Abstract
Inspired by Felix Guattari’s Three Ecologies ([1989] 2000), this article explores recent Orkney literature with an environmental focus (Working the Map—ed. J & F Cumming and M. MacInnes; Ebban an’ Flowan—Finlay, A., Watts, L. and Peebles, A.; The Outrun—A. Liptrot; Swimming With Seals—V. Whitworth) in terms of Orkney ecologies—which are always personal, environmental and cultural. Informed by fieldwork carried out in Orkney, looking at discourse around the development of marine renewable energy in the islands, it argues for the use of ecological dialogism, an approach to language and communication which recognises meaning-making as embodied and emergent within a meshwork (Ingold 2011) of lived experience. It explores the texts as part of an ecology of meaning-making within the naturalcultural (Haraway 2007) world, in which environment, social relations and human subjectivity are inextricably entangled. In this view, literary texts can be approached, not as isolated examples of individual creative expression, but as moments of emergent meaning-making in the dialogue between individual, cultural and environmental ecologies, reaching beyond the page into a living meshwork, where we can think in terms of ‘Ecology as Text, Text as Ecology’ (Morton 2010). These Orkney ecologies entangle the natural, personal, cultural and technological, through and as, stories, emphasising interdependence and care for both human and more-than-human relationships. Such moments of connection offer hope of new narrative possibilities with which to face the uncertainty of an Anthropocene future.
Highlights
What stories can we tell about the places we know, and love, and worry about, as we face the uncertainty of an Anthropocene future? In the face of human-made climate change and environmental degradation, how can we write about our relationship with the environment without naivety, arrogance, guilt or hopelessness?
Humanities 2020, 9, 5 dialogism and suggest how it can help us to explore the permeable boundaries between texts and their environments, applying this approach to a discussion of contemporary texts that focus on the Drawing on recent fieldwork exploring the cultural impact of renewable energy in Orkney, and using Felix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies as a guide, I will argue that ecological dialogism allows a fuller appreciation of these texts as part of Orkney’s living ecology
Within ‘Team Orkney’ not all narratives are shared—there are as many versions of a story as there are storytellers, and not everyone’s story gets heard. Spending time with those involved in the renewable energy sector in Orkney, I have developed relationships and connections which place me within that discourse community, but having grown up in the islands my connections outside of my research bring me into contact with a whole range of opinions about renewables, from the sceptical to the actively hostile
Summary
What stories can we tell about the places we know, and love, and worry about, as we face the uncertainty of an Anthropocene future? In the face of human-made climate change and environmental degradation, how can we write about our relationship with the environment without naivety, arrogance, guilt or hopelessness?. I will explore how the texts emerge from the authors’ embodied interactions with the Orkney landscape and people, shaped by relationships which are both personal and public These texts are both informed by, and contribute to, shared cultural narratives that are part of community discourse in Orkney—which in turn influence, and are influenced by, actions and events in the everyday life of the islands. In their weaving together of individual and collective experiences, they have been weathered by an Orkney climate, they are situated in a particular physical and cultural place, but are informed by a wider story of global ecological crisis. With an attention to interdependence, relationships and care they suggest how the practice of community might be developed and extended in a naturalcultural world which is always more than human, weaving stories of resilience to carry into an uncertain future
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