Volume 4, Issue 2, 2008 Richard Kahn, Editor Green Theory and Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy TABLE OF CONTENTS ARTICLES Introduction Richard Kahn Pg. i-ii Why the George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Theory of Metaphor is Inadequate for Addressing Cultural Issues Related to the Ecological Crises C. A. Bowers Pg. 1-10 Toward an Ecopedagogy of Children’s Environmental Literature Greta Gaard Pg. 11-24 Just War and Warrior Activists Lisa Kemmerer Pg. 25-49 Understanding the Ideology of the Earth Liberation Front Sean Parson Pg. 50-66 Being Sentient and Sentient Being: The Animal Rights Movement and Interspecies Boundaries John C. Alessio Pg. 67-86 Capitalist Discipline and Ecological Discipline Samuel Day Fassbinder Pg. 87-101 BOOK REVIEWS The Nature of Home: Taking Root in a Place, by Greta Gaard (2007) quin aaron shakra Pg. 102-105 Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revoution, and How It Can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman (2008) Samuel Day Fassbinder Pg. 106-110 Rural Literacies, by Kim Donehower, Charlotte Hogg, Eileen E. Schell (2007) Wanda Baxter Pg. 111-114 Rural Voices: Place Conscious Education and the Teaching of Writing, edited by Robert E. Brooke (2003) Fred Waage Pg. 115-118 Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics, by Timothy Morton (2007) Antony Adolf Pg. 119-120 Retrieving Nature: Education for a Post-Humanist Age, by Michael Bonnett (2004) John Bruni Pg. 121-123 Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality, by Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett (2005) Richard Besel Pg. 124-126 FILM REVIEWS The Greening of Southie, by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, Dir. Ian Cheney (2008) Brandon Tauscher Pg. 127-132 CONFERENCE REVIEWS ASLE 2008 (Association for the Study of Literature in the Environment), Edinburgh Mary Been Pg. 133-136 Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy i Volume 4, No. 2 (2008) Introduction Richard Kahn The Tibetan Buddhists speak of the “pretas,” or hungry ghosts, of existence. These are haunted souls, akin to the “shades” of Ancient Greek literature or the tormented individuals in Bosch triptychs. Seething with unresolved fear and insatiable desire, they prey upon the living beings of this world in the desperate search for a satisfaction that in fact can never be their own. To them is given a kind of eternal hell on earth. Alarmingly, more and more I sense the pretas at work in the faddish how-to manuals of “green” everything that is the strident chatter and current parlance of increasing numbers of opportunistic ideologues frantic to quench the thirst of their own professional ambitions. We stand in real need of planetary Shambhala but instead what too many academics and blogified intellectual others are producing is a cacophony of voices crying out with a clamor that serves mainly to enclose the spiritual commons of our cosmic silence. While some are hopeful that this confusion of oft competing agendas is but a kind of negative externality of the environmental movement’s move towards achieving a hegemonic position within our social institutions, I can only find it ironic that many of the educators presently offering visions of a cleaner future (usually within a paradigm of technical and market-based solutions) do so in the form of augmenting noise pollution levels. Al Gore may not foul the air as badly as Rush Limbaugh, but it doesn’t mean that his rhetoric or policy represent anything profoundly less toxic in outcome to the children of generations to come. Isn’t it significant, after all, that in an age of perpetual warfare and unprecedented ecological catastrophe, an annual cult of over 20 million people has arisen that is singularly dedicated to watching Dancing with the Stars? Of course, we should all be celebrating and cavorting with the stars – the denizens of dark skies. But, sadly, for the worldwide majority of city dwellers living under the surveillance of perpetual light, the celestial firmament is no longer even available to the naked eye. It seems that ours is a time when the twilight of the idols has gone electric. Yet, entropy can give way to extropy – to the organization of a transformational movement in another direction. I wonder (not overly seriously): do we really have anything like this in regards to contemporary ecopolitics, though? In the lack of any clearly sustained cohesion or dialogue between the myriad philosophical camps and political organizations articulating ecological concerns at this moment, many on the left have begun to adopt the saving clarion call of the autonomous Marxist theory of organization-as-multitude. Perhaps I am too cynical, but I find it difficult to imagine that the “environmental correctness” now overtaking the academy (as well as amongst the Washington consensus elites) is overtly the successful outcome of ongoing spontaneous eruptions of variegated ecological resistance. Rather, it strikes me to be more like a soccer match conducted by kindergarteners – a jumble