Literary Animal Studies and the Climate Crisis connects insights from the field of literary animal studies with the urgent issues of climate change and environmental degradation, and features considerations of new interventions by literature in relation to these pressing questions and debates. This volume informs academic debates in terms of how nonhuman animals figure in our cultural imagination of topics such as climate change, extinction, animal otherness, the posthuman, and environmental crises. Using a diverse set of methodologies, each chapter presents relevant cases which discuss the various aspects of these interstices. This volume is an intersection between literary animal studies and climate fiction intended as an interdisciplinary intervention that speaks to the global climate debate and is thus relevant across the environmental humanities.
Author(s): Sune Borkfelt, Matthias Stephan
Series: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 305
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Praise for Literary Animal Studies and The Climate Crisis
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Narrating Entangled Vulnerabilities in an Age of Global Crises
Picturing the Problem: Framing the Debate
Humanism Questioned
Situated Knowledges
Shared Vulnerabilities, Disproportionate Impacts
Erratic Ecology: The Crises of the Climate
The Signs of Loss: Tales of Extinction
Resilience, Regret, and Replacement: Posthuman Futures
Seeing Connections, Feeling Entanglements
Multispecies Narratives in an Age of Crisis
References
Part I: Climate Crisis
Hopping, Crawling, Hiding: Creatural Movements on the Path to Climate Emergency
Creatural Paths…
The Flight of Birds
An English Guide to Birdwatching
Water and Glass
The Writing of Species
Conclusion
References
Polar Bears and Butterflies: Allegory, Science, and Experientiality in Climate Change Fiction
Narrative, Climate Change, and the Nonhuman
Hidden Figures: Polar Bears in Solar
Colorful Presences: Monarch Butterflies in Flight Behavior
Conclusion
References
A Spokesbear for Climate Crisis?: The Role of Zoos in Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear
The Polar Bear in Tawada’s Zoo
Looking Back at Knut
References
Undoing Creation in the Climate Change Apocalypse: Animality and Evolution in Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God
Evolution
Theologies of Dominion
Webs of Life
Erdrich and Evolution
Divinanimality
Conclusion
References
Bodies Tell Stories: Race, Animality, and Climate Change in Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones
Bound Together
Humanity Undone
Savage/Salvage Motherhood
Reclaiming Animality
Concluding Thoughts
References
Part II: Extinction
Playing Against Extinction: “The Dreaded Comparison” and the Distribution of the Human in Mlima’s Tale
Introduction
Mlima’s Tale at The Public Theater, 2018
Representing Kin: Between Empathy and Alterity
The Dreaded Comparison: Mlima, the Middle Passage, and the Distribution of the Human
Conclusion
References
Animal Narrators and Resonant Silences in “The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang and Sila by Chantal Bilodeau
Critical Entanglements: American Indian Studies, Environmental Justice, and Critical Animal(ity) Studies
Aspiration: Hope and Breath
Breath, Climate, and Creation in Sila
Resonant Silences
References
The Climate of Extinction: Resistant Multispecies Communities in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior and Richard Powers’s The Overstory
Migrating Monarchs in Flight Behavior
Standing with Trees in The Overstory
Coda
References
Do Humans Dream of Disappearing Insects?: Fictional Strategies to Convey the Impact of Insect Loss
Insect Loss and Its Implication for Our Food Supply
The Authors’ Challenge: Eliciting Reader Empathy with Insects
Theoretical Foundations for Extending Care Ethics to Insects
Fiction Conveying the Impact of Insect Loss: Care Ethics as a Solution
Maja Lunde’s The History of Bees: The Problem of Over-Control
Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior: Women’s Role in Species Rescue
Barbara Litkowski’s “Monarch Blue”: Trading Places with Butterflies
Donna Haraway’s Camille Stories: Becoming Kin with the Butterfly
Conclusion: Caring for a “Stranger Species”
References
Part III: Posthuman
Resurrecting Species Through Robotics: Animal Extinction and Deextinction in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Animal Obituaries, Mourning, and Facing Extinction
Deextinction as a Social Fix
RoboBees and the Twenty-First-Century (De)extinction Moment
References
Alien Oceans as Climate Salvation: Finding Hope in Kinship with the Deep Blue Unknown
“I Am Change”: Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon
The Gift of Memory: Sam Miller’s Blackfish City
Chasing Beasts: Todd Strasser’s The Beast of Cretacea
Salvaging a Life: Jane Rawson’s From the Wreck
Climate Action Through Rejecting Hubris: China Miéville’s The Scar
Conclusions: Eddies and Turbulence
References
Ecocrises and Posthuman-Animal Futures in Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl and Schoen’s Barsk
Bacigalupi and the Future of Bios-Crises
After Humans: Postanimality and Anthropomorphism in Barsk
Species Speculations: Animals as Agents of a Decolonized Future?
References
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Index
