appear in 2000. He suggests that third-wave ecocriticism can be summarized by six main features. First, “global concepts of place” are examined with new coinages, including “eco-cosmopolitanism” and “translocality.” Second, comparative
approaches are adopted to pose “questions about the possibility of post-national and post-ethnic visions of human experience of the environment” and meanwhile discuss ethnic issues “in broader, comparative contexts.” Third, the appearance of “material”
ecofeminism, which evolved from earlier versions of ecofeminism, denotes a “trend toward new gendered approaches in ecocriticism.” Fourth, the concept of animality is stressed and draws attention to non-human animals and their rights. Fifth, third-wave ecocriticism displays the “critiques from within” that can never be found in first- or second-wave ecocriticism. Sixth, scholars and teachers “connect their work to social transformation,” which Slovic calls “a ‘polymorphously activist’ tendency” (7).
Given the rise of ecocriticism, the concentration of ecological issues in Robinsonade may be a purposeful coincidence. In the 1960s and 1970s, discourses, criticisms, and books regarding environmentalism started to appear (e.g., Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and Joseph W. Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival in 1972). Around the same time, some rewritings of Robinson Crusoe also paid considerable attention to environmental issues or expressed a concern with the interaction between humans and nature. For example, three of the works that I will analyze in my dissertation (The Wall, Friday, and Concrete Island) were published during this time.
In brief, the trends in ecocriticism suggest that ecocriticism has over the years moved beyond its earlier focus on the natural environment toward a concern for the
intersection between nature and so-called human affairs. Whereas earlier ecocriticism urges humans to protect the environment and fight against anthropocentrism, more recent ecocriticism tends to place emphasis on non-humans and on humans’
coexistence with nature and non-living beings. Taken as a whole, these ecocritical perspectives can not only help us examine environmental issues in Robinsonade but also make us more aware of the anthropocentric ideologies underlying the said genre and extend the scope of ecology to social aspects.
Moreover, while some ecocritics are inclined to put their ecological thoughts into practice, others elevate environmental issues to a more philosophical level, such as Arne Naess’s conception of ecosophy. In what follows, I build on his proposition and create my own version of ecosophy. This ecosophy, I would like to show, will help to shed light on my reading of contemporary Robinsonades.
B. Ecosophy M
Ecocriticism and ecosophy do not exclude each other; they overlap, reinforce, and complement each other. When I use the relatively down-to-earth ecocritical methods to examine environmental issues in contemporary Robinsonade, I would also like to draw on ecosophy to broach the philosophical meaning of ecological issues as presented in the new Crusoe stories.
In his Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, Arne Naess famously puts forth the term “ecosophy,” literally denoting ecological wisdom.7 To provide a better
understanding of ecosophy, he distinguishes three terms: ecology, ecophilosophy, and ecosophy. According to Naess, ecology refers to “the interdisciplinary scientific study of the living conditions of organisms in interaction with each other and with the
7 Guattari also proposes an ecosophy that consists of three dimensions: social ecology, mental ecology, and environmental ecology. For more details on these three ecologies, see his book The Three
Ecologies.
surroundings, organic as well as inorganic” (Ecology 36). For him, this scientific study falls short of covering all the issues concerning organisms, especially humans, and their environment. Therefore, he poses a more urgent question: “Do all possible studies of humankind’s relations with all possible kinds of surroundings belong to ecology?” (36). In response to this question, Naess brings in ecophilosophy and ecosophy. Ecophilosophy, for him, is “a descriptive study” that connects ecology with philosophy (36). More specifically, ecophilosophy studies particular problems at the intersection between these two fields, employing ecological ideas to explain the place of humans in nature. In contrast, ecosophy is a type of philosophy that reflects “one’s own personal code of values and a view of the world which guides one’s own
decisions” (36). In other words, ecosophy stresses how “to approach practical situations involving ourselves” (37). Because each situation is unique, Naess creates his Ecosophy T, with the letter T standing for Tvergastein, a mountain hut where he wrote books (Cheng 482; Rothenberg 4). At the same time, Naess encourages readers to create their own versions of ecosophy, their “own systems or guides, say,
Ecosophies X, Y, or Z” (Naess, Ecology 37).8
Enlightened by this proposition, I propose here “Ecosophy M,” the ecosophy that considers the relationship between (non-)living beings and the environment.
