Confounding ecospectations: disappointment and hope in the forest

Heddon, D. (2016) Confounding ecospectations: disappointment and hope in the forest. Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, 20(3), pp. 324-339. (doi: 10.1080/14688417.2016.1192001)

Abstract

The task of this essay is to stage an encounter with disappointment. Though the ‘affective turn’ is manifest across many disciplines, there has been little reckoning with disappointment as a particular affect. In the over-lapping contexts of environmental catastrophe and environmentally or ecologically-oriented performance – where the global challenges are immense, solutions impossible, but action vital – disappointment is inevitable. It seems imperative that we begin to think through disappointment’s affective registers in order to understand where disappointment comes from and what it does. What sort of affect, or force, is disappointment? How does it work and what work does it do? Where does it go and what does it take with it? I argue that disappointment remains vital to hope. If disappointment is figured as the space created between expectation and disconfirmation, then that space in-between is the necessary place of hope’s reappearance.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Heddon, Professor Deirdre
• Authors: Heddon, D.
• College/School: College of Arts > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Theatre Film and TV Studies
• Journal Name: Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis (Routledge)
• ISSN: 1468-8417
• ISSN (Online): 2168-1414
• Published Online: 20 June 2016
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2016 Taylor and Francis
• First Published: First published in Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism 20(3):324-339
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher