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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until June 08, 2027

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Beyond the Flood: Expanding the Horizons of 21st Century Climate Fiction

KUHAJDA, CASEY
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1657216655251058

Abstract Details

2022, Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, English.
This dissertation considers five novels: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, The Overstory by Richard Powers, and Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh. It is interested in how vitalism, a term that emerges at the intersection of the work of Jane Bennett (vital materialism) and Amitav Ghosh (vitalist politics), might work to re-focus the form of the novel in a way that thoughtfully considers climate change. Vitalism is an answer to the mechanized, biopolitical, realist modes of contemporary human art and social organization. A vitalist politics reconceives of political systems and structures in a way that acknowledges the role that nonhuman agency plays in shaping human events. A vitalist politics would mean all political and economic decisions acknowledge that nonhuman entities and systems have agency. Vitalism reconceives of "nature" as not brute matter to be extracted, but a web of carefully linked systems. It differs from an animist politics in the sense that it shuns the idea of ascribing any sort of soul to an individual entity (whether human, animal, or plant) for considering all entities as linked in a collectivist, rhizomatic web. The focus of this dissertation project is on contemporary fictional texts out of which strong strains of vitalist politics and aesthetics emerge. In doing so, it considers what the shapes of novels might be in a future that is itself reorganized by climate change.
Anita Mannur (Committee Chair)
Stefanie Dunning (Advisor)
Timothy Melley (Advisor)
Theresa Kulbaga (Advisor)
Marguerite Shaffer (Advisor)
132 p.
Environmental Justice; Literature; Philosophy of Science
climate change, the novel, realism, vitalism, vital materialism, postmodernism, surrealism, magical realism, technology, science, history, physics, dreams, ghosts, spirits, animals, non-human energies, cities, re-enchantment, dis-enchantment, quantum physics, disaster aesthetics, forest systems, anti-racism, environmental justice, climate migration

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • KUHAJDA, C. (2022). Beyond the Flood: Expanding the Horizons of 21st Century Climate Fiction [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1657216655251058

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • KUHAJDA, CASEY. Beyond the Flood: Expanding the Horizons of 21st Century Climate Fiction. 2022. Miami University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1657216655251058.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • KUHAJDA, CASEY. "Beyond the Flood: Expanding the Horizons of 21st Century Climate Fiction." Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1657216655251058

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by Miami University and OhioLINK.