Olive Moore, Queer Ecology, and Anthropocene Modernism

Olive Moore, Queer Ecology, and Anthropocene Modernism David Shackleton (bio) In Moore's novel Spleen (1930), the main character Ruth encounters a "procession of unemployed" passing through Trafalgar Square: "[t]he men, it seemed, were from distressed areas North; closed steel iron works; miners Wales; dockers Clyde. They had gathered in North come down on foot with their banners massed appeal to protest."1 She "turned group nearest her pavement; warmly dressed, middle-class. The man looked carved: woman dried: child bled: dog inflated" (Moore, Spleen, 128). juxtaposition two groups defamiliarizes middle-class family: several family members appear as inanimate objects, colons sentence which ostensibly connect them together equally function separate estrange them. Yet contrast also makes strange relationship between workers, thereby brings sexual environmental politics that are intertwined throughout novel: is not just put into question therein, but reproduction conditions production fossil fuel capitalism. imbrication make key work "queer ecology" Catriona Sandilands's sense term "constellation practices aim, different ways, disrupt prevailing heterosexist discursive institutional articulations sexuality nature."2 This broad definition allows possibility artworks can be examples queer ecology, further its central task developing includes consideration natural world biosocial constitution, an [End Page 355] sensitive ways relations shape material nature perceptions world. Indeed, Sandilands opens way fuller investigation specifically modernist ecology when she identifies E. M. Forster's Maurice (1914/1971) Radclyffe Hall's Well Loneliness (1928) literary works anticipate ecological scholarship has emerged since 1990s.3 As part recent ecocritical turn studies, scholars have extended such approach: for example, Kelly Sultzbach Benjamin Bateman advanced readings Forster.4 Such recognize that, at time various discourses recently defined being "by nature," writers explored lives those whose forms non-normative gender odds kinship structures conceptions "nature," used these imagine better organizations society relationships environment.5 turn, I argue, placed within wider field modernism. name proposed geological epoch humans fundamentally changed Earth system altered course Earth's evolution. modernism cultural registers transformations climate change now considered characterize this epoch, offers potential rethinking pressing concerns present. By drawing attention Ruth's cultivation environmentalism novel's climatic impressionism, situating both context anthropogenic change, suggest should recognized provocative part, read terms provides revised account vexed issue feminism. Very little known about Constance Vaughan, who adopted pseudonym "Olive Moore." worked journalist, first Daily Sketch later Scope, industry magazine, was member Charles Lahr's Red Lion Street circle, congregated around anarchist bookshop Holborn.6 published three novels—Celestial Seraglio (1929), Fugue (1932)—and selection writing notebooks, including essay D. H. Lawrence (which previously been by Blue Moon...