MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Climate change and the sustainability gap (where humanity’s ecological footprint exceeds the earth’s resources) are intrinsically linked, together determining the shape of our children’s future. Efforts to address climate change as well as major environmental issues depend on critical changes to make today’s production and consumption practices sustainable. Yet resistance to those changes has resulted in a sustainability gap worsening the chances to avert climatic catastrophe. The apocalyptic dimensions of climate change and ecosystem collapse have been generously treated by a range of science fiction writers. Less often do we read and see stories in climate and/or science fiction of communities and individuals working not only to avert catastrophe but to build a better, more sustainable future. Far too often cynicism replaces hope, as a flood of dystopian scenarios, far-future techno-fantasies, and stories of superhero saviors fill our screens and consciousness. Some writers, like Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson and others have made efforts to explore more hopeful paths through the chaos, violence and injustice, telling stories of transition, of the struggle of communities to create a better world. The proposed presentation will report on a recently launched international research project to explore some of these stories, particularly those described as climate fiction, as well as the struggles of storytellers around the world (e.g, in the U.S. and India) trying to navigate the power relations, norms and aesthetic frames of a rapidly changing media environment and culture industry, as they attempt to create and share more hopeful narratives of sustainability transitions amid the realities of global warming, species extinction and global inequality.