Emerging Theories CJLDesacado

1. By
CHRISTINE JOANNE L.DESACADO
PhD English, BSU

2. A Sampling of Critical Lenses

4. Literary theories were
developed as a means to understand
the various ways people read texts.

5. Introduction
Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is a
theoretical and interpretive mode
that examines the appearance of
race and racism across dominant
cultural modes of expression.

6. In adopting this approach, CRT
scholars attempt to understand
how victims of systemic racism are
affected by cultural perceptions of
race and how they are able to
represent themselves to counter
prejudice.

7. Closely connected to such fields as
philosophy, history, sociology, and law,
CRT scholarship traces racism in
America through the nation’s legacy of
slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and
recent events. In doing so, it draws from
work by writers like Sojourner Truth,
Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and others
studying law, feminism, and post-
structuralism.

8. CRT developed into its current
form during the mid-1970s with
scholars like Derrick Bell, Alan
Freeman, and Richard Delgado,
who responded to what they
identified as dangerously slow
progress following Civil Rights in
the 1960s.

9. Prominent CRT scholars like Kimberlé
Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia
Williams share an interest in recognizing
racism as a quotidian component of
American life (manifested in textual
sources like literature, film, law, etc). In
doing so, they attempt to confront the
beliefs and practices that enable racism
to persist while also challenging these
practices in order to seek liberation from
systemic racism.

10. As such, CRT scholarship also emphasizes the
importance of finding a way for diverse
individuals to share their experiences.
However, CRT scholars do not only locate an
individual’s identity and experience of the
world in his or her racial identifications, but
also their membership to a specific class,
gender, nation, sexual orientation, etc. They
read these diverse cultural texts as proof of
the institutionalized inequalities racialized
groups and individuals experience every day.

11. As Richard Delgado and Jean
Stefancic explain in their
introduction to the third edition
of Critical Race Theory: The Cutting
Edge, “Our social world, with its
rules, practices, and assignments of
prestige and power, is not fixed;
rather, we construct with it words,
stories and silence.

12. But we need not acquiesce in
arrangements that are unfair and one-
sided. By writing and speaking against
them, we may hope to contribute to a
better, fairer world” (3). In this sense,
CRT scholars seek tangible, real-world
ends through the intellectual work they
perform. This contributes to many CRT
scholars’ emphasis on social activism and
transforming everyday notions of race,
racism, and power.

13. As Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explain in their
introduction to the third edition of Critical Race
Theory: The Cutting Edge, “Our social world, with its
rules, practices, and assignments of prestige and
power, is not fixed; rather, we construct with it words,
stories and silence. But we need not acquiesce in
arrangements that are unfair and one-sided. By writing
and speaking against them, we may hope to contribute
to a better, fairer world” (3). In this sense, CRT scholars
seek tangible, real-world ends through the intellectual
work they perform. This contributes to many CRT
scholars’ emphasis on social activism and transforming
everyday notions of race, racism, and power.

14. More recently, CRT has
contributed to splinter groups
focused on Asian American,
Latino, and Indian racial
experiences.

15. Common Questions
• What is the significance of race in
contemporary American society?
• Where, in what ways, and to what ends does
race appear in dominant American culture and
shape the ways we interact with one another?
• What types of texts and other cultural
artifacts reflect dominant culture’s
perceptions of race?
• How can scholars convey that racism is a
concern that affects all members of society?

16. • How does racism continue to function
as a persistent force in American
society?
• How can we combat racism to ensure
that all members of American society
experience equal representation and
access to fundamental rights?
• How can we accurately reflect the
experiences of victims of racism?

17. Why Use This Approach?
• As we can see, adopting a CRT approach to
literature or other modes of cultural
expression includes much more than simply
identifying race, racism, and racialized
characters in fictional works. Rather, it
(broadly) emphasizes the importance of
examining and attempting to understand the
socio-cultural forces that shape how we and
others perceive, experience, and respond to
racism.

18. Why Use This Approach?
• These scholars treat literature, legal
documents, and other cultural works as
evidence of American culture’s collective
values and beliefs. In doing so, they trace
racism as a dually theoretical and
historical experience that affects all
members of a community regardless of
their racial affiliations or identifications.

