Manifesto as Interrogation

To launch a new journal with a bang, what better than a bevy of manifestoes? The manifesto mode also befits ecocriticism’s state of residual liminality. It has surely established itself for good— burgeoned in less than two decades from asle’s first 1995 Fort Collins, Colorado, campfirestyle plenary into a worldwide polylogue whose biennial gathering runs longer than the mla— but anxieties of definition and legitimation linger. The real work seems barely to have begun. Is ecocriticism a discourse, a crossroads, a tossed salad? Yes, activity is dramatically on the rise— Resilience is its eighth ecocritical journal by my count; yes, the environmental humanities have gained ground; but the gravity of the realtime environmental dangers that energized them is accelerating even faster, and the place of environmental humanities among the disciplines and in the public sphere remains marginal. Manifesto may not be the best idiom for engaging these matters, except to reinforce the urgency of doing so. Manifestoes are supposed to proclaim, define, or contest norms of practice. Peremptory foreclosure is endemic to them. Myself a repeat offender, I am resolved this time around to manifest not with precepts but with “Where now?” questions.