About

Using the critical framework of ecohorror, my research will imagine the non-human world as a trauma victim. My project will interrogate what it means for the earth to be victimised and traumatised by human forces, and how our approach to non-human life changes when we view it this way. Willful ecological destruction and violation of non-human life is an urgent contemporary concern, and I aim to challenge the ways in which we express this. By using ostensibly anthropomorphic terms like ‘victimhood’ and ‘trauma’ to describe the violation of the human world I am providing a path of resistance to the apathy many have adopted in response to the climate crisis. In considering the non-human using terminology conventionally associated with humans, I aim to place non-human loss on a par with human suffering. The purpose of adopting these frameworks is to generate empathy for non-human suffering and loss by altering the human perspective of who and what is capable of experiencing trauma.

As my case study I will use the works of Annie Proulx, a writer, historian and climate activist who has long been overlooked in American literary criticism. My thesis will look at a range of her works from her short story collections to her novels Postcards and Barkskins; these texts are particularly generative to my argument in that they push the critical framework of ecohorror in new, unprecedented directions such as the evolving concept of ecotrauma. Unearthing parallels between communities victimised by prevailing social structures is a central theme to Proulx’s writing, and a pressing concern for contemporary politics.