hi my name is Erin James and I'm with
the Department of English at the
University of Idaho. I'm an Associate
Professor there and today I'm excited to
be talking to you.
My presentation is called "Narrative in
the Anthropocene" and it imagines how
narrative can best represent the
environmental changes that are to come
and specifically I want to engage recent
discussions about the Anthropocene to
imagine a theory of narrative that is
sensitive to matter is commonly
associated with the epoch.
So in other words and asking what an
Anthropocentric narratology might look
like. My approach is inspired by Gerald
Prince's work in on a post-colonial
narratology in which he quote "wears a
set of post-colonial lenses to look at
narrative" unquote with the goal of
sketching out a narratology quote
"sensitive to matter is commonly if not
uncontroversialy associated with the
post-colonial, for example hybridity
migrant see other pneus fragmentation
diversity power relations" unquote.
Llikewise i'm not interested here and
analyzing individual narratives about
the Anthropocene or global climate change
and pointing to their strengths and
shortcomings, nor am I concerned with
attempting to identify the parameters (or
lack thereof) of the genre of the
Anthropocene narrative or "cli fi," though
many people are doing good work on
these topics.
Iinstead I consider narrative modalities
via an anthropocentric lens to better
account for the ways in which narratives --
and by that I mean all narratives, both
existing and possible -- how they make
sense. An anthropocentric narratology
might pose the following questions: how did
the new conceptions of time and space
demanded by the Anthropocene diversify narratological
concepts of
chronology and spatialization? How does
the awareness of self-narration
associated with the Anthropocene
complicate our notions of omniscience and
first-person narration? How does the
intertwining of humans and other species
in the Anthropocene shed any light on
the representation of non-human narrators?
And perhaps most importantly how does
the idea of the Anthropocene as an epoch
in which humans literally write the
earth challenge are very understanding
of narrative itself and its functions?
To begin I want to think about
narrative time and for this portion of
the discussion
I'll rely on a model of narrative time
that's provided to us by Gerard Genette
in his Narrative Discourse. He famously
sketches out three
considerations of narrative time: order
duration and frequency. Within those
umbrellas he talks about ellipses and
prolepsis in order (flashbacks and
flash-forwards), the singulative,  the
repetitive and the iterative in terms of
frequency, ,and acceleration, deceleration,
stasis and ellipses in terms of
duration. Brian Richardson has since
updated Genette's model, arguing
that we need new categories to classify
time in postmodern fiction that has
largely been written since Genette
introduced his model. So Richardson
introduces six new categories: he
talks about circular timelines,  endings
that return to beginnings, contradictory
timelines in which incompatible or
irreconcilable versions of the same
story appear in one narrative, antinomic
timelines in narratives
that move backward in time, differential
timelines in which one chronology is
superimposed on another larger one,
conflated timelines apparently different
temporal zones fail to remain distinct, or
dual or multiple timelines, in which
different plot lines take different
timelines to unfold though they begin
and end of the same moment. Richardson is
eager to point out that given the
uncanny nature of these six categories
of narrative time these temporalities
are anti-mimetic and occur only in
fictional narratives and most commonly
postmodern narratives. So new ways of thinking
about time inherent to or associated with
the Anthropocene demand that we expand
these models. And indeed this expansion
has already begun, particularly in terms
of narrative duration. Rob Nixon's
concept of"slow violence" calls attention
to narratives that feature extreme
decelerations in duration and he
suggests that such situations tend to
accompany specific narrative structures.
The narratives that he sees as featuring
slow violence
are quote "slow-paced and open-ended" and
"elude tidy closure and
containment" unquote.
Llikewise the geological time scales
on which the Anthropocene is based
call for durations not easily
accommodated by Genette's original model.
According to Genette stasis is a
chronology in which the narrative time
exceeds the reading time. He conceives of
such moments as interruptions to the
narrative proper -- periods of description
in which the action of a narrative is
put on hold. But these new slow chronologies
suggest that we rethink
narrative stasis as not a pause in a
narrative plot but the very basis of the
plot itself.
