“Aftermath”: Resilience, Religion, and Ecopoetics-in-Action
摘要
This chapter enlarges the current investigation of narratives of resilience in two directions. Firstly, with respect to narrative, it considers forms of storying that exceed the confines of the narrowly textual and that are therefore not examined narratologically through a literary critical lens, but rather explored from an interdisciplinary environmental humanities perspective as modes of eco-cultural praxis. In particular, the chapter focuses on an ecopoetically-enacted narrative of resilience, whereby ‘ecopoeisis’ is understood in its wider, and more literal, sense as a ‘making’ (poiesis) of the ‘whole household’ (oikos), encompassing forms of more-than-human co-creativity and co-existence. Engaging diverse activities, media and modes of story-telling, such forms of “ecopoetics beyond the page” have the potential to not only thematise resilience, but also to actively cultivate it, whether through enhancing participants’ sense of meaning, purpose and ability to recover from adversity; building inclusive communities through shared creative endeavours premised on mutual respect and embracing diversity; and/or, on however small a scale, fostering forms of socio-ecological regeneration and flourishing. Secondly, with respect to resilience, this chapter considers the potential contribution of religious narratives, values and practices, in conversation with the arts and sciences. These questions are explored with respect to a case study of a scientifically-informed, faith-inspired, creatively realised collaborative project named “Aftermath,” which was devised and curated by the Eco Church team of St. James’s Anglican church in Piccadilly, London, in 2021. This project is shown to instantiate an ecopoetically enacted narrative of transformational resilience, oriented not towards ‘bouncing back’ from disaster (in this case, both the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the wider socio-ecological crises with which it was entangled), but rather ‘bouncing forward’ towards more equitable, inclusive and regenerative modes of multispecies co-becoming.