A QUEST FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN JEANETTE WINTERSON’S THE STONE GODS Najmeh NOURI* ABSTRACT The environmental justice approach is most explicitly associated with minority communities that are characterized as the most vulnerable individuals in environmentally driven challenges. Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) is an exemplary novel which creates a form of critique that targets issues like gender, class, and race and parallels them with ecological concerns. In this perspective, The Stone Gods criticizes the exclusionary systems that produce center and margin oppositions in both human and nonhuman worlds. Furthermore, the novel provides a background for discussion of people and places that are linked to the ecological issues in urban environments including downtown and outskirt areas. Using environmental justice approach as a main framework of analysis, this paper aims to investigate how Winterson utilizes ecological collapse as a productive tool to trouble normative power structures, embedded social binaries, and inequality in society. In doing so, the study will scrutinize the place of power and its underlying discourses that lead to the construction of inferiority and otherness and accordingly will examine their primary role in environmental degradation. 1 Keywords: Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods, Environmental Justice, Gender, Class, Race 1. INTRODUCTION The significance of environmental justice movement lies in the fact that it attempts to explore the ways in which “environmental problems do not affect us equally and that specific environmental concerns are not universal” (Gardner, 1999:204). Within this perspective, environmental justice, on the one hand, scrutinizes the interaction of minority groups with natural environment and on the other hand, it focuses on the inequalities that emerges as a result of marginalization in urban and industrial areas. In other words, the core concern of environmental justice is to examine the relationship between the exploitation of minority groups and degradation of natural resources. The movement “started in the US around 1980 as a series of community-based resistances against toxification of local environments and the siting of waste dumps and polluting industries that discriminate against poor and otherwise disempowered communities, particularly minority communities” (Buell, 2005: 141-42). Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) is a prolific novel about all of these problematic binary oppositions that foster the injustice in both human and nonhuman contexts. The novel demonstrates people who are placed in the position of “Others” by the dominant power structure in various contexts. They suffer from the * Lecturer, Izmir Democracy University, School of Foreign Languages, [email protected], [email protected], ORCID: 0000-0002-3573-0498 lack of access to basic human rights and simultaneously healthy environment. Winterson puts forward the idea of environmental justice in all of the four sections of the novel including “Planet Blue”, “Easter Island”, “Post-3 War”, and “Wreck City.” The four sections are intertwined with the common theme of environmental degradation. In Planet Blue section, people live on Orbus, a planet that suffers from ecological imbalances and its inhabitants have found a new planet, Planet Blue, to start a new life on it. Easter Island sets in eighteenth century when the dominant tribes of the Island destroy its natural resources to worship their idols. Post-3 War and Wreck City take place in the same setting of Orbus after nuclear World War III. 2. THE MANY OTHERS IN THE STONE GODS In the first section, the reader is introduced to Planet Orbus with three main continents: “the Central Power”, “the SinoMosco Pact”, and “the Eastern Caliphate”. While the Central Power possess all the wealth and technology and its inhabitants enjoy ultimate welfare, the other continents are treated as Others that will not be included in the space mission to conquer the newly found planet. The exclusion of other continents is an example of environmental injustice in which only rich and powerful members of Central power are allowed to travel to the new planet and people with different nationality are doomed to stay on Orbus and endure its poisonous environment. In Central Power’s view, the inhabitants of the other 2 continents are in peripheral position, even though the initial plan to discover a new planet was a mutual strategy developed by all the three continents. In another part of the first section, the reader is introduced to Spike, a robo sapiens, who is designed to help humans to make correct calculations while colonizing the new planet. In a conversation with Billie, a worker in the Enhancement Service of MORE corporation who takes part in the space mission with Spike and others, Spike explains that the authorities plan to take only people who can afford travelling to Planet Blue. It means that people with low income would not be able to live on the new planet. Through depicting the sharp division between poor and rich, Winterson criticizes the underlying binary logic that has its root in capitalism. To put capitalism in the environmental justice context, it can be argued that global capitalism facilitates the unequal distribution of wealth and fosters the development of environmental degradation. In other words, within capitalist system poor people will experience more adverse environmental issues because of their exposure to polluted and toxic areas that are mostly the habitat of low-class communities. As Burkett claims that the in equality of the capitalist system “divides workers into environmental ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ insofar as the worst human effects of ecological plunder and degradation are often imposed on the poorest, most socially marginalized sections of the working class” (Burkett, 1999:217). In the second part, Winterson presents another version of capitalism that is neither industrial nor is based on the exchange of capital. In her retelling of Captain Cook’s journey to Easter Island in eighteenth century, Winterson underlines the fact that the oppressive power structure is the major source of ecological destruction, and gender discrimination. The rulers of the island have destroyed trees and the natural resources to build stone idols (gods) and in order to maintain their power they strive to have high number of gods by ruining the rival tribes’ idols. The meaningless process of making and destroying stone gods refers to the recurrent destructive human mistakes on Earth throughout the history. Although the island is described as a place mostly inhabited by men, Winterson describes the presence of women when the tribe leaders want to cut down the last tree of the island and are encountered by the women opposition. The patriarchal society of island ignore the objection and beat the protestors to silence them. In this sense, as Gaard argues “the ideology which authorizes oppressions such as those based on race, class, gender, sexuality, physical abilities, and species is the same ideology which sanctions the oppression of nature” (Gaard, 1993:1). In the third and fourth sections, Winterson also reflects on the process of othering and toxic environment. Post-3 War and Wreck City introduce a society strictly ruled by MORE corporation, a corporation which owns everything, and people must rent from it the things they need. Wreck city is a ghetto located on the outskirts of Tech city. While Tech city is under governance of MORE corporation and its citizens receive social services, Wreck city is an ignored and forgotten place with 3 outcasts and abject people who runaway from the control system of the corporation. The inhabitants of Wreck city are discriminated in a number of ways. Firstly, they are not considered as fellow citizens and are deprived of basic rights like health care and sanitation. Secondly, the Wreck city is extremely polluted and toxic because of the remaining nuclear radiations which have not cleaned by the government. In this fashion, Wreck city deeply suffers from both environmental and racial injustice. The ultimate example of injustice is the Dead Forest, a frightening forest next to the Wreck city. The forest is populated by toxic people who are bomb-damaged and survived from nuclear war. They are not allowed to leave the forest and MORE corporation only provides them food by dropping from helicopters. The novel depicts how the cancerous people encounter violence and are shot by MORE’s soldiers when they want to reach out of the forest. In this perspective, Winterson juxtaposes environmental justice with social justice and draws the attention of the reader to the parallels between the unhealthy environment of the Dead Forest and the lack of equal opportunities for the citizens of Wreck city. Correspondingly, She emphasizes the fact the environmental justice is an indispensable part of social justice. As Harvey points out that environmental justice must “adopt a politics of abstraction capable of reaching out across space, across multiple environmental and social conditions” (Harvey, 1996: 400). 3. CONCLUSION Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods tackles the concept of environmental justice in both local and global scales and in so doing, Winterson criticizes the existing issues and offers the possible alternatives to encounter the problems. The novel depicts how power relations and environmental degradation are intertwined in a way that corruption in power causes ecological catastrophes. In Winterson’s view, the core reason of environmental injustice is dichotomous thinking that allows for the static categorization of concepts like human and non-human entities. The novel disrupts dualistic thinking and instead suggests a model of thinking that is inclusive and promotes a positive climate for all diversities. As the novel suggest, in order to realize an environmental justice, social justice should be incorporated in the process. Winterson highlights the significance of social justice through depicting the gender, class and racial inequalities in all the four sections of the novel. REFERENCES Buell, L. (2005), The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination.