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Speculative Nature Writing: Feeling for the Future

思辨自然写作：对未来的感觉

基本信息

批准号：
AH/V008994/1
负责人：
Jos Smith
金额：
$ 25.74万
依托单位：
University of East Anglia
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2021
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2021 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FV008994%2F1
关键词：
Speculative Nature Writing Feeling Future

项目摘要

The last ten years have seen a shift in environmental discourse from a focus on 'mitigation of the effects of climate change' to the idea of 'transformational adaptation' (Feola 2014). Responding to a failure to curb emissions and meet targets, transformational adaptation argues that incremental change is now insufficient (Lonsdale et al., 2015). A deeper and more holistic change has become both necessary as a societal strategy and/or inevitable as a reaction to scarcity of resources and overreliance on unsustainable practices. What this transformation will look like, we are only beginning to understand. Breaking with present structures of behaviour on such a grand scale should be both a feat of radical imagination and ambitious implementation. This project aims to work with this radical imagination - utopian, dystopian or, more likely, both tangled together, 'ustopian' as Margaret Atwood has it (Atwood 2011). It will look at ways in which literary writing concerned with the environment can help its readers to confront both the need for, and the inevitability of, radical change in our relationship with landscape, wildlife and climate.Where literature might engage with the potential for transformative adaptation, it requires a critical orientation towards the future that goes beyond the narrow focus on catastrophe that we have seen in much 'cli fi' and its associated criticism. Jameson has been critical of such work's repetitive articulation of contemporary anxieties, suggesting a failure to really imagine a future of radical 'Difference' (2007). For Jameson, a break with the impasse of contemporary conditions happens most prominently through formal innovation as authors reach towards that which may be unsayable in the present. This project promises to work at just such a level of form.Bringing together scientific research on future climate and biodiversity scenarios and literary critical research concerned with nature writing conventions (including the conventions of some of this scientific research), the project promises to experiment with form in ways that intervene in dominant modes of thinking and begin to articulate possible futures. It aims to shift current debates about nature writing away from retrospective and symptomatic critiques and asks instead how critical and creative work together might help to produce fresh and unsettling writing with a prospective orientation. At its heart, there is an attempt to confront necessary and inevitable change by providing affective footholds in a future that seems chaotically and abstractly uncertain. Climate science (IPCC Report 2018) and biodiversity research (IPBES Report 2019) from around the world offer profoundly disturbing information about earth-system breakdown, wildlife extinction and the inadequacy of the current political response to the crisis. But the interconnected ('wicked') complexity of the problem and the sheer scale of the data can produce paralysing feelings of inadequacy. There is what Timothy Clark has called a 'derangement of scale' at work here as one tries to connect a partial and localised agency to such abstract, high-level data. Epitomising this predicament, wildlife conservationist Hugh Warwick was asked a question at a recent public event - 'What is the one thing I should do in my garden to help hedgehogs?' - to which he replied: 'Bring down capitalism.' Speculative nature writing is uniquely equipped as a narrative model that can offer its reader an uncannily grounded and embodied 'walk-through' of a particular landscape or 'life-world' that does not yet exist. But it will use playful and innovative experiments with the familiar conventions and modes of this popular non-fiction genre to register possibilities it is difficult to apprehend in the present, unnerving and provoking and stretching the moral imagination.

在过去的十年里，环境话语从关注“缓解气候变化的影响”转变为“转型适应”的想法（Feola 2014）。针对未能遏制排放和实现目标，转型适应认为，渐进式变化现在是不够的（Lonsdale等人，2015年）的报告。作为一项社会战略，更深入和更全面的变革是必要的，也是对资源稀缺和过度依赖不可持续做法的一种反应。这种转变会是什么样子，我们才刚刚开始了解。在如此大的范围内打破目前的行为结构，应该既是一个激进的想象力和雄心勃勃的实施壮举。这个项目旨在与这种激进的想象-乌托邦，反乌托邦，或者更有可能，两者纠缠在一起，“乌托邦”玛格丽特阿特伍德（阿特伍德2011）。它将探讨如何让关注环境的文学作品帮助读者面对我们与景观、野生动物和气候的关系发生根本性变化的必要性和必然性。在文学可能参与变革适应的地方，它需要一种对未来的批判性取向，这种取向超越了我们在许多“科幻小说”及其相关批评中看到的对灾难的狭隘关注。詹姆逊一直批评这些作品对当代焦虑的重复表达，暗示未能真正想象激进的“差异”（2007）的未来。对詹姆逊来说，打破当代条件的僵局最突出的方式是通过形式创新，因为作者达到了现在可能说不出口的东西。这个项目承诺在这样一个形式层面上发挥作用。将关于未来气候和生物多样性情景的科学研究与关于自然写作惯例的文学批评研究（包括一些科学研究的惯例）结合起来，该项目承诺以干预主导思维模式的方式对形式进行实验，并开始阐明可能的未来。它旨在将当前关于自然写作的争论从回顾性和症状性批评中转移出来，而是询问批判性和创造性的工作如何有助于产生具有前瞻性的新鲜和令人不安的写作。其核心是试图通过在一个似乎混乱和抽象不确定的未来提供情感立足点来应对必要和不可避免的变化。来自世界各地的气候科学（IPCC 2018年报告）和生物多样性研究（IPBES 2019年报告）提供了关于地球系统崩溃，野生动物灭绝和当前政治应对危机不足的令人深感不安的信息。但是，问题的相互关联（“邪恶”）的复杂性和数据的庞大规模可能会产生令人瘫痪的不足感。蒂莫西·克拉克（Timothy Clark）称之为“规模错乱”，因为人们试图将一个局部和局部的机构与这种抽象的高层次数据联系起来。野生动物保护主义者休·沃里克在最近的一次公共活动中被问到一个问题，这个问题就是这种困境的缩影--“为了帮助刺猬，我应该在我的花园里做什么？”他回答说：“打倒资本主义。投机性质写作是一种独特的叙事模式，可以为读者提供一个神秘的基础和具体的“步行通过”一个特定的景观或“生活世界”，还不存在。但它将使用有趣和创新的实验与熟悉的惯例和模式，这种流行的非小说体裁登记的可能性，这是很难理解的，在目前，不安，挑衅和拉伸道德想象力。