Radically Hopeful Dystopian Climate Fiction
Exploring Social Dreaming, Temporal Re-Sensitisation, and Katharsis in Jeff VanderMeer's Borne
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3852250 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jasmin Kirkbride (0000-0002-1475-1265, University of London, London, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 88-105 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative American Studies An International Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1477-5700 • E-ISSN: 1741-2676 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14775700.2025.2490336 |
| OpenAlex | W4409353869 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
This article applies Jonathan Lear’s concept of radical hope to dystopian climate fiction, using Jeff Vandermeer’s weird fiction novel Borne as a vehicle to explore the intra- and extra-textual impacts of revivals in dystopian climate fiction. Fuelled by the protagonist’s actions as a radically hopeful individual, Borne’s revival is weird and uncanny, subverting dominant Messianic and redemptive concepts of revival to reframe it as a critical act (Ursula Heise, L. T. Sargant, Tom Moylan, and Rafaella Baccolini), thereby enabling radically hopeful katharsis and temporal re-sensitisation in the reader (Kyle P. Whyte). This article argues that in dystopian climate fiction, not all revivals are not to be taken literally but, supported by evidence from empirical ecocriticism (Matthew Schneider-Mayerson) and psychoanalysis (W. G. Lawrence), are cathartic acts of social dreaming on the part of writers and readers alike. n this way-far from being promises of utopia, comfort, or even continuity-fictive radically hopeful revivals in dystopian climate fiction can support a needed examination of temporality, dreams, and impermanence to redefine what it means to be radical, courageous, and honourable in the face of the climate crisis
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Dystopia · Environmental ethics · Literature · Psychoanalysis · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction
The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature
Anthropocene Fictions
On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre
Progress versus Utopia; or, can we imagine the future?
Environmental Literature as Persuasion
Creative (Climate) Communications
Radical Hope
The Influence of Climate Fiction
The Great Derangement
The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction
Some Climate Change Ironies
The Social Sharing of Emotion as an Interface Between Individual and Collective Processes in the Construction of Emotional Climates
Inhuman writing in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy
Family territory' to the 'circumference of the earth
Progress Versus Utopia; or, Can We Imagine the Future
Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |