RMA LITERARY STUDIES
Sublime Annihilation and the Weird
An Aesthetic for Times of Anthropocene Indeterminacy
By Amaris Enid (AE) Montes June 2018 Supervisor/Examiner Hanneke H. Stuit Second Reader Esther Peeren Faculty of Humanities
Table of Contents
Introduction ……….4
I. Polarizing Polar Bears and the Limits of Realism ………12
II. Facing the Weird ………...………31
III. Bearing Witness: Sublime Aesthetics and their Effects in Alex Garland’s Annihilation
(2018)………..………...45
IV. The Weird Beauty and the Sublime Beast: Relating Across Difference in Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation (2014)……….63
Conclusion……….………….79 Works cited ………84
Introduction
Environmental discourse, in public, academic and literary spheres, has a representation problem. In the face of terrible warnings and projections issued by scientists and agencies, ecocritics1 “feel that their work has an activist mission” (Kerridge 362). Richard Kerridge elaborates:
They are searching for ways of getting people to care. That is the fundamental aim of their criticism of culture. They hope their arguments will directly persuade people to care, and will influence new creative works that will move people to care (362).
The search and deployment for and of these “ways of getting people to care” has, however, resulted in an unfortunately precipitated spread of “ticking clock” representations, warnings that fail to foresee the effects of their articulation and deployment, and thus are condemned to repeat a familiar gesture: pointing to the disconcerting, scientifically proven facts that humanity is at risk and can only blame itself for it. Science, which was first applied to a “‘given’ world of nature, people and society” is now confronted with its own byproducts; “they encounter a second creation in civilization” (Beck 155), a man-made problem generated by the “hyper-complexity of hypothetical knowledge” (157) that justified the unfinished, interminable enterprise of modernity2 until now. A new perplexity has
1 While the term is mostly used in literary circles, I use it here to designate any individual or agent, regardless of
profession or field of expertise, that is concerned with environmental welfare and the global warming crisis.
2 Modernity and humanity should be understood, throughout this thesis, as the historical period preceding the
emergence of what Ulrich Beck calls the “risk society” (9-10), where “[i]n the nineteenth century privileges of rank and religious world views were being demystified” as to make way for relentless industrial development, justified by Enlightenment values. In today’s “risk society,” “the same is happening to the understanding of science and technology in the classical industrial society, as well as to the modes of existence in work, leisure, the family and sexuality” (10). As modernity and its imperatives go unquestioned, new concerns are brought to the fore, and more importantly, with the development of scientific methods and instruments, humans become
manifested. The organizing dichotomies of human-nature have dissolved, and yet, “we fight phenomenological sincerity with our reason” (Morton, Hyperobjects 36), vainly attempting to solve the massively distributed, wicked problems that have turned reality into a dangerous place, a “risk society” (Beck 19-22).
Abolishing awareness of the problems humans confront now and towards the future is not an option. The products of modernity do not go away anymore. This is why academics, environmentalists and writers have taken up arms against modernity and capitalism, specifically their unrelenting drive for constant upgrades and ceaseless, unreflective expansion. Ecocritical literature has followed through with this critique too, aiming to become a part of an attempt to change the culture surrounding environmental matters and heighten ecological awareness, and through cultural means, influence policy-making and day-to-day behavior (Kerridge 363). However, to have an awareness is not enough, as Nicole Seymour claims (60). Instead, she suggests turning one’s attention to the fact that we face a “deeply weird moment – in which reports of immanent collapse inspire not robust environmentalist action but doomsday fatigue” (57, emphasis added).
Bruno Latour takes issue with reactions to this alteration of ontological state of humans vis-à-vis their environment. He identifies five key groups and describes their engagement with the climate crisis (what he calls “The New Climate Regime”). The first two groups are characterized by their denial. One remains certain that data must have been manipulated, exaggerated, that there must be a future “in which there is no longer either any agitated nature or any real threat” (Facing Gaia 12); the other remains quiet, passive. These have “disconnected all the alarms” and view all reports with a “we’ll wait and see” attitude (11). The third and fourth groups consist of people who believe that a threat is looming; their
more aware of the result of their relentless pursuit for progress, collapsing distinctions and reformatting values that go beyond those relating to the social, but that extend towards the environmental.
reactions differ, however. While one group quickly reacts to the threat, conceiving the Earth as a vast machine that has malfunctioned because humans have not controlled it enough (12), the other concerns those who exhibit nuances of depression. For these, problems “can neither be ignored, nor, alas, be remedied” (12). Therefore, they remain passive, unmotivated and lethargic. A fifth group believes they can do something, that it isn’t too late, and that the rules of collective action may work once more, while respecting existing, institutional frameworks (12). For Latour, this last group is the most deluded, “probably bipolar, full of energy in the manic phase, before the letdown that gives them a terrible urge to jump out of the window” (12) when they are confronted with the terrible complexity of the problem at hand.
Ecology, Latour observes, drives people crazy (Facing Gaia 13). A recognition of this symptom and its many manifestations is needed if humans are seeking to survive “without getting carried away by denial, or hubris, or depression, or hope for a reasonable solution, or retreat into the desert” (13). Donna J. Haraway believes, like Latour, that there is no cure for the condition of belonging to the world, and that it is of great importance that humans figure out how to break away, not from reality, but from modes of thinking so sneakily intertwined with capitalism and modernity, modes that present “endless infernal alternatives, as if we had no other ways to reworld, reimagine, relive and reconnect with each other, in multispecies well-being” (50-1). Haraway ushers in the consideration for the nonhuman, the coexistent co-symbionts that have always been caught in the same web humans, prompted by climatic derangement, have just stumbled upon; the same mesh humans can’t quite grasp, bristling with an energy that agrilogistic thought3 and modernization have sought to suppress for millennia. Modernization is dissolving, Beck claims, and another modernity is coming into
3 Agrilogistic thought is the central theme in Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology (2016). Agrilogistics promises
“to eliminate fear, anxiety, and contradiction – social, physical, and ontological – by establishing thin rigid boundaries between human and nonhuman worlds and by reducing existence to sheer quantity” (43). Agrilogistic practices, according to Morton, arose 12,500 years ago, when civilizations began to settle and develop agricultural methods that sustained and perpetuated human life at all cost, regardless of the disastrous consequences for nonhumans and the earth (44).
being (10), one that can neither dismiss the state of Nature and its way of constituting man, nor suppress the “sense of entrapment, unpredictability, and fragility that becomes dominant now” (“Nature, Post Nature” 84). The collapse of distinctions “between nature as the correlative of culture and nature […], comes to break down in the Anthropocene” (87). Ecocritics, in their quest to get people to care, “continue to press, harder and harder, the worn button named cultural change […] to almost no effect” (87). Their efforts have not motivated action. Instead, by insisting on the blatant mismatch between the scale of the most basic of human self-conceptions on the one hand, and the massive, slow-motion scales that Nature operates in, ecocritics have driven their audiences into a loop-like structure of thought that not only limits options and possible actions, but that also sinks their readers and audiences deeper into a complex problem that lacks a practical or veritable solution.
