Martin Ryle

Introduction: the ecology of labour

Some may be surprised to find a journal of ecocriticism devoting a special issue to the topic of human work. The surprise is understandable on a fairly restricted view of ecocriticism as focused on texts invoking the ‘natural world’. But ecocriticism surely also involves a broader commitment to thinking about humanity–nature relations and their ecopolitical transformation. The issue proposes a move away from what Greg Garrard has termed a ‘poetics of authenticity’ towards a ‘poetics of responsibility’ (Garrard 2004, pp. 168–169). It is conceived, that is to say, within a framework whose ethico-political concerns are less with the redemptive qualities of a (supposedly) unmediated encounter with nature than with the impact and possible corrective role of culture and human action. What most matters within this frame is not how better to respect or get back to nature (in the sense of achieving some more immanent relationship with it), but how to imagine and move towards a future that both provides for human flourishing and avoids environmental devastation. A successful environmental politics almost certainly will be rooted in an enhanced sensibility to and aesthetic appreciation of nature, but any transformation of the socio-economic structures and technological instruments through which human societies relate to nature will also depend on revised ideas and cultural representations of progress, prosperity and human well-being. A central place in these must be taken by the question of work as a primary demand on human time and energy, the key site of both human and environmental exploitation, and the axis around which global capitalism revolves, together with its educational systems and its ever-expanding consumer culture. Labour deserves the critical attention of green thinkers because it is both integral to the functioning and reproduction of our environmentally rapacious economy, and a fundamentally formative influence on the individual’s subjectivity, intellect and worldview. The essays presented here (whose arguments we summarise towards the end of this Introduction) reflect the global and historical reach of capitalist labour relations, charting their impact in Australia, South Africa and the Caribbean as British and European interests exploited the resources of those regions. These accounts of colonial and postcolonial violence and resistance are framed by contributions that draw on the critique of capitalism that also originated in Europe. One important emphasis of that radical tradition was its vision of a future in which workers would work less. Marx’s critique of the capitalist extraction of surplus value implied from the start the possibility that a socialist economy could realise this value in the form of free time: time not spent on producing further commodities for sale, and so not expended in resource-consuming ways. There are affinities between contemporary green aspirations for a less consumerist society and this radical tradition which has likewise envisaged a post-capitalist order centred on a more reproductive satisfaction of primary or basic needs, and a less workdriven existence for everyone. GREEN LETTERS: STUDIES IN ECOCRITICISM, 2016 VOL. 20, NO. 2, 119–126 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2016.1164984

Alternative hedonism: the world by bicycle

Our subject is speed in perhaps the commonest use and meaning of the word: speed as the pace at which we move across the earth. Our especial focus is on the bicycle, a machine both slow and fast, as it is still — in some places increasingly — ridden in the countries of the rich world. We draw above all on our knowledge and experience of England and Britain, but refer also to the USA, and to the northern European nations where cycling holds a significant place in the culture and ecology of urban transport.

Cli-Fi? Literature, Ecocriticism, History

The recent period has seen publication of a good deal of ‘cli-fi’—speculative fiction about climate change. Teaching and discussion of this work raises the topic of global warming, and offers an opening for eco-criticism to address wider environmental questions. As a genre, however, cli-fi is limited. Its reliance on apocalyptic scenarios and its didactic tendency weaken it aesthetically. Its short historical perspective cannot address the long history of fossil-fuelled industrialism. Critical analysis of more complex novels by Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan reveals some contradictory implications of recent literary engagement with climate change, while brief discussion of earlier fiction (by Austen, Hardy and Lawrence) shows how the novel as a genre is well placed to present and analyse the ambiguities of progress.

‘Educated and intelligent, if down-at-heel’: John Wain’s Hurry On Down and B.S. Johnson’s Albert Angelo

The present chapter sets out to contrast B.S. Johnson’s work with that of John Wain, a then prominent mainstream novelist first published in the decade preceding Johnson’s debut. It focuses on two novels, Wain’s Hurry On Down (1953) and Johnson’s Albert Angelo (1964). Both are examples of the Kunstlerroman (the novel of development focused on the figure of an artist) and incorporate elements of autobiography. Before turning to the texts, I shall locate their authors on the map of post-war English fiction and in their cultural and historical moment.