This book is part of a body of scholarship which explores the reasons why
we are not taking sufficient action to ameliorate anthropogenic ecological
degradation. The first chapter outlines the contours of this ecocritical academic
project, focusing particularly on the idea that contemporary human subjectivity
is grounded in the illusory separation of humanity from the rest of the world.
The alienation of humanity from ostensibly separate and external ‘nature’
underpins our disregard for that which is not ‘us’. I discuss how this form of
human subjectivity emerged from a series of historically specific circumstances
which informed occidental thought.1 This subjectivity is exemplified in the
dualistic philosophy of René Descartes. I claim that the Cartesian illusion that
we are separate and hierarchically positioned over and above the ostensibly
passive environment is an ‘epistemology we live by’ – our damaging behaviour
towards the natural world is an inevitable result of our ingrained alienation
from the natural world.
Existing ecocriticism makes a similar claim, but generally asserts that the
problem can be resolved by consciously rejecting alienating dualism. This
book argues, however, that humans do not have direct control over their
consciousness, and that ecophobic dualism cannot be willed away. It utilises
various strands of poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory to demonstrate
that a wilful rejection of this ecophobia is not possible, with Cartesian dualism
operating at the unconscious level through what Jacques Lacan calls the Symbolic
Order. This Order is a matrix of possible thoughts, beliefs and behaviours which
any given human subject assents to adopt, without being aware that those
ostensibly internal forces are imposed from without. Our Symbolic Order is
inherently anthropocentric, so that our dualistic alienation from the nonhuman
world is both an integral element of who we are as contemporary Cartesian
subjects, and also something that is unconsciously imposed upon us through all
the subtleties and complexities of our Cartesian culture.