Ecosophy M adopts an eclectic and interdisciplinary approach. Ecosophy M is a dynamic concept, so it is hoped that what defines Ecosophy M here is not a statutory tenet but can be understood as a flexible concept ready to be broadened or revised (into Ecosophy M2, M3, and so forth) in accordance with changes in the environment in the future. As stated earlier, Ecosophy M refers to six major modes: Milieu, Mesh, Mutuality, Maternity, Minorities, and Mood. I shall explain each point below.
8 Inspired by Naess’s idea of Ecosophy T, later theorists and critics develop their own personal ecosophies. For instance, Xiangzhan Cheng dubs his ecosophy “Ecosophy C.” See Cheng 482-86.
1. Milieu
Although many ecocritics, such as Buell, use the word “environment” in their works, the use of this word needs to be reconsidered as it more often than not connotes human-centrism. As Glotfelty states, “enviro- is anthropocentric and
dualistic, implying that we humans are at the center, surrounded by everything that is not us, the environment” (xx). In contrast, the word “milieu” has a more neutral undertone. The term milieu, imported from the French, etymologically and literally means a “middle place”: mi denotes “middle” and lieu means “place.” Regarding ecology, milieu is a more effective term than environment in that it suggests the place where living beings meet. This concept of “middle” thus celebrates the ecological thinking that the ecosystem lacks a center; what should be heeded instead is the networking between the living and the non-living.
I would like to theorize “milieu” by drawing on ideas of such thinkers as Jacob von Uexküll, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, as well as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari; at the same time, I also attempt to extend the scope of the concept of milieu from the biological sphere to the social one. Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt (which literally means “environment” in German) is significant because it influences later thinkers, including Martin Heidegger, Deleuze, Guattari, Merleau-Ponty, and Giorgio Agamben. As Agamben observes, classical science understood the world as a single one within which living organisms existed according to the order of their hierarchy from the lowest to the highest level; however, Uexküll contends that a myriad of perceptual worlds, while excluding each other and failing to communicate with each other, are “all equally perfect and linked together” (The Open 40). In his A
Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, Uexküll shows multiple illustrations
of how animals see their world, which is rather different from the human view, and how each living organism has its own world distinct. Uexküll’s Umwelt theory isecological in that it abnegates the hierarchy between organisms of different orders and stresses a vision of multiple worlds, instead of presenting a unified world from a human perspective.
The French equivalent of the German word “Umwelt” is “milieu,” a French term commonly used in natural sciences and sociology in Germany during Uexküll’s time (Brentari 63). In his early writing Leitfaden in das Studium der experimentellen
Biologie der Wassertiere (1905), Uexküll also used the French word “milieu” to refer
to “the part of the external world that affects animals” (qtd. in Brentari 63).Nevertheless, he later replaced the term “milieu” with the German word “Umwelt”
because the former, for him, suggested that “human nature was to be transformed by a merciless, powerful environment” (Chien 59). In other words, the notion of milieu implies that living organisms including human beings are subject to their environment and lack agency or the ability to alter it. Uexküll abandoned the word “milieu” and changed to “Umwelt” to propose that human beings and animals are not merely passively fashioned by their environment but could actively form their environment (59-60). However, Uexküll’s Umwelt theory is not flawless. As Carlo Brentari points out, one of the flaws is his assumption of “perfect harmony in the relation between organism and environment” (9). This assumption overlooks the probability of
“imperfection and extinction” in the natural evolutionary process, so it fails to adequately explain imperfect or exceptional cases in the organism-environment relationship (10).
In “The Living and Its Milieu,” Georges Canguilhem traces the history of the term “milieu” and analyzes how it has been imported from the field of mechanics into other fields of study, such as biology and geography. The notion of milieu was
introduced to biology during the latter part of the eighteenth century (Canguilhem 99).
