In this work, Lida Maxwell proposes a reexamination of the work and life of Rachel Carson. Carson is best known for having written Silent Spring (1962), which launched the modern environmental movement. She is less well-known for having written electrifying love letters.
But this, in fact, she did. Carson’s letters to and from Dorothy Freeman—Carson’s neighbor in Southport Island, Maine—are the primary subject of Maxwell’s new work of political theory.
Maxwell begins her book by puzzling over the fact that most accounts of Carson’s life and work make little to no mention of Carson’s relationship with Freeman, which began in the early 1950s and lasted until Carson’s death in 1964. Perhaps it is because their relationship (same-sex but nonsexual) was hard to define: the two women described their love as an “unexplainable mystery.” According to Maxwell, it is this enigmatic quality that makes Carson’s and Freeman’s love so potentially powerful in our time of environmental crisis.
In chapter 1, titled “Queer Love in Southport,” Maxwell introduces the book’s central aim: to use Carson’s and Freeman’s “queer love” as a model for constructing a new environmental politics which offers “exciting possibilities for political mobilization” (117). Maxwell also sets up as her foil “the ideology of straight love,” which insists “that we find the meaning of our lives and happiness in heterosexual marriage, with children, a house, and plenty of consumption” (8). Maxwell notes that, despite their contemporary connotations, her concepts of “queer” and “straight” do not (or need not) refer explicitly to sexual orientation: queer love may, in Maxwell’s view, be more common in homosexual relationships, but straight people can also experience queer love—and, vice versa, people who identify as queer sometimes subscribe to the ideology of straight love (13).
In chapter 2 (“Wondrous Revelation”), Maxwell explains that the love between Carson and Freeman offers a useful model for her political project not so much because it was same-sex as because it awakened a sense of wonder, which allowed Carson and Freeman to experience authentic meaning and pleasure and come into their true selves. Importantly to her political project, Maxwell argues that Carson’s and Freeman’s journey of wonderful self-discovery was enabled by nature, which served as the primary setting and inspiration for their love. Thus, Maxwell identifies an intangible human use for nature, namely, as a source of pleasure and self-discovery.
In chapter 3 (“Loving Use”), Maxwell argues that “using” nature (and each other) can sometimes be a good thing. For instance, Carson and Freeman often used each other as a “sounding board” to help make sense of their own thoughts and feelings. Maxwell calls this good type of use loving use, and she argues that humans can also lovingly use nature to get in touch with what they really want and who they really are.
In chapter 4 (“Environmental Desire”), Maxwell suggests that this loving use of nature should serve as the foundation of a new environmental politics. Whereas environmentalists often appeal to fear and preach austerity, which Maxwell claims paralyzes and demotivates the public, she proposes that we instead promote a “democratic environmental politics of desire” (114). Perhaps it seems strange to found an environmentalism on desire, which implies a state of lack, hence a wanting more when we should be wanting less. But, with reference to Deleuze and Guattari, Maxwell argues that the kind of desire she speaks of does not entail a lack. Rather, desire stemming from queer love expresses itself as a desire to share one’s sense of wonder with the world: the more wonder one has, the more one desires to share it. Maxwell believes that, by emphasizing how our “vibrant multispecies world” provides us with unparalleled opportunities to get in touch with ourselves and experience real pleasure, we may tap into loving desire’s snowball effect (93). By promoting a positive vision that highlights nature’s intangible human benefits, Maxwell argues that we can motivate the public to want to preserve these benefits (and so, too, nature).
Maxwell closes the book by claiming, as the fifth chapter title states, that “Heteronormativity is a Climate Issue.” In short, she reiterates that queer love offers an opportunity to mobilize the public to act in favor of nature, whereas the ideology of straight love perpetuates environmental destruction.
The terminological apparatus of this book appears to suggest some sort of connection between sexual orientation and pro- or anti-environmental behaviors. But upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that what Maxwell means by “straight love” is really just conformity to the conventions of capitalist society, and what she means by “queer love” is being in a state of wonder—or simply, true love.
Maxwell’s adherence to terms like “queer love,” and “straight love,” and the theoretical milieu from which they arise, is not only confusing; it hampers her political project by limiting its reach, as well as the resources to which it has access. For instance, Maxwell tells us that queer love is infinite and particular, that it evokes wonder, that it counteracts materialistic impulses. With a smidgen of knowledge of religion (I claim no more), one quickly sees the strong resemblance to Christian love—yet Maxwell does not engage with this tradition. To develop an effective (and so broad-based) environmental politics, one must surely venture outside one’s own milieu.
Furthermore, Maxwell’s adherence to her terms causes her mostly to dismiss a powerful avenue for queer (or, more precisely, wonder-inducing) love: namely, having and raising children. Maxwell lumps procreation together with consumerism as part of the ideology which perpetuates environmental harm. But why? One could point to the environmental damage caused by a growing population, but Maxwell, perhaps wisely, goes nowhere near the issue. From the perspective of Maxwell’s political project, which seeks to use queer love as a way to kindle a desire to protect nature, it would seem that having kids is a boon: what better way to reawaken one’s sense of wonder for nature than to experience it through the eyes of one’s child? As Carson writes in “Help Your Child to Wonder” (an essay to which Maxwell frequently refers), “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement.”
