AustLit

'Imagination is a deeply radical force, yet some postmodern orthodoxies dismiss it as naive modernism. I disagree. Nurturing an ecocentric ethic requires re-imagining ourselves and our world, a process in which storytelling excels. When I first began nature writing l wrote relatively straightforward natural history. Eventually, I saw that I could not write about the natural history of a place without enquiring deeply into its social and political history. Without history, there is no possibility of political engagement.

'After considerable reflection on my own writing praxis, I came to ally myself with ecofeminism and post-colonialism. Neither is unproblematic, but their understandings of the operations of power allow the possibility of pursuing genuine encounters across the intra-human divides of gender, class, race and ethnicity, as well as the species barriers set unnecessarily high by our current culture. Imagination is the shortest bridge between the local and the global. It unlocks the door to a radically different future. We should not be afraid to use it.' (Global Local abstract)