Ekofantastyka
Ecofiction

The sympoiesis perspective

Author(s): Grażyna Gajewska
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Studies of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: ecofiction; ecology; ecohorror; science fiction; climate fiction; weird fiction; fantasy; Anthropocene; Capitalocene; Chthulucene
Summary/Abstract: The future, in which future generations of both human and non-human beings will live, is being shaped today, and it is in this sense that we experience it, conceptualize it to some extent, model it, and feel it emotionally and even somatically. The author of Ecofiction talks about this way of experiencing the present and future in the context of the climate crisis, water and air pollution, disappearing biodiversity, and worsening environmental injustice. The book contains the thesis that to change this state of affairs we need not only scientific, technological, political and economic tools, but also some new sensibility and aesthetics. The "management of imagination" Gajewska proposes would mean constructing new models of cognition at both the epistemological, ontological, axiological and aesthetic levels. The book also constitutes a search for such types, genres, genre varieties in literature, film, computer games, fine arts in which various scenarios of human-not-human justice (or injustice) are most clearly revealed. It makes a case for paying special attention to speculative science fiction, in which the themes of ecology and multispecies (in)justice are addressed. Engaged in presenting alternative images of reality, this trend in speculative fiction provokes audiences to rethink the place of humans on Earth, our relationship with non-humans and political-ethical-aesthetic responsibility for the possible (or probable) shape of the future. At the same time, these speculations – as products of the times in which they were conceived – reveal the ideas that present-day writers, filmmakers, artists and audiences of their works about the likely, or expected, direction in which we will (perhaps) move to transcend, or at least weaken, anthropocentric thinking and direct attention to biodiversity and multispecies well-being.

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