Från det lokala till det globala: Ekokritiska tendenser i poesi och dokumentärfilm

Författare

Ebba Tuva Johansson

Summary, in English

This thesis explores how ecological themes are represented through local and global
perspectives in Juliana Spahr’s ecopoetry, Mikael Kristersson’s Ljusår (2008), and Jiuliang
Wang’s documentary Plastic China (2016). By applying ecocritical theory with a focus on
glocalization and interconnectedness, the study examines how local environments become
metaphors for global ecological crises.

Spahr’s poetry emphasizes the interconnectedness of humans and planetary systems through
bodily processes like breathing and ecological cycles, reflecting how intimate experiences
intersect with global environmental changes. Similarly, Ljusår presents the Swedish natural
landscape as an active ecological space where humans and non-human life coexist beyond
anthropocentric narratives. In contrast, Plastic China offers a stark representation of global
capitalism's environmental toll, depicting how Western consumer waste impacts a Chinese
recycling village, turning a local site into a symbol of global inequality and environmental
degradation.

By comparing these works through an intermedial analysis, the thesis highlights how artistic
representations of place can merge the local with the global. Through poetic and cinematic
strategies, the studied works challenge binary distinctions between human and non-human,
nature and culture, emphasizing the ecological entanglements that define our shared world.
This investigation concludes that glocalization serves as a crucial analytical framework for
understanding how art can articulate the complexities of the climate crisis by anchoring
global environmental concerns in specific, material environments.

Avdelning/ar