Material Ecocriticism ed. by Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann (review)

A final note: Within the letters, items are occasionally asterisked to indicate that there is an explanatory comment in the back of the text. Wriglesworth has offered a great service by providing readers with many pages of notes. These notes will be invaluable to scholars of Snyder and Berry and equally appreciated by those who read inquisitively. Among the gifts found in these notes are further details of books discussed within the letters, ultimate publication destinations of works in progress by both authors, further biography and background on individuals and organizations discussed by the two men, the locations in Berry’s and Snyder’s own books where allusions within the letters are more clearly developed, meanings of various Japanese or Buddhists concepts, explanations of what was meant when one of the writers indicates to the other that he has ‘‘included’’ some additional item with the letter, as well as contextual or interpersonal clarifications often related to some aspect of their travels, relevant politics, or some philosophical rival. An index of names adds to the possibility that scholars of Berry and Snyder can retrieve material that may be of special interest in their work. Paul Kaak Azusa Pacific University Material Ecocriticism. Ed. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana UP, 2014. ISBN 978-0-253-01400-9. Pp ix+ 359. $40.00. The burgeoning field of material ecocriticism seeks to couple the powerful ‘‘turn to the material’’ in the environmental debate with insights from new materialist waves of thought. Contributions to the theoretical horizon within this ‘‘material-semiotic reality’’ (2) include most notably the ISLE special cluster titled Material Ecocriticism: Dirt, Waste, Bodies, Food and Other Matter (2012), Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches (2011), edited by Heather Sullivan and Dana Phillips, and Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011) by Rob Nixon. These various contributors all highlight the complex interrelations between discourse and matter and seek to bring the materiality of the human body and the natural world into the forefront of analysis. Focusing primarily on environmental crises (pollution, mass extinctions, poverty, enslavements of humans and animals, etc.), but also environmental phenomena in general (from electricity and hurricanes to metals, bacteria, and nuclear plants), this field examines the emerging dynamics of human and nonhuman agents as ‘‘storied matter’’ (x) that involves and mutually determined cognitions, social constructions, scientific practices, and ethical attitudes . The theoretical territories of material ecocriticism mix their boundaries with several fields, ranging from biosemiotics to the ecology of the mind, from ecological postmodernism to posthumanism, from ‘‘thing theory’’ to object-orient ontology (OOO). 374 Christianity & Literature 65(3) The edited volume, Material Ecocriticism, comes in the wake of this scholarship. In its introduction, which is primarily devoted to tracing the historical developments of material ecocriticism as a field of study, editors Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann explain the book’s niche: The particularity of Material Ecocriticism is that it heeds matter not solely as it appears in texts, but as a text itself. This extension of the realm of textuality beyond the margins of canonical texts and the elaboration of a ‘‘diffractive’’ methodology resulting from the intra-action (or, using Cheryll Glotfelty’s famous metaphor, ‘‘cross-pollination’’) between human interpreter and material textuality are, in our opinion, the main additions of this new paradigm to the field of ecocritical studies. (6) Their aim is thus to develop practical approaches and new methodologies. The authors in this volume consider material ecocriticism from a variety of critical perspectives, variety which continually seeks to test and indeed expand the limits of this field. Material Ecocriticism is divided into five sections. The first, ‘‘Theories and Relations,’’ contains essays that expose the ways in which material ecocriticism can be theorized. ‘‘From Ecological Postmodernism to Material Ecocriticism: Creative Materiality and Narrative Agency’’ by Serpil Oppermann opens this section with a radical epistemic shift. Oppermann traces the genealogical lineage between material ecocriticism and ecological postmodernism in order to posit a new worldview that draws on the possibility of a panentheistic re-enchantment of nature via quantum theory. ‘‘Limits of Agency: Notes on the Material Turn from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective’’ by Hannes Bergthaller integrates autopoiesis into...