Kas toji ekokritika?

LTTerminas "ekokritika" atsirado aštuntojo dešimtmečio pabaigoje. Vieni labiau linkę pasivadinti ekokritikais, kiti - aplinkotyrininkais (environmentalists); tokie kritikos pavadinimo skirtumai atsiranda dėl to, kad sąvoka "aplinka" suprantama labai plačiai. Tai ir gamtinės (organinis ir neorganinis pasaulis), ir fizinės, ir socialinės, ir istorinės, ir kultūrinės sąlygos. Turbūt todėl kai kurie labiau linkę vartoti sąvoką "aplinka" (environmental studies), o ne "ekokritika". Diskusijos ir nesutarimai, kurį terminą - aplinkos studijos ar ekokritika - pasirinkti, pavadinant šį judėjimą, iškyla dėl to, kad žodis "aplinka" reiškia tai, kas aplink, kas supa, bet tarsi atsieta nuo žmogaus. O eko [gr. oikos - namas, būstinė, tėvynė] - sudurtinių žodžių pirmasis dėmuo, reiškiantis jų sąsają su namais, ūkiu, augimo, buvimo vieta, aplinka, ūkio tvarkymu.5. [Iš straipsnio, p. 89]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Literatūra; Egzodo literatūra; Grožinė literatūra; Jonas Mekas; Kūryba; Gamta; Ekologija; Ekokritika; Kritika; Jungtinės Amerikos Valstijos (United States of America; JAV; USA); Lithuanian literature; Exodus literature; Fiction; Jonas Mekas; Creation; Nature; Ecology; Ecocriticism; Criticism; Lithuania; United States of America.

ENVijole Visomirskyte begins with brief introduction to ecocriticism. Starting from general discussion on the use of terms ecocriticism and environmental criticism, she moves to Lithuanian context. Though the term ecocriticism, ac- 157 cording to Buell, indicates a certain methodological holism, which does not exist, nevertheless, trying to avoid confusion with environmental sciences it is more applicable in Lithuanian literary context. Ecocriticism is not just a part of literary studies, bur rather a part of broader cultural studies. On one hand, ecocritical perspective gives an opportunity to literary critic to look at wide range of texts and read them anew, on the other hand, doing literature-and-nature studies, the difficulties arise: how to find the balance (if such is possible) between literature and nature in your own writing, what language to use? Visomirskyte's approach to nature/environment and the relationship of world and word comes from human/culture background, and is based on the humanities, cultural studies about the coexistence of several cultures. Literary critic and the theoretician of postcolonial theory Homi K. Bhabha talks about strange surviving of people living on the borderline of language, gender and race. We could add nature. Human being - as biological and social/cultural being - always is on the borderline, and today the world/earth is on the borderline, too. This Bhabha's "surviving" gets not only metaphoric, but also literal meaning. Bhabha's thoughts about cultural surviving of people, cultural systems and the understanding of difference as a text of translation to Visomirskyte seems very useful for ecocriticism. That is why the role of literature (the interpretation/translation of nature text) and literary criticism as the translation of nature texts and literary texts into human language (the interpretation /translation of literary text) is significant.Trying to define the position of ecocritical studies on the map of criticism, it is often compared to feminism and postcolonial studies. As feminism is the critique of disastrous gender opposition and postcolonial studies - a critique of dangerous opposition of cultures, ecocriticism tries to dismantle the fatal opposition of human being and nature/environment, where humans are the authority, and nature is that other. Such oppositions, when they become not differences, which allow meaningful life activity in variety of our world, and stress only one members voice, body, vision, power, and rights can ruin everything (destroy one member or other, and finally both). It is obvious, that the starting point, the focus and ideological content of ecocriticism, feminism and postcolonialism in principle intertwine. Thus, ecocriticism could be seen as a part of cultural politics of difference. Though we all know that we are a part of nature, but still we treat it as other. And it must be admitted that it is not only the consequences of science, technological inventions, politics and Ideology. Literature, written word and maybe especially literary criticism are also responsible for this. In the centre of most literary works - human being, the main attention is put on man. As also in the studies of literary criticism, which even when the role of nature or the images of animals, plants and nature, its meaning and significance are analysed, finally and first of all they are interpreted as metaphors of or parallels to human being. Poststructuralists already stated that there are no natural concepts/signs; everything is cultural, social, determined. Ecocritics especially focus on such concepts as nature, environment, culture, human being, literature, and also on the genesis, development, change, understanding, use and representation of inter-relations of these terms.These studies, mostly written in English, encourage looking for the links and differences between the discourses produced by and in Lithuanian language. The concept of culture, as cultivating, soil tilling is very vivid in Lithuanian exile writer Jonas Mekas works. The image of a culturer-bee and selfperception as an artist-farmer resound in his poetry and letters. Reading Mekas's writings it is easy to notice, that the motive of farmer links them all. In his diaries and "Semeniskés idillies" written in DP camps one can find a pastoral nostalgia for lost paradise: farm, farmer, farming is still in a way separated from culture, i.e., there is no directly expressed conception of culture-country or world-farm, which is so strong in his later written "Letters from Nowhere". Such self-consciousness/self-perception of artist as culturer-farmer shows that the relationship of man-nature, and their concord, or as Mekas says "the balance of nature and man (world)", is important to him. In his works farmercultivator-culturer-artist is the one, who is with and near the earth: culture is not opposite to nature and earth, but linked with them; art and poetry are the pieces of paradise. In poems he inscribes the relationship of word art and the world, or the intertextuality of nature and literature. There are also direct ecological considerations in his "Letters from Nowhere" and "Writings of Days". The poisoning of earth, which is brought by progress of civilisation, is a very painful moral and ethical issue to Mekas. For such ideas Lithuanian literary critic Vytautas Kubilius called Mekas "anarchist" or "dissident", we could add ecocritic, because Mekas writing is directed against ideologies, he criticises the politics of difference. [From the publication]