State of the Art: Literary Studies in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Literary studies are well acquainted with the worlding powers of storytelling. Worlding is the generative process that is transformative enough to integrate the dysfunctionalities of the present and imagine what futures might still be possible (Cheng). As Haraway suggests, worlding also implies entangled histories of human and non-human agencies. For this reason, literary studies are well equipped to appreciate the different ways in which speculative fabulation emerges as a core component of current modes of conceptualising the Anthropocene (Stengers, Braidotti, Haraway, Tsing). At once an ethics, a theory of history and a practice of worlding, speculative fabulation is about imagining other ways of living on a damaged planet and taking active (and reflexive) responsibility for the future. The present article is a survey of the challenges and affordances in literary studies in the Anthropocene. It explores literary practices that go beyond symptomatic reading (Best, Marcus), an approach that interprets texts at hand as symptoms for a deeper, unconscious meaning. Instead, it argues that we are witnessing an abundance of topological fabulations, against “depth”, and aware of the limits of interpretation, as well as increasing attention to different modes of scaling, in order to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene.