Research

15 pages, 241 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Material Overconsumption as Ecological Polemics in Allen Ginsberg’s “Plutonian Ode” and Gary Snyder’s “Smokey the Bear Sutra”: Re-Envisioning Beat Critiques of Anthropocentric Materialism

by Henrikus Joko Yulianto

Humanities 2021, 10(2), 78; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h10020078 - 20 May 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2334

Abstract

Beat poetry, since its origination in the American milieu in the 1950s until its further maturation in the late 1960s and 1970s, has embodied ecological visions. Allen Ginsberg’s and Gary Snyder’s Buddhist poetics of the emptiness of material phenomena evoke one’s awareness ofthe [...] Read more.

Beat poetry, since its origination in the American milieu in the 1950s until its further maturation in the late 1960s and 1970s, has embodied ecological visions. Allen Ginsberg’s and Gary Snyder’s Buddhist poetics of the emptiness of material phenomena evoke one’s awareness ofthe true nature of material goods. This ecological awarenessenlightensanyoneto not overconsume the goods in fulfilling his/her daily necessities. In this recent era, Ginsberg’s “Plutonian Ode” and Snyder’s “Smokey the Bear Sutra” memorialize this Beat green poetics against anthropocentric materialism and its potential detrimental impacts on the natural environment. These poems view human’s material attachment as a recurring melancholia even in today’s digital technology era. Their ecological criticisms through the Buddhist poetics pave the way for anyone to cherish rather than objectify any material thing in living the biotic community. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

12 pages, 292 KiB

Open AccessArticle

McClure, Beuys, Kulik, and the Flux of Pink Indians

by Antonio J. Bonome

Humanities 2021, 10(2), 74; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h10020074 - 05 May 2021

Viewed by 1460

Abstract

Looking at different disciplines in the humanities as water-tight compartments is doing a great disservice to knowledge; a comparative angle can do much to solve the situation. History shows how literature and the visual arts have been prone to mutual contagion. This essay [...] Read more.

Looking at different disciplines in the humanities as water-tight compartments is doing a great disservice to knowledge; a comparative angle can do much to solve the situation. History shows how literature and the visual arts have been prone to mutual contagion. This essay will briefly examine a few examples of how performance art was approached by the literary realm during the second half of the 20th century compared to how it was done within the visual arts, and more specifically, regarding non-human creatures. To achieve this purpose, a performance carried out by writer Michael McClure during the 1960s will be collated with two further actions by visual artists who were prominent during the 1970s and 1990s, respectively. The three actions involved animals or pondered on how humans relate to animals and their environment. They differently addressed issues that are still being discussed today and questioned the status quo through their approaches towards animality. A comparative methodology will be used to assess these works under the light of recent publications. Discrepancies in these artworks from the ecocritical ethics and aesthetics viewpoint show a whole different perspective to the topics discussed and provide a worthy contribution to a comparative assessment of performance art. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

16 pages, 298 KiB

Open AccessArticle

‘Muzak for Frogs’—Representations of ‘Nature’ in Decoder (1984)

by Eva-Maria Hanser

Humanities 2021, 10(2), 67; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h10020067 - 09 Apr 2021

Viewed by 1989

Abstract

This paper examines the various representations of ‘nature’ present in Decoder (1984), a German experimental cyberpunk film that was inspired by William S. Burroughs’ thoughts on utilising tapes as revolutionary weapons. Though Decoder is not a film one would easily associate with labels, [...] Read more.

This paper examines the various representations of ‘nature’ present in Decoder (1984), a German experimental cyberpunk film that was inspired by William S. Burroughs’ thoughts on utilising tapes as revolutionary weapons. Though Decoder is not a film one would easily associate with labels, such as ‘green’ or ‘environmental’, signs and images that represent or refer to ‘nature’ and non-human life are not omitted. Through a close reading of the film, the paper first explores the ways in which these representations convey and evoke certain meanings and associations and then elucidates the themes at play in the context of these representations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

10 pages, 236 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Baboons, Centipedes, and Lemurs: Becoming-Animal from Queer to Ghost of Chance

by Alexander Greiffenstern

Humanities 2021, 10(1), 51; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h10010051 - 15 Mar 2021

Viewed by 2023

Abstract

The paper establishes a connection between the becoming-writer of Burroughs, who found his calling and style during the 1950s and his signature characteristic of becoming-animal. This can first be observed in Queer, where Burroughs develops his so-called routine; a short sketch-like text [...] Read more.

