nemo , Over the Hedge, A Bug’s Life , Madagascar , or the animated apocalypse film, WALL-e, as well as the multiplayer online game, Disney’s Club
Penguin, could provide rich sources for research. The particular strategies analysed would be different from those used in this study, but would nevertheless demonstrate how child viewers are positioned to take up the positions offered.
A study of environmental children’s literature produced internationally
The exclusive focus on Australian children’s literature in this study precluded consideration of literature produced for children in other countries. However, as indicated by the range of ecocritical scholarship reviewed in Chapters 2 and 3, literature produced in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada also constructs and advocates particular ecological subject positions. As environmental issues are global concerns that reach beyond these Western countries, a study into children’s literature produced beyond these countries would be informative.
Furthermore, comparative studies could bring to light alternative ecological subjects,
318 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures as well as providing collaborative research opportunities for children’s literature scholars outside the English speaking Western world.
A study of readers’ responses to environmental texts
It was stated in the Parameters of the Study in Chapter 1 that it is difficult to research children’s responses and understandings of the discourses in texts and the ideologies inscribed in them. However, a different methodological approach could involve children and young adults in discussions about their understandings of the texts.
While research into readers’ responses has limitation in terms of generalisable outcomes, such research would provide additional insights for educators if such a study occurred before and/or after texts such as the focus texts in this study were used in classroom practices.
A study of Indigenous ways of constructing subjectivities of relatedness
As stated throughout this study, it was not the purpose to investigate constructions of
Indigenous ways of engaging with the environment except through the conceptions of ecological subjectivity that framed this study. In Australia, publishing firms such as Magabala Books and Black Ink Press are dedicated to producing and disseminating texts which have a specific focus on Indigenous children and communities. Indigenous ways of engaging with the environment, and hence
Indigenous ecological subjectivities are worthy of studies in their own right. It would be appropriate for such studies to be undertaken using non-Western methodological approaches.
The suggestions made here are drawn from the findings of this study. They are not prescriptive; rather, they are intended to alert researchers, in the fields of children’s
319 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures literature and ecocriticism, to the potential of this study to open up possibilities for them. The recommendations above are for only a limited number of research proposals; many others may be possible. It is hoped that researchers will take up these proposals in order to develop additional insights into various aspects of representations of human engagement with the environment.
As deepening environmental crises confront the world, this study provides ways to read representations of human engagement with the environment in Australian children’s literature: ways that foreground subject positions, subjectivities and agency; ways that raise awareness of environmental discourses and the ideologies inscribed in them. As the epigraphs to this chapter propose and as this study argues, knowing how to read the environment and knowing about ourselves as ecological subjects who engage with the environment are critical for human and environmental futures.
320 Chapter 8: Environmental Futures
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