Anthropocene Imaginaries. Science Fiction as Method for Ecological Reading
Open Access
- Author:
- Ivanovic, Vasilije
- Graduate Program:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 20, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Charlotte Eubanks, Program Head/Chair
Eric Hayot, Major Field Member
Jonathan Abel, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Daniel Purdy, Outside Unit & Field Member
Shuang Shen, Major Field Member - Keywords:
- Anthropocene
Environmental Humanities
Environmental Literature
Science Fiction Studies - Abstract:
- We are becoming more and more aware of the marks our human existence is leaving on our global environment: the Anthropocene as discourse of that awareness is turning into a living and lived-in reality. I argue that such discourse cannot remain the purview of the natural and social sciences alone: culture must be recognized in its pivotal role of interfacing between scientific facts and information, and an Anthropocene cultural consciousness that creates the necessary internalization and affect to create genuine environmental awareness. My research shows how literature as a cultural product can serve as precisely such an interface; and how science-fiction literature in particular offers a ready-made vehicle for precisely the kind of shift in technologically and scientifically informed thinking that is behind the idea of the Anthropocene as discourse. I focus on three distinct literary traditions: science-fiction literature from the USA, Germany, and Japan – three countries that are among the largest economies of their respective global regions; that are among the largest producers of environmental pollutants; but that are also among the driving forces of global environmental awareness and action. By situating the works of SF authors from these three global literatures within different aspects of the Anthropocene discourse, I demonstrate the potentials that literature opens up in the critical analysis of what creates environmental consciousness: the internalization of problems and connections through cultural production. The result is a form of ecological reading I call Anthropocene Imaginaries – a way of culturally conceptualizing the Anthropocene discourse as an environmental space in which we are not only acting as concrete agents, but which we must also inhabit affectively through awareness of our own embeddedness in a larger, global, planetary system. By bringing together critical scholarship on the environment by e.g. Paul Crutzen, Gayatri Spivak, J.B. Foster, Donna Haraway, Kohei Saito, or Andreas Malm with sociological and psychological research such as Construal-Level Theory (Liberman et al.), Prospection (Gilbert & Wilson), and Collective Risk (Milisnki, Sommerfeld, et al.), I demonstrate that the core of the Anthropocene discourse contains a culturally driven component in which information cannot be further processed without the filter of cultural production serving as a means to translate abstract facts into emotionally and affectively accessible relationships. In other words, it is only when we form emotional connections to the problems of the Anthropocene that we seem to be able to properly act on Anthropocene problems, even if we abstractly understand both their mechanics and their importance. To that end, my readings of works by Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Octavia Butler, Paolo Bacigalupi, Andreas Eschbach, Paul Scheerbart, Yōko Tawada, Kōbō Abe, Shin’ichi Hoshi and others demonstrate a method to use science-fiction literature as a means by which an Anthropocene Imaginary can be constructed: a cultural space in which the Anthropocene is written and read, and in which environmental understanding is translated through the interface of affect. Here I distinguish between explicit Anthropocene literature, i.e. literature that topically engages with concrete Anthropocene problems such as Tawada’s short story “Fushi-no-Shima” which was written in response to the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima; and implicit Anthropocene literature, i.e. literature that can be read as negotiating Anthropocene problems in ways that are not immediately apparent or topically environmental in nature such as Andreas Eschbach’s novel Die Haarteppichknüpfer in which a larger sociocultural paradigm and the physical transformation of a planet can be read as allegorically standing in for the complexities of the Anthropocene. Extrapolating from Rob Nixon’s idea of “slow violence”, my analysis conceptualizes the Anthropocene Imaginary through the concept of Distance: Spatial Distance, in which environmental problems may have causes far removed from the locations of their effects; Temporal Distance, in which environmental problems may have effects much later in time than their causes; and Emotional/Affective Distance, in which environmental problems are not recognized or responded to proportionately unless an emotional/affective relationship can be formed. Reading science-fiction literature as Anthropocene Imaginaries can expose these Distances and make them legible, but more importantly, it can act on that third Distance of emotion/affect directly by forming precisely the connections necessary to establish a more robust willingness to respond to environmental problems that we would otherwise be all-too willing to ignore or defer. Literature and literary studies should therefore be afforded a “seat at the table” within the Anthropocene discourse and seek to integrate its unique qualities of forming affective connections with the larger paradigms of the natural and social sciences already at work within that framework.