Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language
Article Title
To Whom it May Concern
Abstract
In the closing decades of the 20th Century the long tradition of writing and storytelling focused on nature and place began to attract for the first time a substantial, theorised body of critical response, usually brought together under the rubric of ecocriticism (Hornung ix). Landmark anthologies (e.g. Warren; Plant) and monographs (e.g. Buell; Murphy) began laying out a rough map of the theoretical territory and there were heated and lively contributions and contentions from different disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy (Plumwood; Cuomo; Warren); sociology (Salleh; Gare); politics (Bookchin; Eckersley). In 2011, Buell, Heise and Thornber offered a thoroughgoing review of how that territory has evolved in the opening decade of this century. This paper is written from the perspective of an ecofeminist practitioner of environmental writing and explores the perils, pleasures and purposes of such work in a postmodern context.