Ecocriticism in the colonial present: the politics of dwelling in Raja Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape

Abstract

This article is a contribution to the growing critical debate about a possible rapprochement between the respective preoccupations of postcolonial studies and ecocriticism. It finds fault with the indebtedness of many ecocritics to what the Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno characterized as Martin Heidegger's ‘jargon of authenticity’. That jargon, which entails a nostalgic and politically dubious advocacy of ‘dwelling’, has not served to distinguish the ideals of ecocriticism from the nationalist aspirations of the political right. I argue for an ecocriticism that is conscious of the global dimensions of the ecological crisis and of its connections to ongoing forms of colonial power. I aim, moreover, to show that ecocriticism must encourage not a narrow ethic of dwelling but the far more expansive, indeed postcolonial, attachments explored in Raja Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks (2008).