Rhetorics of Ecocriticality: The Ecocomposition of the Selected Poems of Francis C. Macansantos

Abstract

"Based on Hubert Zapf’s theory of the 'Ecological Force' of Literature and Timothy Morton’s theory of 'Ambient Poetics', this study attempts to flesh out tropes of ecocriticism in the selected poems of Francis C. Macansantos from his collection Snail Fever: Poems of Two Decades (2016). From these theories, Macansantos’ selected poems are revealed to deploy the rhetorics of ecocriticality linking literature to a greater web of discourses concerning nature and the environment. In particular, discourses which are grounded in the interactions of the spheres of culture and nature become, in literary studies, the springboard for fleshing out ecocritical ranges and forces. This is further shown by expanding and thematically analyzing Dobrin and Weisser’s concept of ecocomposition or 'literature’s constitutive existence.' Capitalizing on ecocomposition supported by ecomimesis, the study posits that the ecocomposition and ecological rhetoric of Macansantos’ selected poems take their cue from his ecocritical-creative stance from which place, situatedness, ambience, nature, and environment become discursive ecocritical categories. The analysis of the selected poems with strong ecological bent reveals a remarkable variety of ecocritical themes: the polarity transpiring between the anthropocentric and ecocentric domains of ecology, the precepts of shallow ecology that support the continuity of the anthropocene’s life through the resources of nature and the environment, the decentering of the anthropocene through the notion of deep ecology, the rhetorics of environmental debasement, and thoughts on sustainability as reflected in literature."