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On the Death of Plants: John Kinsella’s Radical Pastoralism and the Weight of Botanical Melancholia602.80 kB
Published (Version of record)CC BY-NC V4.0, Open Access
Published (Version of record)CC BY-NC V4.0, Open
Journal article
On the Death of Plants: John Kinsella’s Radical Pastoralism and the Weight of Botanical Melancholia
Ecozon@, Vol.7(2), pp.113-133
25/10/2016
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Abstract
Through the poetry of Australian writer and activist John Kinsella (b. 1963), this article emphasizes the actual, embodied—rather than metaphorical—dimensions of the death of plants vis-à-vis the pressing international context of accelerating botanical diversity loss (Hopper) and the anthropogenic disruption of floristic communities globally (Pandolfi and Lovelock). On many levels—scientific, ecological, social, metaphysical—a fuller appreciation of plant life necessitates an understanding of their decline, decay, and demise. Toward a more nuanced appreciation of plant lives, the discussion draws a distinction—but aims to avoid a binary— between biogenic and anthropogenic instances of plant-death. Considering the correlation between vegetal existence, human well-being, and our co-constituted lives and deaths, I assert that a more encompassing and ecoculturally transformative outlook on plants involves not only an acknowledgement of their qualities of percipient aliveness but also a recognition of their senescence and perishing. Kinsella’s poetry reflects such themes. His botanical melancholia derives from the gravely fragmented locus of his ecological consciousness: the ancient, native plantscape existing as small, disconnected remnants within the agro-pastoral wheatbelt district of Western Australia. Consequently, rather than an incidental occurrence, plant-death is essential to Kinsella’s enunciation of radical pastoralism as a counterweight to an idyllic textualization of botanical nature as existing in an unimpacted Arcadian state of harmony, balance, and equitable exchange with the built environment (Kinsella Disclosed 1–46).
Details
- Title
- On the Death of Plants: John Kinsella’s Radical Pastoralism and the Weight of Botanical Melancholia
- Creators
- John Charles Ryan - University of Western Australia
- Publication Details
- Ecozon@, Vol.7(2), pp.113-133
- Publisher
- European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and the Environment (E A S C L E)
- Identifiers
- 991013041113702368
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Business, Law and Arts
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article