Relatedly, temporalities associated with
the Anthropocene also expand our notion of
narrative duration by leading us to
think through rates of change, an aspect
of temporality the Genette under-
theorizes in his original model. The
debates concerning the temporalities of
extinction -- uniformitarianism versus the
discontinuity of the Alvarez hypothesis --
offer up to radically different notions
of duration. One, uniformitarianism, relies
on slow and steady durations in which
change progresses at a constant rate,
while the other, the Alvarez hypothesis,
envisages boom-and-bust rates of change
in which rapid periods of extinction
alternate with longer periods of
relative stability. An anthropocenic
narratology might thus accentuate rates
of change in narratives to better
analyze how time passes and to what
effects. In addition to these new types
of duration an anthropocenic narratology also
increases a repertoire of types
narrative frequency. Genette introduced
the notion of the iterative to best
describe a single narrative assertion
that covers several occurrences of the
same event. b But species recovery or
restoration ecology suggest a different
mode.l This type of iteration involves
not an exact recurrence of a particular
event, such as arrival of a new species
or the establishment of a new biotic
community, but an echo recurrence in
which the past arises again in the
present or future moment. Still other
Anthropocene temporalities increases a
repertoire of types of narrative order
and demand that we visit Richardson's
assertion that his categories of time
are anti-mimetic and thus restricted to
fictional narratives. We might for
example point to the collapsed time streams of
sea ontologies to argue that Richardson's
notion of conflated time is present in
the material world. In her work on sea
level rises and indigenous South Pacific
literature, Elizabeth DeLoughrey notes that
oceanic spaces tend to collapse time
such that quote "scientific discourse
positions the oceans as the evolutionary
origin of life on earth and given the
imminent threat of sea level rise, our
anticipated destiny" unquote. This
blending of the pas,t present, and future
reads remarkably similar to Richardson's
description of conflated temporalities
in narratives with quote "impossibly
scrambled historical references" unquote. Those are Richardon's words.
Of course we
can extend this more broadly to think
about the time-scales and -scapes of the
resilience of environmental toxins and
nuclear radiation in which past events
determine future times.
Let's shift now to thinking about
narrative space. The most robust theory
of narrative space that we have is
provided to us by David Herman in his
book Story Logic in which he sketches
out six different models of narartological
spatialization or narrative spatialization: the
diectic shift and is the phrase he use uses to
refer to the relocation of readers from
the here-and-now of their reading
environment to the virtual world of a
narrative. He speaks of figures vs
grounds or located objects vs reference
objects, respectively. Regions, landmarks,
and paths -- those are pretty
self-explanatory. Projective vs
topological locations: these are inherent
vs viewer related locations, respectively --
so the difference between a google map
and a dynamic walking tour of the same
area. Motion verbs, which Herman
argues exist along a continuum of
come-and-go and which help us place
ourselves in a narrative. And the "what/where"
system of nouns and spatial
prepositions
that also help us locate characters in a
narrative. An anthropocenic narratology,
just as with time, helps us refine and
add to the model of narrative space. None
of Herman's categories are particularly
useful for tracking representations of
underground space -- subterranean space of
course being at the heart of the
geologic straigraphy that helps
geologists and cosmetologists define the
Anthropocene as well as the original
source of the overwhelming amount of
displaced carbon that drives the rise of
global temperature. Many of Herman's
categories rely on bird's-eye views of
spac,e such as topological locations, or
at least experiences of space in which a
character and/or narrator can see and
chart progress through space. Regions,
landmarks, and paths, and figures vs
grounds are relevant here but what about
subterranean spaces which in the
monotony, darkness, and enclosure offer no
such distinguishing characteristics by
which to mark progress nor potentials
for top-down views? Similarly, the
representations of extraterranean  space --
aquatic and Atmospheric space -- also
demand that we expand Herman's model. His
model is useful for analyzing
representations of static or stable
space but less convenient for discussing
spaces that constantly shift and change
such as those underwater or in outer
space. That old proverb that you never step
into the same river twice illustrates
just how difficult it is to speak a
stable landmarks, regions, or paths
within aquatic environments, and indeed
aquatic and outer space environments (if
you pardon the pun) are pretty slippy.
Extra-terranean space can be so
alien has to be unknowable, so there are
no familiar regions, landmarks, or paths.
Also motion verbs become very
difficult to use here to place someone:
how can you describe up and down
for example when you are in atmosphere
with no gravity? Herman speaks of "fuzzy
temporalities," or temporal sequencing
that is strategically inexact and
that's difficult to chart along a clear
timeline. An anthropocenic narratology
would develop a corresponding category
of "fuzzy spatialization" or spatializing
information that is strategically unclear
or unchartable. And finally, an
anthropocenic narratology is
influenced by the idea that the whole
world has been affected by human
directed climate change and thus raises
a new concept of multilocality or, to
borrow Richardson's temporal term,  dual or
multiple spatialization. This
spatialization accounts not so much
for "here and here and here" as we might
generate by references to various
regions or landmarks but a "here in here
in here" that demands sensitivity to new,
interconnected and intermeshedd spatial
relations. For the next type of narrative
modeling I want to look at narration
and narrators, and i'm going to hearken
back to Genette once more to sketch out
his model quickly. So he introduces two
different criteria for categorizing and
labeling different types of narrators,
and the first criteria has to do with
narrative levels. So extradiegetic
narrators narrate a primary narrative
while intradiegetic narrators narrate a
story within a story. So think of the
difference here between Marlow and the
frame narrator in Conrad's Heart of
Darkness. The second criteria is the
relationship between the narrator and
the storyworld. So a heterodiegetic narrator is
not present in the story world and a
homdiegetic narrator is present in the story
world, and this is traditionally
difference between a third-person
omniscient narrator and a first-person
narrator. An anthropocenic narratology
surprisingly complicates this model.
