Positive Pollutions and Cultural Toxins: Waste and Contamination in Contemporary U.S. Ethnic Literatures

Epilogue

EPILOGUE I can’t see why you want to talk to me When your vision of America is crystalline and clean. COUNTING CROWS, “When I Dream of Michelangelo” In an interview conducted immediately prior to his acceptance of the Nobel Prize, Al Gore said, “It’s hard to celebrate recognition of an effort that has thus far failed.” While it is undeniable that his work—and particularly his film, PowerPoint presentation, and lecture An Inconvenient Truth—has increased awareness of global climate change, the solutions to that and a host of other ecologically unsound practices lag far behind . Gore continued, “I’m not finished, but thus far, I have failed. We have all failed.” Environmentalism, as a movement, has simply not done enough. Even in our successes, we see how much more remains. Part of this failure comes from environmentalism’s inability to effect change in corporate models. We have made changes at the individual level and must continue to do so; but without a change in a culture that values financial gain over ecological community or an easy status quo over any form of sacrifice, hope is hard to come by. As Peet and Watts illustrate, “An examination of the gatt/wto ideological apparatus reveals a fundamental commitment to trade-induced growth that most basically denies its environmental consequences” (xv). So long as we see the environment , or nature, as a commodity, that which is not us, or that which is Other, we will continue to struggle to effect positive changes. Another of environmentalism’s failures comes in the perception that it is a movement of, by, and for the white middle class, a perception that is fostered both within and without the movement. As such, workingclass and poor communities are unlikely to rally around environmen- talism; members of communities of color often do not feel welcome, often because they are not. Similarly, environmentalism must work to overcome its paternalistic undertones if it wishes to combat right-wing propaganda that labels it the purview of effete leftist intellectuals.1 This book is an attempt to offer methods by which we can recognize the inherently intertwined issues of social and environmental justice. It offers a methodology by which these issues can be addressed and a vocabulary by which to counter purity discourse and the socially toxic rhetoric of isolation or containment. I hope to show that environmentalism need not be locked into the overly simplistic molds into which it has been cast (and has cast itself) over the past forty years. We need not accept the nature/humanity binary. Indeed, we must constantly work to overturn it, illustrating, arguing, and teaching the fact that we are not and cannot be differentiated from the other life and lives of the planet. The rhetoric of pollution and the rhetoric of pure wilderness spaces to be preserved from human contamination add to the perception of environmentalism as a movement of exclusivity. It invites accusations that environmentalists are simply tree huggers who have no interest in social justice or equality unless the victims or the marginalized are nonhuman species. It invites accusations of nimbyism, paternalism, and condescension. And those charges hurt our cause. A discourse that moves away from pollution to toxicity will help to some degree. Environmentalists must show that our concern is the health of our ecosystems rather than preservationism. We must insist on the inclusion of the people within that equation because people are part of the equation. Deming and Savoy wonder how “mainstream environmentalism and nature writing” change if “one’s primary experience of land and place is indigenous or urban or indentured or exiled or degraded or toxic” (8). Positive Pollutions and Cultural Toxins seeks to address that question. Similarly, ecocriticism must continue to move beyond a nostalgic attachment to nature writing to take a hard look at the ecosystemic representations in urban literature and literature by authors of color if it hopes to survive as something more than a field reserved for white, middle-class environmentalists. In American studies we talk a great deal about American exceptionalism , a term credited to Alexis de Tocqueville that refers to some quality or 184 Epilogue qualities that mark the United States as inherently different from other nations. The concept is often associated with notions of American superiority ; it justifies actions that the United States and its people would find unacceptable (or at least objectionable) from other nations...