Future Desert: Wastelands Imaginaries of the Anthropocene
Name of applicant
Rune Graulund
Institution
University of Southern Denmark
Amount
DKK 711,000
Year
2020
Type of grant
Monograph Fellowships
What?
In a world governed by rising temperatures, uncontrollable wildfires, decade long droughts and extreme weather, the image of a future desert planet is evoked on a routine basis. Hypothesizing that the notion of 'future desert' acts as one of two master tropes of the Anthropocene (the other being the flood), the monograph Future Desert: Wasteland Imaginaries of the Anthropocene will therefore explore the cultural significance of the desert in imagined futures of catastrophic collapse caused by anthropogenic change. The central research question is thus: if 'the Anthropocene itself can usefully be understood as a science fiction trope', how and why has the image of a 'future desert' come to stand as a trope for anthropogenic change in general and for global warming in particular?
Why?
The monograph will build its methodological foundations on Elizabeth DeLoughrey's recent decolonial/ecologist work on 'allegory' as being 'the fundamental rhetorical mode for figuring the planet as well as the historical rift between part and whole that is symbolized by the Anthropocene'. In addition to this, the intersection of science fiction studies with disaster studies through imaginaries of worst case scenarios is significant, as is the manner in which 'science fiction infuses science and vice versa' through futurist projections of present and potential technologies and their latent dystopian/utopian outcomes.
How?
While literary in nature in its focus on narrative and allegory, the project is willfully eclectic in its selection of 'texts' analyzed. Including examples from literature over film, computer games, journalism, photography and fine arts that employ 'future desert' imagery in order to conceptualize forms of potential planetary catastrophic collapse, the monograph will offer a comprehensive analysis of a multi-generic corpus of material that covers a wide range of scenarios of catastrophic anthropogenic change, e.g. global warming, nuclear warfare, pollution, or deforestation.