Because of climate change’s complexity, it is what Morton calls a “Hyperobject;” an immensely complex, a massively distributed, ungraspable object that invades and permeates physical, social and psychic spaces in ways that exceed comprehension (Hyperobjects 1). It is an entity so complex and so vast that it “cause[s] us to reflect on our very place on Earth and its cosmos” (15). The most fundamental issue vis-à-vis man, Morton argues, is that hyperobjects “seem to force something on us, something that affects some core ideas of what it means to exist, what Earth is, what society is” (15). Only a posteriori, post an encounter with any given entity, is it possible to impose a sense of causality, a narrative that fits aesthetic, anthropocentric needs. This maneuver, however, is reductive, placing objects at a safe distance, “over yonder,” so that these phenomena, objects and entities do not interrupt the ongoing anthropocentric dream even as teleology evaporates, as hierarchies collapse, as objects become more and more vivid, and human ways of distinguishing them more
questionable (Dark Ecology4 30-2). The boundaries shift; the illusions are unsustainable.
What are humans left with, then?
Morton argues that if humans shed the panic, the depression and find a different, less anthropocentric lens, one could harness a profound wonderment, the basic phenomenological chemical of philosophy (DE 31), with which one may be able to build the “on-the-ground collectives capable of inventing new practices of imagination, resistance, revolt, repair, and mourning, and of living and dying well” (Haraway 51). Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), a branch of speculative realism, facilitates thinking in ways that not only usher in the nonhuman others, but also makes humans more sensitive to their own prejudices concerning other objects (DE 30). OOO inaugurates a way of thinking that decenters anthropocentrism and grants objects, whether they be ideas, values, rain, feelings, chairs, tables, pets, pests, an agency; a life beyond the one humans believe they possess. Morton warns about how weird, how scary it may be to think along the lines of objects that shimmer, withdraw and defy human senses. However, anthropocentric attitudes are simply not sustainable, because anthropocentric distinctions, at Earth magnitude (and at the spatio-temporal scales needed to attempt to comprehend climate change phenomena), cease to matter.
By flattening ontology, OOO slams the brakes on the anthropocentric stories humans keep telling themselves. More importantly, it ushers in a way of thinking that allows one to break from dualistic traditions, a step that environmentalists must take to begin thinking more theoretically. In “Ecocriticism’s Theoretical Discontents,” Serpil Oppermann notes that ecocriticism suffers from a damaging aversion to theory: “The various ecocritical resistances to theory often rely on the assumption that theory will subordinate ontology of nature to pure textuality and will instantiate a hegemonic discourse” (161). Instead, the ecocritical approach is based on an “activist impulse grounded in a firm belief of actual experience with the actual
world,” resulting in a preference for “mimetic concepts of literature’s representation of nature” (160). Ecocritics, Oppermann argues, have fallen back on a referential fallacy, privileging an approach that “inevitably imprisons nature and practically all reality within an endlessly differentiating play of signifiers” (“Theorizing Ecocriticism” 114). OOO offers a way out of this conundrum. It does not subscribe to neither Nature nor Matter, but rather, to tackling the bedrock assumptions on which human lives are led and the idea that there are clear, evident boundaries between the self and the external world to begin with (Kerridge 367). As Seymour believes, humans are living in a deeply weird moment, and curving collapse and disaster fatigue is critical to moving forward (57).
This thesis aims to develop a working concept of the weird that takes advantage of the disorientation the climate crisis has driven into human consciousness, as well as the term’s ancient etymological ties to concepts such as destiny and fate, to signal to an already-available means of getting-to-know and getting-used-to the vivid mesh humans inhabit. The concept of weird operates beyond the binaries of good and evil, right and wrong, guilt and redemption, and instead, centers on the irreducible pre-existing conditions of relation. By exploring the possibility of engaging another being or object without expectations, without imposing, one can avoid reductionism and move onto exploring the weird possibility of expanding circles of empathy by breaking down restricted economies of anthropocentric, reductionist thought. The goal of the concept of weird aligns with Haraway’s call to “relearn how to conjugate worlds with partial connections and not universals and particulars” (13), by embracing ambiguity, learning to adapt to instability and being open to thinking along with the weirdness that characterizes the New Climate Regime.
The first chapter of this thesis is concerns a discussion surrounding trends in ecocritical public and academic discourse, specifically exploring the limits of reality-bound or data-based representations of the climate crisis from an OOO perspective. The concept of
hyperobject will unravel the problems in the object at the center of this discussion: footage of a dying polar bear. The second chapter will develop the base of the concept of weird and briefly examine the New Weird genre, considering it as an alternative playground for depicting and narrating the ontological instability introduced by the climate crisis. By shunning realist modes of narration and representation, the New Weird seeks ways to tease the limits of the reader’s ecological imagination, and it has done so through the impactful delivery of aesthetically sublime forms. The delivery of the sublime forms thus serves as an alternative conduit towards a weird ecological awareness that is mindful of both relation between beings and difference. Further methodological insights on the importance of delivery will be issued in this section. The considerations in this part will be applied to the close readings that follow.
The third and fourth chapters of this thesis will concentrate on close reading visual and textual objects pertaining to the New Weird genre, respectively. The first is a scene concerning an encounter between an expedition of soldier-scientists with a sublime monster, an undead bear, in Alex Garland’s film Annihilation (2018). The second chapter’s object is an unspeakable creature that appears in the book series that inspired Garland’s film, The
Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer: the sublime script-scrawling creature
nicknamed “the Crawler.” This thesis argues that both the scenes and the passages involving the climatic encounters between humans and these creatures have been rendered in such a way that they provoke an ontological displacement of the reader through the use of a sublime aesthetic. Thus, both inaugurate a space for considering an OOO-grounded, weird point of view that may lead towards ecological awareness.
