Postscript on Biosemiotics: Reading Beyond Words - and Ecocriticism

• Published in: New formations 2008-03, Vol.64 (64), p.137-154
• Main Author: Wheeler, Wendy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abductive reasoning; Analysis; Biology; Criticism; Cultural studies; Ecocriticism; Ecocriticism (Literature); Ecology; Environmentalism; Logicians; Nature; Peirce, Charles Sanders; Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839-1914); Political theory; Realism; Romanticism; Semiotics
• ISSN: 0950-2378; 1741-0789

To those who found themselves attracted to this new way of thinking about culture and cultural artefacts, it seemed obvious that the dangers revealed by ecological science needed to find a new voice in cultural criticism. [...]began the project of rereading the texts of literature, art, philosophy, history and science with an eye to their treatments of what David Abram has called the human and 'more-than-human' world.2 This seemed like a timely project of ecoliteracy, but it has not been welcomed in an unqualified way, not least because it seems, to those critics who have been reared on the idea that human language has no capacity to mediate reality, to represent a dangerously untheoretical realism which takes scientific claims to truth too uncritically. [...]the production of self-reflective representative forms of knowledge in art, religion, philosophy, politics and so on is termed a tertiary world-modelling system. There is a certain agreeable occupation of mind which, from its having no distinctive name, I infer is not as commonly practiced as it deserves to be; for, indulged in moderately, - say through some five to six percent of one's waking time, perhaps during a stroll, - it is refreshing enough more than to repay the expenditure. Because it involves no serious purpose save that of casting aside all serious purpose, I have sometimes been half-inclined to call it rêverie, with some qualifications; but for a frame of mind so antipodal to vacancy and dreaminess, such a designation would be too excruciating a misfit. [...]I want briefly to explore two literary forms - romantic poetry and novelistic realism - which have been sources of theoretical contention, particularly in regard to ecocritical responses to them, and to look at them with a biosemiotic eye.