“Earthly Things”

Ecocriticism, Globalization, and the Material Turn

Abstract

This paper first offers a concise consideration of the most promising strands in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities today. Most of these, which are responding to environmental destruction and climate change, are characterized by an affinity with posthumanism and/or materialism (e.g. Alaimo, Colebrook, Morton), often in the face of the need to radically rethink the nature of humanity within a global, geophysical frame (Chakrabarty, Dimock, Morton). In the second part of my paper, the case of Dutch environmentally inspired art allows me to explore the problems in the artistic articulation of such a much-needed global, materialist approach.