Abstract
Countering currents in ecocriticism emphasizing realistic depiction of climate breakdown, this essay advocates for the importance of figural reading for literary climate studies. It proposes that works lacking indexical crisis content may nonetheless contribute to conceptualizing ecocide, precisely through a specifically literary conceptuality that the essay names “objectivity.” In making this metacritical argument, the essay offers a reading of Lydia Millet’s 2008 novel How the Dead Dream. Ecocriticism often cherishes complexity and interpenetrating agencies; through problematized setting, impersonal point of view, and elliptical narration, How the Dead Dream offers instead the simplicity of fault: the great acceleration has been caused by the automobiles and real estate portfolios of the global superrich. This unique theoretical insight about the politics of ecocide stems from literary objectivity.
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Notes
- 1.
See Ghosh, Great Derangement.
- 2.
Ryzik, “Movies about Climate Change.”
- 3.
Buckley, “Scared of Climate Change.”
- 4.
Ryzik, “Movies about Climate Change.”
- 5.
This mimetic, referential, indicative conception does not exhaust realism.
- 6.
In their book Objectivity, note both that “Objectivity has a history” and that “the history of scientific objectivity is surprisingly short. It first emerged in the mid-nineteenth century” (27). See also Donna Haraway’s exploration of the pitfalls of constructedness in Haraway, “Situated Knowledges.”
- 7.
Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 55.
- 8.
How the Dead Dream, 19. Hereafter cited parenthetically in text.
- 9.
Notably, Kathryn Yusoff, Dana Luciano, Donna Haraway.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor. New York: Continuum, 1997.
Buckley, Cara. “Why Is Hollywood So Scared of Climate Change?” The New York Times, August 14, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/movies/hollywood-climate-change.html.
Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2007.
Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99.
Millet, Lydia. How the Dead Dream. Mariner Books-Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
Ryzik, Melena. “Can Hollywood Movies About Climate Change Make a Difference?” The New York Times, October 2, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/movies/mother-darren-aronofsky-climate-change.html.
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Kornbluh, A. (2021). Ecocide and Objectivity: Literary Thinking in How the Dead Dream. In: Sridhar, A., Hosseini, M.A., Attridge, D. (eds) The Work of Reading. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71139-9_13
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