The French naturalist and biologist Lamarck (1744–1829), as Léon Brunschvicg notes,
“had borrowed from Newton the model for a physical-mathematical explanation of the living by a system of connections with its environment” (Canguilhem 100). For Newton, what was called “milieu” by the eighteenth-century French mechanists was
“fluid” (99). His example of ether can help explain how the concept of fluid leads to that of milieu. Newton treats ether as “fluid as the medium of action at a distance”
(99). As Canguilhem further explains, “The fluid is an intermediary between two bodies; it is their milieu; and insofar as the fluid penetrates all these bodies, they are situated in the middle of it” (99). A milieu is a “medium, in between two centers”
(100). Newton’s concept of fluid stresses neither the subject nor the object but
something between two bodies, two forces. Lamarck uses the term in this mechanical sense. However, he always talks about milieus in the plural form. Unlike Uexküll, who supposes a harmonious organism-environment relation, Lamarck contends that circumstances would change, so living organisms should adapt themselves to different circumstances to avoid being “dropped” by their milieus (Canguilhem 104). The milieu, for Lamarck, is indifferent to organisms and thus is external to life (104).
Canguilhem extends the notion of milieu from biology to geography. As he puts it, “Geography has to do with complexes—complexes of elements whose actions mutually limit each other and in which the effects of causes become causes in turn, modifying the causes that gave rise to them” (109). That is, complexes involve actions and reactions that can restrain or impel each other, as well as cause and effect that can influence each other or be reversed. One of the examples of a complex that he
provides is trade winds. Trade winds dislocate surface water with a higher
temperature. When the deep cold waters ascend to the ocean surface, the atmosphere turns cold. Due to low temperatures, low pressure occurs and thus produces winds.
This is the cycle of trade winds that ends and begins repeatedly. Another example is
“plant geography” in which we can see the same kind of complex. Different species of
plants restrain each other while simultaneously maintaining a balanced state for others;
these varied plants form a group that constitutes its milieu. For Canguilhem, this model can also be applied to humans. As he argues, humans can provide varied solutions to a specific problem brought by the milieu and react to stimulation caused by the milieu in diverse ways (109).
While Canguilhem discusses the milieu in a more scientific sense by tracing its history from mechanics and physics to biology, geography, and cosmology, his student Foucault uses the notion of milieu in a more sociological sense. More specifically, Foucault’s concept of milieu is concerned with how power circulates in society. Regarding the question of what the milieu is, Foucault writes, “It is what is needed to account for action at a distance of one body on another” (20-21). Milieu is
“the medium of an action and the element in which it circulates,” so “the problem of circulation and causality” is a significant issue in the conception of milieu (21). In other words, the milieu is not static but circulatory. Moreover, the milieu includes not only nature, such as mountains and rivers, but also artificial things, such as houses.
Therefore, the milieu presents the intersection between the natural and the artificial, and it can be embodied in the form of a town, where “‘naturalness’ of the human species [appears] within an artificial milieu” (22). Power intervenes in the natural and artificial milieu; that is, power creates the milieu of the town, and power techniques are deployed through the milieu.
Deleuze and Guattari also use the term in their works, yet in a more
geophilosophical sense. In their philosophy, the word milieu, as Brian Massumi notes, includes its three meanings in French, that is, “surroundings,” “medium,” and “middle”
(xvii). “The middle” is important in Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of milieu. As they write, “The middle is by no means an average; on the contrary, it is where things pick up speed” (A Thousand Plateaus 25). In a sense, the milieu is the middle, a movement
in the process of action; therefore, it has no center, no boundary, no linearity. The milieu serves as a medium of flows, and thus appears to be heterogeneous, chaotic, open, unpredictable, and unstable. Deleuze and Guattari depict the milieu as
connected with the body. As they note, “Every milieu is vibratory, in other words, a block of space-time constituted by the periodic repetition of the component. Thus the living thing has an exterior milieu of materials, an interior milieu of composing elements and composed substances, an intermediary milieu of membranes . . .” (313).
A living being’s body has external and internal milieus; it is a rhizomatic body.
Deleuze and Guattari use “grass” as an example to explain their theory of the body.
Unlike a tree, which has hierarchies and centers, grass spreads horizontally, lacking origins, centers, boundaries, or any points of reference. Grass is a rhizomatic body that is of continually forming milieus.
