The Environmental Uncanny: Negotiating Imaginaries of the Anthropocene
Submission Type
Paper
Start Date/Time (EDT)
21-7-2024 10:30 AM
End Date/Time (EDT)
21-7-2024 11:30 AM
Location
Narrative & Worlds
Abstract
“Dystopia has replaced utopia as the dominant mode of speculative cultural imagination.”
-Wallace McNeish (From Revelation to Revolution: Apocalypticism in Green Politics)
Climate change can be a difficult phenomenon to represent in fiction as its effects are often dispersed temporally and spatially. Moreover, while our attention is often drawn to major climate cataclysms (which are increasing in intensity in the current era), much of what happens due to climate change flows under the radar and is woven into the fabric of the ordinary and the everyday. Using the notion of uncanny from Freud’s unheimlich, Amitav Ghosh employs the term ‘environmental uncanny’ to explain the representational challenge that climate change poses for fiction.
For Freud, the uncanny denotes the simultaneity of occurrence of the familiar and the unfamiliar which gives rise to tremendous anxiety. According to Ghosh the environmental uncanny conjures up a similar response because climate change is a strange yet familiar haunting of the present by that which had been previously repressed. The prevalence of highly improbable events (unfamiliar) as per our standards of normalcy in Anthropocene narratives which are at the same time our present reality (familiar) is what encapsulates the ‘environmental uncanny’, giving rise to radical and experimental narratives of the Anthropocene. This defamiliarization of our immediate surroundings emerges from the collapsing boundaries between the human/ non-human, nature/culture, fantastical/historical, local/global and the spectacular/mundane.
This paper seeks to investigate the ecocritical effectiveness of dystopian sci-fi by exploring the aforementioned binaries in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for Future (2020) in the light of Amitav Ghosh’s concept of ‘environmental uncanny’ and renowned ecocritic Cheryl Glotfelty’s theories.
Keywords: Ecocriticism, Speculative Fiction, Dystopia, Environmental Humanities, Anthropocene
Recommended Citation
Bisht, Saumya, "The Environmental Uncanny: Negotiating Imaginaries of the Anthropocene" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 20.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/narrativeandworlds/schedule/20
The Environmental Uncanny: Negotiating Imaginaries of the Anthropocene
Narrative & Worlds
“Dystopia has replaced utopia as the dominant mode of speculative cultural imagination.”
-Wallace McNeish (From Revelation to Revolution: Apocalypticism in Green Politics)
Climate change can be a difficult phenomenon to represent in fiction as its effects are often dispersed temporally and spatially. Moreover, while our attention is often drawn to major climate cataclysms (which are increasing in intensity in the current era), much of what happens due to climate change flows under the radar and is woven into the fabric of the ordinary and the everyday. Using the notion of uncanny from Freud’s unheimlich, Amitav Ghosh employs the term ‘environmental uncanny’ to explain the representational challenge that climate change poses for fiction.
For Freud, the uncanny denotes the simultaneity of occurrence of the familiar and the unfamiliar which gives rise to tremendous anxiety. According to Ghosh the environmental uncanny conjures up a similar response because climate change is a strange yet familiar haunting of the present by that which had been previously repressed. The prevalence of highly improbable events (unfamiliar) as per our standards of normalcy in Anthropocene narratives which are at the same time our present reality (familiar) is what encapsulates the ‘environmental uncanny’, giving rise to radical and experimental narratives of the Anthropocene. This defamiliarization of our immediate surroundings emerges from the collapsing boundaries between the human/ non-human, nature/culture, fantastical/historical, local/global and the spectacular/mundane.
This paper seeks to investigate the ecocritical effectiveness of dystopian sci-fi by exploring the aforementioned binaries in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for Future (2020) in the light of Amitav Ghosh’s concept of ‘environmental uncanny’ and renowned ecocritic Cheryl Glotfelty’s theories.
Keywords: Ecocriticism, Speculative Fiction, Dystopia, Environmental Humanities, Anthropocene
Bio
Saumya Bisht is currently working as Assistant Professor in the Department of English (Humanities and Social Sciences) at Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun. She has completed her M.A. in English from Kamla Nehru College, University of Delhi and B.A.(Hons) English from Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. She has taught courses like Literature of the Indian Diaspora, European Classical Literature, British Poetry and Drama: 17th to 18th Century, British Poetry and Drama:18th Century, British Literature: Early 20th Century, Feminism: Theory and Practice, among others. Her areas of academic interest include postcolonial literature, diaspora studies, food studies and environmental humanities. She has presented her research at national and international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals.