Narrativizing Science: The Ecocritical Imagination and Ecophobia

This essay argues that narrativizations of science are important to ecocriticism, because they increasingly imply a latent affective ethics of activist engagement. Increasingly, ecocriticism is coming to realize that it needs science; it needs the findings, the authority, the reach, and the materialist grounding of science. It also needs to theorize the blurring of boundaries between science and narrative, to examine how both biophilic and ecophobic matters determine our perceptions of and interactions with nature; how personal, local interests intersect with global environmental issues; and how seeing connections between global threats and individual lives can lead to broad changes in our behaviors.