Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire

andrea — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Bruce Erickson, Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands

Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire explores the intersections of queer studies and environmental studies and aims to trouble dominant discourses of nature and sexuality. The authors in this collection argue that we should adopt a queer ecological perspective, a “transgressive and historically relevant critique of dominant pairings of nature and environment with heteronormativity and homophobia.” Drawing on science studies, environmental history, queer geography, ecocriticism, critical race theory, cultural studies, landscape ecology, and LGBTQ theory, this interdisciplinary anthology presents the various possibilities for “queering ecology and greening queer politics.”

What do queer ecologies and greener queer politics look like? To answer this question, the essays use various theoretical and methodological strategies to explore how understandings of nature shape discourses of sexuality and how understandings of sex and reproduction shape perceptions and uses of the environment.

The chapters delve into topics as diverse as animal sexuality, hermaphrodite frogs, eco-porn, biophilia, lesbian rural communities, pollution and overpopulation, and penguins as environmental icons. Several themes weave throughout the entire collection, including critical analyses of homophobic and racist evolutionary narratives and the ways that particular spaces become imbued with sexual meanings. Overall, Queer Ecologies critiques the heteronormative, racist, nationalist, and colonialist narratives that structure popular environmentalist discourses.

The volume approaches these issues through three sections. In the first part, "Against Nature? Queer Sex, Queer Animality," the authors examine how sexual natures are produced through dichotomies such as animal/human and nature/culture. These essays argue that the question is not whether queer acts are “unnatural,” but rather how definitions of nature and culture (and the boundaries between them) are produced and mobilized.

The second section of the book, "Green, Pink, and Public: Queering Environmental Politics," explores the intersections of sexuality and nature as sites of engaged political action. These contributions critique the heteronormativity and whiteness of environmental politics and offer possibilities for radical ecologies and sexual environmental justice.

The final part of the book, "Desiring Nature: Queer Attachments," speaks to the pleasures and losses of engaging with the “more than human” world. The authors in this section explore the links between the regulation of sexuality and the destruction of non-human life. One of the most profound essays in the collection is by editor Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, who writes on the subject of mourning in queer writing about nature. Drawing on a politicized melancholic sensibility from lesbian and gay experiences of AIDS, she attempts a queer re-thinking of environmental destruction, arguing that few, if any public rituals exist to express mourning over the loss of the environment.

Overall, this collection moves forward conversations in queer and environmental literatures, and makes important connections between discourses of sexuality and nature that offer promising possibilities for productive political coalitions and more critical theories. While the authors are careful to note the materiality of bodies and spaces, the volume relies predominantly on textual analysis. The authors examine familiar cultural texts such as mainstream movies like Brokeback Mountain and Happy Feet, popular documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth, and the poetry of Adrienne Rich and Minnie Bruce Pratt.

Readers will come away from Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire with a complex understanding of the dangerous assumptions that shape environmental discourses, as well as the importance of environmental considerations to queer theorizing and movement building. The queer ecological framework offered in this collection has valuable insights for readers across a broad spectrum of interests.

Written by: Traci Yoder, January 5th 2011

Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sandra Steingraber

Da Capo

In the original 1997 edition of Living Downstream, Sandra Steingraber was the first to compare data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries. In the last ten years since this edition was published, there has been rapid growth in the understanding of environmental links to human cancer and new published findings that corroborate the evidence Steingraber compiled in 1997. With a Ph.D. in biology and a Master's degree in creative writing, Steingraber has been the recipient of many awards, including Chatham College's Rachel Carson Leadership Award in 2001 and a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund in 2006. Living Downstream is both a personal story of Steingraber's battle with cancer and her investigation into the potential sources of carcinogens released into the air, land, and water in and around her hometown of Normandale in West-Central Illinois, as well as in other areas of the United States.

Thirty years ago, when Steingraber was a twenty-year-old college student, she learned that she had bladder cancer and was surprised when her urologist asked her whether she had ever been exposed to textile dyes or worked in a tire factory or the aluminum industry. The author later learned that bladder cancer was considered a quintessential environmental cancer. In other words, there was more evidence linking it to toxic chemical exposure than to any other type of cancer. However, although bladder carcinogens had been identified, they continue to be used by industry even today. The obvious question, of course, is why have these chemicals not been banned. The reader quickly discovers that cancer causation is complex, as is proving the source responsible for this disease.

The author reminds her readers that of the 80,000 synthetic chemicals currently in use in the U.S., only about two percent have been tested for carcinogenicity and only five have been banned under the U.S. Toxics Substances Control Act since 1976. We also learn that the U.S. environmental regulatory system does not require exhaustive toxicological testing of chemicals before they are marketed. Legal limits are set on chemical releases, but, as we recently learned with bisphenol A (BPA), trace amounts can be more harmful to humans than higher doses. Moreover, we are often exposed to many contaminants simultaneously in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we ingest, and the land where we live and work.

Often compared with Rachel Carson, Steingraber makes some compelling arguments in favor of the precautionary principle, or the better-safe-than-sorry approach to chemicals. She also advocates the principle of reverse onus, which holds producers responsible for proving that their products will not harm the public, as is the case for pharmaceutical companies.

Sandra Steingraber has the expertise in science to give her the necessary authority to present an investigation of this scope and the impeccable writing to make it accessible to a wide audience. Although some environmental texts can be dry, Steingraber's writing and personal story make for a compelling read. Her drive and commitment to finding the missing pieces of the cancer jigsaw puzzle are humbling. I only wish that she had included a map of Tazewell County, Illinois, which we repeatedly visit throughout the book. A few diagrams of some the atoms she describes would have also been nice.

In short, if you have ever thought that the environment may have played a role in the death of a loved one and would like to know more, this is the book for you.

Written by: Heather Leighton, June 9th 2010