In the introduction of Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, Catriona Sandilands and Bruce Erikson argue that “white men came to assert their increasingly heterosexual identities in the wilderness explicitly against the urban specter of the queer, the immigrant, and the communist, a legion of feminized men who were clearly not of the same manly caliber as the likes of Theodore Roosevelt”

 

This issue of Antennae, and the one that will follow in July, is part of a diptych dedicated to new advances in Queer Ecology and the arts. As a field of studies, Queer Ecology emerged in the mid 1990s from the intersection of Eco-criticism with Queer Theory. Highly concerned with the relentless erasure of queer behaviours operated by science and natural history, Queer Ecologies focuses on the relentless deconstruction of the conception of “nature” as formulated in Western culture; it challenges the dualistic ways of thinking that separates nature from culture, and human from other earthlings. Ultimately, it critiques heteronormative constructs of nature and sexuality as not only socially divisive but also ecologically damaging.

 

Queer Ecology ultimately embraces the biological fluidity and uncontainable exuberance of more-than-human worlds to craft new thinking modalities, plateaus, and blue-prints through which to reconfigure inherited normative notions and map new epistemological territories. The all-important concept of 'queer nature' acknowledges that many more-than-human earthlings engage in queer behaviours, challenging the heteronormative assumptions that have been handed down to us by science and natural history. Queer ecology thus critiques the anthropocentrism in environmental discourse and advocates for a more inclusive and diverse understanding of ecologies for our time. In brief, Queer Ecology, instigates a radical reconsideration of every truth that patriarchy has passed down to us. Not only it is one of the most vibrant and creative contemporary field of inquiry, but it doubtlessly is also is one of the most urgent.