of children monotonously stampeding around the field in a chaos; twenty-odd legs attempting to kick the ball at once, each child wishing to a potential hero of the game and all without a commitment to a given role or position in the play. Worse still, in the analogous case of today’s environmental discourse, the soccer ball is symbolic primarily of locked vaults of exploitative capital. ISSN 1941-0948 doi: 10.3903/gtp.2008.2.1 Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy ii Volume 4, No. 2 (2008) Green Theory & Praxis aims to be more than just another shop at the sustainability bazaar. We want to sow the seeds of dialogue between approaches, unionize the venders, and meaningfully evolve the ways in which people barter in the marketplace of ideas concerned with the state of nature. Personally, I would especially like to see the journal seek out, engage with, or otherwise respond to marginal subcultures and voices, to support those traditionally silenced by the university (or media), to hear their wisdom and to see what if anything there is to teach one another on matters of our mutual interest. Per this line of thinking, the bazaar of which we are here a part must strive seriously to include the bizarre. I say this not to forecast a carnivalesque strategy or future for our journal, much less the environmental movement, but rather to support the poet’s insight that truth is beauty and beauty truth; and, in a posthuman age, we must remember that beauty often corresponds to the aesthetic of a nonhuman agent. Therefore, the journal will serve a real role if it can build a bridge between academic protocol and the radical demands of Others and their representatives. This issue, our December issue of 2008, continues in the tradition of our first offering by blending the viewpoints of leading movement thinkers (such as C. A. Bowers and Greta Gaard in this edition) with that of emerging scholars, and by presenting writing that pertains to a diverse number of perspectives – from those of the ELF and the ALF, to anti-capitalist and environmental justice advocates, all the way down to the demand of rights for microbiotic communities. Further, thanks to the tireless and valuable work of the journal’s collective of review editors (please see the Masthead for their names), this issue presents a number of critical reviews of recent literature relevant to ecopedagogy, as well as of another documentary film regarding the green building movement. We also here provide a review of the ASLE 2008 conference, thereby extending the productive partnership begun with the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment that was begun earlier this year. The next issue of Green Theory & Praxis will be in June, 2009 and I have already begun work on a few pieces that let me know that the re-animation of our journal in 2008 is a success that will now continue happily through the following year. The June, 2008 issue was viewed some 4000 unique times in its initial month of publication alone by scholars, activists and public intellectuals the world over. I hope our audience continues to be intrigued by the challenging positions and arguments contained within the present volume. If you have questions, concerns, an idea for a publishable piece, or would like to undertake for the journal a review of a text, film, other piece of appropriate media, or conference/event, please feel free to contact me. I welcome hearing from you. In closing, solidarity goes out to the Greek anarchists, student and labor building occupiers, and those who manifest the courage to take direct action against the pervasive development of global systemic violence. Additionally, in acknowledgement of their recent or expected criminal convictions, thanks are extended to Tim DeChristopher and the SHAC 7-UK (as well as the many lesser known activists whose own important work daily engenders repression of a less spectacular but no less unjust variety). Lastly, in speaking of political prisoners, if change has indeed come to America, let us free Leonard Peltier… Richard Kahn ([email protected]) Editor, Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy ISSN 1941-0948 doi: 10.3903/gtp.2008.2.1 Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy 1 Volume 4, No. 2 (2008) Why the George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Theory of Metaphor is Inadequate for Addressing Cultural Issues Related to the Ecological Crises C. A. Bowers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson intended to radically change one of the dominant traditions of Western philosophy, which is the tradition of abstract theory that stretches from the ancient Greeks down through the writings of the contemporary analytic philosophers. In place of de- contextualized and thus culturally uniformed theories about the nature of reality, mind, language, and individualism, Lakoff and Johnson proposed that the task of the philosopher is to clarify how the metaphorical basis of language, and thus systems of knowing, originates in the embodied experience of individuals.