To achieve scholar Lawrence Buell’s desired generation of breakthroughs, to move people to care requires a climate of transformed environmental values, perception and will, and “to that end, power of story, artistic performance and the resources of aesthetics, ethics
and cultural theory are crucial” (Buell vi). Ecocritical practice, both inside and outside of academic circles, can no longer boil down to Romantic, “old fashioned enthusiasms dressed up in new clothes” (3). But it cannot rely on the faith that humans can grasp the complexity of the climate crisis through ecomimesis, “the rhetoric of immediacy” that calls for individuals to “stop thinking, go out into Nature, turn off your irony” (Hyperobjects 92). Humans cannot succumb to the directives issued by overarching entities that are coming into ontic view without questioning these either (141). Then where should attention be shifted? Where does the problem lie? The realist forms and aesthetics environmental discourse has relied on in public and academic spheres have proven ineffective. Instead of fostering action, they have led to paralysis or denial.
This thesis asks how environmental discourse can move forward from this continuing contemplation of the growing amount of problems the natural sciences have ushered public consciousness and suggests that a more productive, innovative impulse for ecological awareness may be found in the use of sublime aesthetics. Through a conjuration of visual and textual examples, it seeks to demonstrate that sublime forms not only place a viewer or reader in touch with the wonderful weirdness of reality, but they also provide a blueprint for inhabiting these troubling times.
I.
Polarizing Polar Bears and the
Limits of Realism
Figs. 1 and 2. Screen captures of a “Starving polar bear,” recorded by Paul Nicklen on
Baffin Island.
When footage of an emaciated polar bear trudging across a barren, earthen landscape of the Canadian Arctic (figures 1 and 2) appeared on digital news outlets, it was supplemented by a familiar environmentalist litany, one best exemplified by the photographer
Paul Nicklen’s emotional testimony: “We stood there crying – filming with tears rolling down our cheeks” (Gibbens 2017). Nicklen also emphasizes that this “story” of a single, dying polar bear may convey the deadly consequences of anthropogenic climate change,5 and the dangers it poses not just to the polar bears, but, by extension, to all creatures inhabiting the arctic regions. As Nicklen states: “We need to show the world how urgently change is needed with images and stories and, more importantly, with powerful actions” (Nicklen). Telling people that the ice caps are melting does not work. Temperatures are still rising. Animals are going to keep struggling, starving and drowning. Water levels will rise and gradually immerse cities. Perhaps then, when the right kind of humans are endangered, interest in environmental preservation will spike. But to reach this point of concern that may precipitate an appropriate, collective human response, scientists, wildlife photographers and environmentalists must identify better forms of representing Nature6 that veer away from the anthropocentric experience of a human subject’s unhappy, guilty conscience.
This chapter will delineate why current public, scientific and literary discourses based on realist depictions are falling short on the task they set out for themselves: moving people to care (Kerridge 362). Representation and form, Nicklen seems to recognize, play a critical role in reaching out to the public and raising ecological awareness, but relying on realist/reality-based aesthetics has not boded well for environmental movements. One need only to look at comments sections attached to these news stories of emaciated polar bears (and any other animal, really) to notice why what was once the environmentalist movement’s
5Some scholars, such as Timothy Morton (whose work on ecological thought will be central to this
thesis’enterprise), have expressed their disdain and opposition towards employing the term “climate change”, believing it to be “a compression of a more detailed phrase, a metonymy” (Hyperobjects 8). The term “climate change,” Morton argues, is a weak substitute that simply rebrands “global warming,” while “enabl[ing] cynical reason (both right wing and left) to say that the ‘climate has always been changing’” (8). For Morton, the term “climate change” strips the environmentalist causes of appropriate levels of shock and anxiety that may arise from ecological trauma caused by changes that are ultimately tied to global warming. However, in this thesis, the terms “climate change” and “global warming” will be used interchangeably.
6 Throughout this thesis, the term “Nature” will be written in caps, not as to reify it in a Romantic sense, but as
cherished poster child, the polar bear, has been seized with equal fervor by climate change deniers (Harvey et al. 281-287), who use the figure of the polar bear to widen the so-called “consensus gap” between public opinion and scientific agreement concerning anthropogenic global warming.
If the figure of a starving polar bear is such a point of contention, it is because “[t]he Moderns pride themselves on being rational and critical, even while being resolutely non-reflective. Paradoxically, what they call ‘being oriented toward the future’ amounts to saying, like King Louis XV: ‘Après moi le deluge!” (Facing Gaia 251). It is not only representation of the starving polar bear’s declining state and its barren environs that are at stake, but also what these images touch upon a curiously sensitive matter: what it means to be modern man. Man, in the climate change crisis, finds himself “taken aback by the notion that there can be limits to our objectives, we are incapable of defining a behavior that would be down-to-earth, terrestrial, embodied” (244), incapable of attuning to the hesitation polar bears like this one induce. This suppression of the hesitation is a form of violence that plays “a tune called
myself” (Being Ecological7 163, original emphasis), which hopes to cancel the intrusive,
creeping feeling of an object (in this case the bear) signaling towards something weird, something beyond that is exerting power over the supposedly superior human (167). Thus, the starving polar bear demystifies the myth of modernity, and may unsettle how humans understand their mode of existence through the predicament of a singular suffering animal. Attempting to understand the climate crisis doesn’t alleviate this growing sense of anxiety, however. In fact, the very sciences that attempt expand human understanding of the climate crisis risk being met with denial precisely because of the prescriptive charge their human/modernity-blaming conclusions carry.
It would be productive, then, to depart from the notion that humans, when faced with disconcerting imagery such as this polar bear, are prone to take issue with negative representations of themselves. This may be why framing the issue of climate change as an ongoing scientific controversy with opinions on both sides seems like the go-to strategy of climate change skeptics. This strategy can be seen in action on several internet blogs, Harvey et al. note, which have become major conduits for spreading views, angles and perspectives concerning just about any given topic, irrespective of the topics’ societal importance, validity or the accuracy of the facts used to drive their points. It should be noted that these heavily frequented blogs, podcasts, and conservative TV personalities such as Tucker Carlson8 have marked effects on public opinion, and thus, may even influence political decision-making in our epoch (Harvey et al. 281-282), which is now being termed the Anthropocene.
The term “Anthropocene”, first deployed in 2000 by scientists Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer (17-18), arises from the Greek anthropos and kainos, meaning “human being” and “new, recent”, respectively, alluding to what is now humankind’s geologically registered impact on planet Earth. While not yet admitted by the International Commission on Stratigraphy nor the International Union of the Geological Sciences as an official term designating a new, recognized subdivision of geological time, several disciplines, including a number within the humanities, have adopted the term. This increasing scholarly interest in the Anthropocene has been marked by the proliferation of publications, journals, conferences,
8 An exchange between right-wing Fox News host Tucker Carlson and scientist Bill Nye exemplifies the cynical
stance climate-change deniers assume when discussing environmental matters. When faced with the
overwhelming empirical evidence that suggests climate change in underway, Bill Nye points that climate change deniers and extreme skeptics deliberately choose to reject evidence because it disagrees with their world views [1:00 and onwards]. Tucker Carlson then states that the “essence of science is extreme skepticism” [1:39], to which Nye responds by pointing to the insistence of upholding such skepticism in the face of overwhelming, scientific evidence. Still, Tucker Carlson insists throughout this exchange on the open-endedness of the climate change debate, refusing to take into account the multiple facets of the problem climate change poses; from its anthropogenic causes, to its devastating effects on the environment, to the significance and implications for humans. This extended excerpt merits a discourse analysis all its own, but constraints and thematic
considerations will leave the matter here, for a reader’s timely consideration: Fox News. “Tucker vs. Bill Nye the Science Guy.” YouTube, 27 Feb. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN5L2q6hfWo.
and (inter)disciplinary reports. The Anthropocene has also become a subject matter in cultural production. Not only has the Anthropocene raised awareness of the mutual entanglement of human and geological histories, but all the scientific evidence supporting the slow-motion unfolding of global warming and its catastrophic effects has twisted the perception of the past, namely, of human history and modernity.
A recognition of the Anthropocene places humans in a position akin to Walter Benjamin’s “Angel of History.” Instead of moving face-forward towards the future, the angel “has his face turned towards the past. Where a chain of events appears to [man], [the Angel] sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet” (Benjamin 257). And the wreckage only grows bigger as science unveils the extent of the damage, multiplying the agency of the Natural environment humans sought to detach themselves from. The Anthropocene thus endows all that is not human with a haunting dimension that should, rightfully (if one is to accept and agree with the empirical evidence available), place the human collective under significant tension. However, environmentalists have struggled to find adequate forms of representation that may raise awareness and further their efforts to “make people care” (Kerridge 362).
Polar bears, whales, tigers, orangutans, panda bears, sea turtles, among other “poster child” animals, have understandably been a focus in environmentalist discussions and debates tied to anthropogenic climate change and its negative effects. Because these endangered animals are dependent on their habitats for survival, and their habitats are actively under siege, their chronicled suffering becomes the alarm issuing icon that should, ideally, move humans towards empathetically-grounded action. Humans would, through imagery exemplified by Paul Nicklen’s emaciated polar bear, recognize and attempt to understand these creatures’ worsening plight; become one with the animals’ distress and recognize themselves, not only as implicated in the animal’s fate, but as creatures that are also
vulnerable to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. However, the level of alarm and emotional charge that is often attached to reports concerning the state of certain species, of Nature, not just through the dissemination of images, graphs documenting rising CO2 levels and reports of animal and plant diversity decline due to the Sixth Mass Extinction, are all too easily dismissed by the opposition as too emotional and too dogmatic.
To scientists, 98% of whom that a climate change crisis is currently unfolding9 and
that human activities are to blame, it seems impossible to productively and politically cross the gap between what they conclude and describe through their research and what such results prescribe. The evidence the scientific communities have gathered is so overwhelmingly clear that it should be impossible to debunk it (Harvey et al. 282), and yet, climate change deniers, by simply casting doubt on the available empirical evidence and by providing an alternative, a different way of assessing the state of the planet that preserves business-as-usual worldviews and practices, deniers can get their way. Even by simply
conjuring healthy polar bears thriving in properly frozen, Arctic environments, climate
change deniers can easily dismiss scientific consensus surrounding climate change and draw instances represented in Paul Nicklen’s as unfortunate exceptions to what they present as an “overarching rule.” Such is the belief one climate change denying blog upholds. In their article, Harvey et al. concentrate on a climate change skeptic blog titled Polar Bear Science. This blog, administered by Susan Crockford, features in 80% of the 45 climate-change denier blogs Harvey et al. revised (283). Crockford, they note, has never conducted original research nor published any articles in peer-reviewed journals focusing on the effects of disappearing Arctic ice on the population dynamics of polar bears. However, she has published “briefings”
9 As Latour states, controversies lie in what one should do after establishing causality, the reliability of models
available, the accuracy of instruments used for measuring phenomena, the quality of the data gathered, etc. (Facing Gaia 29 fn53). The consensus referred to in this thesis bears only on the vast scope of the phenomena of climate change, notably, how it menaces both environments and humankind, and the urgency with which it is to be treated.
and “notes” for a number of conservative “think tanks” such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Heartland Institute, both of which aim to downplay the effects of anthropogenic global warming by citing the planet’s recurring, natural cycles, and touting polar bears’ supposed capacity to easily adapt to changes the Arctic ecosystems may face in the coming decades (283). At the same time, these foundations and institutes criticize peer-reviewed scientists that work with polar bears and the environment at first-hand. While NASA/NOAA affiliated scientists track weather patterns and find anomalies in temperature worldwide, a recent briefing from the Heartland Institute, published on May 26th, 2018,
claims that “Earth Records 600 Millionth Consecutive Cooler-than-Average Month” (Wrightstone). The author, Gregory Wrightstone, dismisses the global warming scientists’ concerns, claiming that warming started in the late 1600s, long before man could have had any effect on temperature. He also takes issue with the timescales used to frame what he considers to be a fake problem. For Wrightstone the planet is warming, and always has been, and because it is natural, it shouldn’t be a cause for alarm:
So why the media firestorm and portrayal of the latest data as dangerous? H. L. Mencken warned us of imaginary “hobgoblins of alarm” that governments needed to create to frighten the population into accepting onerous regulations such as the Paris climate accord. Climate change today is one of those hobgoblins of alarm used to convince people that our current warming is “unusual and unprecedented” when it is neither. Six hundred million months of below-average temperature, or 400 months of above-average temperature? Both are true, depending on which metric you choose to use, but the media are publicizing what is designed to best promote the political agenda of catastrophic climate alarm (Wrightstone 2018).
