Literature, literary pedagogy and extinction rebellion (XR): the case of Tarka the Otter

Extinction Rebellion: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-truth/about-us/ Tema Milstein, ‘Blooming in the Doom and Gloom: Bringing Regenerative Pedagogy to the Rebellion’, The Journal of Sustainability Education, April 9th, 2020: http://www.susted.com/wordpress/content/blooming-in-the-doom-and-gloom-bringing-regenerative-pedagogy-to-the-rebellion_2020_04/ Extinction Rebellion Universities group: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2019/09/20/extinction-rebellion-universities-group-calls-for-degree-overhaul-to-mark-start-of-global-climate-strikes/ Although the question of how ‘urgent’ the ‘issues’ may be and to whom and how has been crucially raised, especially in relation to claims of how ‘we’ are constituted as such in (eco-)criticism. See for just some examples of important analyses of this: Sojourner Truth, ‘Ain’t I A Woman?’ (1851), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_I_a_Woman%3F; Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London, 1993); Wub-E.-Ke-Niew, We Have the Right to Exist, a Translation of Aboriginal Indigenous Thought: The First Book Ever Published From an Ahnishinahbæotjibway Perspective (New York, 1995); Richard Kerridge, ‘Introduction’ in Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells (eds.), Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature (London, 1998), pp. 1-11, p. 6 and, more recently, Alison Kafer, ‘Bodies of Nature: The Environmental Politics of Disability’ in Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington, 2013), pp. 129-48 and Kathryn Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Minneapolis, 2018) Timothy Clark, The Value of Ecocriticism (Cambridge, 2019) Helena Feder, ‘Introduction: The Unbearable Closeness of Reading’, in Helena Feder (ed.), Close Reading the Anthropocene (London, 2021), pp. 1-15, p. 2. See: Susan Lanzoni, Empathy: A History (New Haven, 2018) and for differing critiques of ‘empathy’: Daniela Caselli, ‘Kindergarten Theory: Childhood, Affect, Critical Thought’, Feminist Theory, 11(3), 2010, pp. 241-54; Ruth Leys, ‘“The Turn to Affect”: A Critique’, Critical Inquiry, 37, 2011, pp. 434-72 Julian Henriques, Wendy Hollway, Cathy Urwin, Couze Venn, Valerie Walkerdine, Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity (London, second edition 1998 [1984]), p. ix, p. xiii See in relation specifically to Dis/ability (activism): Karín Lesnik-Oberstein (ed.), Rethinking Disability Theory and Practice: Challenging Essentialism (Basingstoke, 2015) Only C. Parker Krieg’s chapter raises anti-representational questions: ‘From Scale to Antagonism: Reading the Human in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos’ in Helena Feder (ed.), Close Reading the Anthropocene (London, 2021), pp. 175-90 Feder, ‘Introduction’, p. 2 The exception is Senayon Olaoluwa, ‘Postcolonial Anthropocene and Narrative Archaeology in Burma Boy’ in Helena Feder (ed.), Close Reading the Anthropocene (London, 2021), pp. 93-102 Sidney I. Dobrin, Blue Ecocriticism and the Oceanic Imperative (London, 2021), p. xi Marek Oziewicz, ‘Introduction: The Choice We Have in the Stories We Tell’ in Marek Oziewicz , Brian Attebery and Tereza Dĕdinová (eds.), Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene: Imagining Futures and Dreaming Hope in Literature and Media (London, 2022), pp. 1-13, p. 5 (quoting from Max Haiven, Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power Capitalism: Capitalism, Creativity, and the Commons (Halifax, 2014), p. 9) Oziewicz, ‘Introduction’, p. 3 Oziewicz, ‘Introduction’, p. 5 Oziewicz, ‘Introduction’, p. 1 Here I thank my PhD student Natalie England for pointing this out to me Julian Henriques, et al., Changing the Subject, pp. xiii-iv Dana Phillips, ‘Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology’, New Literary History, 30(3), Ecocriticism (Summer, 1999), pp. 577-602, p. 578. See also: Dana Phillips, The Truth of Ecology: Nature, Culture, and Literature in America (Oxford, 2003) See: Neil Cocks, Higher Education Discourse and Deconstruction: Challenging the Case for Transparency and Objecthood (Basingstoke, 2017) Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (London, 1989). Although recent (eco-) criticism tends to draw primarily on Haraway’s more recent writings such as Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, 2016), I understand the theoretical arguments of her earlier work to be more in line with the critique I am making in this article Matthias Fritsch, Philippe Lynes and David Wood (eds), Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy (New York, 2018) Fritsch, Lynes and Wood (eds), Eco-Deconstruction, p. 6 Stewart Cole, ‘The Animal Novel as Biopolitical Critique: Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter’, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 26(3), Summer 2019, pp. 540–569: doi:10.1093/isle/isz001; Henry Williamson, Tarka the Otter (London, 1995 [1927]). I will not here be considering Williamson’s well-known fascist sympathies and if and how these might be read in Tarka. For this see for instance: Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the Twentieth Century: A History (New Haven, 1989) Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Harmondsworth, 