Memory, Resilience and Ecocentrism in shalan joudry’s Generations Re-merging

Abstract

This article investigates Mi’kmaw poet shalan joudry’s ecopoetics as it manifests in her collection Generations Re-merging (2014). Drawing on Timothy Morton’s thought on ecology, Jason W. Moore’s notion of the Capitalocene, and David Abram’s ecophilosophy, it argues that joudry’s poetry turns readers’ attention to the existence of two different conceptions of the Earth. On the one hand, capitalist societies conceive of the planet as a portfolio of resources to be exploited in the service of humankind, and, on the other hand, Earth-bound communities like the Mi’kmaq embrace an ecocentric worldview that sees the planet as homo sapiens's true home. An examination of joudry’s poetry reveals that she is aware of the centrality of attention to an ecocentric ethics – one that is sensitive to the fragility of the biosphere and the need to rethink how our species relates to the nonhuman. She undertakes a journey towards self-healing in the face of the pain inflicted upon the Mi’kmaq by outrageously infamous colonial policies. Deprived of their lands, forced to culturally assimilate, and alienated from their own world, joudry’s people do not give in to despair, but rather embrace hope and seek hard to reconcile themselves with their past to look ahead to the future.