Anthropocentrism

The Lives of Animals is a metafiction novel based on a lecture given by a fictional character named Elizabeth Costello. Elizabeth is an animal rights activists who presents at Appleton College to inform other people on her values of how animals are treated so unethically. Moreover, Costello emphaisizes her belief that humans do not need to eat meat to survive. Moreover, Costello strongly disagrees with the use of farms (which she refers to as factorieies) and slaughterhouses where animals are…

This paper attempts to read the novel Surfacing, written by the Booker Prize winning Canadian author, poet, critic and environmental activist Margaret Atwood, through the lens of ecocriticism. Atwood has delved not only into the changing ecological Canadian scenario as an aftereffect of what she calls ‘Americanisation’, but through her protagonist and her journey of self-exploration, Atwood portrays nature as the elemental force that makes a man realise the essence of humanity, and only in…

Humanity has strived, even survived off of progress. It is what drives our evolution and continues to ameliorate ourselves. In Adlerian psychology, it is theorized that the main strife in any given individual is to progress and improve themselves, as well as the society in which they reside. Considering this, we may have taken progression to a damaging level. Innovation is a delicate and ambivalent matter that must be taken cautiously. It is both beautiful and terrible, and the outcome is solely…

3.2. The Second Paradigm: The Dialogic The second interrelated principle of Postcolonial eco-poetics is the dialogic paradigm developed and introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin. The dialogic paradigm seeks to unmask and unsettle dominant discourses in colonial and anthropocentric discourses. Bakhtin’s affiliation and appropriation to both postcolonialism and eco-poetics has been recently acknowledged by scholars and critics. Bakhtin is cited to lend prestige and weight to the theoretical sphere of…

The Pesticide control act was first applied in 1970, before significant revisions in 1972 that expanded the EPA’s present authority to oversee the sales and use of pesticides with emphasis on the preservation of human health and protection of the environment. This revision would implement the regulatory framework that it was lacking before, along with strengthening registration process by seeking proof from chemical manufactures of what they were using. By exposing the hazards of the chemical…

Steiner “Animal, Vegetable, Miserable” is an op-ed guest column published in the New York Times in 2009, written by Gary Steiner. Steiner is a philosophy professor at Bucknell University who has published other animal rights books including Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents and Animals and the Moral Community. He attempts to open the minds of the readers to learn about their “normal” behavior. Things such as eating meat, going to zoos, or even enjoying circuses are what Steiner wants…

In Rewilding Our Hearts by Marc Bekoff (2014), he addresses how humans can change their ways to contribute to the restoration of environments damaged by human action or lack thereof. He argues that though there has been a paradigm shift in the ways in which we perceive animals has changed through beginning to see non-human animals as sentient beings (Bekoff 2014, pg. 1), there is still more change that people must become more involved with. And that is to save the ecosystems and provide…

A black and white, a left and right, and a right and a wrong. While all three of these phrases seem to make sense, including their obvious cut and dry nature, our society is so focused on one or the other that we forget about the in between. A grey, a center, and a human being. Toni Morrison explores the ambiguity of our life in her novel Beloved, letting the reader forgo their idea of evil and goodness, for a more vague and less constructed moral standing. The physical and spiritual world are…

Q. In his poetry, Ted Hughes re-casts human and nonhuman relations in a manner which makes man re-think anthropocentrism and its impact on the environment. How can the re-thinking of the category of the human be important in today's world? Elaborate in the light of any 6 poems by Ted Hughes. These poems should include at least four poems that you have not studied in your course. The given statement engages us is to explore the relations of non-human creatures like plants, animals and natural…

Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax offers an animated analogy of how man’s actions have recursive actions towards the ecological balance of nature. The film largely emphasises on the artificiality of nature within Thneedville. While its citizens seem unfazed by the lack of natural resources, it is apparent that Dr. Seuss is portraying their oblivion towards the scarcity of nature itself. However, though the lack of natural resources may result in a polluted or contaminated environment, the clean outlook of…