Ecological mourning : living with loss in the Anthropocene

There is a growing awareness that environmental degradation, which has dramatically increased in pace, scope, and severity over the last few decades, is taking a toll on people’s mental and emotional well-being. However, as yet, we are somewhat at a loss as to how to adequately navigate the affective terrain of environmental breakdown. Lacking standard protocols and procedures, we do not quite know how to make sense of, channel, or cope with its psychological impact. After all, we tend to associate grief and mourning with human losses; more-than-human losses are traditionally seen as outside the realm of the grievable. Through a number of case studies, this essay will explore how literature serves as a cultural laboratory for articulating and dealing with grief related to environmental loss, which remains largely unspoken and unrecognized. The act of naming the often disenfranchised and marginalized forms of grief arising from environmental loss is a major step in bringing them to public awareness and granting them social acceptance and legitimacy so that they can be processed more effectively. Coming to terms with ecological grief can inspire efforts to work through it and reinvigorate practices of environmental advocacy in the face of the daunting ecological challenges confronting global society in the 21st century.

ISBN:9781350230125

Publication year:2023

Accessibility:Closed