'There was no Us and Them': Environmental Justice and Discursive Struggle in Jeanette Winterson's <italics>The Stone Gods<italics>

Abstract

This project examines Winterson's depiction of various environmental positions alongside the text's intertwining discourses of nationalism, imperialism, capitalism, androcentrism, and anthropocentrism. I explore the parallels Winterson draws between, first, the power relations and underlying discourses that rely on and normalize identity constructions of inferiority and otherness; second, how these power relations and discourses are implicated in environmental degradation; and, third, how common environmental positions arise from and perpetuate these power relations and discourses, or, conversely, seek to critique them. Within this investigation, I posit that Winterson points to the productivity involved in collapsing dualistic, normative systems of thought which construct human identity, conceptions of humanness, conceptions of nature or environment, and human relations to environment. In doing so, she suggests that by opening up conceptual categories and making possible what these constructions and discourses declare is impossible, hope for environmental and social well-being emerges. By juxtaposing many environmental positions, Winterson not only points to the limitations of each, but also invites an "opening up" of their possibilities and an exploration of how some positions might borrow from others. Particularly, she points to the ways in which an environmental justice approach might expand beyond its largely anthropocentric, localized applications. Winterson challenges the dualism between anthropocentrism or ecocentrism, since to choose only one is to either neglect the social or the environmental. Finally, I suggest the ways in which Winterson's novel provides a rich opportunity for expanding and contributing to current conversations that merge queer studies and ecological concerns.