What if: the literary case for more climate change

Burnett, Lucy (2019) What if: the literary case for more climate change. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 26 (4). pp. 901-923. ISSN 1076-0962

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Abstract

In recent years, contemporary climate change discourse has become dominated by the trope ‘what if’. Yet far from operating such as to open up new ways of thinking, across political scientific and literary spheres, answers to the trope close down around accounts of catastrophe, framed by a mitigation agenda intent on solving the problem before it’s too late. This paper critiques the ideological problems associated with this perspective on climate change, and presents a provocative three-part literary manifesto which explores how creative literary practice might explore ‘more climate change’ as opposed to ‘less’.