Continuing on with the series of five technical papers on ecocriticism, I am pleased to offer this 2nd one: "Ecocriticism, Ecophobia and the Culture of Fear: Autobiographical Reflections" (Technical Paper 67).
R. Michael Fisher
Technical Paper No. 67
Abstract – This second of five Technical Papers on ecocriticism, and in particular with a critical focus on discourse(s) on ecophobia (e.g., Estok’s “Hypothesis of Ecophobia”), is intended to assist the author and reader to integrate the basics from the postmodern field of ecocriticism. The author utilizes a brief autobiographical and historical ‘coming out’ as an early ecocritic and eventual academic critic of the larger phenomenon of the “culture of fear” as central to the author’s project (since 1989). He contends that despite not having accessed the ecocriticism scholarship over the past three decades or so, he has been attracted ‘naturally’ (from his late teens) to critiquing the very environmental and ecological (‘green’) movements he so loved. Though, mostly, he critiqued the mainstream society and media in how it depicted these movements. Within this autobiographical narrative the author brings in several theoretical guides (e.g., primary influence of the integral philosopher Ken Wilber) and shares his own theorizing on the “culture of fear” (and its critics), and ‘Fear’ Studies.
