Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment Series Editor Ursula K. Heise University of California Dept of English Los Angeles, California, USA
Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment focuses on new research in the Environmental Humanities, particularly work with a rhetorical or literary dimension. Books in this series explore how ideas of nature and environmental concerns are expressed in different cultural contexts and at different historical moments. They investigate how cultural assumptions and practices, as well as social structures and institutions, shape conceptions of nature, the natural, species boundaries, uses of plants, animals and natural resources, the human body in its environmental dimensions, environmental health and illness, and relations between nature and technology. In turn, the series makes visible how concepts of nature and forms of environmentalist thought and representation arise from the confluence of a community's ecological and social conditions with its cultural assumptions, perceptions, and institutions. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14818
Antonia Mehnert Climate Change Fictions Representations of Global Warming in American Literature
Antonia Mehnert Munich, Germany Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment ISBN 978-3-319-40336-6 ISBN 978-3-319-40337-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40337-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955971 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: Colorbox.de Cover design: Will Speed Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A lot of work, research and dedication went into this book and its completion wouldn t have been possible without the support of many individuals and institutions. Climate Change Fictions is based on my doctoral dissertation submitted to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in 2014. The Rachel Carson Center and its interdisciplinary PhD program offered the intellectual environment and academic community that influenced great parts of my work. I would like to thank my supervisor, Christof Mauch, for always taking the time to provide advice and critical insights beyond disciplinary confines and for his continuous encouragement and enthusiasm for my project and work. Sylvia Mayer, my second supervisor, helped with valuable feedback on my analyses and guidance to situate my work in the context of ecocriticism. I am particularly thankful to Alexa Weik von Mossner for our exchange of ideas in various stages of my project. Her comments led me to rethink parts of my original argument and brought a new focus to my work. An equally important influence for my first drafts was Mike Ziser. I am extremely grateful to Louis Warren and Mike for the opportunity to spend a couple of months researching at the University of California Davis, to attend its Environments and Societies Workshop Series, and to have the chance to discuss my work with other ecocritics and graduate students in the environmental humanities in the lively Davis University context. I was lucky to have a great group of young environmental humanities scholars around me at the Rachel Carson Center as well. To engage with other PhD students from very different disciplinary and national backgrounds was an enriching experience and inspired me to also look v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS at my own research topic from various angles. I particularly would like to thank Rebecca Hofmann, Dania Achermann, and Amir Zelinger for their reliable support and trusted collegiality as well as many of other members of the PhD program for not only hanging in there but also having fun together. I would also like to thank the program coordinators, Elisabeth Zellmer and Rob Emmett, for their patience and continuous support for our group of doctoral students. Danish visiting scholar, Gregers Andersen, shared my enthusiasm for the topic of climate change fiction and I am thankful to him for sharing theoretical texts as well as his thoughts on books that we both analyzed. I really enjoyed bringing our research together in a co-authored article on German climate change fiction. Two of my dearest colleagues with similar disciplinary backgrounds deserve special mention here. Hanna Straß, thank you for not only being a great conference buddy and co-founder of the postgraduate forum for Environment, Literature and Culture (ELC), but also reader of many of my chapters, friend and hiking partner. Stephanie Siewert, expert on theory and reader with a critical mind, always providing ideas that brought new aspects of my work to light, I couldn t have done this without your encouragement and friendship. I am also indebted to my dear friend, Fran Lawther, who generously gave up her spare time to proofread several of my chapters, and John Grennan who eased out any strange Germanisms that may have still been in the text. Needless to say that all remaining mistakes are my own. A work like this would have been much more difficult to complete without the support of family and friends. I thank them for their faith in me and interest in my work, their understanding for my absence on numerous occasions, their open arms and helping hands when needed. Finally, Damien, I could not be more thankful for everything you ve have done to support me along the way. Thank you. I am grateful to the sdw (Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft) as well as the LMU Graduate Center for their scholarships, which allowed for the necessary financial independence to conduct my research and complete the dissertation. I am also thankful for the conference travel grants provided by the PhD Program of the Carson Center and their support of graduate student activities, such as the extremely valuable and fun writing group with Chris Pastore and two workshops of the postgraduate Forum Environment, Literature, Culture. These academic exchanges were not only fruitful for my work, because they allowed me to share various chapters of my work with others, but also because they helped to keep up
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii the motivation during the more difficult times every PhD student goes through. Finally, I thank Prof. Kunow and Prof. Priewe for their initial encouragement to pursue a PhD with an environmental topic. A part of Chap. 3 appeared in Cultural Dynamics of Climate Change edited by Bernd Sommer (Brill 2015) under the title Back to the Future: Imagining Climate Change Futures in US American Literature. My analysis of Amsterdam s Things We Didn t See Coming was originally published as Riskscapes in Climate Change Fiction in The Anticipation of Catastrophe, edited by Sylvia Mayer and Alexa Weik von Mossner (Winter 2014). Both are reprinted here with full permission by the original publishers. I thank Ursula Heise for her encouragement to publish this manuscript in this series and her advice on the manuscript as well as the anonymous reviewer for her/his helpful remarks and Ryan Jenkins and Paloma Yannakakis for their editorial efforts.
CONTENTS Introduction: Imagining Climate Change Futures 1 Climate Change Fictions in Context: Socio- Politics, Environmental Discourse and Literature 21 Scaling Climate Change: The Transformation of Place in Climate Change Fiction 53 Reimagining Time in Climate Change Fiction 93 Manufactured Uncertainty: Climate Risks in an Age of Heightened Security 127 ClimateCultures in Kim Stanley Robinson s Science in the Capital Trilogy 149 ix
x CONTENTS Representing the Underrepresented: Climate Justice and Future Responsibilities in Climate Change Fiction 183 Conclusion: Climate Change Fiction and the Introduction of New Genres in Environmental Crisis Discourse 221 Bibliography 231 Index 249