Towards Symbiocene: Simulation and Extrapolation of Environmental Inevitability in Ecofiction
Anthropogenic intervention into the environment has led us towards what is now widely understood as a new epoch: the Anthropocene. While nature is a concrete and palpable entity, the othering of it is a linguistic construct. Literary narratives are significant part of our everyday discourse and thei...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institute of English Studies
2024-10-01
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| Series: | Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://anglica-journal.com/resources/html/article/details?id=625746 |
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| Summary: | Anthropogenic intervention into the environment has led us towards what is now widely understood as a new epoch: the Anthropocene. While nature is a concrete and palpable entity, the othering of it is a linguistic construct. Literary narratives are significant part of our everyday discourse and their efficacy in positing an alternative worldview cannot be undermined. The current paper seeks to investigate select texts of ecofiction: Megan Hunter’s The End We Start from (2017), Jim Laughter’s Polar City Red (2012), Louis Lowry’s The Giver (1993), and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), towards analyzing how ecofiction can foster global eco-consciousness (Wallis 2013) by either instilling a sense of eco-guilt (Agoston et al. 2022) or offering ecological hope (Northcott 2020). Towards that end, the paper shall trace out the genesis of ecofiction, and consider how through the twin techniques of estrangement and extrapolation, it creates alternate worlds, thereby simulating future scenarios. These scenarios can offer apocalyptic visions of dismal and tragic consequences of the human intervention into the environment, or could posit a rejuvenating alteration in human efforts, resulting in increased environmental imagination, leading us from Anthropocene towards the Symbiocene (Albrecht 2015). |
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| ISSN: | 0860-5734 2957-0905 |