Contemporary Fiction and Climate Uncertainty: Narrating Unstable Futures

Abstract

As one of the forerunners of econarratology, Marco Caracciolo has been devoting himself to enriching the patterns and methods of this contextual approach to narratology. Contemporary Fiction and Climate Uncertainty: Narrating Unstable Futures, the final volume of his NARMESH trilogy, explores both formal and experiential dimensions of narrative through an ecological and ecocritical perspective and demonstrates “how reading narrative (or engaging with narrative in other media) may train audiences in the acceptance or embrace of ecological uncertainty as a fundamental dimension of the experience of the present” (ix).The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and a coda. Taking a cue from contemporary narrative theories, Caracciolo in the introduction brings out the idea of narrative’s “negotiation” of uncertainty in an era of ecological crisis. In his opinion, narrative can help us come to grips with an unknowable future, especially when the “ontological security” of our lives is fundamentally threatened (4). By offering formal tools, literary narrative can cultivate readers’ affective and ethical acceptance of uncertainty. Therefore, in the chapters thereafter, he aims to discover the types of stories that might be most effective in adapting readers to the instability of the future, and the aspects of those stories that should be focused on to cultivate readers’ embrace of uncertainty.In Chapter 1, “Uncertainty in the Future Tense,” Caracciolo begins with temporality, a fundamental dimension of narrative, to explore narrative’s engagement with uncertainty. Before detailed textual analysis, he urges us to grasp four distinct but interrelated aspects of temporality in the new era of climate change: futurity; individual as well as collective temporal experience; the narratological significance of telling a future-oriented story and future-tense narration and parallel storyworlds as narrative strategies in contemporary fiction but significantly different from those in postmodernist literature. Taking Jesse Kellerman’s Controller (2018) and Jeff VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts (2019) as case studies, Caracciolo identifies future-tense narration and parallel storyworld-building as experimental narrative forms attempting to represent the affective and imaginative complexity of the climate crisis and having the potential to foster readers’ embrace of uncertainty.Chapter 2, “Pathways to Unstable Worlds,” re-examines another fundamental parameter of narrative, spatiality. Caracciolo’s discussion begins with “storyworlds,” a concept introduced by David Herman to narratology and the basis for Erin James’s econarratology. He then proposes that the destabilization of (story)worlds can be represented in four aspects: oscillation, erasure, fragmentation, and floating. However, Caracciolo reiterates that these are not completely developed narrative types but adaptable formal devices existing in different genres and contexts, such as postmodernist works. Though similar narrative strategies may be deployed in contemporary fiction, they are relevant to current ecological issues and have the potential to arouse readers’ affective resonance to the crisis.Chapter 3, “Strange Animals and Metonymic Mysteries,” discusses how uncertainty can be negotiated via the narrative’s nonhuman characters. Caracciolo claims the opacity and impenetrability of nonhuman characters’ minds are of narratological values, for the inability to penetrate the animals’ minds may reflect the unpredictability of human’s future on the verge of a global ecological disaster. Unlike the reading strategy of “empathetic perspective-taking,” his negotiation of uncertainty invites readers to shift from an anthropocentric reading strategy to a strategy emphasizing human and nonhuman interconnectivity, foregrounding a sense of human responsibility toward nonhuman life. He calls our attention that the reading of nonhuman unknowability is metonymic, not symbolic; he further explains “what establishes an association between animals and unknowability is not a symbolic leap but the realization of a metonymic contiguity between humans and animals within ecosystemic relations” (104).Drawing from debates on ontology in anthropology and narrative theory, Chapter 4, “The Meta and the Uncertain,” explores the role of metafiction in contemporary narrative negotiations of uncertainty. Metafictional devices are apparent features of postmodernist fiction, however, in Caracciolo’s opinion, such devices in contemporary narrative can “generate forms of ethical and epistemological uncertainty that resonate strongly with the ecological crisis” (109). Through detailed analysis of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) and J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year (2008), he demonstrates that the two writers develop metafictional and metaleptic strategies to challenge ontological categorization between human and nonhuman, thus cultivating readers’ acceptance of the instability caused by the ecological crisis.Chapter 5, “Deus Ex Algorithmo,” examines the attempts of contemporary narrative to confront hesitations and instabilities brought about by the ecological crisis. Through reinterpreting the classical trope of “deus ex