Andreas Malm
Universitetslektor
'This Is The Hell That I Have Heard Of' : Some Dialectical Images in Fossil Fuel Fiction
Författare
Summary, in English
How can the realities of global warming be made visible in literary texts? After the rise of 'cli-fi', it might be time to return to a trove of literature written long before the discoveries of climate science: fiction about fossil fuels. It is filled with premonitions of disasters, such as extreme heat and terrible storms. Focusing on two texts - Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun and Joseph Conrad's Typhoon - this essay makes a case for developing 'dialectical images', in Walter Benjamin's sense of the term, from fossil fuel fiction. Such images might contribute to a critical understanding of our current epoch, fracturing the narrative of the human species as a united entity ascending to biospheric dominance in the Anthropocene. The miseries of global warming have been in preparation for a long time. Some have felt the heat from the start.
Avdelning/ar
- Humanekologi
Publiceringsår
2017-04-11
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
121-141
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Forum for Modern Language Studies
Volym
53
Issue
2
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Oxford University Press
Ämne
- Social and Economic Geography
Nyckelord
- Dialectical image
- Ecocriticism
- Fossil fuel fiction
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Global warming
- Joseph Conrad
- Material allegory
- Walter Benjamin
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0015-8518