Appositions: The Future in Solarpunk and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Katarzyna Więckowska

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.12.21

Authors

Katarzyna Więckowska Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3408-3695

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.12.21

Keywords:

solarpunk, post-apocalyptic fiction, future, dystopia, Anthropocene

Abstract

The essay discusses images of the future in solarpunk and post-apocalyptic fiction, focusing on their distinct approach to the narratives of progress, science, and individualism. The dystopian perspective of post-apocalyptic fiction is juxtaposed with the hopeful stance of solarpunk stories in order to outline the attempts to move beyond environmental pessimism and to imagine a liveable future. A reading of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes’s The Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), and Omar El Akkad’s American War (2017) provides an overview of early 21^st-century dystopian motifs and visions, while the ideas and development of solarpunk fiction are discussed on the basis of three anthologies of short stories: Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Ecospeculation (2017), Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers (2018), and Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures (2021). The aim of the essay is to argue that apocalyptic and solarpunk fiction stand in a relationship of apposition to one another, representing dominant and emergent structures of feeling.

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Author Biography

Katarzyna Więckowska, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń

Katarzyna Więckowska (PhD, D.Litt.) is Associate Professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. Her research interests include ecocriticism, feminist criticism, and contemporary British literature; her most recent work focuses on hauntology, precarity, and post-anthropocentric ethics of care. She is the author of Spectres of Men: Masculinity, Crisis, and British Literature (2014), On Alterity: A Study of Monstrosity and Otherness (2008), and numerous articles on literatures in English.

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