19. Most CRT scholarship attempts to
demonstrate not only how racism
continues to be a pervasive component
throughout dominant society, but also
why this persistent racism
problematically denies individuals many
of the constitutional freedoms they are
otherwise promised in the United States’
governing documents.

20. This enables scholars to locate how
texts develop in and through the
cultural contexts that produced
them, further demonstrating how
pervasive systemic racism truly is.
CRT scholars typically focus on both
the evidence and the origins of
racism in American culture, seeking
to eradicate it at its roots.

21. Additionally, because CRT
advocates attending to the
various components that shape
individual identity, it offers a way
for scholars to understand how
race interacts with other
identities like gender and class.

22. As scholars like Crenshaw and
Willams have shown, CRT
scholarship can and should be
amenable to adopting and adapting
theories from related fields like
women’s studies, feminism, and
history. In doing so, CRT has evolved
over the last decades to address the
various concerns facing individuals
affected by racism.

23. Interestingly, CRT scholarship does not only
draw attention to and address the concerns of
individual affected by racism, but also those
who perpetrate and are seemingly unaffected
by racial prejudice. Scholars like W.E.B. Du
Bois, Peggy McIntosh, Cheryl Harris, and
George Lipsitz discuss white privilege and
notions of whiteness throughout history to
better understand how American culture
conceptualizes race (or the seeming absence
of race).

24. Important Terms
White privilege: Discussed by Lipsitz,
Lee, Harris, McIntosh, and other CRT
scholars, white privilege refers to the
various social, political, and
economic advantages white
individuals experience in contrast to
non-white citizens based on their
racial membership.

25. Important Terms
White privilege: These advantages can include
both obvious and subtle differences in access to
power, social status, experiences of prejudice,
educational opportunities, and much more. For
CRT scholars, the of white privilege offers a way
to discuss dominant culture’s tendency to
normalize white individuals’ experiences and
ignore the experiences of non-whites. Fields such
as CRT and whiteness studies have focused
explicitly on the concept of white privilege to
understand how racism influences white people.

26. Microaggressions: Microaggressions
refer to the seemingly minute, often
unconscious, quotidian instances of
prejudice that collectively contribute
to racism and the subordination of
racialized individuals by dominant
culture. Peggy Davis discusses how
legal discourse participates in and
can counteract the effects of
microaggressions.

27. Institutionalized Racism: This concept,
discussed extensively by Camara Phyllis Jones,
refers to the systemic ways dominant society
restricts a racialized individual or group’s
access to opportunities. These inequalities,
which include an individual’s access to
material conditions and power, are not only
deeply imbedded in legal institutions, but
have been absorbed into American culture to
such a degree that they are often invisible or
easily overlooked.

28. Social construction: In the context
of CRT, “social construction”
refers to the notion that race is a
product of social thought and
relations. It suggests that race is a
product of neither biology nor
genetics, but is rather a social
invention.

29. Intersectionality and anti-essentialism:
These terms refer to the notion that
one aspect of an individual’s identity
does not necessarily determine other
categories of membership. As Delgado
and Stefancic explain, “Everyone has
potentially conflicting, overlapping
identities, loyalties, and allegiances”
(CRT: An Introduction 10).

30. Intersectionality and anti-essentialism: In
other words, we cannot predict an individual’s
identity, beliefs, or values based on categories
like race, gender, sexuality, religion,
nationality, etc; instead, we must recognize
that individuals are capable of claiming
membership to a variety of different (and
oftentimes seemingly contradictory)
categories and belief systems regardless of
the identities outsiders attempt to impose
upon them.*

32. • Ecocriticism is an umbrella term
under which a variety of approaches
fall; this can make it a difficult term
to define. As ecocritic Lawrence Buell
says, ecocriticism is an “increasingly
heterogeneous movement” (1). But,
“simply put, ecocriticism is the study
of the relationship between
literature and the physical
environment” (Glotfelty xviii).

33. • Ecocriticism (1960-Present)
• Ecocriticism is an umbrella term under which a
variety of approaches fall; this can make it a
difficult term to define. As ecocritic Lawrence
Buell says, ecocriticism is an “increasingly
heterogeneous movement” (1). But, “simply
put, ecocriticism is the study of the
relationship between literature and the
physical environment” (Glotfelty xviii).