In a recent essay on the Anthropocene
historian Dipresh Chakrabarty calls
for the need for humans to perceive
themselves as a as collective agents. He
discusses how a climate change crisis
suggests that humans have become quote "a
force of nature in the geological sense" unquote
and looks at the massive global
changes that have resulted from
industrialization to suggest that we
must now think of humans as a collective
agent acting together on a grand
planetary scale. He argues that we must
now have a second notion of humans as
having a collective history that
registers at the level of species even
though we can never experience ourselves
as a species.
Genette's model doesn't easily consider
the ability of the collective to generate a
common story but Richardson's Unnatural
Voices discusses the importance of
"we" narration to post-colonial narratives.
He explores collective narration in texts
by writers such as in Ngugi wa Thiong'o  and
concludes that "we" narration is most
often employed in texts seeking to
emphasize the construction and
maintenance of a poweful collective
identity. He writes the vast majority of
"we" texts valorize collective identity in
no uncertain terms. "We" is almost always a
favorite term and a desirable subject
position that is to be sought out and
inhabited so this stands in stark
contrast to Chakrabarty's
conceptualization of the species
collective, which is an unknowable and
undesirable subject position. An anthropocenic
narratology will thus aim to account for
this new idea of connectivity by
pluralizing and complicating our
understanding of collective narration. As
with Richardson's categories of temporal
time, it would also suggest that such
collective narration is not only a
mode of anti-mimeitc agency limited to
fictional modern and postmodern
narratives but also a form of agency
found in the material world. The emphasis
on the collective and the Anthropocene
also encourages us to rethink the
possibility of our omnicent narration or
an extradiegetic and heterodiegetic
narrator -- that is a primary narrator who is not
part of the storyworld. We must ask if it is
possible in this new epoch to narrate a
story from a singular, omniscient
subject position. The Anthropocene points
to the possibility of the heterodiegetic
and extradiegetic in two ways: one, an
emphasis on species agency in the
Anthropocene suggests that one can no
longer however above a world to narrate a
story. Humans in the Anthropocene are
collective geological agents and thus
human narrators in this epoch must tell
stories of which they are a part. Second,
species agency makes true heteodiegesis
problematic: no one in this epoch cannot
not experience the Anthropocene. You can't
be present --
you can't help but be present in this
world. You thus cannot simply be a witness
anymore.
You are always part of the collective
and thus an agent in the events of
which you narrate. It is impossible to tell
a story of others in this epoch that is
also not the story of yourself. In
addition to collective narration
Chakrabarty's notion of species agency
also offers up a second idea for an anthropocenic
narratology to grapple with, and
that is the idea of human exceptionalism.
The critique of human exceptionalism
within new materiaist scholarship is now
robust and think here of the work of
Stacy Alaimo, Karen Barad, and Jane
Bennet, among others, that stresses the
inter-connection and interdependence
of humans and their material
environments. In this epoch such scholars
argue you cannot think of humans as
isolated individual; we must think of
ourselves as part of a wider network of
biotic and material agents. Such concepts
of human/non-human intermeshing offer a
serious challenge to narrative. Narratologists
have long assumed that
a narrative persona informs every
narrative and that this narrative
persona is necessarily human, even if the
narrator is not. So I'm thinking here of
James Phelan's definition of narrative as
"somebody telling someone else on some
occasion and for some purpose that
something happened," which is undoubtedly
a human-centered definition. So an
anthropocenic narratology thus
queries how or even if narration can
illustrate the intertwining of the human
and non-human world. We find sympathetic
projects in two recent essays of the
nonhuman and narrative, and those are the
essay by Bernaerts and his colleagues on
non-human narrators and David Herman's
own work on "narratology beyond the
human," the first of which argues that
non-human narrators engage in a dialectic
of defamiliarization and
empathy, and the second of which tracks
the ways in which narrators and
narratives can intermesh characters
within wider biotic communities.
