When asked your nationality, do not say you are a citizen of Athens or Syracuse, but say you are a citizen of the world.
- Diogenes of Sinope (attrib.) We categorize literature by the author’s nationality, region, language, ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, neurology, etc. These have to do with identities that are (mostly) foisted upon one at birth. Sometimes they are sources of rich subject-matter and a generalized sense of belonging or pride; but often they are created by a shared history of oppression and exploitation. Some embrace categories, some have categories thrust upon them. Or both. In any event, one result of such demographic categories is a built-in audience. Many protagonists in novels or speakers in poems have a lot of the author in them – or at least, the author’s experience has informed them. And if you can relate to a character’s or speaker’s experience, you are more likely to want to read a book. If you are a member of a marginalized or oppressed group, such work can be liberating, affirming, edifying. If you are a member of a hegemonic group within a particular society, you might read some books to find out more about people whose lives may be both different from yours and invisible to you, or to signal your solidarity with (or sympathy for) the marginalized communities represented by those works. Add in the global climate disaster, and things get more complicated. The Bangladeshi author probably will perceive global heating very differently than someone in the midwestern U.S. The person who grew up in the big house on the hill may see things differently than the poor folks living in the bottoms. These differences naturally (or unnaturally) will affect a writer’s product, directly or indirectly. There have been a lot of works of literature about Katrina, many with the category tag “African-American studies” or “-poetry,” etc. That hurricane was a disaster – beyond disaster – for the African-American community of New Orleans. But I think there is a tendency, esp. among white Americans, to see it purely as an African-American disaster. While it’s true that there is a correlation between the wealth and clout of the community and the hardness of the infrastructure, and while “climate apartheid” is real, those in the high rent district should not rest easy – just ask the folks in Pacific Palisades. In fact, the climate disaster is a Texas disaster, a disaster for the northeast, a Miami Beach disaster, a disaster for the “redneck Riviera,” a disaster for Japan as well as Bangladesh. Most “climate activists” in the global north are white and middle-class in origin – it’s hard to deny those demographics. To the extent that there is a built-in audience for climate fiction or poems dealing with the Anthropocene extinction, that would be it. Maybe these books should have “Environmental studies/White studies” on the back cover. But that would be equally short-sighted. Publishers, editors, professors may just add the word “climate studies” to labels denoting nationality, region, language, ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, neurology, etc., when classifying books – as though the global climate were a niche. Indeed, the hardships being induced by climate chaos are dividing people – causing wars, in fact. It can cause everyone to hunker down, shelter in place, circle the wagons (Omar El-Akkad’s book American War, for instance, is one scenario where this happens). The problem is that (a.) anthropogenic climate change affects everyone on the planet; (b.) it affects some sooner, more frequently, and more catastrophically than others; (c.) that disparity prevents the privileged from taking it personally. But there is no “human studies”* or “entire-population-of-planet-earth fiction.” It’s too big a topic. It wouldn’t sell anyway – it would try to appeal to everyone, which means readers would not be able to identify with it. And this is the big problem: humans can’t really think in terms of humanity. We think in terms of the facts on the ground – our ground, whatever that may mean. The most that we can hope from literary writers is that they become aware, not only of what the climate crisis is doing to their community, but what the same trends are doing to other parts of the world. Indeed, writers have explored the ways that colonialism, writ large, has affected people across borders; more recently, others have registered the effects of neoliberal political economy, how it connects the part of the world they are writing about with others, and the local to the global. Imaginative literature can on occasion link the local and specific to the global and more abstract, when expository writing doesn’t do the trick. And that is what the climate crisis demands of us. “Cosmopolitanism” was an in-thing in academia a few years ago. But it’s a rather general concept, not sexy enough to go viral. I think the most that we can hope for from “creative” writers is some awareness of what a hotter, more chaotic atmosphere and oceans are doing to their characters, communities, and concerns, and at least a vague awareness that it affects others as well – in some cases, at least as severely, if not more so. ________________ * Unless one considers anthropology as such. But how much anthropological drama and poetry is out there?
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |