These Overheating Worlds

Abstract

In 2003 the British literary magazine Granta published an issue on climate change, "This Overheating World," containing reportage and essays but almost no fiction-and the claim that our "failure of the imagination" regarding socioenvironmental change is both a political and a literary one. The decade since has seen a relative burgeoning of what has been dubbed "cli-fi," dominated by apocalyptic and dystopian literarygeographical imaginations. In this article I ask this question: If these are our ways of imagining the future, what are the relationships among cultural imaginaries, theories, and politics of socioenvironmental change? Engaging the work of Frederic Jameson on utopia, and the novels of Margaret Atwood and Barbara Kingsolver, I argue that the flourishing interest in narrative, stories, and storytelling in human geography opens up opportunities for exploring political imaginaries of climate change through utopian and dystopian impulses present in its "fictionable worlds." Key Words: climate change, feminist theory, geographical imaginations, literary geographies, Utopia.2003年，英国的文学杂志 《格兰塔》(Granta)发表了一 本气候变迁特刊--"这个过于炙热的世界"， 其中包含了报导文学与论文，但几乎没有虚构小说--并主张我们对社会环境变迁"丧失想像"，同时是 政治也是文学的。此后的十年，见证了被称为"气候科幻电影(cli-fi)"的相对兴盛，并充斥着天啓式与 去乌托邦的文学--地理的想像。我于本文中提出以下问题：如果这是我们想像未来的方式，那麽文化 想像、理论与社会环境变迁政治之间的关联性为何？我透过涉入詹明信(Frederic Jameson)有关乌托邦 的着作，以及玛格丽特．阿特伍德(Margaret Atwood)和芭芭拉．金索佛(Barbara Kingsolver)的小 说，主张人文地理学中， 对论述、故事和说故事的繁盛兴趣，开啓了藉由存在于"可虚构的世界"中的乌 托邦与去乌托邦之动力，探讨气候变迁的政治想像之契机。关键词： 气候变迁，女性主义理论，地理想 像，文学地理，乌托邦。 En 2003 el magazine literario brit anico Granta public o un n umero sobre cambio clim atico, "Este mundo sobrecalentado," que conten ıa reportaje y ensayos pero casi nada de ficci on-y el reparo de que nuestra "falta de imaginaci on" en lo que concierne al cambio ambiental es a la vez pol ıtica y literaria. La d ecada siguiente ha visto un relativo florecimiento de lo que ha sido tildado de "cli.fi," una tendencia dominada por imaginaciones literario-geogr aficas apocal ıpticas y dist opicas. En este art ıculo me pregunto lo siguiente: Si estas son las maneras como nos imaginamos el futuro, ¿cu ales son las relaciones entre imaginarios culturales, teor ıas y pol ıticas de cambio socioambiental? Abocando el trabajo de Frederic Jameson sobre utop ıa y las novelas de Margaret Atwood y Barbara Kingsolver, sostengo que el floreciente inter es en narraciones, historias y cuentos en geograf ıa humana descorre oportunidades para explorar imaginarios pol ıticos sobre cambio clim atico a trav es de impulsos ut opicos y dist opicos presentes en sus "mundos ficcionales." Palabras clave: cambio clim atico, teor ıa feminista, imaginaciones geogr aficas, geograf ıas literarias, Utop ıa.

Geohumanities and climate change skepticism

“…For example, Braun (, p. 241) introduces a special edition of Annals of the Association of American Geographers by pointing out that the increasing dependence on modeled climate scenarios in policy making has meant “the line separating science from fiction has become increasingly blurred” (a tension often explored in science fiction literature and film—see Kitchin & Kneale, ). Later in that edition, Strauss () argues that post‐apocalyptic fiction is politically generative in that it opens up new imaginative possibilities for action. Ginn () adds that filmic depictions of climate apocalypse can instigate reflection on the shifting boundaries between the human self and its Anthropocenic environment .…”

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

“…Some authors have begun to connect the concept of the imaginary with climate change (Strauss, 2014;Whiteley et al, 2016;Wright et al, 2013). For example, Levy and Spicer define (2013, p. 662) a climate imaginary as "a shared socio-semiotic system of cultural values and meanings associated with climate change and appropriate economic responses".…”

“…Among the few authors in this field who are interested in the political implications of such place-based imagination of the future, Strauss studies the spatial relationship between climate fiction and collective imaginations of political transformations (Strauss, 2014). She usefully points out that all imagination of the future has to be situated in particular places, where both imagined environmental and social dynamics can play out -imagination requires geography.…”

Analyzing Zombie Dystopia as Neoliberal Scenario: An Exercise in Emancipatory Catastrophism

“…In other words, after the publication of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin in 1921, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley in 1932, andGeorge Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1948, to mention just three of the most famous works, dystopia was suspected of being ideologically alienated from the emancipatory projects which had been known as utopias, thus leading some authors to discriminate between "antiutopian dystopias" and "critical dystopias" as variants of utopia (Moylan, 2000;Orwell, 2000;Huxley, 2004;Zamyatin, 2006). The geographer Schlosser (2015), analyzing ideology and dystopia and specifically in apocalyptic scenarios, discusses the division among those who hold that an apocalypse could open the way to revolutionary potentials as suggested by etymology deriving from the Greek word Aπoκαλυψις, meaning "revelation, " in which case it is seen as capable of shattering illusion as an essential mechanism of social reproduction and stratification (Bourdieu, 2012) and, consequently, of inequalities (Noxolo and Preziuso, 2013;Strauss, 2015). At the other end of the scale are people who view these same dystopias as an interpretive foreclosure in the service of post-politics and depoliticization (Wilson and Swyngedouw, 2014).…”