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Article
Affinity Studies and Open Systems: A Non-equilibrium, Ecocritical Reading of Goethe's Faust
Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches
  • Heather I Sullivan, Trinity University
Document Type
Post-Print
Publication Date
1-1-2011
Abstract

Ecocriticism’s contributions to the current rejection of dualistic thinking are noteworthy, particularly when this interdisciplinary field concentrates on hybridity and “relations” that preexist essences. In this mode, ecocriticism participates in a broader development of “affnity studies” that encompass the many efforts across the disciplines toward reconfiguring our “intraactions” with the world in terms that avoid dichotomies and Newtonian linearity and that utilize instead nonlinear, nondualistic forms of “hybridity.” Hybrids, in Steve Hinchliffe’s words, are “more or less durable bodies made up of similarly hybrid and impermanent relations.

Editor
Axel Goodbody & Kate Rigby
Publisher
University of Virginia Press
ISBN
9780813931487, 9780813931357
Citation Information
Sullivan, H.I. (2011). Affinity studies and open systems: A nonequilibrium, ecocritical reading of Goethe's Faust. In A. Goodbody & K. Rigby (Ed.), Ecocritical theory: New European approaches (pp. 243-255). Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.