machina,” Caracciolo coins the term “deus ex algorithmic” to refer to artificial intelligence deploying algorithmic strategies to solve problems such as nuclear proliferation and global warming. By identifying biophysical forces in the case studies, respectively, that is, quantum uncertainty in Mitchell’s Ghostwritten (2001) and the self-organizing logic of complex systems in Richard Powers’s The Overstory (2018), he further summarizes that the two writers’ solution to today’s crisis lies in the endings of each novel—humanity’s collective future is largely in the intervention of a nonhuman agency of computational intelligence.Chapter 6, “Ecologies of Interactive Narrative,” investigates algorithmic in a literal sense through the analysis of digital narratives. Caracciolo argues that the encounter of narrative and gameplay offers unique possibilities for staging the uncertainty of our ecological predicament (157). The interactivity of video games also offers a prominent form for capturing the ecological crisis with complex and multilinear characteristics. By examining Heaven’s Vault (Inkle 2019) and Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer 2020), two story-focused games as case studies, he not only identifies a remarkable level of narrative sophistication and a higher sense of mystery the game medium has achieved but also the ethics of decision-making in an unstable and enigmatic world that is beyond human grasp. It is the player’s experience of deep involvement in a logic of choice that sets these games apart from the novelistic engagements with uncertainty he examined in the previous chapters.In the coda, by examining some online reviews of Jenny Offill’s Weather (2020), Caracciolo discusses the emotional resonances between climate uncertainty and the outbreak of coronavirus disease. He reinforces the role of narrative in cultivating readers’ response and creating conditions for psychological and societal resilience and calls for educational institutions to mediate and amplify such formative effects.Generally speaking, three notable strengths can be identified in Caracciolo’s monograph. First, it is his ambition to launch a mode of reading to confront today’s ecological uncertainty. Unlike Erin James, who calls for a better understanding of the status quo through a series of new narrative forms to mitigate the environmental crisis, Caracciolo emphasizes the role of narrative as formal tools to cultivate readers’ embrace of uncertainty, which he considers as an essential skill in the face of ecological crisis. We need not only to explore the reciprocality between narrative and the Anthropocene but also to learn how to co-exist with climate change that is beyond our control. Caracciolo’s mode of reading proposes an alternative for us to live against the background of crisis and uncertainty and may have effects to relieve anxiety and stress.Second, Caracciolo follows the trend of narratology as intersectional and intermedial. On the one hand, his approach to narrative bears the strong feature of intersectionality, as he not only bridges the gap between narratology, ecocriticism, and affect studies within literary studies, but also crosses the boundaries of climate science, computer science, algorithmics, and game studies to integrate them into his case studies. On the other hand, his selection of works across genres, motifs, ethnicities, and media not only demonstrates his wide scope of reading and research as well as the intermediality of his contextual approach to narrative but also attests to the compatibility and applicability of his mode of reading.Third, he organizes his chapters and textual analysis in a systematic and user-friendly way. The first three chapters deal with basic parameters of storytelling, that is, time, space, and characters; from Chapters 4 to 6, the focus has been shifted to more particularized but still more formal engagements with uncertainty in the future: metafiction, uneasy closure, and interactive narrative of videogames. As for textual analysis, he infuses abundant background materials into his case studies, which facilitates readers’ comprehension of his central topics and claims. Besides, these analyses are all presented in an accessible manner, which makes it much easier for readers to follow his line of thought and apply it to their own critical practice.In addition, Caracciolo adds a caveat for us that to accept the reality of climate change “does not imply indifference or nihilism, or a sense that all choices are equally undesirable” (179). His objective is to identify “the mental and affective resources that are required to transform anxiety at an unstable future into a nuanced appreciation of instability” (18). Indeed, the shaping powers for our climate future are beyond the control of any single person or any institution.Climate change, with uncertainty and unpredictability as its inevitable dimension, may cause anxiety and depression. How to cope with such a situation and how to arrive at a meaningful cultural negotiation with such uncertainty is hotly debated among scholars from various fields. By launching a new mode of reading, Caracciolo’s monograph not only offers a new contribution to the debate but also enriches the patterns in the burgeoning field of econarratology, thus broadening the frame through which we view narrative and climate change.