The above-mentioned thinkers offer different facets of the term “milieu.” The term does not only refer to the natural environment in a biological sense but also acts as an ecological way of thinking to examine the interaction between beings and their environments in a social context.
2. Mesh
In The Ecological Thought (2010), Timothy Morton, one of the most important ecological critics of recent times, proposes the concept of “the ecological thought,” a thought that “imagines interconnectedness,” which he calls “the mesh” (15). This thought helps us to consider the relationship between milieus and living beings. The notion of the mesh suggests that a being cannot exist by itself but always needs to entangle itself with other beings and milieus.
As Morton indicates, the mesh, appearing in different fields, such as biology and engineering, can refer to “the holes in a network and threading between them,”
and the term’s antecedents include “mask” and “mass,” which suggest “density and deception” (Ecological Thought 28). Morton borrows from biology and cytology to explain the porous trait of the mesh. As he states, “Some parasites and symbionts are so intimate you can’t tell where one starts and its habitat stops, all the way down to the DNA level. There is no way of knowing which bits of our DNA are actually ‘ours’
and which are plasmid insertions” (35). Specifically, in a parasitic or symbiotic relationship, two different beings are intertwined with each other and connected on the level of DNA; they thus become hardly distinguished from each other. The term
“mesh” stresses interconnectedness and interdependence, which is the essence of Morton’s ecological thought. For Morton, “everything is interconnected” (28).
Morton notices that Darwin mentioned in passing the mesh in his theory of natural selection as his theory also concerns the interconnectedness of species. As Darwin states in his On the Origin of Species, “It is a truly wonderful fact . . . that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in group subordinate to group . . .” (122-23). However, Morton points out that although Darwin mentions interrelatedness, his theory is different from what Morton intends to
develop.9 Whereas Darwin’s theory is like the structure of a tree that suggests a starting point, Morton’s concept of the mesh, “far from linear,” has no such point that can be traced back (29). As Morton states, “Each point of the mesh is both the center and edge of a system of points, so there is no absolute center or edge” (29). Succinctly put, the mesh refutes linearity and centeredness, thus canceling the hierarchy among beings.
Morton imagines a porous mesh, with everything interconnecting with each
9 Morton does not completely refute Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Instead, he observes the flavor of the mesh in Darwin’s argument at the end of the chapter on natural selection: “the great Tree of Life . . . covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications” (Darwin 124;
emphasis added). Darwin’s mention of ramifications, for Morton, echoes his notion of the mesh. At this point, “Darwin brings ecological interconnectedness and thinking together” (Morton, Ecological Thought 29).
other, be it human or non-human, living or non-living, alive or dead. As he notes, “All life forms are the mesh, and so are all dead ones, as are their habitats, which are also made up of living and nonliving beings” (Ecological Thought 29). One of the examples that he provides is the mountain that can accommodate shells, fossilized bacteria, and animals. The mesh includes all beings and their habitat as well. Living beings are affected by their environments, and vice versa. One living being may function as another’s environment; for example, in the case of bees and flowers, the latter serve as the former’s environment while both evolve together. Morton’s use of the expression “the mesh,” different from the traditional view of ecology that focuses on the living, expands our view to consider our relationship not only with the living but with the non-living and the dead.
The idea of the mesh echoes what Morton calls “thinking big—as big as possible,” an expression that he believes is “the best environmental thinking”
(Ecological Thought 20). When Morton urges us to think big, he means that we human beings should think beyond our competence and imagination and be aware of our limitations and insufficiency. Morton suggests that “thinking big doesn’t mean that we put everything in a big box” but “means that the box melts into nothing in our hands” (31). The more we understand the dangers that environmental crises bring about, “the more we find ourselves lacking a reference point” (31). That is, by
thinking big, by thinking of our connection with everything and every being around us, we humans can realize that our knowledge of reality is limited and that we are merely part of the ecosystem rather than the center of it.
Morton explicates the ecological thought by the metaphor of the mesh rather than Nature because Nature for him has been constructed by human beings as “an ideal image” (Ecological Thought 5). Nature has turned into a “private property” of human beings, something that can be “exhibited in a specially constructed art gallery”