A Wilderness of Signs: Ethics, Beauty, & Environment After Postmodernism

While it is clear that postmodernism was a much-needed shift in thinking - a concerted movement to displace naturalized 'grand narratives' and power-stacked claims to reason, order, and justice - postmodernism has evaded address of elements integral to the condition(s) of being human: ethics, beauty, value, and judgment. And, although signifying practice inescapably defines the human world, postmodernism has not successfully addressed aspects that lie outside human signification, namely the environment and the natural world. Here we find a dangerous conundrum: while the natural world around us has an existence independent of its human conceptions, these human conceptions carry with them grave consequences for the natural world's very existence. This collection is comprised of selections from the 2005 Pacific Rim Conference on Literature and Rhetoric - 'ethics beauty environment: the Wilderness of Signs' - an annual graduate student conference held at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Clipped from a wide critical swath, the discussions in this collection include clashes between global capitalism and environmentalist discourses; problems implied by ownership of place; dismantling the borders between language, region, and modern criticism; extending agency, action, and voice to the voiceless; and re-discovering identity, ethics, and 'reality' through the lens of post-positivism. At the dusk of postmodernism, now is the time to visit careful attention upon these issues - issues critical not only for the good of humanity, but for the good of the non-human world as well.