Myth and Environmentalism: Arts of Resilience for a Damaged Planet

ISBN-13: 9781032391342 / Angielski

Esther Sánchez-Pardo; María Porras Sánchez

Opis

This volume traces the interconnections between myth, environmentalism, narrative, poetry, comics and innovative artistic practice, using this as a framework through which to examine strategies for repairing our unhealthy relationship with the planet. Challenging late capitalist modes encouraging mindless consumption and the degradation of human-nature relations, this collection advocates a re-evaluation of the ethical relation to "living with" and sharing the earth.  　

Myth and the environment have shared a rich common cultural history travelling as far back as the times of storytelling and legend, with the environment often the central theme. Following a robust introduction, the book is organised into three main sections: Myth, Disaster and Present-Day Views on Ecological Damage; Indigenous and Afro-Diasporic Myths and Ecological Knowledge; Art Practices Myth and Environmental Resilience; and concludes with a Coda from Jeanette Hart-Mann. The methodology draws from diverse perspectives, such as ecocriticism, new materialism and Anthropocene studies, offering a truly interdisciplinary discussion that reflects on the dialogue among environment and myth, whilst a broad range of contributions are included from Canada, United States, the Caribbean, Ukraine, Japan, Morocco, and Brazil. The book joins a long line of approaches on the interrelations between ecological and mythical thinking and criticism that goes back to the early 20th century.　　

This volume will be of interest for students, scholars, activists and experts in environmental humanities, myth and myth criticism, literature and art on more-than human and nature interaction, ecocriticism, environmental activism, and climate change.

Spis treści

Introduction: myth and environmentalism: entanglements, synergies, openings PART I: Myth, disaster and present-day views on ecological damage 1. The afterlife of Chornobyl: apocalyptic mythology and environmentalism in the Exclusion Zone 2. Myths of wilderness and motherhood in postapocalyptic narratives of the Anthropocene PART II: Indigenous and Afro-diasporic myths and ecological knowledge 3. Boundless water, boundless ice–Arctic cosmological concepts in times of melting horizons 4. Revisiting the wild: mythology and ecological wisdom in shalan joudry’s Waking Ground 5. Myth, Afrodiasporic spirituality, and the oceanic archive in independent comics PART III: Artistic practices, myth and environmental resilience 6. "Giant by Thine Own Nature": Jean-Baptiste Débret and Antônio Parreiras’ mythic Brazilian land(scape)s through a transatlantic gaze 7. New cosmogonies of waste negotiated in the art of Mohamed Larbi Rahhali 8. Death is life is death is life: continual regeneration in myth and the art of Maki Ohkojima 9. Coda: a radical evocation of seed