Monika Kaup pairs post-apocalyptic novels by Margaret Atwood, José Saramago, Octavia Butler and Cormac McCarthy with new realist theories from Bruno Latour, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Markus Gabriel, Jean-Luc Marion and Alphonso Lingis. She shows that, just as new realist theory can illuminate post-apocalyptic literature, post-apocalyptic literature can illuminate new theories of the real. Kaup showcases a context-based concept of the real. She argues that new realisms of complex and embedded wholes, actor-networks and ecologies - not the old realisms of isolated parts and things - represent the most promising escape from the impasses of constructivism and positivism.
Author(s): Monika Kaup
Series: (Speculative Realism)
Edition: 1
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 352
Tags: Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Novel Criticism, Ecocriticism, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
New Ecological Realisms
Copyright
Contents
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 New Ecological Realisms and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
The New Realism of the Factish and the Political Ecology of Humans and Non-Humans: Bruno Latour and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy
3 The Ontology of Knowledge as the Enaction of Mind and World: Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s Autopoietic Theory and Jose Saramago’s Blindness
4 Apocalypse as Field of Sense: Markus Gabriel’s Ontology of Fields of Sense and Octavia Butler’s Parable Series
5 New Phenomenologies after Poststructuralism (Jean-Luc Marion and Alphonso Lingis) and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Bibliography
Index
