SOURCE: Donovan, Josephine. “Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Reading the Orange.” In Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, edited by Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy, pp. 74-96. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

In the following essay, Donovan posits that Western literary discourse has objectified and degraded nature by using inaccurate symbols (words) to displace the true meaning of the thing being described. According to Donovan, a better approach would be to direct close attention at each individual subject and to portray it in the most literal terms in order to provide a respectful description without distortion.

There is a time for listening to the vibrations that things produce in detaching themselves [imperceptibly from] the nothing-being to which our blindness relegates them, there is a time for letting things struggling with indifference give themselves to be heard.

Il y a un temps pour écouter les vibrations que produisent les choses...