Introduction: “The Greening (or Not) of America”

Abstract

By chance, the date of the morning I set out to write this introduction was September 11, 2011. I found this coincidence worth pondering because the only other time I had guest-edited a special issue of the Journal of American Culture it was a theme issue on 9-11. My Introduction to that 2005 issue focused on the archetypal meanings of irreversible destruction as well as potential regeneration that pervaded the imagery and discourses of that terrorizing event. As I pondered, an image from the front page of that Sunday's New York Times Book Review (9-11-11) caught my attention. One of the legacies of 9-11 has been US Americans' collective apprehension of national demise, something directly addressed by the Times front-page review of Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum's new work, That Used to Be Us: How Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. That theme was encapsulated in a photo, showing an abandoned factory building on a grim and greenless winter's day. Despair is in this air. No human or animal presence can be detected and viewers easily might imagine the remains of toxic chemicals leaching into the soil. symbolic meaning seems to be not only a cessation of production, but also of reproduction, that is, regeneration. Winter has come1 and, the photo seems to say, might not ever leave. And it is regeneration, or not, that is precisely what this most recent special issue of the Journal of American Culture - The Greening (or Not) of America - is all about. word greening came into prominence with the publication of Charles Reich's 1970 book, Greening of Amenca, which heralded the birth of a new one that had evolved beyond greed, mechanistic models of humanity, violence, and fragmentation. Greening, which previously, in common vernacular, had meant only the ripening of apples, began in the 1970s to take on the new (if ancient and archetypal)2 meaning of replenishment, the return of vitality or freshness after decay or destruction. Not insignificantly, also became the color most aligned with the ideals and practices of the environmental movement. articles in this special issue of JAC all are concerned with issues related to regeneration: hope, accompanied by a necessary humility; vitality; and a resurgent and respected life/death force. They are rooted in a green consciousness, one that recognizes the consciousness of all beings, not just human beings, interconnectedness and value of all forms of life, the ecological meaning (and necessity) of death, the rejection of privileges bestowed by systems of male, white, and straight supremacies, as well as a parallel proclaimed superiority of humans over (something, in this scheme, that humans supposedly exist outside of and can exploit and abuse without consequence). consciousness necessitates a rejection of all of these and related forms of domination and an accompanying transvaluation of values and behaviors, including and especially those related to the most basic aspects of existence - birth, death, play, work, love, sex, food, and sense not only of self but of world, even of what we mean when we say nature or environment. In Katie Hogan's Green Angels in America, the promise of transformative regeneration after an apocalyptic wasting is revealed as a key theme in Tony Kushner's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Hogan insightfully interprets Kushner's magnum opus as a play that explodes barriers and builds connections among various forms of oppression and social justice issues: AIDS discrimination, racism, queer oppression, women's rights, the violence of capitalism, and the earth's environmental deterioration. She aligns Kushner's perspectives with those of the environmental justice movement, which focuses on how marginalized peoples and their communities are treated as dumping sites. That grassroots movement has led to a profound redefinition of what constitutes our environment . …