34. Emerging in the 1980s on the shoulders of
the environmental movement begun in the
1960s with the publication of Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring, ecocriticism has been
and continues to be an “earth-centered
approach” (Glotfelty xviii) the complex
intersections between environment and
culture, believing that “human culture is
connected to the physical world, affecting it
and affected by it” (Glotfelty xix).

35. Ecocriticism is interdisciplinary,
calling for collaboration between
natural scientists, writers, literary
critics, anthropologists, historians,
and more. Ecocriticism asks us to
examine ourselves and the world
around us, critiquing the way that
we represent, interact with, and
construct the environment, both
“natural” and manmade.

36. At the heart of ecocriticism, many maintain,
is “a commitment to environmentality from
whatever critical vantage point” (Buell 11).
The “challenge” for ecocritics is “keep[ing]
one eye on the ways in which ‘nature’ is
always […] culturally constructed, and the
other on the fact that nature really exists”
(Gerrard 10). Similar to critical traditions
examining gender and race, ecocriticism
deals not only with the socially-constructed,
often dichotomous categories we create for
reality, but with reality itself.

37. First and Second Waves
• Several scholars have divided Ecocriticism into two
waves (Buell)(Glotfelty), recognizing the first as
taking place throughout the eighties and nineties.
The first wave is characterized by its emphasis on
nature writing as an object of study and as a
meaningful practice (Buell). Central to this wave and
to the majority of ecocritics still today is the
environmental crisis of our age, seeing it as the duty
of both the humanities and the natural sciences to
raise awareness and invent solutions for a problem
that is both cultural and physical.

38. As such, a primary concern in first-
wave ecocriticism was to “speak for”
nature (Buell 11). This is, perhaps,
where ecocriticism gained its
reputation as an “avowedly political
mode of analysis” (Gerrard 3). This
wave, unlike its successor, kept the
cultural distinction between human
and nature, promoting the value of
nature.

39. The second wave is particularly modern in its
breaking down of some of the long-standing
distinctions between the human and the non-
human, questioning these very concepts
(Gerrard 5). The boundaries between the
human and the non-human, nature and non-
nature are discussed as constructions, and
ecocritics challenge these constructions,
asking (among other things) how they frame
the environmental crisis and its solution.

40. This wave brought with it a redefinition of the
term “environment,” expanding its meaning
to include both “nature” and the urban (Buell
11). Out of this expansion has grown the
ecojustice movement, one of the more
political of ecocriticism branches that is
“raising an awareness of class, race, and
gender through ecocritical reading of text”
(Bressler 236), often examining the plight of
the poorest of a population who are the
victims of pollution are seen as having less
access to “nature” in the traditional sense.

41. These waves are not exactly distinct, and
there is debate over what exactly constitutes
the two. For instance, some ecocritics will
claim activism has been a defining feature of
ecocriticism from the beginning, while others
see activism as a defining feature of primarily
the first wave. While the exact features
attributed to each wave may be disputed, it is
clear that Ecocriticism continues to evolve and
has undergone several shifts in attitude and
direction since its conception.

42. Tropes and Approaches
Pastoral
• This trope, found in much British and American
literature, focuses on the dichotomy between urban
and rural life, is “deeply entrenched in Western
culture”(Gerrard 33). At the forefront of works which
display pastoralism is a general idealization of the
nature and the rural and the demonization of the
urban. Often, such works show a “retreat” from city
life to the country while romanticizing rural life,
depicting an idealized rural existence that “obscures”
the reality of the hard work living in such areas
requires (Gerrard 33).

43. Pastoral
Greg Gerrard identifies three branches of the
pastoral: Classic Pastoral, “characterized by
nostalgia” (37) and an appreciation of nature as a
place for human relaxation and reflection;
Romantic Pastoral, a period after the Industrial
Revolution that saw “rural independence” as
desirable against the expansion of the urban; and
American Pastoralism, which “emphasize[d]
agrarianism” (49) and represents land as a
resource to be cultivated, with farmland often
creating a boundary between the urban and the
wilderness.

44. Wilderness
An interesting focus for many ecocritics is the
way that wilderness is represented in
literature and popular culture. This approach
examines the ways in which wilderness is
constructed, valued, and engaged.
Representations of wilderness in British and
American culture can be separated into a few
main tropes.

