Ecocritism in the Twenty-first Century (and the Centuries to Come)

Plants, Animals, Futures

Abstract

Sometimes the sciences create their own object of study, as was the case with literariness, the distinctive features of the literary object to which the Russian formalists paid attention, as was the case with the phoneme, a structuralist concept of sound without physical existence and a fundamental abstraction for analysing the factual sonorities to which phonetics pays attention and for better understanding and learning of the orality of languages. Sometimes the sciences do not invent their fields of enquiry, but rather adopt a novel perspective on an already well-established subject, capable of illuminating and renewing it as a scientifically relevant entity. This is the case of ecocriticism, which since its beginnings in the last decade of the 20th century has managed to bring to the forefront of the Humanities in the 21st century the academic relevance of introducing the ecological perspective into the reading of literary texts, works of art and, in general, into the disciplines of knowledge, whatever they may be, from History to Economics, from Law to Economics, from Medicine, Engineering, Cybernetics and Architecture to Theology and Philosophy, Sociology and Agronomy. In the age of the Anthropocene, the ecological perspective is essential in the study, analysis and interpretation of all manifestations of culture and, precisely because it is so essential to a high degree, it invites us to make the limits of the disciplines it affects porous and to open up new spaces for political action and scientific and artistic enquiry.