[Commlist] New book: Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis

A new monograph, ‘Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis: Surviving 
the Environmental Apocalypse in Cinema’ has just been published by 
Routledge 
(https://www.routledge.com/Ecological-Film-Theory-and-Psychoanalysis-Surviving-the-Environmental-Apocalypse/Geal/p/book/9780367373412 
<https://www.routledge.com/Ecological-Film-Theory-and-Psychoanalysis-Surviving-the-Environmental-Apocalypse/Geal/p/book/9780367373412>).

Book Description

This book applies ecolinguistics and psychoanalysis to explore how films 
fictionalising environmental disasters provide spectacular warnings 
against the dangers of environmental apocalypse, while highlighting that 
even these apparently environmentally friendly films can still 
facilitate problematic real-world changes in how people treat the 
environment.

/Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis/ argues that these films 
exploit cinema’s inherent Cartesian grammar to construct texts in which 
not only small groups of protagonist survivors, but also vicarious 
spectators, pleasurably transcend the fictionalised destruction. The 
ideological nature of the ‘lifeboats’ on which these survivors escape, 
moreover, is accompanied by additional elements that constitute 
contemporary Cartesian subjectivity, such as class and gender binaries, 
restored nuclear families, individual as opposed to social 
responsibilities for disasters, and so on. The book conducts extensive 
analyses of these processes, before considering alternative forms of 
filmmaking that might avoid the dangers of this existing form of 
storytelling. The book’s new ecosophy and film theory establishes that 
Cartesian subjectivity is an environmentally destructive ‘symptom’ that 
everyday linguistic activities like watching films reinforce.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of film 
studies, literary studies (specifically ecocriticism), cultural studies, 
ecolinguistics, and ecosophy.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Environmental crisis and epistemological crisis: 
Ecologically-destructive Cartesian subjectivity

2. Cinema spectatorship as an illusory Cartesian ‘symptom’

3. Realist film as /cogito/-centric film

4. Surviving environmental disasters in film ‘lifeboats’

5. Surviving environmental apocalypse in film ‘lifeboats’

6. Survivors in post-apocalyptic environmental dystopias

7. The possibilities of non-Cartesian film

Conclusion

Reviews

*"Robert Geal’s meticulous and wide-ranging discussion seeks to 
understand why despite the heavy presence of environmental issues in 
film … things are getting much worse. Rather than promoting action, Geal 
argues, contemporary … films … reinforce the Cartesian separation 
between the human and nonhuman, what Geal calls the "epistemology we 
live by." This timely book is refreshing and original, persuasive and 
accessible, complex and provocative."* — Simon Estok, Professor, 
Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul. Author of /The Ecophobia 
Hypothesis/ (Routledge, 2018).

*"This is an engaging and compelling analysis of how various filmmaking 
traditions express, reinforce, and normalize our dominant dualistic 
Cartesian worldview grounded in a subjectivity of human separation from 
and domination over nature. Robert Geal productively applies various 
theoretical strands to the study of cinematic form and content, 
revealing how films both repress and resurface our awareness of the 
"ecological precipice at which we stand." This eye-opening study 
concludes with a cautiously optimistic exploration of a potentially 
non-Cartesian cinematic practice that, if embraced, could offer an 
alternative form of spectatorship, one that might be capable of 
meaningful action in the face of ecological disaster."* — Paula 
Willoquet-Maricondi, Champlain College. Editor of/ Framing the World: 
Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film/ (2010).

*"This accessible, interdisciplinary and carefully argued book 
contributes to ongoing environmental theories about the impact of 
dystopian films on spectators. Geal argues that realist dystopian 
Hollywood films construct the spectator as mastering environmental 
devastation—a mastery that prevents our taking responsible action. An 
important book that should be required reading in Environmental Media 
Studies and beyond."* — /E. Ann Kaplan, Distinguished Professor of 
English and Women's Gender, and Sexuality, Studies at Stony Brook 
University. Author of Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian 
Film and Literature (Routledge, 2015)./

*"In /Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis/, Robert Geal brings 
psychoanalysis to bear on our response to the oncoming environmental 
disaster. This approach enables him to see the ideological forces 
responsible for our inability to act in a way adequate to the disaster. 
This urgent book is necessary for gaining our bearings today and for 
understanding the reasons why we can’t."* — /Todd McGowan, Professor, 
University of Vermont/

*/"Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis/** addresses /the/ urgent 
question: What cultural biases might explain our lack of action in 
response to ongoing ecological destruction? Looking at how a broad range 
of films deal with non-human beings, ecologies, disasters, and 
environmental crises, Geal ultimately discovers, like Lacan, that "this 
lack is beyond anything which can represent it." The challenge of this 
book lies in the very lack of cinematic solutions it finds to the 
symbolic hold of Cartesian subjectivity, which reinforces human 
alienation from the biosphere with every monocular turn of the 
camera."* — /Thomas Lamarre, Professor, University of Chicago/

*"In this timely book, Geal contributes to the field of ecocriticism and 
ecocinema studies by developing a new Lacanian psychoanalytic 
ecocritical methodology. This book convincingly explains why a 
rationalistic, Cartesian response to eco-crisis fails. The potential 
cure, Geal argues, lies in a radical, non-Cartesian turn in aesthetic 
and cultural practices. A must-read for environmental humanists!"* — 
/Chia-Ju Chang, Professor, Department of Modern Languages and 
Literatures at Brooklyn College/

*"An ambitious and daring work distinguished by a rare clarity of 
expression that adds force to its argument about the psychological 
alibis enabling our ecological crimes. This is a study of the separation 
ideologies of our time. … Geal’s theoretically surprising, even bracing, 
approach illustrates that the "ecological unconscious" glimpsed and 
obscured in contemporary cinema is the very terrain of the frightening 
unknown that governs our collective impotence in responding to our 
ecology crisis."* — /Anil Narine, Professor, University of Toronto, 
Editor of Eco-Trauma Cinema (Routledge, 2015)/

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