While for Wrightstone the globe’s warming seems like a cyclical event, overwhelming scientific consensus points to humans as responsible for the accelerated rate of global warming and climate change. But how can one frame this matter without having to contend with individuals like Wrightstone, whose “everything you can do I can do meta” attitude downplays the severity of the problem of climate change? When scientifically grounded claims are mockingly framed as “hobgoblins of alarm,” it is unsurprising that they warrant an ad hominem attack on the sciences and scientists. Painting the efforts of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) under a political, left-wing leaning light, as “an attempt on the part of mad scientists to dominate the planet, […] just a plot ‘against the American way of life,’ and ecology is just an attack on humanity’s inviolable right to modernize itself ” (Facing Gaia 26) is just another climate change denier tactic that seeks to reestablish boundaries between the self and the deteriorating planet inhabited; a way of dismissing complicity.
Saving polar bears and their evanescent habitats would, if one is to believe the scientists and environmentalists, become a priority, and as such would translate to both a heightened acknowledgement of human complicity in the creation of the climate crisis and an imperative to assume responsibility by means of a more environmentally conscious political practice. However, attempts to do so are likely to be inhibited due to the monumental onslaught of data being dumped into public consciousness, intensified through scientific reports and testimonies that, like Benjamin’s Angel, look back at the chain of mistakes and can’t help but make humans either shrivel up in shame or sneer at the available evidence in denial. Pictures of dying polar bears, new graphs and projections concerning sea level rise, even imagery of Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi playing his piano against a backdrop of
calving icebergs in Norway10 may keep prompting a cynical contemplation of the wreckage
and may result in inhibiting more genuine ways of handling knowledge of global warming (BE 12).
THE CLIMATE OF ACADEMIA
Academic (humanistic) discourse surrounding ecocritical matters has attempted to bridge the gap between the appearance of environmental issues and their actual state of being by refining modes of representation in accordance to the piling scientific evidence that supports the idea that climate change is unfolding. This maneuver aligns with deconstructive practices rooted in second-wave criticism. While first-wave ecocriticism sought to reconnect humans with the natural world through mimetic means, second-wave skepticism abandoned these shimmering, idealized landscapes and fantasies of reconnection, and introduced deconstructive practices that politicized ecocritical practice in writing, reading, and scholarly criticism. Second-wave ecocriticism sought to expand its influence by “locating vestiges of nature within cities and-or exposing crimes of eco-justice against society’s marginal groups” (Buell 24), in an attempt to step away from the romantic idea that ecocritics were a mere “club of intellectually shallow nature worshippers” (viii). Instead, the goal of second-wave ecocritics was to pivot towards the generation of breakthroughs, both technological and legislative, and to call attention to the increasing need for covenants concerning environmental welfare. Unsurprisuingly, ecocritics grounded their practice in the “real,” respond to a scientifically grounded “reality.” But in doing so, these scholars have built an
10 This instance, along with the associated “making of” of this recording, is interesting. A massive Greenpeace
ice-breaking ship brought the famed composer and his grand piano to the Arctic with the purpose of raising awareness about Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic campaign. The campaign’s aims were to demand the protection of Arctic territories from oil drilling operations, preserve the Canadian and Siberian peoples that live and rely on the Arctic land for their sustenance, and top preserve threatened Arctic wildlife. Greenpeace España.
“Greenpeace holds a historic performance with pianist Ludovico Einaudi on the Arctic Ocean (English)” YouTube, 19 Jun. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHpHxA-9CVM.
ever-expanding hall of mirrors of beliefs and ever-multiplying priorities, conjuring more “proper,” more “correct” derivatives of the Anthropocene hypothesis, without considering the paralyzing effects such a gesture may bring about. Writers too have yielded to the temptation, narrating homologous horrors brought about by the Anthropocene hypothesis and its variants, but like academic discourse, has failed to consider the effects and limits of their gestures, living up to the pre-drawn expectations of an ecologically-centered narrating practice that finds its origins in mimetic realism.
“[R]ealism of the literary variety,” Phillips states, “is a creed outworn, a nineteenth century aesthetic unsuited for the production and understanding of art at the turn of the millennium” (586). Not only is it unsuited, but it is staunchly anthropocentric; oriented towards the social, the artificial, constructs and ideas that are rooted in (and arise from) and unhappy consciousness that seeks to reconnect with Nature. It is a Romantic yearning that constructs Nature as an idealized “other,” a utopian space that, instead of sanctioning play and creative reworkings of the environment and man’s place within it, privileges one state of things over another, and prescribes, a way of being, of existing within this space.
This aesthetic pose, reenacted by scientists, wildlife photographers, scholars and writers, reeks of what Timothy Morton calls “beautiful soul syndrome;” in seeking to insert themselves in an ambience that allows them to uphold and promote their ethical ambitions, they uphold an artificial split between the self and the world they inhabit (Ecology without
Nature 117). In doing so, they hypocritically ignore how the wretched, modern evil, the
despicable “wrong” way of existing in the world they condemn is in fact intrinsic, fundamental, to the “better,” “environmentally friendly” stances they upohold (117-118). The “iconoclastic” gesture enacted by environmentalists (which is perceived as “a critical virtue that in politics, philosophy, and the arts plays the role of the Sovereign Good, the role that cannot possibly be discussed” [“Iconoclastic gesture” 65].) is the ultimate aesthetic pose.
Though their beliefs and claims are grounded in scientific evidence, scientists and environmentalists find themselves disarmed, divested of their political power, because the opposing camp of climate change deniers also pose as equally impassioned “beautiful souls,” hell-bent on preserving agrilogistic logics that uphold anthropocentric modes of thought and reinstate the nature-human divide.
As long as scientific and ecocritical communities are unable to efficiently represent the agents that they uncover through their research and unable to assemble a new, political body that can navigate the New Climate Regime, environmentally-inclined subjects remain caught in an echo chamber, a hall of mirrors that multiplies, not only the problems unveiled, but that also reshuffles priorities, forcing a never-ending refinement of representations. This is an endless, ongoing process, one that will keep camps divided and dividing further. Recent debates surrounding the adequacy of the term “Anthropocene” for describing humans’ current predicament reflect this pervasive problem.
While second-wave ecocriticism sought to complicate notions of Nature and the natural by building selectively on post-structuralist and post/de-colonial theory (Buell 9-10), it failed to resist the totalizing implications of the linguistic term, meaning that second-wave ecocriticism is still subject to the belief that language can shape, determine and structure, not only an understanding of the world, but also a way of being in the world (Barad 802). This “continuing seductive habit of mind” (802) that Latour also echoes has gained what he calls a
normative dimension that not only “purport[s] to orient all existence according to a model of
life that obliges us to choose between false and true ways of being in the world” (Facing
Gaia 20), but that also purports ways of “correctly” discussing Anthropocene-related matters.