Despite the promising suggestions of
this work an anthropocenic narratology recognizes
that narrative is truly incapable of
meshing the human and non-human as it
cannot escape the human. It is
fundamentally an anthropogenic
rhetorical mode that always begins from
and foregrounds human methods of
communication and human experiences. In
other words, despite a particular
narrative's non-human narrator and/or
characters or its attempt to mesh human
characters into wider more than human
biotic communities, narrative as a mode
is impossible without the human and an anthropocenic
narratology will thus call into question
the popular material ecocritical claim
that non-human matter possesses quote
"narrative agency" unquote and has the
potential to produce its own stories.
I'm thinking here of the work of Serenella
Iovino and Serpil Opperman. A non-human
agents such as a dog a banknote or a
stone may be capable of expressing
agency in producing meaning, but that agency
requires a human narrator to be
rendered in a narrative. Yet an
anthropocenic narratology sees
narrative's emphasis on the human as an
appropriate starting place for
grappling with human exceptionalism and
its shortcomings. If we take seriously
the key idea of the Anthropocene that
humans are the problem -- we are the cause
of environmental crisis -- should not part
of our response to that problem be a
better understanding of how we imagine
an experience the world around us? An
anthropocenic narratology thus views
narrative as a useful guide to the human
exceptionalism that underlies this epoch.
We find cues for grappling with the
origins of today's crisis by exploring
this limitation of narrative. I want to
close by highlighting to similarities
between narrative and the Anthropocene
that bolster this idea that we stand to
better understand our future by studying
narrative, and the first is the clear
overlap between the timelines of the
Anthropocene and the popularity of
narrative
that suggests that narrative is the
dominant rhetorical mode of this epoch,
especially if we view the Anthropocene in
light of the rise of the novel. The dates
of the onset of the Anthropocene and the
rise of the novel certainly matchup. Now
geologists have recently declared the
Anthropocene is officially beginning in
1950 but of course we can look
back to the 18th century to the
beginnings of the Industrial and
colonial activity that helped to define
and shape the epoch and these origins
neatly correspond with the origins of
the novel. Of course Defoe first
published Robinson Caruso in 1719.
Indeed novels and the Anthropocene result
from the same set of conditions: early
secularism, scientific enlightenment,
empiricism, capitalism, materialism,
national consolidation, and the rise of
the middle class
(I'm citing Watts's work here on the rise
of the novel). But additional features of
early novels suggest the depth
of this connection. Novels offer readers
worlds dominated by human agents as
created by human agents. Think here of
Ralph Radar's definition of the novel as
quote "a work which offers the reader a
focal illusion of characters acting
autonomously as if in
the world of real experience within a
subsidiary awareness of an
underlying constructive authorial
purpose." Novels, according to Radar, best
simulate humans' real life perspective of
a relationship to the world around them
in the Anthropocene -- they are worlds in
which humans are the center of
that are created by humans. Early novels
are different from the romances and
allegories that predated them because
they
are about no one in particular. As
Katherine Gallagher argues, early
novels assume a correspondence
between a proper name in the believable
narrative and an embodied individual in
the real world. Early novels such as
Robinson Crusoe and others were thus
seen as representing humanity as a
whole,
such that the narrator of Henry Fielding's
Joseph Andrews states that his story
describes "not men but
manners, not an individual, but a species."
Obviously this narrator's notion of the
human species is markedly more limited
than Chakrabarty's, but yet the
argument that early novels placed
emphasis on the general instead of the
specific speaks to the notions of
connectivity that are so integral to our
understanding of the Anthropocene. So
these two ways that early novels are
evocative of some of the concepts
central to the Anthropocene -- this
world created by humans for humans and
then also this interest in the
collective. A second striking similarity
between narrative in the Anthropocene is
that both emphasize the effects of
humans writing the world. And indeed i
argue that we understand the
Anthropocene better by exploring and
thinking through the world creating
power of narratives. We distinguish the
Anthropocene from the Holocene by
acknowledging the capability of humans
to irrecoverably change the world.
Humans and his epoch have rewritten the
world to reflect their own activities
and attitudes towards themselves and
other species and matter. We literally
see the effects of this rewriting in the
inscription of human activity in
geological strata. A similar sense of
world making is fundamental to narrative.
This is a mode by which humans write
worlds in which to immerse themselves -- a
mode by which we create and then
emotionally and cognitively inhabit new
time- and space-scapes and experiences
when we read. Understanding that process
will surely give us insight into the
ways in which we enact similar processes
of world creation and inhabitation in
material non-narrative realms in this
epoch. Just as they provide us with safe
contexts within which to experience the
emotional states of others, narratives
also provide us with safe contexts
within which to study the world-making
processes that define the Anthropocene.
In other words, narratives
offer us powerful simulations of the
processes that have created the Anthropocene
We thus stand to understand our
destructive role in the latter by
graphing with the world-making power of
the former. Thanks so much for listening
to my talk! I hope to I'm listen to yours.