45. Wilderness
• First, Old World wilderness displays
wilderness as a place beyond the borders of
civilization, wherein wilderness is treated as a
“threat,” a place of “exile” (Gerrard 62). This
trope can be seen in Biblical tales of creation
and early British culture. Old World wilderness
is often conflated with demonic practices in
early American literature (Gerrard 62).

46. Wilderness
• New World wilderness, seen in portrayals of
wilderness in later American literature, applies
the pastoral trope of the “retreat” to
wilderness itself, seeing wilderness not as a
place to fear, but as a place to find sanctuary.
The New World wilderness trope has
informed much of the “American identity,”
and often constructs encounters with the
wilderness that lead to a more “authentic
existence” (Gerrard 71).

47. Ecofeminism
•As a branch of ecocriticism,
ecofeminism primarily
“analyzes the
interconnection of the
oppression of women and
nature” (Bressler 236).

48. Ecofeminism
• Drawing parallels between
domination of land and the
domination of men over women,
ecofeminists examine these
hierarchical, gendered relationships,
in which the land is often equated
with the feminine, seen as a fertile
resources and the property of man.

49. Ecofeminism
• The ecofeminism approach can be
divided into two camps. The first,
sometimes referred to as radical
ecofeminism, reverses the
patriarchal domination of man over
woman and nature, “exalting
nature,” the non-human, and the
emotional” (Gerrard 24).

50. Of course, ecofeminism is a highly
diverse and complex branch, and many
writers have undertaken the job of
examining the hierarchical relationships
structured in our cultural
representations of nature and of women
and other oppressed groups. In
particular, studies regarding race have
followed in this trend, identifying groups
that have been historically seen as
somehow closer to nature.

51. The way Native Americans, for instance, have
been described as “primitive” and portrayed
as “dwelling in harmony with nature,” despite
facts to the contrary. Gerrard offers an
examination of this trope, calling it the
Ecological Indian (Gerrard 120). Similar studies
regarding representations and oppression of
aboriginals have surfaced, highlighting the
misconceptions of these peoples as somehow
“behind” Europeans, needing to progress
from “a natural to a civilized state” (Gerrard
125).*

52. Typical Questions
• Taking an ecocritical approach to a topic
means asking questions not only of a primary
source such as literature, but asking larger
questions about cultural attitudes towards
and definitions of nature. Generally,
ecocriticism can be applied to a primary
source by either interpreting a text through an
ecocritical lens, with an eye towards nature,
or examining an ecocritical trope within the
text.

53. The questions below are examples of
questions you might ask both when working
with a primary source and when developing a
research question that might have a broader
perspective.
• How is nature represented in this
text?
• How has the concept of nature
changed over time?

54. • How is the setting of the play/film/text related
to the environment?
• What is the influence on metaphors and
representations of the land and the
environment on how we treat it?
• How do we see issues of environmental
disaster and crises reflected in popular culture
and literary works?
• How are animals represented in this text and
what is their relationship to humans?

55. • How do the roles or representations
of men and women towards the
environment differ in this
play/film/text/etc.
• Where is the environment placed in
the power hierarchy?
• How is nature empowered or
oppressed in this work?

56. • What parallels can be drawn between the
sufferings and oppression of groups of people
(women, minorities, immigrants, etc.) and
treatment of the land?
• What rhetorical moves are used by
environmentalists, and what can we learn from
them about our cultural attitudes towards
nature?
• There are many more questions than these to be
asked, and a large variety of approaches already
exist that are asking different questions. Do some
research to check on the state of ecocritical
discussion in your own area of interest.*

57. • In a Nutshell …
A very basic way of thinking about literary
theory is that these ideas act as different
lenses critics use to view and talk about art,
literature, and even culture. These different
lenses allow critics to consider works of art
based on certain assumptions within that
school of theory. The different lenses also
allow critics to focus on particular aspects of a
work they consider important.

58. • For example, if a critic is working with certain
Marxist theories, s/he might focus on how the
characters in a story interact based on their
economic situation. If a critic is working with
post-colonial theories, s/he might consider
the same story but look at how characters
from colonial powers (Britain, France, and
even America) treat characters from, say,
Africa or the Caribbean. Hopefully, after
reading/knowing through and working with
the resources via this report and the other
oral reports, literary theory will become a
little easier for us to understand and use.=)

59. Critically
Creatively
Come read…