This tendency to refine representations is best encompassed by the criticism and reactions the very term “Anthropocene” has received in academic circles since it was first proposed.
Take for example cultural analyst and art historian T.J. Demos, whose reasons for rejecting the term “Anthropocene” range from terminological to political. First, he argues that the term is terminologically anthropocentric, and as such could be charged with neohumanist discourses which “support such developmentalist globalization, joining all humans together in shared responsibility for creating our environmental disaster” (49) when only a fraction of humanity, composed of highly industrialized nations, is to blame. By pointing to the term’s universalizing logic, Demos aligns with researchers Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg, who propose the term “Capitalocene” as an alternative that holds a certain genre of man, and not the entire species, as responsible for the climate crisis (63-64). For Malm and Hornborg globalization and global warming are born out of overlapping processes of modernization that were exacerbated by capitalism. However, one must remain wary, for, as Dipesh Chakrabarty notes in “The Climate of History: Four Theses”, “the problematic of globalization allows us to read climate change only as a crisis of capitalist management” (212). And while there is indeed no denying that climate change is intimately tied with the history of capital, a critique of capital by way of labeling the crisis the “Capitalocene” will not be sufficient for addressing more profound, philosophical questions concerning how climate change has reframed man, and in turn, reshaped human perspectives (Ulstein 76). However, discourse is caught in “a kind of cognitive dissonance when (not) dealing with Anthropocene issues” (79), unable to assess that it finds itself forever outscaled by the threat.
In the recent study The Shock of the Anthropocene (2017), authors Bonneuil and Fressoz ground a number of facets of their Anthropocene argument in scientific data, and based on data, elaborate new angles from which to tackle the subject, each of which is granted a new name: Thermocene, Thanatocene, Phagocene, Agnotocene, Polemocene, Plasticene, etc.. However, this approach reflects the pervading penchant to further deconstruct the term “Anthropocene.” While this well-intentioned attempt to be inclusive
may be useful to some disciplines, it ultimately distracts from the more urgent, ontological shifts that prompt this maneuver in the first place. After all, the Anthropocene, Morton concludes, is about humans, and “reducing things to effects of history or discourse or whatever has resulted in a fixation on labels, so that using ‘Anthropocene’ means that you haven’t done the right kind of reducing” is detrimental (DE 20, my emphasis).
To summarize, what recently coined approaches such as “Capitalocene” do is follow the same reactive, discursive structure that finds a false impulse in multiplying and refining terms for more conscientious representation. However, this is a gesture that calls attention to the vast finitude of the problem at hand; an immense finitude that divests humans of power, effectively hollowing out decisions-making capacities from the inside (Hyperobjects 124). New terms keep popping up in academic discourse, and all respond to a compulsion to arrest the object in question (global warming) and to better explain the shifting circumstances that place humans at the center of Nature’s “revolt,” as both unknowing perpetrators and unwilling victims. But the intention of productively grounding a more expansive discussion is lost, as an increasing, creeping sense of insignificance keeps being impressed on humans. Timothy Clark calls this “Anthropocene disorder,” a “a lack of proportionality […], a loss of proportion tout court, vertiginously and as yet without any clear alternative” (Ecocriticism on
the Edge 147, original emphasis).
The value of the “iconoclastic gesture” that piles more “accurate” “-cenes” on the already existing heap must be scrutinized. It should also be noted that scholars employing the term “Anthropocene” are not uninformed, unaware or deliberately gloss over the politics of difference, or the identity politics that distort the former (BE 6). Scholars should be able to talk about the human species “while at the same time not acting as if the last few decades of thought and politics had never happened” (6-7). After all, does the Anthropocene not impinge on our imagining of man? Surely, it should not be possible to conjure some “vanilla essence
of ‘Man’ underneath out differences” (7). Resorting to primitive atavisms is not an option either, for one cannot simply unknow what is now known or simply will it way. However, contemplating and understanding climate change as a hyperobject may provide a refreshing exit from human-scaled, anthropocentric thoughts that try to contain the “contextual explosion.” Instead of nervously wavering before the wicked and threatening, hyperobjects call attention to the Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) grounded fact that things are, first, not knowable in their entirety, and second, that some things are not purely thinkable, or at least, that cannot be correlated with whatever thinking is (Hyperobjects 64). An encounter with global warming is riddled with epistemic uncertainty that implicates, affects and finally cracks open a productive thought space that invites humans to become self-reflexive (DE 23-4).
Instead of satisfying the human penchant for wanting to contain contextual explosions (BE 91), perhaps humans can learn to coexist with the piling wreckage. Sorting out the debris does not make the monstrous heap of mistakes any less daunting, and to attempt to smooth out the complexity of the climate crisis, to smooth out the anxiety the Anthropocene induces, ends up doubling down, heightening anxiety and confirming the extent of reality’s unknowability. Humans have always been coexisting with 1 + n others; the difference is that humans are now realizing this fact and find themselves lacking ecofriendly thought-tools with which to confront this fact. Therefore, this thesis turns to OOO for a fresh perspective that resists the reenactment of the “-cene”-declaring maneuver. Objects - and hyperobjects in particular - reveal that there is no meta-language that can wholly capture the intricacies and particularities of any given object or the extent of its relations. In fact, hyperobjects reveal that those beautiful souls of scholars and deniers “are the most deluded of all” (Hyperobjects 177), for they are, irrespective of their position vis-à-vis global warming, caught up in the
same mesh hyperobjects exist in. Before this massive entity, they are rendered and revealed vulnerable, interrelated, and ignorant as ever.
HYPEROBJECTS
The plight of the polar bear, which was discussed at the beginning of this chapter, revealed how the problem environmentalists face is grounded in representation of the phenomena they seek to allude to. This section disavows the possibility of encapsulating the matter of climate change through realist aesthetics. Though quantifiably real and threatening, global warming is a problem too complex for humans to grasp and as such is even harder to represent. Global warming, as stated before, is what Timothy Morton calls a hyperobject: a thing that is massively distributed in time and space relative to humans (Hyperobjects 1). Because of the massive scales involved in contemplating hyperobjects (other such examples Morton provides are the half-life of plutonium, plastic, oil spills, among others), these displace humans by doing away with the idea that humans possess a privileged transcendental sphere from which to examine anything - in this case, the wicked problem of climate change. Hyperobjects, Morton states, share several properties, which are briefly summarized below.
