Of Cats and Crones: Hope and Ecofeminist Utopianism in Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet

Abstract

Both in her visual and written productions, surrealist artist Leonora Carrington depicts mythological interspecies communities, where hybrid creatures embody the hope of a peaceful and non-exploratory relationship between humans and animals. In her <em>novella The Hearing Trumpet</em> (1974), Carrington employs the literary devices of surrealist aesthetics to envisage the creation of a geriatric and ecofeminist utopia in the wake of environmental catastrophe. This essay draws on Ernst Bloch’s notions of ‘revolutionary interest’ and the ‘Not-Yet-Conscious’, as well as on Timothy Morton’s concept of dark ecology in order to understand the transformative impulse that inspires the older characters at the helm of this narrative to overthrow the patriarchal system that oppresses them within institutional walls and to establish a posthuman, ecological society in a world entering a new Ice Age. It argues that, in projecting a post-apocalyptic vision of a planet devastated by human activity, and by simultaneously addressing questions of social marginalization and intersectionality, <em>The Hearing Trumpet</em> shows an early form of ecological awareness that rethinks human-animal interactions while anticipating concerns with ecological justice.