Imagining Ecocatastrophe: Reading Literary and Cultural Texts in the Global Context

by Scott Slovic (Editor), Joyjit Ghosh (Editor), Samit Kumar Maiti (Editor)

Overview

This volume examines scholarly perspectives on eco-imaginaries, focusing in particular on how eco-catastrophes have been represented in literature and different visual forms, including film, television and cartoons, among other cultural media. It draws on literary genres such as science fiction, climate fiction, speculative fiction, petrofiction, post-apocalyptic narratives and nuclear fiction to examine the role that literature plays in the dissemination of information about environmental crisis in the Anthropocene and in preparing mankind for a better and sustainable future. Deeply embedded in theoretical conceptualisations, the essays in this volume address issues of natural disasters, deforestation, nuclear disasters and pandemics, among others, which constitute the core subjects of environmental humanities.

A seminal study on the literary and cultural representations of ecodisaster in the global context, and with contributions from across the world, this book, truly interdisciplinary in nature, will be an invaluable read for students, academicians and researchers in literature, film studies, climate change studies, disaster studies, gender studies and cultural studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032724195
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/01/2025
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Scott Slovic is a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute and a distinguished professor of environmental humanities emeritus at the University of Idaho, USA.

Joyjit Ghosh is Professor in the Department of English Literature, Language and Cultural Studies, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal, India.

Samit Kumar Maiti is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Seva Bharati Mahavidyalaya, Kapgari, Jhargram, West Bengal, India.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors viii

Acknowledgements xv

Introduction 1

PART I

Anthropocene, Ecocatastrophe and Apocalypse 23

1 “We Have So Little Time Left”: Portrayal of Environmental Catastrophe in Selected Poems from Reckoning 25

JOYJIT GHOSH

2 Unmasking the Risks of Climate Change in Liz Jensen’s The Rapture 38

MAHINUR GOZDE KASURKA

3 Maja Lunde’s The End of the Ocean: A Narrative of Climate Change and Environmental Crisis 53

SAUMYA PRIYA

4 Subverting Anthropocentrism: A Critical Study of J. G. Ballard’s The Wind from Nowhere 64

BAPIN MALLICK AND NIKHILESH DHAR

5 Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for The Future: A Tale of Transcending Climate “Catastrophism” 72

TUSHAR KANTI KARMAKAR

PART II

Vulnerability, Precarity and Resilience 85

6 “Climate Plague”, Precarious Lives and Resilience in a Post-Apocalyptic World: Vignettes of Vulnerability in

Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark 87

SK TARIK ALI

7 Precarious Selves, (Dis)abled Bodies and Post-Apocalyptic Narratives 101

ELWIN SUSAN JOHN

8 Ecocatastrophe in the Literary Imagination: Confronting the Anthropocene through Narratives of Ecoprecarity from North-East India 111

PADDAJA ROY

PART III

Resource Extraction, Eco-Injustice and Resistance 123

9 Eco-Anxiety, Trauma and Resilience of the Dongria Kond Tribe of India: Locating the Literary and Cultural Responses of the Niyamgiri Movement in the Global Scenario 125

MIR AHAMMAD ALI

10 “We Should Have Known Our Land Would Soon Be Dead”: Resource Curse, Petro-Capital Extractivism and Survival Environmentalism in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were 140

SHANKHA SHUBHRA MANDAL

PART IV

Disaster(s) and Dystopian Imaginaries 153

11 The Literary Dimensions of Pagan Spirituality in Fictionalising the Nuclear Tierratraumatic Experience 155

INNA SUKHENKO

12 Some Things Are More Equal Than Others: Or, How to Read On the Beach 170

ANNA FRIEDA KUHN

13 Gender, Famine and Masculinities: An Ecofeminist Insight into the Irish Great Hunger 178

ASMAE OURKIYA

14 The Ecology of Reading Lithuanian Dystopia: The Cases of Dorandobongas by Jurgis Volandas and Ėko by Valdas Papievis 192

INDRĖ ŽAKEVIČIENĖ

PART V

Climate Change and Environmental Disaster in Cinema 209

15 Don’t Look Up: Political Satire Crashes into the Contemporary Disaster Film 211

GEORGIOS DIMOGLOU

16 The City Τhat (Never) Dies: Film Noir Imagines the Urban Disorder, Disease and Disaster 221

DIMITRIS PAPACHARALAMPOUS

17 “Toward an Otherwise”: Decolonising Epistemology and Ecology in The Last Wave 232

WILL UNDERLAND AND MATTHEW SPENCER

18 Scorched Earth and Precarious Existence: Representation of the Anthropocene in Bollywood Films Kadvi Hawa and Jal 242

AMIT MANDAL

PART VI

Climate Change and Critical Thinking in Other Cultural Media 255

19 From One World to Another: Immersion in Digital Games and its Relevance for Climate Change 257

LAURA AKERS

20 Geopolitics of Climate Change Cartoons: Exploring Everyday Resistance through Visual Discourse 271

SHIFANA P. A. AND ASHA SUSAN JACOB

Index 284