In search of the unusual: Galera, Ghosh and literary fiction in the Anthropocene
Abstract
From the analysis of Daniel Galera’s Ondas catastróficas and Amitav Ghosh’s The great derangement, this article explores the contradictions and possibilities of literary fiction in the Anthropocene as aimed by these essays. By different ways and using their fiction as example, both of the authors points to specific problems in what they call realist prose, marked by a narrow and impotent human perspective against the end of the world. By the urge of representing a reality defined by extreme conditions, mainly climate ones, Galera analyzes the “total visibility” of technological images of natural disasters, and Ghosh finds difficulties bringing essential notions of collectivity and temporality to fiction. Both agree that approximating human and nonhuman in still unknown narratives is vital if fiction wants to be on the same page with an epoch that urges for ontological changes.
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References
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