Humaniora i kris

Ekopsykologi och ekokritik i elfte timmen

Abstract

The current global environmental crisis can potentially deepen the relationship between the human mind and the physical environment. How do environmental issues affect the interpretation of cultural artifacts? In what ways is the environmental crisis challenging the purpose and methods of the humanities? This paper applies the Jungian concepts of enantiodromia and metanoia to humanity’s collective response to the environmental crisis: Everything in life tends to shift from one extreme into its opposite. A personal crisis often implies an opportunity for consciousness to integrate and assimilate material previously unconscious and unprocessed. Furthermore, an individual awakening of this kind reflects a potential collective awakening of humanity. As a result of the environmental crisis, many people perceive nature as threatening. The scholar Simon Estok has termed this condition ecophobia. This paper briefly discusses Estok’s concept of ecophobia in connection to the new school of ecocriticism, which has been defined as the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. The paper suggests that ecocriticism is a sign of a major shift in human consciousness, a kind of enantiodromia or metanoia, and suggests that this shift is not so much an intellectual process as a conversion in the classical sense. Scholars within the humanities can contribute to this necessary reorientation, but only after a radical change of attitude, both individually and collectively.