Anthropocene Presences and the Limits of Deferral
- Literary criticism, particularly ecocriticism, occupies an uneasy position with regard to activism: reading books (or plays, or poems) seems like a rather leisurely activity to be undertaking if our environment—our planet—is in crisis. And yet, critiquing the narratives that structure worlds and discourses is key to the activities of the (literary) critic in this time of crisis. If this crisis manifests as a ‘crisis of imagination’ (e.g. Ghosh), I argue that this not so much a crisis of the absence of texts that address the environmental disaster, but rather a failure to comprehend the presences of the Anthropocene in the present. To interpret (literary) texts in this framework must entail acknowledging and scrutinising the extent of the incapacity of the privileged reader to comprehend the crisis as presence and present rather than spatially or temporally remote. The readings of the novels Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013) by Waanyi writer Alexis Wright (Australia) trace the uneven presences of Anthropocenes in the presentLiterary criticism, particularly ecocriticism, occupies an uneasy position with regard to activism: reading books (or plays, or poems) seems like a rather leisurely activity to be undertaking if our environment—our planet—is in crisis. And yet, critiquing the narratives that structure worlds and discourses is key to the activities of the (literary) critic in this time of crisis. If this crisis manifests as a ‘crisis of imagination’ (e.g. Ghosh), I argue that this not so much a crisis of the absence of texts that address the environmental disaster, but rather a failure to comprehend the presences of the Anthropocene in the present. To interpret (literary) texts in this framework must entail acknowledging and scrutinising the extent of the incapacity of the privileged reader to comprehend the crisis as presence and present rather than spatially or temporally remote. The readings of the novels Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013) by Waanyi writer Alexis Wright (Australia) trace the uneven presences of Anthropocenes in the present by way of bringing future worlds (The Swan Book) to the contemporary (Carpentaria). In both novels, protagonists must forge survival amongst ruins of the present and future: the depicted worlds, in particular the representations of the disenfranchisement of indigenous inhabitants of the far north of the Australian continent, emerge as a critique of the intersections of capitalist and colonial projects that define modernity and its impact on the global climate.…
Author details: | Kylie Ann CraneGND |
---|---|
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.348 |
ISSN: | 2056-6700 |
Title of parent work (English): | Open library of humanities |
Subtitle (English): | Alexis Wright's Carpentaria and The Swan Book |
Publisher: | Open library of humanities |
Place of publishing: | Cambridge |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2019/02/04 |
Publication year: | 2019 |
Release date: | 2021/05/17 |
Volume: | 5 |
Issue: | 1 |
Number of pages: | 24 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |
DDC classification: | 8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik |
8 Literatur / 82 Englische, altenglische Literaturen / 820 Englische, altenglische Literaturen | |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
DOAJ gelistet | |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |