Quiz Guide: Ecocriticism
Chapter 1: Positions (may require a dictionary)
- What is the position that argues most environmental dangers are "illustory or exaggerated," and how is this position supported financially?
- Why do "free-market economists" tend to hold this position?
- According to Frederick Buell, how has the "antienvironmental right" depicted their opponents?
- What is one "more serious objection" to the position articulated by those espousing the position discussed above?
- How does the book define the position of "environmentalism" or "shallow environmentalism"?
- What are some of the "concrete improvements" that can be attributed to "environmentalists" as defined above?
- How, according to the book, has the position of environmentalism "already failed"?
- What are two crucial "key points" of Deep Ecology?
- What is the "core of the radicalism" in Deep Ecology?
- Is "deep ecology" misanthropic (hates people)? What is the difference between "ecocentric" and "anthropocentric"?
- According to ecofeminists, how does "androcentric dualism" lead to the "logic of domination"?
- If traditionally "female" qualities and traditionally "natural" qualities have been seen as negative, what's one way to reverse that process?
- Plumwood criticized Descartes for creating a "mind/body" or "reason/nature" dualism, one that equated men with the former and women with the latter. How does she argue that it should be solved?
- Give an example of how ecofeminism emphasizes "environmental justice," especially "biological and cultural" diversity?
- To what 19th century thinkers are "social ecology and eco-Marxism" indebted?
- To what forces do "social ecologists" attribute environmental problems?
Chapter 7: Animals
- What does Peter Singer call "speciesism"?
- Why, for people like Jeremy Bentham, is the boundary between human and animal "arbitrary"?
- What is "homology"? Give an example.
- On what basis do we argue that animals are inferior to humans, according to Derrida? What is his term for that kind of thinking?
- How does Temple Grandin link animal studies with disability studies?
- Berger says that industrialization has"marginalized" animals. What does he mean?
- What does Steve Baker mean by the "rhetoric of animality"?
- Define two of the following terms as the book uses them "antropomorphism, zoomorphism, mechanomorphism, and allomorphism."
- What is an "amusing example of crude anthropomorphism"?
- Discuss an example of "disnification" and "neoteny."
- Give a crude example from the book of "zoomorphism" that degrades both animals and the human groups to which they are compared.
- In Straw Dogs, Gray suggests that "the species we most thoroughly anthropomorphise is our own." What does that mean?
- What is a "Yahoo"?
- Give an example of "allomorphism" in D.H. Lawrence.
- What does the book mean by "posthuman analysis?" Explain with the example it uses.
- Donna Harroway says the cyborg "subverts an apparently limitless number" of dualisms. Give an example.
- Discuss an example from the book of "intersexuality" in animals.
- Why do some people believe we should revise the distinction between wild and domesticated animals?
- What does the book mean by the term "biodiversity"?