“Enlightenment Is a Shared Enterprise”: Tree Ecosystems and the Legacy of Modernity in Richard Powers’s The Overstory

Katarzyna Ostalska

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.12.17

Authors

Katarzyna Ostalska University of Lodz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8553-7517

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.17

Keywords:

contemporary American environmental fiction, Richard Powers, ecology, modernity, Enlightenment, tree ecosystem, Buddhism

Abstract

In Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Overstory (2018) the theme of the novel is the forest ecosystem, with a special emphasis placed on trees, upon whose developmental model the processes of (organic and industrial) growth are scrutinized in this novel. This article examines tree-human assemblages in detail to see how they exchange their material agency and how they relate to the e/Enlightenment project. The essay also explores Powers’s novel to examine how Buddhist values of spiritual enlightenment are contextualized within European Enlightenment and how decentred humanity finds its place among other non-human beings. Apart from fictitious characters from The Overstory, the article draws upon the research of real-life scientists who inspired the creation of Powers’s protagonists: Prof. Simard and Dr. Beresford-Kroeger, along with the work of anthropologist Anna Tsing. In addition, eco-solutions concerning the tree ecosystem (i.e. bio-planning and the seed banks) coming from the scientific field and the field of literature (Powers) are examined to see if today’s progressive ideas can function in the world of the—still, to a large extent, “regressive”—structures of modernity’s legacy. I conclude by arguing that the novel shows that the Enlightenment project is not compatible with the well-being and long-term survival of both humans and non-human beings.

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Author Biography

Katarzyna Ostalska, University of Lodz

Katarzyna Ostalska (née Poloczek), D.Litt., is Assistant Professor in the Department of British Literature and Culture at the University of Lodz, Poland. She is the head of the Posthumanities Research Centre at the Faculty of Philology. Her research is concerned with Utopian studies, posthumanism (mainly New Materialisms and object-oriented ontology), contemporary Irish and British literature and culture, gender studies, animal studies, ecofeminism, and media studies. Her Towards Female Empowerment—The New Generation of Irish Women Poets: Vona Groarke, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitríona O’Reilly, and Mary O’Donoghue (2015) analyzed the areas (with a special emphasis on ecofeminism) from where female empowerment can be drawn. In 2021, with Tomasz Fisiak she co-edited The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia: Intersectional, Feminist, and Non-Binary Approaches in 21^st-Century Speculative Literature and Culture (Routledge).

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