Both these stories are cited by the authors with approval; Warren, in fact, comments:
As I reflect upon that story, I am struck by the power of the environmental ethic that grows out of and takes seriously narrative, context and such values and relational attitudes as care, loving perception, and appropriate reciprocity, and doing what is appropriate in a given situation — however that notion of appropriateness eventually gets filled out. (146)
Warren would argue, I am sure, that this tale has nary a hint of anthropocentric utilitarianism in it; after all, the child is being instructed to feel the otherness of the deer, to experience its pain, and to recognize his own mortality, and his connection to the earth. But the point remains: killing the animal is all right, because it serves human ends. The only issue is whether the killing is done “ the right way, ” namely, the way that will bring future deer, will sustain a connection with nature, and will teach the hunter appropriate humility. Cheney ’ s chosen narrative is the same: the salmon are mythologized so that they may be killed and eaten with impunity.
I think we must learn to be discriminating about narrative, at least the narrative that we put forward as what Cheney calls “ ethical vernacular ” (Postmodern Environmental Ethics, 134). It is always true that narrative may offer insights into the psychology of the storyteller, or the worldview of the culture from which she speaks, and in that sense all narrative has value. But insights alone do not make it good narrative. Good narrative — that is, narrative that can form the basis of an ethic that recognizes both individual and general others — requires more. If we are to propose the creation of intentional narratives, myths to live by, we must also establish criteria by which to judge them.
The kind of narratives we want, I think, should satisfy four criteria: (1) they should be ecologically appropriate to a given time and place; (2) they should be ethically appropriate in that time and place; (3) they should give voice to those whose stories are being told; and (4) they should make us care. I ’ ll expand on each of these criteria separately.
A good narrative should be ecologically appropriate to a given time and place.
While there is some danger in assuming that ecology is an exact mirror of the world — it is, after all, a human enterprise, and as such subject to the sorts of unconscious meaning-making I have been describing in this article — it does, I think, provide us with a parameter for our narratives. Cronon ’ s remarks about environmental history are equally appropriate here:
. . . the biological and geological processes of the earth set fundamental limits to what constitutes a plausible narrative . . . Insofar as we can know them, to exclude or obscure these natural “ facts ” would be another kind of false silence, another kind of lying. (1372 – 73)
It is absurd, I think, for white Americans to advance narratives that feature animals willingly presenting themselves to be killed, or as humans traveling in a fish “ disguise, ” which they leave behind as a sort of bread-and-butter note. However much descriptions of the world are open to interpretation, it seems fairly indisputable that wild animals shy away from humans, and that when forced into confrontation, attempt to preserve their lives through flight, artifice, or counterattack.
Similarly, it is inappropriate to craft narratives that present the world as an unlimited storehouse of resources awaiting human use, or which posit human ingenuity as the single driving force behind change, or which, for that matter, extol the virtues of human manipulation of the natural world. The tale of human progress, whether strictly linear or dialectically unfolding, has outlived its usefulness, if indeed it ever had any. And while declensionist narratives may seem too overwhelming, too fatalistic, or too much a manipulative stage setting for salvation fantasies, it does us no good to avoid the unpleasant truth: there are ecological limits. So let ’ s tell the stories of dammed and polluted rivers, disappeared ecosystems and species, plains and prairies and tundra ravaged by inappropriate agriculture and grazing, forests leveled for exports, the unnecessary slaughter of millions of animals.
But at the same time, let ’ s also tell the stories about how we could live in harmony with the rest of nature. Our narratives could remind us of the integrity and complexity of the natural world, and the need to embrace limits with joy and humility. They could be models of ecologically responsible and respectful interactions, both among animals and between humans and animals. They could inspire us to see beauty and feel delight in natural forces.
None of these stories require that we ignore “ the facts, ” or turn away from elements of the natural world that seem harsh or cruel, like predation, or starvation, or natural disaster, or competition. Our narratives about nature, about animals, about ourselves — all must ultimately be judged by their credibility; we must therefore tell stories that are as accurate as we can make them.
A good narrative should be ethically appropriate to a given time and place.
In the past twenty years, environmentalists and ethicists have invested considerable energy in establishing ecology as a normative discipline, not just a descriptive one. A healthy ecosystem, they tell us, is not only a model of how the natural world is, but also of how it ought to be: interdependent, sustainable, and diverse, a web of beings-in-relationship that emerges as a whole far greater than the sum of its parts, and which cannot be reduced to its parts without destroying its integrity. How do we move from what is in nature to what ought to be, or from ecologically appropriate narratives to ethically appropriate ones? The first move, I would suggest, is the easier of the two, despite the number of pages it has consumed in journals devoted to philosophy and ethics. 11 Like Holmes Rolston, I think we can say that facts and values in the natural world are discovered simultaneously; our values affect what we perceive as facts, and vice versa. This is especially true when we consider the words used to describe natural ecosystems, as Don Marietta points out:
Such words as stability, diversity, unity, balance, integrity, order, and health can be employed in strictly scientific, value-neutral ecological research papers, but they also show up in expressions of appreciation for the environment and in normative discourse. (201)
Thus moral obligation is contextual, a matter of is-with-ought rather than is-implies-ought.
