Abstract
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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 121-141 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Forum for Modern Language Studies |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2017 Apr 11 |
UN SDGs
This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
-
SDG 13 Climate Action
Subject classification (UKÄ)
- Social and Economic Geography
Free keywords
- Dialectical image
- Ecocriticism
- Fossil fuel fiction
- Ghassan Kanafani
- Global warming
- Joseph Conrad
- Material allegory
- Walter Benjamin
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of ''This Is The Hell That I Have Heard Of': Some Dialectical Images in Fossil Fuel Fiction'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Cite this
- APA
- Author
- BIBTEX
- Harvard
- Standard
- RIS
- Vancouver