Dale Jamieson, perhaps the foremost climate ethicist in the world today, has asked why the humanities have been slow to respond to the crisis of climate change (Critical Inquiry 2008). In this paper, I argue that the reason most humanists have been silent is that problem-oriented approaches have dominated the discourse and study of climate change. The urgency of climate destabilization has energized empirical research, technological innovation, and policy discussions. Climate ethics, the primary field through which the humanities have engaged climate change, has focused on questions of mitigation and adaptation, offering the resources of the philosophical tradition to negotiate questions of distributive justice. Within this problem-solving framework, the humanities–especially literature, art, and cultural productions–are viewed as a form of propaganda: the question is how art can persuade people to live more sustainably. I argue that the question “How can the humanities help to solve the problem of climate change?†is the wrong question. Instead, drawing on the work of Judith Butler, I argue that the humanities needs to pose questions about mourning, responsibility, witness, and hospitality, and that these questions will open up a new way of thinking about and responding to climate change.
In the first part of my paper, I focus on Roni Horn’s installation The Library of Water as an example of memorial and mourning for the worlds we are losing, revealing what Rob Nixon calls the “slow violence†of climate change (2011). Following my reading of The Library of Water, I turn to the “Second Line†tradition from New Orleans as an example of mourning that calls for witness to injustice and hospitality to those displaced by climate change.
Janet Fiskio, Oberlin College
The 2013 Eaton/Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Conference
Riverside, CA
4/10/13-4/14/13
From reflection on species extinction in Silent Running (1972) and overpopulation and resource management in Soylent Green (1973) to the passing away of the last tree god in Hellboy 2 (2008) and the colonial acquisition and ecological devastation of Avatar (2009), science fiction film has engaged in a variety of ways with popular environmental concerns. Proposals are invited for papers that explore the ecological and environmental aspects of science fiction film from any period. What is the extent of their engagement with contemporary environmental issues? What is the role of the image in this engagement? What changes to the style and content of these films can be tracked across different periods of ecological and environmental awareness?
This panel is sponsored by ASLE and ASLE-UKI, professional affiliates of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). Please send 200 word proposals in the body of your email to Eric Otto (eotto@fgcu.edu) by 1st September, 2012. Visit the Eaton/SFRA conference website for more details (http://eatonconference.ucr.edu/).
Jennifer Sibara shares her abstract from the ASLE-Juneau conference.
Maquilapolis: Mobilizing Resistance to Environmental Violence in the Global South
I argue that the documentary film Maquilapolis (City of Factories, dirs. Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre, 2006) offers important models for artistic and political collaboration aimed at mobilizing resistance to environmental violence in the Global South. The film explores the lives of several women factory workers in Tijuana and their efforts to obtain restitution from transnational corporations and the Mexican government for environmental and labor violations. Through the film, the activists seek to raise awareness among “First World†consumers about the violence that goes hand in hand with global capitalism. The film documents countless violations perpetrated by transnational corporations—factories emitting toxic plumes into the air, releasing contaminated waste water into local streams, and abandoning hazardous materials, among other crimes. These visual examples evidence the ways in which transnational corporations perpetuate the legacy of colonialism—treating workers in the Global South and their environments as natural resources to be exploited and then discarded. However, rather than calling on privileged audiences to “rescue†the subjects of the film, as many well-intentioned documentaries do, the creators of Maquilapolis adopt a technique Rosa Linda Fregoso calls “mobilizing shameâ€: this tactic challenges privileged viewers to confront the environmental and health effects of the commodities they rely upon—ranging from cell phones to batteries to medical supplies—which are often produced “out of sight, out of mind†in Global Southern communities. The film also indicts the transnational corporations that profit from global capitalism and the governments that comply with the exploitation of their peoples and resources.
Ecopolitics and the Image: Visual Culture Through a Green Lens
In hope of pulling today’s most pressing global issue into the discursive arena of SCMS, “Ecology and the Image: Visual Culture Through a Green Lens” seeks new approaches to film, video, and television that take into account issues of environmentalism, ecopolitics, and sustainability. This may include any number of approaches, including (but not limited to): textual analysis of representations of the natural world; technological studies of how we mediate between the human and non-human; material studies of the environmental consequences of industry practices; and/or pedagogical inquiries about how to integrate environmental studies into the disciplines of film and media studies.
