Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis: A new perspective on life in the anthropocene (Routledge Environmental Literature, Culture and Media)

__Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis__ argues that the popularity of the term "climate fiction" has paradoxically exhausted the term’s descriptive power and that it has developed into a black box containing all kinds of fictions which depict climatic events and has consequently lost its true significance. Aware of the prospect of ecological collapse as well as our apparent inability to avert it, we face geophysical changes of drastic proportions that severely challenge our ability to imagine the consequences. This book argues that this crisis of imagination can be partly relieved by climate fiction, which may help us comprehend the potential impact of the crisis we are facing. Strictly assigning "climate fiction" to fictions that incorporate the climatological paradigm of anthropogenic global warming into their plots, this book sets out to salvage the term’s speculative quality. It argues that climate fiction should be regarded as no less than a vital supplement to climate science, because climate fiction makes visible and conceivable future modes of existence within worlds not only deemed likely by science, but which are scientifically anticipated. Focusing primarily on English and German language fictions, __Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis__ shows how Western climate fiction sketches various affective and cognitive relations to the world in its utilization of a small number of recurring imaginaries, or imagination forms. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecocriticism, the environmental humanities, and literary and culture studies more generally. "Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis argues that the popularity of the term "climate fiction" has paradoxically exhausted the term's descriptive power and developed into a black box containing all kinds of fictions which depict climatic events and consequently lost its true significance. Aware of the prospect of ecological collapse as well as our apparently inability to avert it, we face geophysical changes of drastic proportions that severely challenge our ability to imagine the consequences. This book argues that this crisis of imagination can be partly relieved by climate fiction, which may help us comprehend the potential impact of the crisis we are facing. Strictly assigning "climate fiction" to fictions that incorporate the climatological paradigm of anthropogenic global warming into their plots, this book sets out to salvage the term's speculative quality. It argues that climate fiction should be regarded as no less than a vital supplement to climate science, because climate fiction makes visible and conceivable future modes of existence within worlds no only deemed likely by science, but which are scientifically anticipated. Focusing primarily on English and German language fictions, Climate Fiction and Cultural Analysis shows how Western climate fiction sketches various affective and cognitive relations to the world in its utilisation of a small number of recurring imaginaries or imagination forms. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecocriticism, the environmental humanities and literary and culture studies more generally"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Table of Contents 8 Acknowledgements 9 Introduction: the birth of a new type of fiction 10 A brief history of global warming 12 What is climate fiction? 13 The context of this book 16 Presentation of content 20 Notes 22 1 Cultural hermeneutics 24 Hermeneutics and preunderstanding 25 Approaching climate fiction 28 Notes 30 2 The social collapse 32 From the broken social contract to climate war 33 Post-apocalyptic worlds 37 The uncanny as a mood 43 The uncanny relation to the world 45 Notes 49 3 The judgment 51 The judgment in cultural history 52 The judgment in climate fiction 54 Serres, Latour and the imagination form 59 Another uncanny relation to the world 64 The judgment as a denial of responsibility 66 Notes 69 4 The conspiracy 71 The conspiracy in cultural history 71 Doomsday atmospheres 74 The arrival of the supercomputer 79 Crichton and the conspiracy 82 The suspicious relation to the world 86 Notes 88 5 The loss of wilderness 90 The loss of wilderness in cultural history 91 The destructiveness of humanity 93 Another suicidal ice-lover 97 Heidegger and the imagination form 102 The loving relation to the world 107 Notes 111 6 The sphere 113 The sphere in cultural history 114 Bubbles 116 The globe 124 Sloterdijk and the imagination form 129 The anthropotechnical relation to the world 135 Notes 138 7 The birth of a new perspective 141 Beyond the grid of the imagination forms 144 Two functions of climate fiction 149 Notes 151 Bibliography 152 Index 158