Matthew Scheider-Mayerson - Yale-NUS College, Singapore (Division of Social Sciences)

Overview of Study

What is Slow Violence?

Nixon (Slow Violence, Perceptions of Time in Relation to Climate Change) observed that climate change poses a formidable representational challange: the production of greenhous gases is so discoupled from its accretive consequences (sometimes decades or centuries later) humans struggle to recognise them.

How can Climate Fiction as a present day object help tackle climate change?

Climate fiction can serve as a good cultural object to provoke dialogue. It can help end the 'spiral of silence' around climate change.

How do conservatives and progressives differ in their response to climate fiction?

Conservatives respond with further skepticism, which often reinforces their position. The dystopia often portrayed in cli-fi can often cause conservates to discount all talk about climate change. Progressives usually have their belief reinforced, and move from 'conserned' and 'anxious' to 'alarmed'

In what ways does Climate Fiction help readers imagine the possible future?

Given that many works of climate change are set decades into the future, cli-fi often helps readers draw connections between their current actions and their consequences. In other words, it can help make readers aware of the 'slow violence' of climate change for the first time. It can also help readers visualise the future for the first time, making something that was abstract and vague and turning it into something concrete.

Notes

Climate fiction allows readers to visualise the shift caused by climate change: takes something that was abstract and vague and turn it into something concrete

Given that many works of climate fiction are set decades or centuries in the future, but explicitly draw connections to our actions in the present, it is not surprising that some readers reported reconfiguring their temporal perception of environmental processes or becoming aware of the 'slow violence' of climate change for the first time. (ref)

By explicitly framing familiar experiences such as anxiety, depression, loss, grief, and regret as related to climate change, these novels provided many readers with a vivid sense of the granular and quotidian impacts of unimaginably large-scale changes.

ref: Nixon, Slow Violence. As Nixon observed, Climate Change poses a formidable representational challenge, since the origin of its slow violence (the production of greenhouses gases, the destruction of carbon sinks) is decoupled from its accretive consequences (which ovvus decades or centuries later). On the conflict between modern human and climatic (or geological) temporalities, see Pahl et all., Perceptions of Time in Relation to Climate Change

<aside> 🌲 A common positive impact that Climate Fiction had was to serve as a cultural object to provoke dialogue. This is particularly valuable given the 'spiral of silence' about climate change, even among the concerned

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<aside> 🌲 As Manjana Milkoreit suggested: "cli-fi can serve as both an individual literary journey as well as a shared cognitive-emotional experience that connects readers regardless of various differences, becmoing an entry point for conversations about the future people want to persue" (Milkoreit, the Promise of Climate Fiction, 180)

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