Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Advance Access originally published online on July 29, 2009
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 2009 16(3):551-567; doi:10.1093/isle/isp065
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Understanding Wilderness: Humans and Ecology in Alaskan Nature Writing
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The recent debate over opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development has presented us with two wholly different and seemingly irreconcilable views on the nature of wilderness. On the one hand, wilderness is depicted as a blank and threatening void, which we have a moral obligation to develop. On the other, it appears as a pristine, Edenic space uncorrupted by human influence. The passion each viewpoint has elicited testifies to the dominance of the idea of wilderness in the American consciousness. Yet these viewpoints are so polarized they preclude the understanding of our own role and responsibilities in the natural world. Can we come to an understanding of wilderness that is less sterile, and ultimately less threatening, than those outlined in these two stances? Such an understanding seems now more necessary than ever, as humans have become so disproportionately dominant a species that we face the