religions Commentary Interpreting Literary Ecologies and Extending Spheres of Concern: A Note on Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space for Eco-Theology Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski   Citation: Pruszinski, Jolyon G. R.. 2021. Interpreting Literary Ecologies and Extending Spheres of Concern: A Note on Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space for Eco-Theology. Religions 12: 891. https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel12100891 Academic Editor: Alison Milbank Received: 10 August 2021 Accepted: 13 October 2021 Published: 18 October 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Department of Religion, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA; jolyonp@princeton.edu Abstract: This critical note addresses two key features of eco-theology with regard to future prospect: that literary analysis is an important mode of eco-theological work and that an important function of eco-theology is to expand readers’ spheres of concern to include even the most remote of global environmental issues. Working from Tweed’s contention in Crossing and Dwelling that a central function of religion is the process of making homes, the note emphasizes the home as the primary sphere of concern and the need for eco-theological work to extend the concern naturally associated with the private home to the broadest possible sphere: the whole earth as conceived as human home. As pertaining to literary-analytical resources for this eco-theological endeavor, the note highlights the importance of Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. Bachelard’s work offers a compelling exploration of the psychological connection between the most intimate spheres of concern (the private home) and the most extended ones (the broader world). Broader eco-theological engagement with his work will employ resources both for understanding relations between the relative scales of human ecology and for expanding spheres of concern, particularly in extending that concern often reserved for the most intimate ecological sphere to the most expansive. Keywords: Bachelard; poetics; eco-theology; literary analysis; dwelling; home; ecology; periphery; solidarity; theory 1. Eco-Theology and Expanded Spheres of Concern Eco-theology, as currently conceived, involves a diverse set of interests and a variety of modes of inquiry. 1 Among the interests that appear repeatedly in the work of those engaged in eco-theology is the interest to support a broadened sphere of concern among readers beyond their natural, more private, or parochial spheres of concern, to include a larger sphere which extends to include the entire earth, its people, and ecosystems. 2 Embedded in this idea is the conviction that the responsibility humans more readily feel for their proximate home, or their intimate ecosystem, weakens with distance. In spite of scientific evidence of the interconnectedness of various far-flung environments, and the repercussions of seemingly local choices that redound across remote geographies, humans seem to persist in their concern for the apparently immediate and proximate at the expense of concern for the apparently removed or distant. This type of observation has long been made in various spheres of inquiry, particularly in geographically-interested fields, perhaps most famously in social-science circles in which the phenomenon is called the “Gravity model” (Reilly 1931). 3 Suffice to say, the observation that for humans the primary sphere of concern is the most proximate and that more peripheral spheres receive more marginal attention is not new. In eco-theological discourse, Michael Northcott suggests as much with his discussions of “parochial ecology” (Northcott 2015). This dynamic takes on particular importance in the study of religion, especially when considering Thomas Tweed’s thesis from his critical-geographical study of religion, Crossing and Dwelling (Tweed 2006). If, as he suggests, religion amounts to a kind of Religions 2021, 12, 891. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12100891 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions