ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Postcolonial theory has frequently asserted the value of positionality in order to foreground the politics of discursive authority. Positionality has generally been thought to include race, gender, sexuality, and class but has more recently come to include geographical and biotic space. In an era of increasing ecological degradation, the mutually constitutive relationship between social inequity and environmental problems has been more starkly illuminated, as the recent tragedy in New Orleans has shown. In an effort to understand how the history of empire has altered both the literal and literary landscape of postcolonial studies, we seek papers that explore these points of contact. This panel engages the connections between postcolonialism and ecocriticism in historical terms as well as their contemporary manifestations in areas of the world that remain particularly vulnerable to environmental crisis, (neo)colonialism, and globalization. Papers will address these, among other questions: Are postcolonial and environmental concerns compatible? What emergent theoretical paradigms are needed to address both fields? How do postcolonial authors imagine and theorize the relationship between human and non-human histories? What is the relationship between ecological imperialism and literature? Why has ecocriticism neglected the (racialized) history of empire, and what might it gain from a thorough engagement with postcolonial studies? How might these knowledges be drawn upon to guide the futures of sovereignty and sustainability?

Friday, March 24

Susan Comfort, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
“Environmental Justice and Postcolonialism: Identity, Imagination, and Struggle”
Almila Ozdek, George Washington University
“The Imperialism of the Nation State: Grand Narratives Inscribed on Body and Nature”
Rajender Kaur, Rhose Island College
“‘Home is Where the Oracella Are:’ Of Cetology and Entrepreneurship: Towards a New Paradigm of Transcultural Ecocritical Engagement”
Jeffrey McCarthy, Westminster College
“The Wilderness Debate and Ecocriticism: A Postcolonial Intervention”

Saturday, March 25

Marcela Romero Rivera, Cornell University
“Excessive Nature: The Human and its Limits in Latin America”
Tess Shewry, Duke University
“Signs of Struggle: Recent Literature and the Re-nationalization of Ecology in the Postcolonial Pacific”
Victoria Abboud, Wayne State University
“The Wrath of Grapes: Achieving Balanced Nature-Human Interaction in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe”
Megan Kuster, University of Nevada, Reno
“Touring Place: Caribbean Literature, Neocolonialism, and Ecocriticism”