An Ecology Not Taking-Place: Analysing Ecocriticism\u27s Move from Place and Space to Spacing and Displacement through Derrida, Morton, and Haraway

Deconstructive readings of place-space dichotomies in ecological thinking reveal not only a repetition of the subject-object divide examined by Derrida and others, but also a spacing in between these categories. Morton and DiCaglio establish the importance of the in-between to ecological thinking and writing, and they demonstrate how literary and physical irony can reveal this spacing to the reader through an experience of displacement. By choosing to reject norms and instead linger in the spacing, individuals can enact a non-lieu-tenance that radically undermines sovereign systems, defers place, and opens up the possibility of new kinds of intimacy and community. By reading Haraway, Morton, and Derrida’s works as critiques of one another, the in-between emerges as a literal (in multiple senses) ethical possibility recognising that, while survival might mean “living-on” one another, it also implies a responsibility to minimise violence against every individual, human or otherwise