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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 literary–geographical 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.”
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。
En 2003 el magazine literario británico Granta publicó un número sobre cambio climático, “Este mundo sobrecalentado,” que contenía reportaje y ensayos pero casi nada de ficción—y el reparo de que nuestra “falta de imaginación” en lo que concierne al cambio ambiental es a la vez política y literaria. La década siguiente ha visto un relativo florecimiento de lo que ha sido tildado de “cli.fi,” una tendencia dominada por imaginaciones literario–geográficas apocalípticas y distópicas. En este artículo me pregunto lo siguiente: Si estas son las maneras como nos imaginamos el futuro, ¿cuáles son las relaciones entre imaginarios culturales, teorías y políticas de cambio socioambiental? Abocando el trabajo de Frederic Jameson sobre utopía y las novelas de Margaret Atwood y Barbara Kingsolver, sostengo que el floreciente interés en narraciones, historias y cuentos en geografía humana descorre oportunidades para explorar imaginarios políticos sobre cambio climático a través de impulsos utópicos y distópicos presentes en sus “mundos ficcionales.”
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Maria Kaika for her guidance and encouragement when I first started working on this theme as a graduate student almost a decade ago. Friends and colleagues, especially Kate Derickson, Katie Meehan, and Alex Loftus, provided an invaluable sounding board for the ideas as they evolved. I would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers of the article and Bruce Braun for their perceptive, constructive comments, and suggestions—with the usual caveat that all errors and omissions are mine alone.
Notes
1 In the interests of length, this article is confined to Anglo-American print and visual culture and focuses on the literary novel. I am aware that this is a partial and selective approach, and unfortunately follows a Western bias in much ecocriticism and science fiction studies. See inter alia Hollinger and Gordon (Citation2002), O’Connell (2012), and Estok (Citation2013).
2 A review I carried out at the time in fact identified dozens of examples of Anglo-American fiction engaged with themes related to climate change, spanning a range of genres (Strauss Citation2004).
3 As Milner also noted, this has also produced a conventional academic distinction between uchronia (no time), euchronia (good time), and dyschronia (bad time).
4 Atwood won the Booker Prize in 2000; Kingsolver won the Orange Prize in 2010.
5 Oryx and Crake proved to be the first of three interrelated novels, which are together known as the MaddAddam trilogy.