2000 [1962]) Rachel Carson, Under the Sea-Wind (Harmondsworth, 2007 [1941]) Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 541. Animal and childhood theorist Sue Walsh, writes in relation to Cole’s remark about Tarka being a ‘children’s novel’ that while: ‘[Steve Baker’s Picturing the Beast flags up an association of the animal with ‘memories of childhood’, and an implied equation of this with triviality, Baker’s analysis …] does not extend to asking why the animal and the child together occupy this position of triviality and non-significance, or insignificance’. (Sue Walsh, ‘Child/Animal: It’s The “Real” Thing’, in Karín Lesnik-Oberstein (ed.), The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 32, Special Issue on ‘Children in Literature’, 2002, pp. 151-162, p. 151, quoting from Steve Baker, Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation (Manchester, 1993), p. 8). See also: Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Children’s Literature and the Environment’ in Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells (eds.), Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature (London, 1998), pp. 208-18 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 542 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 542 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 543 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 543 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 543 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 543 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 546 Williamson, Tarka, p. 9 Williamson, Tarka, front matter no page number and p. 271 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, pp. 543-44 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, note 5, pp. 564-65, quoting Philip Armstrong, What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity (London, 2008), p. 114 For a consideration of the same claims to ‘voice’ and ‘agency’ in relation to childhood see: Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Introduction: Voice, Agency and the Child’ in Karín Lesnik-Oberstein (ed.), Children in Culture, Revisited: Further Approaches to Childhood (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 1-18 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 544 Cole does not reference his use of ‘biopolitics’ but mine is drawn from: Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De France 1978-1979, edited by Michel Senellart, translated by Graham Burchell (New York, 2010 [2004]) Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 552 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 552 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, pp. 545-6 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 545 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 545 Cole’s liberal interpretation of Derrida is common but for just one typical other instance see: Kelly Oliver, ‘Sexual Difference, Animal Difference: Derrida and Difference: “Worthy of Its Name”’, Hypatia, 24(2), 2009, pp. 54-76. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2009.01032.x Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 545, citing Jacques Derrida, ‘The Animal that Therefore I Am (and More to Follow)’, Critical Inquiry, translated by David Wills, 28(2), 2002, pp. 369–418, p. 409 Jacques Derrida, ‘L’Animal Que Donc Je Suis (À Suivre)’ in Jacques Derrida, L’Animal Autobiographique, edited by Marie-Louise Mallet (Paris, 1999), pp. 251-301, p. 291 (my italics) Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, edited by Marie-Luise Mallet and translated by David Wills (New York, 2008), p. 41 Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, p. 3 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 545 Here I thank CIRCL PhD student Ting Fang (Grace) Yeh for helping me to clarify my reading of this claim. Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 552 See on this for instance: Hilda Kean, Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain Since 1800 (London, 1998). Kean discusses (as many other critics do) how Black Beauty was also read as a critique of slavery Anna Sewell, Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/271/271-0.txt [accessed 12-07-2022] Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 545 Cole, ‘The Animal Novel’, p. 543 Scott Slovic, Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility (Reno and Las Vegas, 2008), p. 27 Phillips, ‘Ecocriticism’, p. 582 Geoff Bennington, ‘Inter’, in Martin McQuillan, Graeme Macdonald, Stephen Thomson and Robin Purves (eds), Post-Theory: New Directions in Criticism (Edinburgh, 1999), pp, 103-19, p. 103 Haraway, Primate Visions, pp. 4-5. For an extensive discussion of (neuro-)science and literature in the light of these issues see: Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘The Object of Neuroscience and Literary Studies’, Textual Practice, 31:7, 2017, pp. 1315-31 and for mathematics see: Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, ‘Reading Derrida on Mathematics’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 17:1, 2012, pp. 31-40 For such claims about ‘communication’ see for instance: Scott Slovic, Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran (eds), Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (London, 2019)