New Ecological Realisms: Post-Apocalyptic Fiction and Contemporary Theory

Description

Monika Kaup pairs post-apocalyptic novels by Margaret Atwood, José Saramago, Octavia Butler and Cormac McCarthy with new realist theories from Bruno Latour, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela, Markus Gabriel, Jean-Luc Marion and Alphonso Lingis. She shows that, just as new realist theory can illuminate post-apocalyptic literature, post-apocalyptic literature can illuminate new theories of the real. Kaup showcases a context-based concept of the real. She argues that new realisms of complex and embedded wholes, actor-networks and ecologies - not the old realisms of isolated parts and things - represent the most promising escape from the impasses of constructivism and positivism. New Ecological Realisms Copyright Contents Series Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1 New Ecological Realisms and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction The New Realism of the Factish and the Political Ecology of Humans and Non-Humans: Bruno Latour and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy 3 The Ontology of Knowledge as the Enaction of Mind and World: Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s Autopoietic Theory and Jose Saramago’s Blindness 4 Apocalypse as Field of Sense: Markus Gabriel’s Ontology of Fields of Sense and Octavia Butler’s Parable Series 5 New Phenomenologies after Poststructuralism (Jean-Luc Marion and Alphonso Lingis) and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road Bibliography Index