Using Critical Animal Studies to Read Climate Change Fiction: Literary Reflections and Provocations

Abstract

This article utilises the conceptual and theoretical tools of critical animal studies to expose and interrogate the terminological lapses and possibilities in selected contemporary climate fiction novels. These novels are My Days of Dark Green Euphoria (2022) by A. E. Copenhaver, Bewilderment (2021) by Richard Powers, and Stay and Fight (2019) by Madeline Ffitch. I argue that the terminological slipperiness that confronts anyone attempting to talk about and imagine other animals in respectful modes of engagement signals more than the inadequacy of our scholarly lexicons. Rather, these gaps reveal deeply problematic epistemological and ontological assumptions about other animals and our responsibilities towards them. The selected primary texts offer me an anchor in which to ground my argument that much greater levels of nuance and complexity are demanded of us when we read representations of other animals through the lens of critical animal studies. I conclude by exploring how Eva Haifa Giraud’s theorisations of entanglement and ethical exclusion move the conversation about other animals forward in richly generative ways. I argue that the selected novels allow readings that reach far beyond simplistic, anthropocentric understandings of the more-than-human world. Finally, I suggest that vegan studies opens up new spaces in interactions with cultural texts, and that this emerging framework and reading modality brings into stark relief both the challenges and the opportunities that continue to shape our ways of being part of a world where the human animal is not the only one worthy of respect and care.