The Affective Legacy of Silent Spring

In the fiftieth year since the publication of the importance of Rachel Carson's work can be measured in its influence on contemporary environmental writing across the humanities. The ground broken by in creating new forms of writing has placed affect at the very centre of contemporary narratives that call for pro-environmental beliefs and behaviours. A critical public-feelings framework is used to explore these issues and trace their passage from the private and intimate, where they risk remaining denuded of agency, and into the public sphere. The work of Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart and their focus on the struggle of everyday citizenship in contemporary life is helpful in illustrating how mobilised private feelings, particularly anger aimed at environmental destruction, into political action. This template is then explored in two contemporary environmental writers. First, by Bill McKibben is examined for its debt to and its use (and overuse) of sadness in its attempt to bring climate change to the public's attention. Second, by Amy Seidl is shown to be a more affective effective descendant of in its adherence to Carson's narrative procedures, by bringing attention back to the unpredictable and intimate power of ordinary, everyday affects. As such, is shown to occupy a foundational position in the history of the environmental humanities, and a cultural politics concerned with public feelings.