Crip Nature Writing? Domestic Wildness in Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s "The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating"

Authors

  • Christian Hummelsund Voie University of Southeast Norway

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2026.17.2.6114

Keywords:

Crip nature writing, corporeal unconscious, ableist ecologies, disabled ecologies, domestic wildness

Abstract

This article cautiously proposes the concept of “crip nature writing” as a subversive challenge to American nature writing’s troublesome legacy of ableism, or its “corporeal unconscious,” in Sarah Jaquette Ray’s terms, and its pattern of abandonment. Drawing on the eco-crip theories of Alison Kafer, Sunaura Taylor and Jaquette Ray, the essay analyzes the way Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (2010) models an investment in what Barney Nelson terms “domestic wildness” as a generative space from which she levels a subtle critique of the genre’s cult of effort and remoteness, ultimately offering an approach to nature writing that is inclusive of underrepresented places and perspectives.  

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Author Biography

Christian Hummelsund Voie, University of Southeast Norway

Christian Hummelsund Voie is an associate professor of English at the University of Southeast Norway. His teaching subjects include academic writing, American literature, Anglophone literature, the environmental humanities, and literature and the environment in America. He defended his dissertation Nature Writing of the Anthropocene at Mid Sweden University in 2017 with Scott Slovic as his opponent. He has published various articles on literature and the environment, and the title of his dissertation reflects many of his current research interests. They include nature writing, the Anthropocene, ecocriticism, material ecocriticism, ecofeminism, environmental justice, postcolonial ecocriticism, the environmental humanities, environmental literature, environmental memory, environmental generational amnesia, blue ecocriticism, science fiction and the environment, Norwegian black metal and the environment, and Louisiana and the environment.

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Published

2026-10-31

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 2 (2026): Eco-Crip Cultures: Disability and the Environment

Section

Articles: Eco-Crip Cultures: Disability and the Environment

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