I Am a Tree: A Monologue on Tropical Ecotourism

Overview

This work presents an ecospiritual poetic monologue articulated from the perspective of a tropical tree situated within rainforest ecotourism landscapes. The piece interrogates the structural contradictions inherent in contemporary tropical tourism marketing, examining the disjuncture between the promotion of biodiverse destinations and the simultaneous ecological degradation occurring within these spaces. The work employs Kahyangan cosmology, a Javanese-Balinese philosophical framework conceptualizing sacred realms where nature and divinity interpenetrate, as its theoretical and spiritual foundation. The monologue functions as an ecocritical intervention that deconstructs the aesthetic commodification of tropical environments within capitalist tourism systems while simultaneously articulating a decolonial perspective on how non-Western ecosystems are appropriated and repackaged for global consumption.

Methods and approach

The composition employs lyrical poetic form as its primary methodological vehicle, utilizing imagistic language and symbolic registers to produce meaning. The monologue adopts the ecological subject (the tree) as narrative voice, thereby centering non-human perspectives within the critical discourse. Specific poetic metaphors—including 'a saw that doesn't know poetry' and 'breath piercing the sky'—function as concentrated linguistic instruments encoding both ecological destruction and counterhegemonic resistance. The work integrates ecocritical theoretical frameworks with spiritual-philosophical traditions derived from Kahyangan cosmology, producing a hybrid analytical approach that refuses the conventional separation between aesthetic, spiritual, and political registers. This methodological assemblage generates what the work characterizes as an 'ecological prayer,' leveraging devotional linguistic modalities toward oppositional purposes.

Key Findings

The monologue produces a sustained critique of tropical ecotourism's structural operations, demonstrating how the marketing of 'natural' destinations obscures the material violence enacted upon forest ecosystems. Through the tree's articulated perspective, the work exposes capitalism's appropriation of nature as commodity while simultaneously erasing the ecological cost underlying such appropriation. The poetic language generates layered symbolism wherein devastation and resilience coexist within singular imagistic formations. The integration of Kahyangan cosmological frameworks reveals how Western tourism paradigms fundamentally misalign with indigenous conceptualizations of nature as sacred and relational, thereby illuminating the epistemic dimensions of ecological dispossession.

Implications

This work contributes to ecocritical scholarly discourse by demonstrating poetry's capacity to produce theoretically rigorous environmental critique while maintaining aesthetic and spiritual dimensions. The poetic monologue format offers alternative epistemological pathways for articulating ecological knowledge and resistance that operate outside conventional academic registers. By centering indigenous cosmological frameworks within environmental discourse, the work gestures toward decolonial approaches to environmental humanities scholarship that refuse the universalization of Western environmental philosophy.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.