As noted above: there is no limit to the possible topics considered within this intersection, and the entire goal of the panel (or workshop, depending on expressed interest) is to challenge the traditional boundaries of disciplinary exclusion, to re-frame what we understand as “global,” “natural,” and “human,” and to offer new methodologies for a progressive and constructive application of our passion for moving-image culture.
Please send a 300-word proposal, with brief biography, or any questions to Hunter Vaughan at vaughan@oakland.edu by August 1.
First, from Amy McIntyre at the Association of Literature and Environment (ASLE) news about Wilderness Plots.
Second, a plug for the good work of my student, Brian Kelley (Gettysburg graduate 2010) and the AU Environmental Filmmaking Program.
I) “Wilderness Plots in Concert,” filmed at the ASLE conference last year at Indiana University Bloomington, has won a CINE Golden Eagle award for excellence! For those of us who attended, it was a memorable performance.
CINE is internationally recognized for its highly acclaimed film and video competitions and related educational support activities which culminate every year in a gala Awards Event held in the Washington, D.C. area. CINE has a wide following in the film and video industry nationally and internationally, drawing over 1,000 entries per year into its prestigious competitions, which have been taking place since 1957.
You can watch other clips of the concert on the Wilderness Plots website.
2) I am also delighted to add that my student, Brian Kelley (Gettysburg graduate 2010) was amongst the award winners for his Master’s work at American University’s Environmental Filmmaking program. For those of you interested in marine issues and in the Chesapeake Bay in particular, their film Menhaden: The Most Important Fish in the Bay, is a must see.
Menhaden: The Most Important Fish in the Bay Trailer from Brian Kelley on Vimeo.
Ecology and contemporary Nordic cinemas: from nation-building to ecocosmopolitanism
Pietari Kääpä (University of Helsinki)
Part of the Continuum series Themes and Issues in National Cinema (editor Armida de La Garza, Xian Jiantong – Liverpool University)
Outline of the book
Ecology and contemporary Nordic cinemas challenges the traditional socio-political rhetoric of national cinema by providing an ecocritical examination of Nordic cinema. The book uses a range of analytical approaches to interrogate how the national paradigm can be rethought through ecosystemic concerns. We explore a range of Nordic films as national and transnational, regional and local texts, all with significant global implications. By synergizing transnational theories with ecological approaches, the study considers the planetary implications of nation-based cultural production.
Framework
According to Sheldon Lu and Jiayan Mi, ecocinema involves ‘the study of the production and reproduction of life, the relationship between the human body and the ecosystem, and the controlling and administering of the human body in modern capitalist and socialist regimes’ (2, 2010). These are all vital aspects of Nordic cinemas as nature and environmentalism feature centrally in Nordic self-conceptualisations. Thus, it is surprising that little attention has been devoted to academic exploration of these topics in the Nordic contexts. While work has been done on the individual national cinemas, an analysis of the whole Nordic region and its multiple ecological intersections is yet to be attempted.
Structure
- 1.      Nation-building in the Nordic context: natural history?
This chapter provides an overview of the dominant eoccinematic patterns and concerns from all five Nordic countries, with due attention paid to cross border and regional projects. I start from an exploration of Nordic existentialism (seen in the films of Bergman and Kaurismäki for example) and situate these within ecophilosophical structures. For the majority of this chapter, however, I will focus on how transnational historical coproduction films use environmental notions to justify their nation-building project(s). Traditionally, such a relationship has been conceptualised from a human-centric basis where the natural environment functions as an integral element in the construction of the national imaginary – nature is conceptualised as a mirror for the ‘national mentality’. What happens when such discourses are recontextualised on a regional level in films like the Arn series (2007-2008)? Do we see the appropriation of nature as a materialist element (the property of the nation) or does the relationship become something more complex, even challenging the foundations of the nation building process?
- 2.      Ecocosmopolitanism in the global Nord
Ecocosmopolitanism concerns rethinking the notions of the local and the global in social or cultural environmentalist rhetoric beyond the environment as a source of local ‘authenticity’ or a concern for the global ‘ecosphere’. This chapter interrogates these ideas in the context of popular transnational cinema. I focus on films like the Norwegian Trolljägaren (2010) and Finnish Rare Exports (2010). Both films use national myths in the framework of commercialist genre production and rethink the value of the local/ national in the context of global cultural production. Nature grounds these explorations as it localizes them to indigenous cultural concerns. Simultaneously, the films consciously widen their scope beyond their socio-political confines, providing intriguing case studies of ecological cultural globalization.
