New Ecological Realisms

Abstract

What is the singular reality of humanistic objects of study? New Ecological Realism argues that our contemporary moment after the exhaustion of postmodernism presents an unprecedented opportunity to pursue this question. It proposes that the answer is found in a new concept of the real that hinges on, instead of denying, context, organization and form. New Ecological Realism showcases a context-based concept of the real, arguing that new realisms of complex and embedded wholes, actor-networks, and ecologies, rather than old realisms of isolated parts and things, represent the most promising escape from the impasses of constructivism and positivism. To achieve this, this study devotes equal attention to literature and theory. By pairing post-apocalyptic novels by Margaret Atwood, José Saramago, Octavia Butler, and Cormac McCarthy with new realist theories, this study shows that, just as new realist theories can illuminate post-apocalyptic fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction also embeds new theories of the real. Reassessing the recent revival of interest in ontology in contemporary theory, this study brings together four contemporary theories that formulate context-based realisms: Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory; Chilean neurophenomenologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s theories of autopoiesis and enactivism; German philosopher Markus Gabriel’s new ontology of fields of sense; French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness and American philosopher Alphonso Lingis’s writings on passionate identification. Their shared emphasis on interconnectedness over individuation has gone unnoticed because these theories have never been considered together before.