In Megan Hunter's article, "Seeing the World Anew: on climate change fiction," Hunter argues that literature on climate change is not only important as cultural artifacts, but that it can quite literally change our perspective and interaction with the physical environment. So if this is true, then what responsibilities do we as writers and advocates for the environment have? For Hunter, it seems that she thinks that cli-fi should move more toward imagining the future of daily life that climate change will have on us; if what people are concerned with is the disconnect the general population feels about the impact of climate change, then our fiction should work toward reconnecting the population through an imagining of the personal within a changed environment.
Through this, we can look at climate change disasters not as fiction, but as a question about how we as a society will function in a future where the affects of climate change will become more and more apparent. Something Hunter wrote that stuck out to me was when she says, "We want to know about how we destroy ourselves." If we cannot save human life as we know it now, what will happen to humanity in the future? How will we go on? Will we go on? How might individuals react and adapt in the future? What I love about this (that we're fascinated with how we're going to destroy society) is that in some ways it's not as bleak and dreary of an idea as it superficially seems. Life as we know it now may end, but it was always going to end. There are some things we can't reverse or save; but even after the most devastating changes, perhaps we also look to cli-fi and dystopians with some hope. That humans still go on, and that perhaps the earth will also move on.
So then, what is our goal as nature writers? What responsibilities do we have in shaping how our society thinks about climate change? Is it to provide solace? Is it to provoke fear? Is it to inspire people to work harder for a better future? Where do we stand in this imagining of the future?
tillhumanvoiceswakeus22,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some striking questions about our responsibilities as writers in an era of climate change. I think the main responsibility we have is, as you say, understanding the power of where we stand in imagining the future. Writers should be writing about climate change, but I think there are many dimensions to this. Writers could write cli-fi as potential dystopias or in post-climate change settings. I also believe that by writing stories set in modern day, with characters asking these same questions themselves, in our modern environments, is equally valuable. This perspective could remind readers of the beautiful world around us today and invite them into the climate change discussion through characters like them. Both solace and fear are options for writers, but I think we shouldn’t confine cli-fi to one perspective, or else it shuts off potential imaginations. We just must start talking about it.
All of this reminds me of an article I read while researching a history essay—Lynn Hunt’s “The New Cultural History”—which discusses the use of imagination in historical writing and the fine line between fiction/literature and history. Hunt’s argues that "any attempt to describe events (even as they are occurring) must rely on various forms of imagination." In writing about the future of climate change, authors form readers’ cultural imaginations, which then both defines history (the current cultural moment) and defines the future (through imagination and through the influence of their work on readers). Historians, and writers, translate complex ideas and dilemmas into something recognizable and personal. Megan Hunter remarks in her article, “Fiction to see the world through,” that “However global an event, [climate change’s] effects are personal.” What we say, and write, about climate change, will create new forms of imagination. What we say about this event now, matters on a personal, cultural and historical level.
Lynn Hunt also remarks that "The historian performs an essentially poetic act,” in the way they pull together fragments of the past into a coherent story, or image, to instruct us in the future. So, perhaps poets, and novelists, perform an essentially historic act by preserving the world as we see it today and point to, or imagine, a future world with all the complications and aftereffects imposed on it from the past. Imagination will shape the future’s history, as novelists write according to or against our culture and readers interact with these works. In terms of climate change, I think these novels will preserve parts of how our culture is responding to the crisis. Perhaps, future generations will then look back on the literature of today and see threads of connection between historical context and their own current day beliefs. (Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder if novels written during the Cold War about nuclear holocaust could support the same argument. But that’s an investigation for another day…)
Literature has a historical power in the way it preserves culture and creates new imaginations. As Hunter says, fiction is, “the ideal form for a culture trying to get to grips with a new kind of change, and a new image of ourselves, which it may be easier, or more convenient, to ignore.” Fiction allows us to test theories and possibilities through imagination instead of waiting to live it out ourselves. This, then, changes the way we live, in theory, as “we see our planet – and ourselves – anew.” Writers should be cognizant of the forms they use to inspire new imaginations and the reaction from readers. With such potential, why wouldn’t we use our writing to share in the conversations about climate change?