| Description |
"The Kid Loses to Domination" offers a multidisciplinary critique of environmentality, domination and subjecthood regarding Ken Kesey's 1964 novel Sometimes a Great Notion. Utilizing methods drawn from the academic discipline of environmental criticism; natural and environmental history, philosophy, ecopsychology, ethology and critical theory offer perspective. This work emerged from a fall 2010 class titled "Ecocriticism," taught by University of Utah Professor Robert Stephen Tatum. Kesey's novel, largely neglected critically, offers enormous potential to the field of ecocritique. A realist story of a patriarchal logging family set in early- to mid-twentieth century Oregon, Kesey offers through mimesis a rich environmentality duly represented in form. Ecomimesis aside, the novel offers historically rooted grounds for capitalist critique and a strong template for critique of patriarchal domination and the so-called traditional western American masculine archetype. Fiction differs admittedly from history or psychology. Storylines, causes and effects, influences and outcomes are often invented in fiction; while in history, a convincing story or argument emerges in tandem with verifiable fact. Research driven psychology utilizes theory, hypothesis testing and peer review to suggest tendencies or general characteristics in the human condition. Too readily useful perspectives are converted into gospel truth, bad science or history. Wallace Stegner-Kesey's late 1950's writing mentor-aimed for Western realism in fiction. Guiding the widely recognized teacher, writer, historian, and ardent environmentalist was the belief that in fiction "we should have no agenda but to tell the truth." Through the humanities, scholars too can bring to light certain ‘truths' or perceptions, patterns denied recognition yet profoundly affecting awareness and our relationship to our selves, each other and the more than human world. In the ecological view, a system is far more complex than its constituents; subverts with dynamic interrelations held more significant than static identities, and recognizes that feedback loops-as well as dominant and resistant elements-change system behavior. This seems true of critical disciplines as well. The whole is more than a sum of the parts, and what we learn today-whether from history, literature, science, critical thinking or the natural environment-cannot but influence individual and collective action tomorrow. |
