Abstract
In the current climate crisis, we count more than ever on art and literature.1 Theorists and critics repeatedly emphasize the role of literature and imagination in overcoming an impasse in climate change communication through science and data.2 In genres like speculative fiction and science fiction, or, for convenience, the umbrella genre/category of climate fiction, writers already narrativize climate change and speculate on its futures.3 Yet, there is much critique and contestation on how climate fiction may properly respond to the climate crisis, what affects it may create, and whether it could move the public to act. Adam Trexler and Adeline Johns-Putra have done extensive research on climate change representation in contemporary culture. One major frame for representing climate change in their surveys is, expectedly, a future dystopia or apocalypse; Johns–Putra writes: “Overwhelmingly, climate change appears in novels as part of a futuristic dystopian and/or postapocalyptic setting” (269).4 Climate change here refers to social upheavals, civilization collapse, abandoned cities, violence, authoritarian rule, along with environmental degradation, extinctions, and loss of land. For many commentators, however, this representation seems to be more of a problem than a solution. These novels are said to “evade most of the present-day moral [and] political dilemmas by simply jumping ahead to some far more straightforward depiction of future disaster,” and they “inoculate us against the very real object that has intruded into ecological, social, and psychic space” (Clark 78-79; Morton 103–04). They are alarmist, or they rather commodify apocalypse as entertainment (Hoggert 261; Swyngedouw 219). They invest in the “charisma of crisis,” and they “contribute to negative public perceptions of environmentalism” (LeMenager 225; Seymour 54).
Published Version
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