Foreword: Ecocriticism in the Age of Dislocation?

Abstract

Anglophone environmental literary criticism has evolved within the bounds of regions and regionalism. Particularly during its early years, ecocriticism privileged local engagement with the natural world as a literary-activist mode. Recent approaches, however, emphasise translocal, transregional, and transnational frameworks. Moreover, intersections with studies of affect, ecofeminism, materiality, postcolonialism, risk, and other areas underlie the continuing theoretical diversification of ecocriticism. An Anthropocene Ecocriticism would confront the disorienting spatio-temporal scales of our age, resist longstanding local-global binarisms, place emphasis on the value of indigenous narratives, and embrace the environmental justice origins of the field.