The paper establishes a connection between the becoming-writer of Burroughs, who found his calling and style during the 1950s and his signature characteristic of becoming-animal. This can first be observed in Queer, where Burroughs develops his so-called routine; a short sketch-like text that often involves instances of metamorphosis or transformation. The theoretical background for this short form and the term becoming-animal is taken from Deleuze’s and Guattari’s book on Kafka, who also worked best in short texts and frequently wrote about animals. “The Composite City” may be the central text to understanding Burroughs’ work. It is the text where Burroughs found his style and his identity as a writer. Becoming-animal is a logical consequence that further develops Burroughs’ aesthetic ideal. Over the following decades, he experimented with it in different forms, and toward the end of his career, it became part of an environmental turn. In Ghost of Chance, one can find the same aesthetic ideal that starts Burroughs’ writing in 1953, but the political implications have turned toward saving the lemurs of Madagascar. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

14 pages, 274 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s Life Notes

by Rona Cran

Humanities 2021, 10(1), 50; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h10010050 - 12 Mar 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2931

Abstract

This essay argues that Anne Waldman’s 1973 selected poems, Life Notes, articulates a vision of the environment that is positively and reparatively enmeshed with language and culture. Embracing the paradox at the heart of the best environmental writing, Life Notes reveals our [...] Read more.

This essay argues that Anne Waldman’s 1973 selected poems, Life Notes, articulates a vision of the environment that is positively and reparatively enmeshed with language and culture. Embracing the paradox at the heart of the best environmental writing, Life Notes reveals our natural environments to be at once legible and unknowable, and embodies this through experimental forms, language, and typography. This collection of poems, which has yet to be paid significant critical attention (despite Waldman’s renowned status as a poet), artfully mediates the relationship between word and world, giving voice, shape, and form to what we might call the poet’s ‘ecology of knowing’, per Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s formulation. Through a sustained process of imaginative elision of the human and nonhuman, I argue, Waldman illuminates the ways in which the ‘natural’ world is almost always touched by the human, and refutes the widely-held cultural fantasy that nature is self-evidently restorative or redemptive and thereby somehow at a remove from humankind. Life Notes, I suggest, is a ‘dissipative structure’, critically entangled with the everyday environment out of which it emerges and with which it remains ‘involved in a continual exchange of energy’ (Waldman). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

11 pages, 247 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Green Jack: Naïveté, Frontier and Ecotopia in On the Road

by Michael Amundsen

Humanities 2021, 10(1), 37; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h10010037 - 26 Feb 2021

Viewed by 1753

Abstract

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is among the seminal texts of the Beat Generation canon, and the author himself is renowned as a hero of American letters and freedom. Kerouac’s book is clearly one of the most inspirational of the last century and [...] Read more.

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is among the seminal texts of the Beat Generation canon, and the author himself is renowned as a hero of American letters and freedom. Kerouac’s book is clearly one of the most inspirational of the last century and helped to spur the culture of mobility, spiritual yearning and adventure in the decades following its release not only in the USA but in many other parts of the world. A close reading of On the Road reveals other realities about the author, through his character Sal Paradise, and the America he discovers in his travels. This article looks at the files from Kerouac’s aborted stay in the US navy, letters, journal entries and the text of On the Road itself to demonstrate that the author’s Whitmanesque longings and ennui are very much rooted in a romantic vision challenged by the realities of mid-20th-century American life. However, Kerouac’s “ecotopia of the West” also suggests other ways of living which would influence America’s counterculture and environmental movements. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

14 pages, 273 KiB

Open AccessArticle

On Webbed Monsters, Revolutionary Activists and Plutonium Glow: Eco-Crisis in Diane di Prima and Anne Waldman

by Estíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo

Humanities 2021, 10(1), 4; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h10010004 - 28 Dec 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2057

Abstract

Though green readings of Beat works are a relatively new phenomenon, the Beat aesthetic easily meets Lawrence Buell’s criteria for ecocritical texts. Indeed, many writers associated with the Beat movement, such as Diane di Prima and Anne Waldman, often use their work to [...] Read more.

Though green readings of Beat works are a relatively new phenomenon, the Beat aesthetic easily meets Lawrence Buell’s criteria for ecocritical texts. Indeed, many writers associated with the Beat movement, such as Diane di Prima and Anne Waldman, often use their work to give shape to environmental concerns. This article studies the development of a green poetics in the work of both di Prima and Waldman. Focusing on works spanning four decades including Revolutionary Letters (1971), Loba (1998), Uh Oh Plutonium (1982) or The Iovis Trilogy (2011), to name a few, the article analyzes the poets’ use of utopian and dystopian images through which they develop a poetics of eco-crisis that opposes the conformism and political tension of the American postwar and its aftermath. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

16 pages, 229 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Future of Extinction: William S. Burroughs’ The Western Lands

by Steen Ledet Christiansen

Humanities 2020, 9(4), 142; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h9040142 - 08 Dec 2020

Viewed by 2927

Abstract

In this article, I draw on William S. Burroughs’ The Western Lands to think about what François Laruelle has termed a “generic humanity.” This generic humanity broadens and expands our ethical obligations towards those who have not yet been included in humanity. Burroughs’ [...] Read more.

