1 Knowing Genre, Knowing Nature? Econarratology
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KNOWING GENRE, KNOWING NATURE? ECONARRATOLOGY, GENRE AND CLIMATE FICTION Astrid Bracke University of Amsterdam (I presented this paper at the 2015 ASLE-UKI conference in Cambridge, on September 2nd 2015) Today, I want to talk about how genres shape representations of nature. I'll explore the narratological mechanics of genre as a significant part of narrating environmental crisis. I will focus on narrative worldmaking as central to genre and to depictions of the Anthropocene. I will discuss this is in relation to two works of climate fiction: Barbara Kingsolver's 2012 novel Flight Behaviour and Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow, published in 2013. Although little work has been done on ecocriticism and narratology, there are a few exceptions. Erin James has coined the term "econarratology" in her book The Storyworld Accord. She is also putting together Ecocriticism and Narrative Theory with Eric Morel, in which a longer version of this paper will appear. [SLIDE 2] Econarratology "embraces the key concerns of each of its parent discourses – it maintains an interest in studying the relationship between literature and the physical environment, but does so with sensitivity to the literary structures and devices that we use to communicate representations of the physical environment to each other via narratives" (23). Similarly, the study of genre isn't wholly alien to ecocriticism. In many ways, genre is central to ecocriticism which in its early stages was concerned explicitly with recuperating the genre of nature writing. And many contemporary ecocritics as well – such as Richard Kerridge, Ursula Kluwick and earlier, Joseph Meeker – have explored in depth which genres may be most effectual in communicating environmental crisis. Yet ecocritical explorations of how genre works, and how it influences our 1 depictions of nature are rare. In fact, the only example of a reading that comes close to this is Adeline Johns-Putra's discussion of genres as ecological systems in her discussion of Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital trilogy. A lot of work, though, remains to be done in both econarratology, ecocriticism and genre, and combinations of the two. An econarratological approach to genre does two things. Firstly, it leads to a more thorough understanding of a genre and its mechanics. Secondly, it enables a more thorough reading of the text, and consequently a fuller understanding of how narratological elements shape depictions of nature. My focus today will be on climate fiction – or cli-fi – although the idea of course is that my approach can be applied to a much wider variety of genres. Climate fiction is an interesting case study because it is quite a popular genre, and it holds a lot of potential in terms of communicating contemporary climate change. At the same time, it taps into an older tradition of ecodystopian and apocalyptic literature.1 Yet cli-fi has been defined primarily in terms of its content and thematics, rather than in terms of its narratological and formal features. The term cli-fi became very popular in the spring of 2013, following an NPR report on Nathaniel Rich's novel Odds Against Tomorrow. The New Yorker, The Guardian and other publications picked up on the term. Most of these articles suggest that cli-fi refers to "novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth's systems are noticeably off-kilter" (Evancie par. 6). Husna Haq has distinguished cli-fi from science fiction by arguing that it 1 See Adam Trexler's introduction in Anthropocene Fictions. Frederick Buell provides a discussion of twentieth-century dystopian and apocalyptic fiction in From Apocalypse to Way of Life. 2 "describes a dystopian present, as opposed to a dystopian future, and it isn’t non- fiction or even science fiction: cli-fi is about literary fiction" (par. 9). Adam Trexler's recent book Anthropocene Fictions is the first extensive study of what we could call climate fiction. Although he prefers the term "Anthropocene" to "climate change" novels, 2 Trexler's descriptions of Anthropocene fictions can be extended to include climate fiction: [SLIDE 3] "To date, nearly all Anthropocene fiction addresses the historical tension between the existence of catastrophic global warming and the failed obligation to act. Under these conditions, fiction offered a medium to explain, predict, implore, and lament" (9). All these definitions focus on shared thematics – environmental chaos, global warming – and barely on narratological features, such as setting, characterization, focalization, register. What narratologists calls "worldmaking" remains unexplored, while is it, as I'll discuss today, central to an econarratological understanding of the genre. Worldmaking refers to both the ways in which the textual world is created, and in turn, how we are able to make sense of it. In Herman's words, the term encapsulates both [SLIDE 4] "how narrative designs prompt the construction – enable the exploration – of different sorts of storyworlds" and "how the process of building storyworlds in turn scaffolds a variety of sense- making activities" (Storytelling x). The worldmaking possibilities of narratives tie in with the concept of the storyworld, [SLIDE 5] a "mental model of context and environment within which a narrative's characters function and to which readers transport themselves as they read narratives" (James 253). Storyworlds 2 He prefers the term 'Anthropocene' to climate science because "it may help to move beyond the narrow questions of truth and falsity with regard to climate science" (4). 3 enable readers to travel from the actual world to the textual world, to gain access to it and understand it. Interestingly, genre studies scholars generally understand genre to work in a similar way – although as far as I know, the term worldmaking has not been used in genre studies. Genres do not only help us to understand a text, they also help us make sense of the world by framing our perceptions and experiences. As John Frow has suggested, genres provide "discursive maps of the world" (1633). How we travel from our own world into the world of narrative, and how we achieve this act of worldmaking, depends largely on what Marie-Laure Ryan has called the principle of minimal departure. As she argues, [SLIDE 6] "we construe the central world of a textual universe … as conforming as far as possible to our representation of AW [the actual or real world]. We will project upon these worlds everything we know about reality, and we will make only the adjustments dictated by the text" (Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory 51). We use our own world and environment as a starting point for our understanding of the narrative's world (Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory 51). Stories provide us with a lot of cues that help us understand their world: objects in the narrative will help us establish in what time the story is set – are there iPads or not? – and cues about cultural and social relations help us understand how close this world is to our own. Ryan has grouped these cues into nine different categories which she calls accessibility relations. Accessibility relations are [SLIDE 7] "trans-universe relations" that function as "the airline through which the sender reaches the world at the center of the textual universe" ("Possible Worlds" 558). They provide us with the cues 4 that help us understand the story's world as similar to, or different from, our own world. Ryan has usefully linked these accessibility relations to genres. Accessibility relations are key to defining and understanding cli-fi, a genre with which Ryan – writing in the early 1990s – was not concerned. Indeed, I'd argue that the success of climate fiction relies on the difference between the actual world and textual world being as small as possible, yet big enough nonetheless to recognize that the textual world is not wholly the same as the actual world. Compared to science fiction, then, - which Ryan does include in her typology – cli-fi scores positively on more accessibility relations, most significantly on the one Ryan terms the chronology compatibility of the textual world and the real world. If the textual world is set in the future, accessing it becomes more difficult for readers, as they are not familiar with it. Yet while works of science fiction are arguably set in the future – which allows them the temporal distance to speculate about the future of humanity – a key element of climate fiction is that its setting is so close to the present as to make the future and the present nearly indistinguishable. Expanding on Ryan's principle of minimal departure, I'd suggest that successful climate fiction – works that really confront us with life in the Anthropocene – puts the reader through a two-step process taking us from our world into the textual world. Cli-fi depends on first depicting a world that is very close to our actual world, providing cues that give us little reason to suspect that circumstances and developments might be different. Next, however, this familiar world is extended into the unfamiliar, generally without the narrator stepping in to explicitly guide the reader in navigating this new space. What happens is a lot 5 like the myth of the frog who, placed in cold water and slowly boiled, does not jump out as its environment has changed so gradually and imperceptibly. Cli-fi is at its most successful when the first and second step can be barely told apart. Both Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour and Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow achieve in combining the real world and the textual world in such a way that it becomes almost impossible to tell apart what is real in the actual world, and what is happening in the textual world.