The first property of hyperobjects is viscosity; they are “sticky.” Any attempt to introduce distance between the object and the self11 through social and/or psychic means is an
ideological, anthropocentrically grounded aesthetic maneuver that seeks to preserve human enjoyment (Hyperobjects 27). Hyperobjects disavow this distance, haunting humans with a sense of an “always-already:” “[T]here must already be a sticky mesh of viscosity in which I find myself tuned to the object, an aesthetic uterus that subtends even my supposed acts of transcendence” (30). The second property of hyperobjects is nonlocality; any local
11 In Object-Oriented Ontology, the subject/self should be considered an object like any other, meaning, that
manifestation of the hyperobject is not the hyperobject itself.. Nonlocality warns against both holism and atomism; objects have blurred boundaries. To suppose the contrary would require top-level machinations that impose artificial, correlationist separations (42-43).
The third property of hyperobjects is temporal undulation; beings and other objects are “caught up” in hyperobjects because these can generate their own spacetime vortexes (Hyperobjects 1). Take the example of plutonium. Morton turns to this example often because it frames the problem of vast timescales, a finite temporality (24,000 years, approximately) and radiation’s lack of visibility. This example also highlights how humans find themselves implicated in the creation of the object, and later unintendedly subjected to the object’s influence and directives (that humans find ways to safely contain it). Temporal undulations emanating from objects “corrode the supposed fixity of smaller objects” (65); the monstrous, petrifying sublime that arises, however, may provide a refreshing exit from human scale/centered thoughts (64).
The fourth property of hyperobjects is that they are phasing; they “phase in and out of the human world” and “occupy a high-dimensional phase space that makes them impossible to see as a whole on a regular three-dimensional human-scale basis” (Hyperobjects 70, original emphasis). Because of the transdimensionality of hyperobjects, it is only possible to capture or see small fragments, pieces, instances and manifestations of hyperobjects at any given time. The whole will always remain inaccessible (70-71) and insist on its total unknowability.
The fifth and final property of hyperobjects is interobjectivity. An interobjective abyss “floats” between objects. This negative space is still part of what Timothy Morton calls the
mesh: a “potent metaphor for the strange interconnectedness of things, an interconnectedness
and absences” (Hyperobjects 83). In this interobjective mesh-space, nothing is ever experienced directly. Effects ripple across time and space in ways that cannot be fully accounted for. Everything encountered is mediated through a “mind” or “consciousness” (these are also to be considered objects) which arise in response to external stimuli, thus jump-starting the human-world correlating machines (86-89) best encapsulated by the dialectic of Hegel’s “beautiful soul” 12 (Ecology without Nature 118).Distance is uncritically
assumed by the subject in response, but in reality, the unassailable hyperobject “photographs” the human in situ, in the stark, overflowing present that is both haunted by the past and that trembles, like Benjamin’s Angel of History, before the incoming future; a human surrounded by objects, all of which ooze sublime excess and weirdness. Humans are humbled as they begin to reconsider what they are, what they know, and what they’ve done, as they become unveiled as emmeshed beings, interrelated and interconnected with 1 + n (an infinite number of) objects (Hyperobjects 89).
In short, the properties of hyperobjects prompt humans to realize how emmeshed they are with the problem they attempt to untangle (Hyperobjects 17), by perplexing the social and psychic instruments typically employed to measure and contain them (47). Hyperobjects also highlight the artificiality of attempts to introduce order, coherence or separation. In fact, doing so feeds back into a haunting weirdness that forces humans to reconsider their relation to the hyperobject and their position within the mesh. The very tools used to objectify and
12 The “beautiful soul” and Morton’s elaboration of the derivative “beautiful soul syndrome” are central to the
discussion of ecological subjectivity. This is the main topic in the second chapter of Timothy Morton’s Ecology
without Nature (2007), titled “Romanticism and the Environmental Subject.” What distinguishes the “beautiful
soul” is how the desired “aestheticization” (fashioning) of the subject features a moral dimension that is
achieved precisely via an insistence of a distance between the righteous self (the subject) and “evil” world that it condemns. To be able to assume such a position, the “evil” world is necessary. An example of this black-and-white attitude towards the world is green consumerism. Green consumers are beautiful souls in that they maintain a critical position about everything except their own position; it’s not their noble, conservation efforts or eco-centric ideas that are the problem, but their uncritical manner of relating to these ideas which causes trouble (Ecology without Nature 117-122). Ideas of a pristine nature may lead to an “ecological contemplation” that may “provide fuel for a possessive, predatory grasp of the world” (139), igniting feelings that can later be exploited for capitalism gain. Thus, Morton concludes that nature is an inadequate starting point, that perhaps it is more ethical to contemplate ecology without nature, without matter (Hyperobjects 92) at its center.
understand things gain a spurious life of their own; they melt away and plunge humans deeper into the hyperobject’s gravitational field, into the taboo territory of ontology. Here, it is impossible to negate the specificity of objects, and even harder still to negate the fact that they affect humans. But perhaps these encounters with the irreducible weird, which work
against human rationalization, may be the conduit towards a more ecological existence with
nonhumans. The rift of understanding between man and object widens under the hyperobject lens; an abyss lies between them, but this abyss is not an infinite void. Instead, this abyss is
what allows things to coexist (79, added emphasis); it is the play-space of potentiality, where
exchanges occur, and from these exchanges, values, ideas of the other object, ideas of the self, arise.
Hyperobjects highlight an underlying an irony, “present[ing] us with an intimacy with existing nonhumans” (Hyperobjects 19) that boggles correlationist modes of thinking. Hyperobjects dispense with two hundred years of careful correlationist calibration (21), and confront humans with the artificiality of the belief that Nature remains a land “over yonder,” existing apart from humans and civilization, as a backdrop for history’s unfolding (113). Hyperobjects collapse the distinction between background and foreground, flattening ontology and thus, challenging available tools, concepts and instruments for assessing the real (14-15).
FINAL REMARKS
Atomizing the Anthropocene, breaking the Anthropocene apart is not a useful tactic for heightening ecological awareness. It only emphasizes the unspeakable essence of reality, calling attention to both the weird withdrawnness and the weird interconnectedness of things. This realization (which may be exacerbated by imagery such as Paul Nicklen’s starved polar
bear or the multiplying “-cenes” academics seem so eager to issue as of late) leads to a greater sense of entrapment and paralysis (DE 110). Contemplating the matter of climate change through the hyperobject concept disavows imperatives to solve the problem by refining approaches to suit the object in question. Instead, this concept endorses an approach that disavows a priori the total understanding of Anthropocene-related phenomena, and as such encourages humans to attune to the present moment, to the already-there-ness of objects. It invites humans to relax the anthropocentric, objectifying grip and allow things to become strange, and render humans strangers to themselves. While arrest and containment hold “promises to eliminate fear, anxiety, and contradiction – social, physical, and ontological – by establishing thin boundaries between human and nonhuman worlds” (DE
43), an easing of ideology may pose as the vital political maneuver that drop notions of
Nature, of World, of Matter, and ushers in a careful consideration of ontology: the terrain upon which a new, object-oriented environmental ethics may flourish.
