A Queer Way of Looking at Ecology

Last month I received the latest issue of PMLA (the Publication of the Modern Language Association) that included a lead article with the title, “Queer Ecology.” Why I’m still a member, I’m not sure.

What is queer ecology? Well, it’s the latest literary theory that begins with the “fact” that nature is partially queer—because “cells reproduce asexually” and some “plants and animals are hermaphroditic.” The author goes on to argue, using a rather standard post-structuralist trick, that because all things are interdependent, all things are equal and somehow have rights. And by all the things, he means all things , including silicon.

What is the scientific evidence of the supposed “queerness” of nature? I am sure Stephen Barr could give us a much more informed evaluation, but to me, the arguments seem to rely mostly on sleight of hand—anecdotal references to splitting cells, hermaphroditism in invertebrates, or two females caring for a single offspring, none of which have anything to do with sexual relations between two males or two females. Even Paul Vasey, who researches “homosexual behavior in free-ranging Japanese macaques,” put the problem this way in a recent New York Times piece : “Homosexuality is a tough case, because it appears to violate that central tenet, that all of sexual behavior is about reproduction.” Indeed, which is why, to get around this problem, Vasey and others define homosexuality as something else besides sex between two animals of the same gender—usually a set of behavioral characteristics that we associate with homosexuality, which is then superimposed on the animals being observed.

Of course, the “queerness” of nature is treated as almost scientific fact in the PMLA piece, but never mind accuracy and nuance. What matters is style! To wit:

This exercise in hubris is bound to rattle nerves and raise hackles, but please bear with me on this test flight. Start with the basics. Let’s not create this field by comparing literary-critical apples and oranges. Let’s do it the hard way, up from foundations (or unfoundations). Let’s do it in the name of ecology itself, which demands intimacies with other beings that queer theory also demands, in another key. Let’s do it because our era requires it—we are losing touch with a fantasy Nature that never really existed (I capitalize Nature to make it look less natural), while we actively and passively destroy life-forms inhabiting and constituting the biosphere, in Earth’s sixth mass extinction event. Giving up a fantasy is even harder than giving up reality.

I particularly like the irony of claiming to do things “the hard way, up from foundations” while writing was is essentially a heavily footnoted manifesto.
Reading the piece made me glad I did my doctoral studies overseas and reminded me of a poem by dissertation director, the late poet and critic Robert Rehder , called “The Frontier.” Here are the final stanzas:

And I met this guy in Iowa
Whose academic field of interest is shopping malls.

Yes, of course, he’s in English.
They don’t do stuff like that in business schools.

English is where it’s at.
But Thursday

Was breakthrough day.
Recognizing that in an era

Of techno-globalism,
Following the post-mall interregnum,

There would be a need for a more focused,
Upscale,

Erudition-deficient, consumer-oriented topic,
Open to free-association Lacanian discourse

And Benjaminian object theory,
Combining straight-up Stuart Wilson narrative

With Homi Babba babble,
I thought it was time to turn the other chic,

So at lunch,
I invented boutique studies,

Because of which I am going to be intensely famous
For the next eight months.

I’ve got this grant to do research in Palm Springs
And Beverly Hills,

The grant proposal is being published in Social Text
And People magazine has asked for an interview.

That’s the wonderful thing
About Cultural Studies.

You stop thinking
And have all these great ideas.