The role of nature in contemporary literature: an interdisciplinary dialogue

AutorDavi Silva Gonçalves - Eliana de Souza Ávila
CargoDoutorando na área de Processos de Retextualização, linha de pesquisa: Teoria, Crítica e História da Tradução, do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução - Doutorado em Inglês/Literatura pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Páginas104-130
1807-1384.2014v11n1p104
Esta obra foi licenciada com uma Licença Creative Commons - Atribuição 3.0 Não
Adaptada.
THE ROLE OF NATURE IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE: AN
INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE
Davi Silva Gonçalves
1
Eliana de Souza Ávila2
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to analyse how the dialogue between literature and the
environment might actively interfere in society’s behaviour concerning the ecological
problems in vogue today. In this sense, the bibliographical research is structured on
hypotheses which problematise dominant systems in the contemporary intellectual,
social, and economic spheres, highlighting ecocriticism as a pivotal theoretical
perspective for the relation between subject and surrounding space to be rethought.
Bringing the Amazon as to materially illustrate the importance for such theme to be
discussed, the article proposes alternatives external to the ones posed by
developmentalist policies, whose worries generally regard material profit reached
through the alienation of the population so convinced of the benefits of such process.
Such process, thus, takes place through the institutionalisation of Amerindian’s
culture, their insertion in the capitalist world, and, especially, the obliteration of
Amazonian environment and the extinction of native species. Going to the opposite
direction, literature might be utilised as a counter-hegemonic tool able to allow
readers to consider other definitions for their relation with the environment.
Keywords: Ecocriticism. Nature. Literature. Society. Sustainability.
1 “In the Landscape of Capitalism”: Nature and Us
David Harvey, one of the most cited authors in the humanities, has very strong
opinions against global capitalism, which he criticises through several analyses
regarding mainly neo-imperialist enterprises. His writing, therefore, is permeated by a
sense of social and political justice, and, when addressing those issues, the
environment is a topic in which he seems to be particularly interested. Even though
he has never called himself an actual “ecocritic” that does not mean he is not; he
1 Doutorando na área de Processos de Retextualização, linha de pesquisa: Teoria, Crítica e História
da Tradução, do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução. Mestre na área de Teoria e
Crítica Literária e Cultural do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Língua Inglesa ambos na
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC, Brasil. E-mail:
goncalves.davi@hotmail.com
2 Doutorado em Inglês/Literatura pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Professora adjunta no
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Inglês da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis,
SC, Brasil. E-mail: elavila.ufsc@gmail.com
105
R. Inter. Interdisc. INTERthesis, Florianópolis, v.11, n.1, p. 104-130, Jan./Jun. 2014
surely has much to contribute to the field, and the fact that he is not “labeled” does
not affect the ecocritical plausibility of his arguments. Here I rely more specifically on
these arguments as found in two chapters from two different books that he has
written, both focusing on nature and/or on human relationship with nature.
In “Responsibilities Towards Nature and Human Nature”, from one of his most
well-known books Spaces of Hope (2000), Harvey’s view is that, even though
hegemony addresses ecological matters as if everything which is required for us to
solve current environmental issues is a more cautious approach towards nature while
the west “grows” (that is, we just need to develop “more carefully”), western capitalist
and expansionist system is bound to fail in that attempt due to the self-destructive
character that defines this system in the first place; for human relationship with
nature to be effectively rethought Western structural projectsmainly the ones related
to its notions of progress and developmentcannot be applied less harmfully, they
need to be completely deconstructed and reconceptualised.
In the words of the theorist, the environment “is now an open and critical focus
of discussion and debate among the capitalists and their alliesmany of whom are
obsessed with the issue of long-term sustainability” (HARVEY, 2000, p. 213). Harvey
admits, thus, that people have been concerned about our relationship with nature
which has already proved to be far from healthybut he nonetheless does not believe
that talking about it from the same Imperialist perspective, which has accompanied
us throughout history, is quite enough.
Trying to “change” capitalism for it to become less damaging to nature is
impossible; if everything is seen through the lens of profit how can anything be
preserved? This is why Harvey believes that this “long-term sustainability”–so
fashionable in the contemporaneityis nothing but utopian if the structural flaws of the
system are not amended; a money-centred societyexactly what we areis
essentially the antagonist of a sustainable one.
One of these structural flaws of the capitalist system is the anthropocentrism it
entails; some of us have actually been convinced that we should not worry so much
about how the west has altered the environment because the environment has
always gone through modifications, that there have been ice ages and fire ages so
the weather has always been naturally unstable just as it is today, that forests are

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