Our times are marked, perhaps even defined, by crisis: sanitary, economic, social and epistemic crises but also (and perhaps more prominently) ecological and climate crises, which gave rise to the "crisis of the imagination" identified by Lawrence Buell in 1995. Today, the matter stands unresolved, driving writer Amitav Gosh to declare: "the climate crisis is a crisis of culture, thus of the imagination." Confounded by the biological, geological and planetary scales of the crisis, humankind seems unable to coherently grasp, feel or represent the ongoing catastrophe.
In this seminar, we will read various novels, each of which addresses a recent crisis. We will ask ourselves how these texts deploy representations of contemporary crises in order to (critically) negotiate notions such as community, resilience, and the self and its relation to the other, as well as of narrative, nature, temporality, and the human/non-human distinction.
Students should be willing to read and thoroughly prepare several novels and to engage with theoretical issues. Regular and active participation is expected!
- Trainer/in: Johannes Schlegel