When we speak of ethically appropriate narratives, however, we need to add another dimension. It is entirely possible for a narrative to be ecologically accurate, and to suggest or model behavior that accords with the ecological facts, while nonetheless presenting an ethically inappropriate rationale for the behavior. Suppose, for example, that I perceive the frog pond as a delicately balanced microcosmic universe, however temporary it may be. Having learned from ecology (and culture) that balanced and complex ecosystems are functionally good, I conclude that tossing a stone or a bag of garbage into it would be wrong. Asked my reason, I reply that disturbing an ecosystem is a wrongful act because it violates God ’ s design, or because it might ultimately threaten human well-being. Indeed, most contemporary utilitarian ethicists (and deep ecologists) advance the notion that the natural world is an interrelated whole of which humans are a part, and that anything that threatens our environment threatens us. Therefore, it is in our interests not to harm the environment. In a similar vein, I might advance the importance of self-restraint. In my opening narrative, you may recall, I “ restrained ” myself from picking up a stone and tossing it into the pond, but I expected the frogs to entertain me as a “ reward. ” My action was good, but my stated reason for it was questionable at best.
How, then, do we judge the ethical appropriateness of a narrative? Here I think we can have recourse to principles of ecofeminism. While there is certainly no one formulation of ecofeminist ethics, a number of guidelines — what Karen Warren calls “ boundary conditions ” 12 — can be suggested. Besides being ecologically appropriate, good ecofeminist narratives should reject the notion that any part of the world, human or animal, exists for the use and pleasure of any other part; in particular, any kind of instrum
ental characterization of animals implies an endorsement of human power-over. Ecofeminist narratives should emphasize lived experience and context, and the ways in which perception of the world is socially negotiated. When possible, they should remind us of the intersection of oppressions. But instead of presenting humans as compulsive destroyers who can control our bad impulses only with great effort, they should emphasize the pleasure we take in relationships and in identification with nature and animals, and the importance of caring, attention, kindness, playfulness, trust, empathy, and connection. They should demonstrate that ethical behavior toward the nonhuman world is a kind of joyfulness, an embracing of possibility, a self-respecting and respectful humility.
Theorizing about the natural world and human relationships to it all too often focuses on goals, whether they be the execution of a divine design or the reestablishment of some mythical arcadian harmony. If we behave in such and such a way, we are told, things will work out fine; this is the message of the progress narrative, and, insofar as it calls upon us to change our ways, the declensionist one as well. But what if we ground ourselves in the present, asking not so much what we hope to achieve in the future, but who we want to be right now? Ethics should not be about a Herculean labor, wherein right action will lead to a desired end. We are already in relationships with each other and with the natural world, even though these relationships may not always be mutually beneficial. We should be asking, I think, not what we will get from being more attentive, more loving, more joyful, more empathic, and more trusting, but simply how to do it. Ethically appropriate ecofeminist narratives would begin to show us the way, and to remind us that a vision can illuminate the present as well as the future.
A good narrative should give voice to those whose stories are being told.
In the mythic narratives of the hunt such as those suggested by Warren and Cheney, the animal ’ s story is never really told. Instead, human desires are centralized, while the animal becomes a universalizable animal “ Other. ” And, like the classic female/mother “ Other ” of masculinist discourse, the universalizable animal is offering itself up as food/sacrifice. In the same way, the narrative freezes a particular moment in time — the moment of the animal ’ s death — thus denying the rich, textured, purposeful, and unique life that the animal led prior to the encounter with the hunter.
The story of “ the one that got away, ” as a hunting tale, is of course just another version of the story of the kill, since it focuses only on the events of the hunter/animal encounter. But what if the story continued: Where did the animal go when s/he got away? Where had s/he come from to begin with? What, after all, is an animal ’ s life?
When I speak of an animal ’ s life, I mean to do so in both factual and mythic ways, because I think our narratives should be informed by both observation and imagination. There are abundant observations of animals in the wild, the best of which record animal ’ s life histories without manipulating them; from these we can learn a great deal about animal thought, feeling, needs, desires, joys. 13 But we can also rely on direct knowledge. In our lived experience, animals communicate with us in many ways: through companion relationships, in which most of us engage at some point in our lives; through scolding, swooping, hissing, circling, or bursting from cover as we walk through the woods or across the desert; by their absence, in the places that humans have rendered uninhabitable for them; by the scat, chewed twigs, faint trails, empty burrows, and nest holes they leave behind; by their cleverness, in pursuing their own lives all around ours, as is the case with raccoons, ravens, starlings, coyotes, rabbits, and the like; by their confined presence and passivity in fields, on rangelands, and in feedlots; and by their fate, when we see their remains in the supermarket meat section. Even intermittent attentiveness to our surroundings brings knowledge about the animals who share the place with us.