In this article, I draw on William S. Burroughs’ The Western Lands to think about what François Laruelle has termed a “generic humanity.” This generic humanity broadens and expands our ethical obligations towards those who have not yet been included in humanity. Burroughs’ emphasis in the novel on flattened time, magic, and death as transformation is used to show how we can make Mankind extinct from our way of thinking. Burroughs’ novel is thus an example of a “philo-fiction,” a work of literature that allows us to see the world differently. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

10 pages, 227 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Dark Ecology of Naked Lunch

by George Hart

Humanities 2020, 9(4), 130; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h9040130 - 30 Oct 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3104

Abstract

In this article, I argue that William S. Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch engages in a “perverse aesthetics” that is analogous to Timothy Morton’s theory of dark ecology. The novel’s main themes of consumption and control are directly related to the Anthropocene’s twin disasters [...] Read more.

In this article, I argue that William S. Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch engages in a “perverse aesthetics” that is analogous to Timothy Morton’s theory of dark ecology. The novel’s main themes of consumption and control are directly related to the Anthropocene’s twin disasters of global warming and mass extinction, and the trope for addiction, junk, reveals Burroughs’ deep analysis of the political and social forces that attempt to control life, what Burroughs calls biocontrol. By placing the novel’s obsession with hanging/lynching in the context of dark ecology, its critique of racism can also be seen as a critique of speciesism. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

11 pages, 291 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“[A]n Exterior Air of Pilgrimage”: The Resilience of Pilgrimage Ecopoetics and Slow Travel from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

by Susan Signe Morrison

Humanities 2020, 9(4), 117; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h9040117 - 08 Oct 2020

Viewed by 3002

Abstract

While the Beats can be seen as critical actors in the environmental humanities, their works should be seen over the longue durée. They are not only an origin, but are also recipients, of an environmentally aware tradition. With Geoffrey Chaucer and Jack Kerouac, [...] Read more.

While the Beats can be seen as critical actors in the environmental humanities, their works should be seen over the longue durée. They are not only an origin, but are also recipients, of an environmentally aware tradition. With Geoffrey Chaucer and Jack Kerouac, we see how a contemporary American icon functions as a text parallel to something generally seen as discrete and past, an instance of the modern embracing, interpreting, and appropriating the medieval. I argue that The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer influenced Kerouac’s shaping of On the Road. In the unpublished autograph manuscript travel diary dating from 1948–1949 (On the Road notebook), Kerouac imagines the novel as a quest tale, thinking of pilgrimage during its gestation. Further, Kerouac explicitly cites Chaucer. His novel can be seen not only in the tradition of Chaucer, but can bring out aspects of pilgrimage ecopoetics in general. These connections include structural elements, the spiritual development of the narrator, reliance on vernacular dialect, acute environmental awareness, and slow travel. Chaucer’s influence on Kerouac highlights how certain elements characteristic of pilgrimage literature persist well into the modern period, in a resilience of form, language, and ecological sensibility. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

15 pages, 241 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Creative Environments: The Geo-Poetics of Allen Ginsberg

by Alexandre Ferrere

Humanities 2020, 9(3), 101; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/h9030101 - 01 Sep 2020

Viewed by 3419

Abstract

As was the case for other writers from the Beat Generation, geography is more than simply a setting for Allen Ginsberg’s work, as his poetry also bears the imprint of the influence of the landscapes through which he traveled in his mind and [...] Read more.

As was the case for other writers from the Beat Generation, geography is more than simply a setting for Allen Ginsberg’s work, as his poetry also bears the imprint of the influence of the landscapes through which he traveled in his mind and poetic practice. In the 1950s, the same decade which saw the composition of Ginsberg’s Howl, Guy Debord and his followers developed the concept of “psychogeography” and “dérive” to analyze the influence of landscapes on one’s mind. The Debordian concept of psychogeography implies then that an objective world can have unknown and subjective consequences. Inspired by Debord’s theories and through the analysis of key poems, this paper argues that a psychogeographical focus can shed new light on ecocritical studies of Ginsberg’s poetry. It can indeed unveil the complex construction of the poet’s own space-time poetics, from hauntological aspects to his specific composition process. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Keep on Rolling Under the Stars: Green Readings on the Beat Generation)

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