Posthumus, Stéphanie
French Écocritique: Reading Contemporary French Theory and Fiction Ecologically
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, collection "Romance Series", 2017.
EAN13 : 9781487501457. — 264 pages. — 45 $ (CAN)
French Écocritique is the first book-length study of the culturally specific ways in which contemporary French literature and theory raise questions about nature and environment. Stephanie Posthumus’s ground-breaking work brings together thinkers such as Guattari, Latour, and Serres with recent ecocritical theories to complicate what might otherwise become a reductive notion of "French ecocriticism." Working across contemporary philosophy and literature, the book defines the concept of the ecological as an attentiveness to specific nature-culture contexts and to a text’s many interdiscursive connections. Posthumus identifies four key concepts, ecological subjectivity, ecological dwelling, ecological politics, and ecological ends, for changing how we think about human-nature relations. French Écocritique highlights the importance of moving beyond canonical ecocritical texts and examining a diversity of cultural and literary traditions for new ways of imagining the environment.
Table of contents
INTRODUCTION - Ecological Readings
CHAPTER ONE - Ecological Subjectivity: Guattari and Darrieussecq
CHAPTER TWO - Ecological Dwelling: Serres and Lafon
CHAPTER THREE - Ecological Politics: Latour and Rufin
CHAPTER FOUR - Ecological Ends: Schaeffer and Houellebecq
CONCLUSION - Further Ecological Readings
Bibliograph