A Sense of No-Place

Abstract

That the roots of ecological crisis lie in the alienation of modern people from nature is a recurrent theme of environmentalist thought. The related principles of ecocentric identification and ‘sense of place’ are frequently advanced as providing a remedy for this problem, as well as a conceptual foundation for both Deep Ecology and environmental justice. This paper argues that James Cameron's Avatar can be understood as a dramatisation and implicit critique of these ideas. The film's imaginary Na'avi are an indigenous people whose claim to their land rests on ecocentric identification. 3D cinematography is employed to visualise the state of sensory immersion which catalyses the process of ecocentric identification, yet these techniques also produce a sense of aesthetic dislocation in the viewer. In this manner, Avatar brings to the fore a paradox that has always been implicit in narratives of ecocentric identification: in claiming to heal the split between subject and environment, they presuppose and inadvertently reproduce that split. Avatar thus highlights the need for an environmental politics that dispenses with the notion of alienation and traditional conceptions of place.

Keywords:

• deep ecology
• ecocentrism
• environmental justice
• sense of place
• virtuality

Notes

According to figures from the website Box Office Mojo, Avatar generated almost $2.8 billion in revenue from ticket sales alone, with only about a fourth of this number coming from the US. By comparison, Wall-E and The Day After Tomorrow each grossed somewhat above $500 million (Box Office Mojo, (<http://boxofficemojo.com/>).

In a closer analysis of Thoreau's text, such a conflation of ‘civilisation’ and ‘modernity’ would admittedly be highly problematic. However, since these terms are often used interchangeably in the environmentalist reception of his thought which forms the subject of this paper, I hope readers will follow this argumentative short-cut.

Deep Ecology emerged in the late 1970s as a radical alternative to the ‘shallow’ reform efforts of mainstream environmentalism. Because it views the ecological crisis as one that has deep cultural roots and therefore cannot be addressed by purely administrative or technological means, it has provided much inspiration to ecocriticism which, as a form of cultural criticism, can claim to have the right toolkit for the occasion. The rise of bioregionalism parallels that of Deep Ecology, and there is much ideological overlap between the two, but whereas the former tends to focus on articulating foundational principles for environmentalism, the latter is more concerned with practical ways of reconnecting people to the places they inhabit, most importantly the reorganisation of political and economic life around supposedly natural geographical units called bioregions.

Examples for attempts to render ecocentric identification in the medium of film would have to include documentary films such as Godfrey Reggio's Qatsi trilogy (Koyaanisqatsi, 1982; Powaqqatsi, 1988; Naqoyqatsi, 2002) or Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou's Microcosmos (1996), but also dramatic features like John Boorman's The Emerald Forest (1985) and especially animated films such as Ferngully (1992) or Pocahontas (1995).

Thomas More's coinage of the term drew on the Greek words ‘ou’ (no) and ‘topos’ (place), but it also played with the fact that the English pronunciation of the former is homophone with the Greek ‘eu’, i.e. ‘good’. A ‘utopia’ is thus both a ‘no-place’ and a ‘good place’ (cf. Fokkema, 2011: 3–9).

Avatar's website links not only to Cameron's ‘Hometree Initiative’ (where fans can donate money to have a tree planted in their name), but also, under the headings ‘Explore Real Pandoras on Earth’ and ‘Visit Pandoras on Earth’, to the report The True Cost of Chevron, compiled by a coalition of NGOs and detailing the deleterious environmental and social impact of the one of the world's largest oil companies on the countries where it operates (Avatar, official website, <http://boxofficemojo.com/>).

Holtmeier (2010) provides a detailed account of the online discussions which took place in four separate threads on a forum devoted exclusively to Avatar (<http://www.avatar-forums.com>), as well as the resultant buzz in US news media.

Neil Stephenson is sometimes credited with having popularised the term in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, but has himself pointed out that it had already been used in the mid-1980s by Habitat, the first online role-playing game (2003: 470).