[csaa-forum] CCLCS Research Seminar 8 April 2009: Kate Rigby - ‘COME FORTH INTO THE LIGHT OF THINGS’: MATERIAL SPIRIT AND NEGATIVE ECOPOETICS

[Andrew Milner]

Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Monash University
Melbourne
	
RESEARCH SEMINAR

Wednesday 8th April, 3.00 to 5.00 pm, Room W710, Menzies Building 
(Building 11) Clayton Campus.

‘COME FORTH INTO THE LIGHT OF THINGS’:  MATERIAL SPIRIT AND NEGATIVE 
ECOPOETICS
Kate Rigby

Kate Rigby is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature. Her 
publications include Out of the Shadows: Contemporary German Feminist 
Theory (1996), Transgressions of the Feminine (1996) and Topographies of 
the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism (2004).

Abstract

In a poem from 1937 addressed to future generations, Bertold Brecht 
famously declared that to engage in a conversation about trees was 
almost a crime since it meant keeping silent about the grievous 
socio-political ills of the day (above all, the rise of fascism). In 
this paper, I argue that in our own ‘dark times’ of deepening ecosocial 
woes, not to talk about trees would be the greater crime. The central 
question that I want to address here is how literature, and in 
particular lyric poetry, might contribute to this pressing conversation. 
Recalling Adorno’s comments on poetry after Auschwitz, I propose that in 
the era of accelerating ecocide, to write about trees (and other 
non-human others) poetically is both utterly necessary and profoundly 
problematic. As I have argued elsewhere, the kind of ecopoetics that is 
called for in this context necessarily has a ‘negative’ dimension. 
Focussing my discussion around William Wordsworth’s strange summons in 
“The Tables Turned” to “come forth into the light of things”, this paper 
elaborates the theory of negative ecopoetics as a literary practice that 
is radically subversive of those dualistic habits of thought which, in 
severing spirit from matter, mind from body, and man from nature, have 
both informed, and been informed by, historical patterns of relationship 
among humans and other others that can now be seen as intrinsically 
unethical and ultimately ecocidal.

ALL WELCOME
Wine, cheese and nibbles will be provided.

-- 
Professor Andrew Milner
Graduate Coordinator
Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Monash University
Melbourne
Victoria 3800
AUSTRALIA

Phone: (61) (3) 9905 2979
Fax: (61) (3) 9905 5593
Email: Andrew.Milner at arts.monash.edu.au
Homepage:
   http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/cclcs/staff/milner/