Book contents
- Climate and American Literature
- Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture
- Climate and American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Climate and Its Discontents
- Part II American Literary Climates
- Chapter 5 Climate and American Indian Literature
- Chapter 6 Colonial Climates
- Chapter 7 The Degeneration Thesis
- Chapter 8 The State of the Air in Post-Revolutionary America
- Chapter 9 The Higher Latitudes of the American Renaissance
- Chapter 10 Climate and the American West
- Chapter 11 Fictions of Health after Miasma
- Chapter 12 Naturalism, Regionalism, and Climate (In)determinism
- Chapter 13 American Modernisms and Climatology
- Chapter 14 Postmodern Climates
- Chapter 15 Frontiers of a Shrinking World
- Part III New Lines of Inquiry
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 13 - American Modernisms and Climatology
from Part II - American Literary Climates
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2021
- Climate and American Literature
- Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture
- Climate and American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Climate and Its Discontents
- Part II American Literary Climates
- Chapter 5 Climate and American Indian Literature
- Chapter 6 Colonial Climates
- Chapter 7 The Degeneration Thesis
- Chapter 8 The State of the Air in Post-Revolutionary America
- Chapter 9 The Higher Latitudes of the American Renaissance
- Chapter 10 Climate and the American West
- Chapter 11 Fictions of Health after Miasma
- Chapter 12 Naturalism, Regionalism, and Climate (In)determinism
- Chapter 13 American Modernisms and Climatology
- Chapter 14 Postmodern Climates
- Chapter 15 Frontiers of a Shrinking World
- Part III New Lines of Inquiry
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter offers a critical analysis of the relationship between postmodernism and the environment, in particular the climate and climatic change. It outlines an alternative understanding of postmodernism and the literature of the period that resists normative assumptions regarding culture eclipsing nature during this postmodern period. Reading across canonical postmodern texts, genre fiction, and social movements literature, it identifies within this body of work a persistent preoccupation with resource scarcity, pollution, environmental degradation, and, in particular, anthropogenic climate change. Arguing that this tendency with postmodernism necessitates a rethinking of the archives of climate literature, this chapter argues that the period designation "postmodern" names a transition point in how climate is imagined, a period within which we can identify the emergence of an understanding of the global climate that is focused increasingly on environmental threats, their predictive modeling, and the cumulative effects of industrial and nuclear civilization.
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- Information
- Climate and American Literature , pp. 226 - 241Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021