Literary ecology

Protocol: Christina Pfänder

Gabriele Dürbeck: As a literary and cultural studies scholar, I believe it is essential not to leave the discourse around nature, species extinction and the climate crisis solely to the natural sciences. For more than ten years I have been addressing questions of ecocriticism, an approach in literary studies that originally comes from the Anglo-American region. It studies how ecological issues are dealt with in literature and reflects on the role humans play in the ecological fabric, including on a planetary scale.

Simon Probst: Yes, and it was questions of a planetary nature that led me to become involved in ecocriticism. Especially questions about the Anthropocene, a central concept in ecocriticism – originating in the field of geology, it describes humankind’s massive impact on natural processes. What particularly interests me is ecocriticism’s openness to an interdisciplinary approach: literature enters into dialogue with the natural and social sciences to rethink cultural processes at the planetary level. The close ties between nature and culture are especially evident for example in feminist and postcolonial ecocriticism, which links ecological destruction to social oppression.

Dürbeck: This interdisciplinary dialogue has been pursued since roughly 2010 under the umbrella of the environmental humanities, an area of study that encompasses environmental history and philoso­phy, cultural geography and political ecology, amongst other fields. It puts forward the view that the climate crisis cannot be resolved by technology alone but requires profound critical engagement at the cultural, social and ethical levels: if people’s consciousness changes, their actions will in the long term too.

Probst: As far as the environmental humanities are concerned, I believe it is vital for critical reflection on cultural patterns, values and traditions to be part of an ecological response. One key advantage of ecocriticism is that it shines the spotlight on the way in which different epochs, genres and aesthetic traditions have left their ecological mark. For example, the Romantic era continues to influence our concepts of nature to this day – be it the dangers posed by mountain landscapes or our fascination with the diversity of nature. Their ecological dimensions have only been discovered in recent years, however.

Dürbeck: That makes me think of Joseph von Eichendorff, one of the most important nature poets. Rather than merely romanticising nature, his poems can also be interpreted as a reaction to our alienation from nature since the beginning of the industrial era. Some of his songs about forest solitude and wanderings already sound like a poetic response to experiences of loss in the modern age, such as deforestation and resource exploitation. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, it is almost impossible for authors these days to ignore ecological aspects, even if they do not address them explicitly.

Probst: That’s exactly what I find so interesting: there are approaches in literary studies that claim that the Anthropocene features in cultural products even when this is not consciously intended. The British literature and film expert Mark Bould for example talks about an “Anthropocene unconscious” that is evident not only in disaster movies but also in seemingly innocuous depictions of luxury, consumerism or lifestyles.

Dürbeck: At the same time, however, new ­genres have emerged that often address the climate crisis explicitly in dystopian scenarios – such as eco-thrillers, climate fiction, ecocinema and ­nature writing.

Probst: And it’s fascinating to see how climate fiction, long belittled as a niche genre, has now made it into the literary mainstream. The best example is Kristine Bilkau’s novel “Halbinsel” (“Peninsula”, available only in German), which has won this year’s Leipzig Book Fair Prize.

“If people’s consciousness changes, their actions will in the long term too.”

Professor Gabriele Dürbeck

Dürbeck: Another contemporary text, Robert Macfarlane’s book “Underland. A Deep Time Journey”, provided the impetus for our current research project “Natural-Cultural Memory in the Anthropocene”. The book explores underground sites such as the Karst caves in the Julian Alps and the glaciers of eastern Greenland, which are retreating faster than any other in the world. ­Macfarlane sees ice as having a memory, believing that it remembers details such as the pollution of the air in Ancient Rome or volcanic eruptions, and brings about a consciousness of the consequences of the dramatic pace of glacial melt.

Probst: Our project has been able to show that an awareness of the interwoven nature of human and planetary history is emerging in our cultural mem­ory, an awareness that humans are part of this ­planet and, in destroying it, are harming themselves. For us it is about learning lessons for the future from the Earth’s history.

Dürbeck: In a second project that is currently under­way on future discourses in Lower Saxony, local residents tell their own personal climate stories, such as what they have observed in their own gardens and how there is one hot summer after an­other, making heat-resistant plants necessary, while a forester uses the annual growth rings of a section of tree to show how they tell their own story of ever longer warm periods. We compare such stories with the overarching narratives of natural-cultural transformation. This makes it clear that the awareness of the threat posed by the climate crisis has long since become part of our everyday life, and that very concrete work is being done to find solutions. —

Professor Gabriele Dürbeck is a Professor of Litera­ture and Cultural Studies at the University of Vechta, where she heads the project “Natural-Cultural Memory in the Anthropocene” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). She has taught in Cameroon and Australia as a DAAD short-term lecturer.

Dr Simon Probst did his PhD in German studies (modern German literature) at the University of Vechta. He is a research associate in the DFG project “Natural-Cultural Memory in the Anthropocene”.