Jessica Stiles

ENG 311
1 September 2015
The responsibilities of environmental writers are mainly 1. To
recognize the interconnectedness of him/herself and of all humans with
all other living creatures and with the entire earth; 2. To dig deep into
the history and social-cultural context of a place, in order to honor its
roots and avoid obscuring the past with a dominant present; and 3. To
be vivid, detailed and honest in ones writing, recognizing both the
concreteness of language and the inseparability of form and content.
Overall, ones greatest responsibility as an environmental writer is to
always be curious, skeptical and humble. This means a willingness to
learn and discover what is unfamiliar or difficult to confront, the
humility to admit what one does not know, and the critical analysis of
ones subject.
In Percy Walkers The Loss of the Creature, Walker especially
stresses the inseparability of form and content. He describes the form
or presentation of a subject as packaging, and argues that that
packaging can often get in the way, or make obscure, what one is
trying to see clearly. There are two ways, he says, to get around this:
the first is the direct recovery: A student may simply be strong
enough, brave enough, clever enough to take [the subject] by storm,
to wrest control of it from the educators and the educational package

(Walker 60). But, as Walker says, what may be a more viable solution
for separating the content from the packaging is to have the
subject presented in an unexpected context, and to have it studied in a
less-than-formal setting. In other words, separating the subject from
the very careful packaging that it has received from
educators/museum curators, etc. What he seems to be suggesting is
that the environmental writer go into the observation of his subject
without too many preconceived notions about what he/she should
get from the experience, and instead just accept whatever the
experience happens to throw his/her way. In other words, one should
have the willingness, even eagerness, to be taken by surprise.
In Jonathan Skinners ecopoetics, he addresses the mistake that
many writers make, which is trying to separate themselves from their
language. He says, Any writer who wants to engage poetry with morethan-human life, has no choice but to resist simply, and instrumentally,
stepping over language. Poetry frank about the materiality of
language, whether via image or sound or both is a step in the right
direction (Skinner 105-6). What Skinner seems to be saying is that it is
a writers responsibility not to ignore the environmental factors that
have inspired and shaped his/her writing. Language reflects what we
have observed, comments on it, and then guides a readers
visualization and understanding of the subject. It is therefore a writers

great responsibility not to be ignorant of the impact and implications of

their words.
In Francisco Alarcons Reclaiming Ourselves, Reclaiming
America, Alarcon says that the environmental writers most important
responsibility is to be aware of the history and the social-cultural
context surrounding ones subject. It is all to easy, he says, to write
about the present as if the past never occurred, but to do is
irresponsible because it not only sweeps over the peoples and events
of the past as if they were insignificant, but it also paints an incomplete
picture of why things are in the present condition. Nothing today would
be the way it were if not informed by an extremely complex and rich
historical background, and Alarcon urges environmental
writers/observers to be aware of this. Disregarding the background of
something actually takes away from the observers abilities to
understand it to its fullest extent. Alarcon warns us about the danger of
marginalizing certain people and their stories: Behind the seeming
monoliths erected by the official history, there are some forgotten
cracks and gaps that sometimes hold the real story. This is the
suppressed and mostly unspoken history of the native peoples of this
continent, and of their descendants (Alarcon 234). The author
additionally warns writers/observers about the dangers of smoothing
over the rougher parts of history, ignoring the misunderstanding,
confrontations, and contradictions, all the suffering and havoc brought

about by the so-called discovery of [a place] (Alarcon 236). In

studying a geographical location, a writer should be aware that it is
undoubtedly the crossroads of different, perhaps clashing, cultures and
peoples, and should take great care to represent all sides of the story,
rather than favoring one over the other(s).
Alarcon also addresses the ecological issue of environmental
responsibility. A mistake environmental writers may make is to believe
that they are separate, or superior, to the environment surrounding
them, and this is simply not correct. Alarcon suggests, to remedy this
sense of environmental alienation, a form of ecopoetics in order to
stress the deep sense of interconnection linking the poetic self and
nature (Alarcon 243). By being aware of the interdependent
relationship that exists between a writer and his/her environment, one
can avoid this alienation.