412 CHAPTER TWENTY THREE TOXIC BODIES AND ALIEN  AGENCIES Ecocritical perspectives on ecological others Serpil Oppermann S imilar to postcolonial studies, ecocriticism is a heterogeneous ield of study that does not correspond to any uniied discourse. Although internally varied, ecocrit- ical discourses converge on non-anthropocentric knowledge practices, which entail a consensual focus to address and conceptualize the global environmental crisis in socio-cultural and literary contexts. In the current critical moment, the argument goes, “we cannot encounter the natural untouched or uncontaminated by human remains.” 1 Ecocriticism focuses on this condition of interfaced reality that points to the ways in which culture and nature are closely entwined. Postcolonialism, however, prioritizes an ostensibly anthropocentric vision, exploring cultural models and meth- ods that account for the relations of power in the “discursive division between the First and the Third World, the North and the South,” 2 as well as in the construction of forms of alterity. Although the concept of alterity has been theorized from exhaus- tive perspectives, postcolonial theory has shown little or no interest in the nonhuman other, whereas in ecocriticism “[a]lterity is always also deined by the nonhuman other.” 3 Given this fundamental difference, one might expect these two ields hardly to intersect, but negotiating this difference in a slowly developing dialogue, they have actually converged with the arrival of postcolonial ecocriticism. 4 Embodying ecocriticism’s basic ecological commitments, postcolonial ecocriticism has expanded the postcolonial foci towards more nuanced explorations of ecolog- ical conditions, ecological others, and environmental injustices in postcolonial cul- tures. 5 In this light, it signals the commingling of postcolonial and ecocritical issues as a means of contesting ecological imperialism, biocolonization, environmental and social injustice, and environmental racism, speciesism, and anthropocentricism – matters of concern that are always intrinsically interwoven. This postcolonial ecocrit- ical framework is important in understanding ecological otherness which, inspired by Sarah Jaquette Ray’s conceptualization of “the ecological other,” I analyze in the form of toxic bodies in this chapter. My argument, however, does not build upon Ray’s analysis of the socially excluded disabled body as the ecological other. Instead I foreground the material “trafic” between the body and the environment from the material ecocritical perspective in my discussion of toxic bodies. Therefore, equally important here is the material ecocritical framework that sheds light on the 15031-0124e-2pass-r02.indd 412 08-07-2016 13:34:07