II.
Facing the Weird
The previous chapter examined, through the plight of a dying polar bear photographed by Paul Nicklen, why reality-based aesthetics have proven ineffective for ecocritical discourse both in public and academic spheres. In public discourse, ecology-related matters are confronted with conservative rebuttals that downplay the urgency of the climate change crisis. Meanwhile, academic circles seek deconstruct the Anthropocene through the production of new, more accurate “-cenes” that correspond to the homologous horrors the sciences unveil, a gesture that is being replicated and refuses to reflect on why. This analysis determined that ecological awareness suffers from a problem rooted in its inability to productively account for the ontological displacement climate change induces in its choice of representation. Realist representations are insufficient for tackling this matter, which is why a new aesthetics, one that corresponds to the ungraspable complexity of the hyperobject that is climate change, is needed.
By exploring how ecological awareness of the hyperobject that is climate change undermines anthropocentric, human exceptionalism, ecocritical inquiry may be able to move forward in a productive direction that doesn’t reenact the same problem-pointing gestures. This chapter proposes, in the spirit of Donna J. Haraway, to explore a recent literary genre that follow through with her call to “stay with the trouble” (4), to acknowledge that we inhabit an “Age of Asymmetry” characterized by an acknowledgement of the weirdness of things that “evolution, ecology, relativity and quantum theory all speak about” (Hyperobject 159). More importantly, it is an age that humans must learn to inhabit. Morton states that, if humans are to move forward, they must begin by starting to find ways to live the data:
[r]ight now it’s as if we are waiting for just the right kind of data, then we can start living in accord with it. But this data will never arrive, […] – we find ourselves in the midst of horribly confusing, traumatic events […], and we don’t have much of an idea of how to live that (BE 15).
The discourses worth vouching for are not the ones that list the innumerable ills plaguing degrading surroundings, but rather those that usher in the possibility of recognizing how an onslaught of data pertaining to the presently unfolding climate crisis has mutated human’s relationship to the environment. To live the data, as Morton states, requires that one be open to examining the irreducible, weird intimacy that exists between all beings and agents, human and nonhuman. If ecological awareness in the strange time of the Anthropocene indeed undermines belief in human exceptionalism, one could then allow this disorienting experience, the acknowledgement of something weird impinging on human consciousness and destabilizing ontology, to prompt a politics, a blueprint for a mode of coexistence that rejects hierarchies and works with in lieu of against the ontological displacement experienced by man in the time of the Anthropocene. But how can one trace a politics on something that is weird? Something that resists re-grounding within ideology or organizational schemas? The critical difference between the term I would like to employ, weird, and the term “Other” is that, though both share the quality of comparatively designating something as being disquieting, different or alien, pertaining to categories, either ideological or ontological, that are apart and different from those concerning the self, the term weird caters to the pre-existing, irreducible and unknowable entanglements between objects.
When employed as an adjective, the term weird suggests, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, something involving the supernatural, unearthly or uncanny. Further examination unveils another, albeit archaic, definition, this time having to do with the term
predetermined; fate, destiny.” Weird, under this light, may be thought of as the default form of existence before the hubristic reduction of lifeforms, objects and relations via correlationism, disabling the anthropocentric illusion that understanding an object and its relations is possible through some kind of meta language. Weird reveals the artificiality of anthropocentric concepts and constructs – and when applied to the climate crisis - it tears away the veil of human exceptionalism and tearing apart the anthropocentric fantasy of being immersed in a neutral or benevolent Mother Nature (Hyperobjects 196). Weird reveals that there is no meta language. As Morton notes, “a person who is losing a fantasy is a very dangerous person” (196); to this it would be important to add that a person refusing to enter into a sustained engagement with the ways in which the climate crisis has affected human ontology - with the weird - is running the risk of repeating the same arrest and containment maneuvers that characterize the “-cenes,” postponing the critical confrontation with the weirdness of the mesh that these attempt to contain.
The Anthropocene has exposed humanity as a geological agent without agency (Ulstein 77, original emphasis). This project will not run against the empirically-proven fact that climate change is underway, nor seek to decenter the conversation by referring to one of the many Anthropocene derivatives. Instead, this project will dwell on the matter of the Anthropocene and what it spells for human ontology, responding to the urgency to find literary examples of ways to “stay with the trouble” (4) by dwelling in weirdness. The hunt for the perfect meta position from which to contemplate the climate change crisis, in both public and academic discourse, is over. Humans are decentered, thrown off balance. Their reactions alone signal this affective dimension of ecological awareness, but to prevent falling into the same “-cene” declaring gesture, the focus must shift not towards the reasons why humans feel the need to “go meta” in the first place, but towards a consideration of what
aesthetics may be useful to ecological discourse; which forms trigger a weird awareness of the mesh.
THE NEW WEIRD: A NEW HORIZON IN ANTHROPOCENE LITERATURE
As stated in the previous chapter, more intricate, self-reflective approaches towards the Anthropocene should be developed, both in literary production and humanistic scholarship. The “-cenes” cannot keep multiplying, for these may result in action paralysis or cynical inaction; stories cannot rely on realist depictions or post-apocalyptic landscapes, for these have proven ineffective and are easily thwarted or confronted with (oftentimes false and overstated) counter narratives that undermine them. These recycled gestures and doomsday hailing (or postponing) stories, in fact, delay a confrontation with what is really in question here: ontological displacement. To explore this matter, this chapter will examine the New Weird genre. This genre was chosen because it does not rely on realist “data dump mode” nor ascribes to politically charged agendas that can be easily re-appropriated or subverted by an opposition. Two major “weird fiction” figures, author Jeff Vandermeer and editor Ann Vandermeer, have elaborated a definition of the “New Weird,” as follows:
New Weird is a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy (The New Weird xvi)
The real, modern world, as stated here, remains the basis for the works within this genre, but this genre finds its impulse in techniques and devices that explicitly disavow the expected use of realistic forms and subvert a reader’s expectations. These often surreal additions, along with the horrific tones and style of writing confer New Weird fictions a