An animal ’ s life history can be told in factual ways, and it can be told in mythic ways as well. I am somewhat hesitant to propose this, because mythologizing has so often been used to objectify animals, but that objectification, I think, is more a function of the worldview of the mythmakers than of mythology itself. In dreams, in fantasies, in visions, animals often speak to us — and who is to say that this is not a form of communication? As long as a myth does not contravene observed fact — as do the hunting myths — or exist simply to prove the mythmaker ’ s theory, it can be a way of translating animal consciousness into a form humans can apprehend, and thus admit animals into our dialogue.
Giving voice to something that does not speak is a challenge we should not take lightly. Indeed, as Mar í a Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman have pointed out in “ Have We Got a Theory for You!, ” many white feminists have displayed a remarkable lack of talent for giving voice even to those “ others ” who do speak. Of course, we need not think that communication is only verbal; for both humans and animals, instinct, emotion, and action can be a form of speech. But the test, I think, for determining whether the voice we give to animals is accurate will lie in the behavior it calls forth from humans. 14 If an animal ’ s “ voice ” dictates action that serves human ends but compromises the animal, we had best try listening more carefully.
A good narrative should make us care. 15
Marti Kheel writes that “ we cannot even begin to talk about the issue of ethics unless we admit that we care (or feel something) ” (The Liberation of Nature, 144). Therefore, even if a narrative satisfies all the other conditions I have laid out, if it fails to make us care, we cannot judge it to be a good narrative. But what do we mean by “ care ” ?
For these purposes I think that caring is best defined as a state of consciousness and a form of behavior, each inextricably linked to the other. 16 Sara Ruddick ’ s work on maternal thinking is useful in this regard. For Ruddick, mothers learn to care, to think “ maternally, ” by doing it; it is a practice that grows out of the requirements of the work. In the case of mothers, the work requires above all that the child be nurtured, protected, and trained. These in turn require attention both to the individual and its environment, that is, an awareness of and sensitivity to the child ’ s needs and to the community (or context) in which the child is to grow up.
Awareness of and sensitivity to the needs of the individual requires what Ruddick calls “ attentive love, ” 17 the habit of asking “ What are you going through? ” and waiting for the answer . Like empathy, it requires us to experience the other ’ s feelings as though they were our own, but without projecting our own feelings onto that other. And it requires us to celebrate as well as suffer:
. . . it is equally important and sometimes as difficult to really look at her excitements, ambitions, and triumphs, to see her quirky, delighted, determined independent being and let it be. Attention lets difference emerge without searching for comforting commonalities, dwells upon the other, and lets otherness be. (121 – 22)
Nonetheless, attentive love requires more than simply asking, waiting, and hearing: it has to imply a commitment to action, and in particular, to the action that will help preserve the other and let her flourish.
Applying concepts of maternal thinking to narrative suggests that good narratives will model attentiveness to individuals as well as to the context in which they live, and will inspire us to appropriately preservative actions. By “ appropriately preservative ” I mean to indicate actions that promote the evolution of an individual animal ’ s life history in ways that are consonant with its community/context. Attentive love directed toward a child, for example, would require us to save it from a (human or animal) predator; predators are not (or should not be) a part of a human child ’ s life story, in the context that healthy human lives are lived. But attentive love toward a deer, or a bighorn lamb, or a ruffed grouse does not require us to devise schemes to frighten off every wolf, eagle, and fox; predation is a part of the life story of at least some wild animals. Therefore a narrative that had humans intervening to protect an animal from a natural predator could be
judged as modeling a misguided form of caring, one that was ignorant of context.
For the purposes of narrative, decisions about what constitutes an individual ’ s context can be guided by common sense and by the other requirements of good narrative. For instance, to care about an individual chicken in context means more than caring that it is being humanely treated while it awaits death; the context, in this case, must be extended beyond the immediate material circumstances of its existence to the larger ecological and ethical circumstances. In other words, narratives about chickens should make us care enough to put an end to meat-eating.
Crafting narratives that will give voice to animals and make humans care about them in appropriate ways is no easy task. We want to avoid anthropomorphizing animals even though that has proven itself an effective tactic for mobilizing public sympathy toward them. 18 We need to be faithful to their stories, not our own. The goal is not to make us care about animals because they are like us, but to care about them because they are themselves.
Epilogue: Can This Narrative Be Saved?
It is usually the prerogative of a theorist to sketch out the parameters of a theory and then leave the work of applying it to others, as I have tried to do with you. And who knows: perhaps you are whittling away already, making template after template, or perhaps you ’ ve finished and are out searching for a text. But I have a text of my own to revise, one I produced initially in a self-interested effort to demonstrate that not all narratives are created equal. Could that story be retold in line with my own criteria? I am compelled to try, if only to illustrate that what I have said need not drive us to the creation of grand narratives, narratives for all time, any more than we should strive for grand theories. Sometimes we can just have fun with the simple stories.
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