[by Hubert Heckmann]
The use of the term "ecology" is interesting in the “Publication profile (Galaxie): Literature and Ecology – ECO/LIT” put out to competition in May 2022.
Since this is not about scientific ecology (the CNU sections indicated are the 9th and 10th, "French Language and Literature" and "Comparative Literature", but not the 67th, "Population Biology and Ecology"), it is therefore about political ecology. But the 4th section of the CNU (Political Science) is also absent, because ecology does not appear in the profile as an object of study, but as a watchword.
By playing on the homonymy between a science and a political movement, the profile of the position combines a discipline ("Literature", which corresponds to the two CNU sections indicated) and a militant orientation. Can we imagine positions in "Criminological Psychology and Insurrectional Anarchism", "Educational Sciences and Social Conservatism", or "Evolutionary Genetics and Christian Democracy"?
Recruitment therefore focuses on both scientific skills in a discipline and political conformity to an ideological line determined by the profile of the position, which is contradictory and akin to Lysenkoism. Some activist circles do not hesitate to call for an "alignment of science" (“Let us align our scientific practice with the pressing issues of this century”, ENS student forum, Le Monde of May 11, 2022).
The activist dimension is confirmed by the content of the file itself: "The studies devoted to the relationship between ecology and literature in fact emanate from a transdisciplinary reflection, at the crossroads of the human sciences (sociology, anthropology, philosophy and ethics), of political and activist commitment, and hard sciences. "The "hard sciences" only appear here as a soft alibi: how many researchers specializing in biocenosis and biotope are there on the selection committee?
The detailed profile blandly admits that it is a question of importing an Anglo-Saxon product: "Strongly developed across the Atlantic under the name of green studies, the study of the links between literature and ecology remains underrepresented in France, and often confined to the study of contemporary literature. ECO/LIT aims to change this situation by demonstrating the breadth and centrality of this specialist field. " No valid reason is given for this dishonorable mimicry, voluntary vassalization of French research. When the green studies will mature, how to prevent them from becoming brown study ?
The conception of literary studies set out in the file is based on a naive and pernicious postulate,intersection of managerial ideology and woke prejudice: "Literature plays a crucial role in the representation of the world, but also in the transformation of mentalities and behaviors." Literary studies are therefore only tolerated if they display their social utility, which is done here according to a paralogism: since literature would shape representations of the world and transform mentalities and behaviors (a premise of Marxist origin simplified and recycled by various vulgates), it is by studying literature that one could act on representations of the world and transform behaviors (a formally erroneous conclusion).
The human sciences are therefore reduced to a form of social engineering: "if many citizens are now becoming aware of the need for an ecological transition, this relationship with the environment is established as much by daily actions and commitments as by means of the imagination. It therefore seems essential to give due importance to work which, drawing on the tools of literary analysis as much as on cultural studies, measures the impact of this imagination [...]" (extract from the job description). Impact measurement and work on the "imaginary" to produce consent ("social acceptability" in the jargon of calls for projects): is this not the very definition of propaganda? The academic in Letters and Human Sciences is enlisted as a programming technician of Worldview.
Last point, which is important: the green studies cannot be "confined to the study of contemporary literature". The recruited colleague will have to put through the mill green studies "the literary manifestations of an ecological consciousness prior to the 20th centurye century, or outside of European space". It is not even a question of approaching from a contemporary perspective the works marked by a cultural or temporal otherness, but of selecting them according to an effect of anachronistic resemblance in order to project on them, in a non-critical way, a Worldview which is in fact foreign to them. When we cover up the testimonies of cultures different from ours with our own concerns, we practice the ethnocentrism of the present with a view to edification – with the assurance of finding in our conclusions the illustration of our intentions. Is this really the mission of university teaching and research?
