CoHearence Podcast

Photo Credit: Edie Steiner, Text 1: from the series Material Remains (2003)

In the fall of 2011, ecocritics, writers, and poets from across Canada attended a conference at the Gladstone hotel in Toronto. This conference, entitled “Green Words/Green Worlds: Environmental Literatures and Politics in Canada,” focused on the relationship between the cultivation of an environmental reading (and writing) practice and engaged eco-politics. In this CoHearence episode, we’ll use recorded material collected at the conference as well as a follow-up interview with the conference organizers to explore the ways that Canadian ecocritics and poets are engaging with the challenging environmental questions of our time. Featuring conference organizers Catriona Sandilands and Ella Soper as well as keynote presenters Adam Dickinson, Anne, Milne, and Molly Wallace, we’ll ask the question: in a world increasingly characterized by climate change, environmental disasters, and technology, why does literature matter? How can an
environmental writing practice be a political act?

Web Resources

• Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALECC).
• The Association for the Study of Literature & Environment (ASLE).
• Yann Martel’s What is Stephen Harper Reading?
• Alternatives Journal – What Harper Should Read
• The Community Coalition Against Mining Uranium (CCAMU)
• Canadian Chemical News Interview with Adam Dickinson
• Edie Steiner’s Website

Photo Credit: Edie Steiner, Industrial Ruins at Michipicoten Bay, 2010.

“My name is this and that and I come from here and there and I practice I don’t know what and I am not myself because I am also my government and I am also my economy and I am very much my one-directional totalitarian culture which subdues me and misuses me and uses and misuses my work to the point where I don’t know where my work is itself or where my work is something other than itself or where my work is the opposite of itself and this one-directional culture uses and misuses not only my production but also my protest against these uses and misuses because my protest is part of its pluralistic glory which is part of its world governing economic order which presents itself as a religion and is as fervently believed in as a religion and extracts from its believers the fanaticism of a fervently believed in religion and the chief characteristic of this self-righteous world governing order is that it is marching on and on and on and on and this marching on and on and on and on has no opposition because it eats opposition for breakfast.”
- Peter Schumann, Bread and Puppet

The title of this episode, Resistance for Breakfast: Hegemony, Arts, and Environment, is a playful departure from Peter Schumann’s words, and suggests that, perhaps, we could all use a little more resistance in our diet. We will investigate how hegemonic power manifests itself in environmental art and how art practices can also expose and challenge such power. Hegemony is a social condition in which dominant groups exercise power in all aspects of social reality not through militarized violence but rather through implied means (Mayo, 35). The scholars, activists, and educators we speak with call for resistance to hegemonic power that is not only critical and subversive but also beautiful.

Photo: Andrew Mark, 2012

Featuring interviews with FES Professor Deborah Barndt, storyteller and FES contract faculty Chris Cavanagh, FES PhD candidate Heather McLean, and artist and FES PhD candidate Edie Steiner, we will discuss the ways ‘the arts’ reinforce common sense understandings of what constitutes ‘good art.’ We’ll also explore the problematic relationship between large art festivals and local arts movements and suggest ways in which critical environmental art practices can facilitate meaningful activism and create change.

CoHearence Contributor Websites/Blogs

Chris Cavanagh’s Blog: http://comeuppance.blogspot.ca/
Creative Class Struggle Blog: http://creativeclassstruggle.wordpress.com/
Edie Steiner’s Website: http://www.ediesteiner.com/
FES Community Arts Practice Program Website: www.yorku.ca/cap

Community Art and Arts Activist Web Resources

Artbridges/ToileDesArts: http://www.artbridges.ca/
Bread and Puppet: http://breadandpuppet.org/
Catalyst Centre: http://www.catalystcentre.ca/
Neighbourhood Arts Network: www.neighbourhoodartsnetwork.org
Toronto Free Gallery: http://www.torontofreegallery.org/

(Photo by Edie Steiner, FES PhD Candidate, www.ediesteiner.com)

Discussions about melancholy and mourning pop up in a wide range of disciplines. For scholars in environmental studies, understanding these concepts is important as we try to figure out how to deal with the unprecedented environmental losses of our time. In the first part of this two-part episode of CoHearence, we explore the history of melancholia and why it’s important for thinking about environmental issues. Faced with an increasing amount of environmental destruction and frightening levels of species extinction, we will ask how we might begin to learn to grieve the lost objects everywhere around us. Featuring professors Cate Sandilands and Peter Timmerman from the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) at York University, and Susan Moore a part-time faculty member at FES and psychoanalytical candidate at the Toronto Psychoanalytical Institute, we’ll map out Freud’s thinking on mourning and melancholy and draw links to our current environmental state. If we think of our culture as a melancholic culture, how might we better understand commodity fetishism, the commodification of environmental loss, and where to go from here?