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American Fantasy: Imaginative Landsc...

Dell, Aaron Christopher.

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American Fantasy: Imaginative Landscapes and Environmental Justice in Five American Writers' Work.

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	American Fantasy: Imaginative Landscapes and Environmental Justice in Five American Writers' Work./
Author:	Dell, Aaron Christopher.
Published:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, : 2020,
Description:	189 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 81-12, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International81-12A.
Subject:	American literature. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=27961022
ISBN:	9798617009417

American Fantasy: Imaginative Landscapes and Environmental Justice in Five American Writers' Work.
Dell, Aaron Christopher.

American Fantasy: Imaginative Landscapes and Environmental Justice in Five American Writers' Work. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2020 - 189 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 81-12, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2020.

This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.

This dissertation focuses on five North American novelists who, in the latter half of the 20th century, strategically broke from realism to advocate for environmental justice. It argues that Ursula K. Le Guin, Gerald Vizenor, Octavia E. Butler, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Karen Tei Yamashita use what I term fantastic realism to dramatize continuities between colonialism and capitalism and to envision alternatives to a dominant culture of whiteness, consumerism, and environmental harm. Situating the works that I discuss with respect to North American histories of genocide and oppression, and developing my readings in conversation with a range of critics of contemporary society, I make the case that politically-engaged imaginative literature can upset established ideologies and inspire new forms of relation.I argue that as a discourse and practice that combines respect for nature with the demand for social justice, environmental justice needs fantastic narratives. My dissertation echoes the concerns of critics and activists such as Wendell Berry, Vine Deloria, Jr., Rob Nixon, and Elizabeth Ammons by foregrounding texts that use science fiction, fantasy, and other reality-reshaping genres to name the lethal delusions of Western civilization. The texts I examine show that our destruction of the biosphere is not accidental or inevitable, but is related to patterns of oppression that have been imposed upon women, poor people, and people of color in North America for centuries; and they maintain that abolishing these patterns requires creating communities in which both ecological integrity and human difference are respected.My first chapter discusses Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea writings (1964-2018) to trace the movement from environmentalism to environmental justice. While Le Guin's novels and short stories begin by reproducing a version of environmentalism that is redolent of the British pastoral romance, I explain that they develop into a radical critique of patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and Western metaphysical dualism. Chapter Two then takes up Gerald Vizenor's Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart (1978) and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) to ask what life in America has been like for those excluded from dominant modes of fantasizing. The chapter argues that Vizenor and Butler use dystopian fiction to portray the continuity between colonial and capitalist phases of US history from Native American and Black points of view respectively.The importance of multiculturalism is reiterated in Chapter Three, which argues that Paolo Bacigalupi's portrayal of a drought-ravaged future-Southwest in The Water Knife (2015) under-represents Native American and Mexican American perspectives while reinforcing the myth that technology will solve environmental problems. More broadly, in emphasizing Bacigalupi's inattention to cultural and racial diversity, this chapter criticizes texts that trade on scientific predictions about the future without a commensurate regard for history. In my final chapter, I turn to a text that foregrounds multicultural realities, Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange (1997), which I argue uses magical realism to highlight the injustices of neoliberal economic globalization.I conclude with a reflection on how the critique of the colonial-capitalist mindset in the texts I discuss has changed my thinking about the environmental and environmental justice issues in my home state of North Carolina.

ISBN: 9798617009417Subjects--Topical Terms:

523234
American literature.
Subjects--Index Terms:

American fantasy

American Fantasy: Imaginative Landscapes and Environmental Justice in Five American Writers' Work.
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245 1 0 $a American Fantasy: Imaginative Landscapes and Environmental Justice in Five American Writers' Work.
260 1 $a Ann Arbor : $b ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, $c 2020
300 $a 189 p.
500 $a Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 81-12, Section: A.
500 $a Advisor: Ammons, Elizabeth.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2020.
506 $a This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.
520 $a This dissertation focuses on five North American novelists who, in the latter half of the 20th century, strategically broke from realism to advocate for environmental justice. It argues that Ursula K. Le Guin, Gerald Vizenor, Octavia E. Butler, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Karen Tei Yamashita use what I term fantastic realism to dramatize continuities between colonialism and capitalism and to envision alternatives to a dominant culture of whiteness, consumerism, and environmental harm. Situating the works that I discuss with respect to North American histories of genocide and oppression, and developing my readings in conversation with a range of critics of contemporary society, I make the case that politically-engaged imaginative literature can upset established ideologies and inspire new forms of relation.I argue that as a discourse and practice that combines respect for nature with the demand for social justice, environmental justice needs fantastic narratives. My dissertation echoes the concerns of critics and activists such as Wendell Berry, Vine Deloria, Jr., Rob Nixon, and Elizabeth Ammons by foregrounding texts that use science fiction, fantasy, and other reality-reshaping genres to name the lethal delusions of Western civilization. The texts I examine show that our destruction of the biosphere is not accidental or inevitable, but is related to patterns of oppression that have been imposed upon women, poor people, and people of color in North America for centuries; and they maintain that abolishing these patterns requires creating communities in which both ecological integrity and human difference are respected.My first chapter discusses Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea writings (1964-2018) to trace the movement from environmentalism to environmental justice. While Le Guin's novels and short stories begin by reproducing a version of environmentalism that is redolent of the British pastoral romance, I explain that they develop into a radical critique of patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and Western metaphysical dualism. Chapter Two then takes up Gerald Vizenor's Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart (1978) and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) to ask what life in America has been like for those excluded from dominant modes of fantasizing. The chapter argues that Vizenor and Butler use dystopian fiction to portray the continuity between colonial and capitalist phases of US history from Native American and Black points of view respectively.The importance of multiculturalism is reiterated in Chapter Three, which argues that Paolo Bacigalupi's portrayal of a drought-ravaged future-Southwest in The Water Knife (2015) under-represents Native American and Mexican American perspectives while reinforcing the myth that technology will solve environmental problems. More broadly, in emphasizing Bacigalupi's inattention to cultural and racial diversity, this chapter criticizes texts that trade on scientific predictions about the future without a commensurate regard for history. In my final chapter, I turn to a text that foregrounds multicultural realities, Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange (1997), which I argue uses magical realism to highlight the injustices of neoliberal economic globalization.I conclude with a reflection on how the critique of the colonial-capitalist mindset in the texts I discuss has changed my thinking about the environmental and environmental justice issues in my home state of North Carolina.
590 $a School code: 0234.
650 4 $a American literature. $3 523234
650 4 $a Environmental justice. $3 528369
653 $a American fantasy
653 $a Imaginative landscapes
653 $a Environmental justice
653 $a Le Guin, Ursula K.
653 $a Vizenor, Gerald
653 $a Butler, Octavia E.
653 $a Bacigalupi, Paolo
653 $a Yamashita, Karen Tei
690 $a 0591
690 $a 0619
710 2 $a Tufts University. $b English. $3 1022054
773 0 $t Dissertations Abstracts International $g 81-12A.
790 $a 0234
791 $a Ph.D.
792 $a 2020
793 $a English
856 4 0 $u http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=27961022