Environmental Politics ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fenp20 ‘At the heart of human politics’: agency and responsibility in the contemporary climate novel Matthew Benjamin Cole To cite this article: Matthew Benjamin Cole (2021): ‘At the heart of human politics’: agency and responsibility in the contemporary climate novel, Environmental Politics, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2021.1902699 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.1902699 Published online: 26 Mar 2021. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fenp20 ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2021.1902699 ‘At the heart of human politics’: agency and responsibility in the contemporary climate novel Matthew Benjamin Cole Harvard College Writing Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA ABSTRACT How might climate fiction inform public perceptions of climate change and its political stakes? While early proponents of climate fiction called on writers to move the public with visceral cautionary tales, recent climate fiction and criti­ cism thereof aims beyond apocalyptic and catastrophic representation, reflect­ ing broader debates regarding fear and agency in the climate imaginary. This context clarifies the modes of imaginative engagement pursued in recent English-language climate novels, including Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, Richard Power’s The Overstory, and Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island. These works respond to patterns of denial and depoliticization by challenging their audiences to reimagine agency and responsibility in politically expansive and ethically demanding terms. Dramatizing complex interconnections between communities, generations, and species, as well as the obligations and possibi­ lities for action to which they give rise, they enrich the climate imaginary by illuminating political potential amidst the overwhelming crisis. KEYWORDS Climate change; climate fiction; climate imaginary; Kim Stanley Robinson; Richard Powers; Amitav Ghosh Introduction Fiction about climate change, often referred to as ‘climate fiction’ or ‘cli-fi,’ has become a major tributary of English-language literature in the twenty- first century (Goodbody and Johns-Putra 2019). While commentators only recently lamented the absence of literary engagement with climate change, American, Canadian, and British writers have now produced dozens of climate novels, with many enjoying commercial success, critical acclaim, and media engagement. As the field has grown, scholars have considered how such works may reflect and reshape public engagement with climate change (Trexler 2015, Mehnert 2016, Milkoreit 2016, Schneider-Mayerson 2018, Johns-Putra 2019). Though climate fictionmay seem far removed from politics or policymaking, it provides a window into what scholars refer to as the ‘climate imaginary’ (Milkoreit 2017): the symbols, narratives, and CONTACT Matthew Benjamin Cole [email protected] © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 M. B. COLE concepts through which climate change is represented and given meaning. If ‘the arts and humanities play an important role in thinking through our representations of environmental change and give tangible form to the ima­ gination’ (Yusoff and Gabrys 2011, p. 518), then we may look to climate fiction to understand how the ethical and political stakes of climate change are being processed and negotiated. After all, the explosion of English- language climate fiction has coincided with mounting public concern over climate change among its audiences in the US, UK, and Canada, and the most optimistic appraisals suggest that climate fiction may not only reflect but facilitate such trends, acting as a ‘handmaiden to environmental politics’ (Schneider-Mayerson 2017, p. 316). Much of the initial interest in climate fiction reflected the conviction that failures to address climate change via policy and politics followed from preliminary failures of imagination. If awareness had not translated into action because climate change itself was ‘unimaginable’ (Marshall 2014, p. 52) or ‘unthinkable’ (Ghosh 2016), then proponents of climate fiction have hoped that literature would render it more tangible and affectively resonant by ‘using narrative to heighten its reality’ (Trexler 2015, p. 5). And while the influence of literature on public attitudes is neither direct nor easy to confirm empirically, Schneider-Mayerson’s survey of readers finds that climate fiction ‘can be quite effective at enabling or compelling readers to imagine potential futures and to consider the fragility of human societies and vulnerable ecosystems’ (2018, p. 495). Even so, recent climate fictionand criticism thereof point to the limitations of an approach that seeks to move the public with visceral cautionary tales. Such concerns echo wider controversies about framing climate change in terms of apocalypse, cata­ strophe, and disaster, a subject of debate within climate politics, commu­ nications, and psychology, among other disciplines. To begin, I survey this contested terrain, developing the tension between fear and agency which will frame the ensuing discussion of climate fiction. Though apocalyptic narra­ tives need not be categorically rejected, the analysis will show that their utility is limited when they do not illuminate opportunities for collective action, in which case they may reinforce patterns of denial and depoliticiza­ tion despite their author’s intentions. I then consider climate fiction’s constructive contributions to the climate imaginary, tracing the themes of agency and responsibility in three recent novels which exemplify the burgeoning popularity of climate fiction as well as its political potential: Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 (2017), Richard Powers’ The Overstory (2018), and Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019). These novels have featured prominently in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, while more specialized media have drawn attention to their ecopo­ litical messages. For example, Robinson, Powers, and Ghosh each discussed ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS 3 the political implications of their novels in The Nation (Thatoor 2019, Carpenter 2020, Gordon 2020), and each was recommended to environmen­ talists in SIERRA Magazine (Berry 2017, 2018, 2019), indicating their poten­ tial to influence a wide range of politically engaged readers. In that context, their concern with agency and responsibility reveals an important develop­ ment in climate fiction and the broader climate imaginary. Climate change and the predicament of the Anthropocene within which it is frequently conceptualized challenge conventional understandings of agency and responsibility (Jamieson and Di Paola 2016), resulting in a profound ethical and political disorientation which particularly afflicts the inhabitants of wealthy, industrialized nations at a time when their inaction cannot be afforded or justified. Writers like Robinson, Powers, and Ghosh endeavor to deepen their readers’ imaginative engagement with the climate crisis by dramatizing complex interconnections between communities, generations, and species, as well as the obligations and possibilities for action to which they give rise. In doing so, they enrich the climate imaginary with stories that illuminate unrealized political potential amidst the overwhelming crisis. Fear and agency in the climate imaginary Theorists of the political imagination ask that we consider politics as ‘not only an affair of reason, but also an activity that is deeply embedded in a society’s images, narratives, and myths, which frame its viewing of “reality” and form its members perceptions and sensibilities’ (Czobor-Lupp 2014, p. 227). This is particularly true with respect to the politics of climate change. As Millkoreit explains, Imagination is essential not only for understanding and ‘seeing’ climate change itself – a phenomenon no single human being can observe or experience in its entirety – but also for developing promising responses. The imagination can help us step away from and cast a critical eye toward existing institutions and practices, and envision radically different futures (2016, p. 171–172). The climate imaginary therefore has stakes which extend beyond the inves­ tigation of climate fiction. It is an inescapable context for climate discourse, activism, and policy, and a critical arena in which the public’s interpretation of and engagement with climate change is prefigured. Despite the efforts of climate advocates to foster awareness and urgency, commentators often argue that political inaction in response to climate change evinces a failure of imagination. To the extent that the risks of climate change are understood, the argument goes, they are grasped intellectually rather than affectively – conceptualized, but not felt (Hulme 2009). Diagnoses of this failure have been couched in the language of evolutionary psychology (Jamieson 2014), cultural cognition (Kahan et al. 2012), and in 4 M. B. COLE the least optimistic appraisals, of human nature (Rich 2019). Marshall (2014) emphasizes that uncertainty about the consequences of climate change complicates precautionary efforts because social and psychological heuristics for risk assessment prioritize certain, sudden, and familiar threats. Others have explained