- 3.      Human ecology and the Nordic welfare state
While Nordic countries are often depicted in very positive terms as the ‘People’s Home’, several contemporary and historical films contradict these optimistic evaluations. Human ecology is concerned with the ways the state structures its society which manifests explicitly in how the human body is subjected to the demands of modernization (and its associated capitalist ideologies). By synergizing socio-political ideological explorations with considerations arising from human ecology, we start to reassess the implications of the Nordic welfare state project. To these ends, the study contextualizes the foundational rural/city bifurcation myth in the context of the welfare state and its ecopolitics. This allows us to take an ecological view on films such as R (2010) and The Man Without A Past (2002). While these films are often discussed in relation to their class politics, we explore them as examples of an emerging ecological consciousness that challenges hegemonic societal structures.
- 4.      Ecocultural differences and the multicultural Nord.
Despite the oft repeated planetary implications of ecological thinking, different cultures have diverse modes and perspectives on environmentalism. Thus, we turn to exploring how the rhetoric of multiculturalism accounts for/ restricts ecological diversity. How do the multiculturalist rhetoric Nordic cinemas tie in with the ecocultural diversity on both the national and regional levels? To explore these concerns, we draw on a range of sources from both art and popular cinema. While we initially explore popular comedies and thrillers dealing with multiculturalism, the exploration will expand to fictional explorations of ethnic minorities of the pan-Nordic Lapland. This exploration continues to interrogate the arguments from the previous chapter on the Nordic welfare state. The postnational lifestyles of these ethnic minorities also provides substantial challenges to our perception of Nordic cinema as it urges rethinking the notion of the environment as the integral basis of nationalist ideologies.
- 5.      Ecodocumentaries
This chapter is devoted to a range of Nordic documentaries which use environmentalist rhetoric and ecological argumentation. Some of the films use these ideas to interrogate welfare state egalitarianism and consumerist capitalism such as John Webster’s Finnish Recipes for Disaster (2008). In contrast to this observational film, others use documentary ideas in more complex ways such as Jorgen Leth / Lars Von Trier’s The Five Obstructions (2004). These concerns are inspected alongside ethnographic documentaries by Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio. Their explorations of the diverse ethnic populations of the Nordic Lapland provide a counterpoint to the more exclusivist rhetoric of the ‘mainstream’ films. We build on ideas from previous chapters (multiculturalism, human ecologies) not only to demonstrate the richness of the field but also to challenge any homogeneity of the ‘Nordic project’.
- 6.      Global Nordicness and ecopolitical interventionism
Starting out from problematic explorations of the ‘green Nord’ as a self-satisfied hypocritical cultural space in films like Together (2004), the chapter contextualizes  human ecology and Nordic interventionism on a global scale. This enables us to explore the ways in which globalization as a form of neo-liberalism operates through cinema to normalize certain ideological and political structures. Case studies are comprised of films by such well known directors as Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Susanne Bier, Lukas Moodysson, Aki Kaurismäki and Lars Von Trier. Case studies compare Nordic self-conceptions of morality and ideology in and against other parts of the world. The results will not only provide critical perspectives on how Nordic cultural producers view their roles in the world but also tell us of their sense of ‘obligation’ to the wider ecosystem.
- 7.      Media convergence
Media communications are increasingly concerned with ecological debates as they aim to utilize aspects from different media types to achieve sustainable modes of production, distribution, exhibition and consumption. This chapter synergizes ecocriticism/transnationalism with new media considerations to expand our scope on ecocinema and Nordic film cultures. For example, how are new technological developments (i.e. distribution channels, production technology) enabling producers to reduce their material consumption rates? Conversely, are such ‘environmentalist’ concessions used as a form of greenwashing to merely give the illusion of safer and sustainable production? Case studies come from animation films like Niko – The Way to The Stars (2008), which exemplify the populist potential of ecocinema while they also use ecological messages to offset more problematic ideological suggestions (ie. traditionalist ideologies such as patriarchy). Other films such as Iron Sky (2012) use crown sourcing to produce science-fiction films with intriguing ecologically suggestive potential. We explore these concerns to critique the ways the Nordic information age society models are often valourized on a global scale.
Filmmaker and activist, Josh Fox, is working on a sequel documentary to his acclaimed Gasland. Meanwhile, he has written and directed a short film on the topic, Â The Sky Is Pink.
THE SKY IS PINK from JFOX on Vimeo.
For a conversation between Josh Fox and  former NY Times journalist Andrew Revkin, follow this link at Dot Earth.
Bronwyn Preece shares her ASLE abstract: