Weird ghosts of the Anthropocene: the spectral encounter in new weird fiction as a conceptual metaphor for ecocritical theory
In “The Great Derangement”, Amitav Ghosh links the reluctance of contemporary fiction to tackle the environmental crisis to the inadequacy of realism, with which Western “high” literature has been associated since the rise of the modern novel, to describe the “hyperobject” quality (Clark 140) of the...
| Autor: | |
|---|---|
| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Alcalá (UAH) |
| Repositorio: | e_Buah Biblioteca Digital Universidad de Alcalá |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ebuah.uah.es:10017/64504 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10017/64504 https://dx.doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2024.15.2.5368 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | New Weird Spectrality Non-human Ecology Uncanny Espectralidad No-humano Ecología Literatura Medio ambiente Literature Environmental science |
| Sumario: | In “The Great Derangement”, Amitav Ghosh links the reluctance of contemporary fiction to tackle the environmental crisis to the inadequacy of realism, with which Western “high” literature has been associated since the rise of the modern novel, to describe the “hyperobject” quality (Clark 140) of the Anthropocene. This paper argues that the genre labeled as New Weird, which strives to portray the “Unheimlich”, the eerie, or precisely the weird in our familiar reality, offers an answer to this aesthetic challenge, having found an especially powerful literary device in spectral encounters. In the works of many New Weird authors, environmental concerns are often embodied by the encounter of human protagonists with the ghostly apparitions of non-human entities. A close reading of three stories from China Miéville’s collection “Three Moments of an Explosion”, “Polynia,” “Covehithe” and “Estate,” will serve as a detailed example of how the portrayal of people’s behavior in encountering ‘weird’ spectral presences bears a specific ecological significance. This significance reverberates in the use of spectrality as a conceptual metaphor in contemporary ecocritical theory, thus corroborating the claim of this genre as the most productive for our historical times. |
|---|