Cookie Consent by FreePrivacyPolicy.com
Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Special Issue Articles

Vol. 5 No. 2 (2024): Narrative, Environment, Social Justice

The "Colonial Anthropocene" Imaginary: Re-Imagining Climate Change in Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018)

Submitted
October 15, 2023
Published
2024-06-18

Abstract

Climate imaginaries – collectively held visions of future climate change – take shape in a variety of media and genres, from computer models to poetry. While some climate imaginaries have proven particularly enduring and have managed to attain a hegemonic status in climate change discourse – for example, the "techno-market" imaginary and the "climate apocalypse" imaginary – others remain marginalized. Drawing on Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018), this article theorizes the "colonial Anthropocene" imaginary as an alternative imaginary and examines its co-production at the intersection of academic discourses, activism, and literature. The "colonial Anthropocene" imaginary generally and Moon of the Crusted Snow specifically negotiate ideological tensions that have emerged in the discourse on the Anthropocene and forge a connection between the seemingly exceptional event of anthropogenic climate change and a historical sequence of colonial violence and forced displacement of Indigenous peoples. As one of this imaginary's manifestations in the literary domain, Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) embeds climate change into a longer story that begins with settler colonialism on the North American continent by drawing on an equally old genre: the Indian captivity narrative. Significantly, the "colonial Anthropocene" imaginary is a reaction to the impulse toward claims to universality resurfacing in the discourse on the Anthropocene, particularly in the notion of "the human."

References

  1. Alter, Alexandra. "'We've Already Survived an Apocalypse': Indigenous Writers Are Changing Sci-Fi." The New York Times, 14 Aug. 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/books/indigenous-native-american-sci-fi-horror.html.
  2. Anthropocene Working Group. "Working Group on the 'Anthropocene.'" Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, 21 May 2019, quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/.
  3. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minnesota UP, 1996.
  4. Bergthaller, Hannes, and Eva Horn. The Anthropocene: Key Issues for the Humanities. Routledge, 2020.
  5. Blaser, Mario. "Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe: Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology." Current Anthropology, vol. 54, no. 5, 2013, pp. 547–68.
  6. Blood Quantum. Directed by Jeff Barnaby, Prospector Films, 2019.
  7. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. "The Human Condition in the Anthropocene." The Tanner Lectures in Human Values, 18 Feb. 2015, Yale UP. Roundtable Discussion. https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resources/documents/a-to-z/c/Chakrabarty%20manuscript.pdf.
  8. Colley, Linda. "Perceiving Low Literature: The Captivity Narrative." Essays in Criticism, vol. 53, no. 3, 2003, pp. 199–218.
  9. Crutzen, Paul J., and Eugene F. Stoermer. "The 'Anthropocene.'" Global Change Newsletter, vol. 41, 2000, pp. 17–18.
  10. Davis, Heather, and Zoe Todd. "On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene." ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, vol. 16, no. 4, 2017, pp. 761–80.
  11. Davoudi, Simin, and Ruth Machen. "Climate Imaginaries and the Mattering of the Medium." Geoforum, vol. 137, 2022, pp. 203–12, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.11.003.
  12. De Vos, Laura Maria. "Spiralic Temporality and Cultural Continuity for Indigenous Sovereignty: Idle No More and The Marrow Thieves." Transmotion, vol. 6, no. 2, 2020, pp. 1–42.
  13. Dillon, Grace L. "Imagining Indigenous Futurisms." Introduction. Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, edited by Grace Dillon, Arizona UP, 2012, pp. 1–12.
  14. Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. Cormorant Books Inc., 2017.
  15. Dimock, Wai Chee. Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival. Chicago UP, 2020.
  16. Ebersole, Gary L. Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity. Virginia UP, 1995.
  17. Ellis, Erle. "Why I Resigned from the Anthropocene Working Group." Anthroecology Lab, 13 July 2023, https://www.anthroecology.org/why-i-resigned-from-the-anthropocene-working-group/.
  18. Fagan, Madeleine. "Who's Afraid of the Ecological Apocalypse? Climate Change and the Production of the Ethical Subject." The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 19, no. 2, 2017, pp. 225–44.
  19. Fluck, Winfried. Das kulturelle Imaginäre: Eine Funktionsgschichte des Amerikanischen Romans 1790–1900. Suhrkamp, 1997.
  20. Ghosh, Amitav. The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. John Murray, 2021.
  21. Gómez-Barris, Macarena. "The Colonial Anthropocene: Damage, Remapping, and Resurgent Resources." Antipode Online, 19 Mar. 2019, pp. 1–12, https://antipodeonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/book-review-essay_gomez-barris-the-colonial-anthropocene-1.pdf.
  22. Gross, Lawrence W. "The Comic Vision of Anishinaabe Culture and Religion." American Indian Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 3, 2002, pp. 436–59, www.jstor.org/stable/4128493.
  23. Heise, Ursula. "Comparative Ecocriticism in the Anthropocene." Komparatistik: Jahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, edited by Christian Moser and Linda Simonis, Synchron, 2014, pp. 19–30.
  24. Heise, Ursula. Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species. Chicago UP, 2016.
  25. Hornung, Alfed. "North America." Handbook of Autobiography/Autofiction, edited by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 1205–62, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110279818.
  26. Huhndorf, Shari M. Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination. Cornell UP, 2001.
  27. Indiana, Rita. Tentacle. Translated by Achy Obejas, And Other Stories, 2018.
  28. James, Erin. Narrative in the Anthropocene. Ohio State UP, 2022.
  29. Jasanoff, Sheila. "Future Imperfect: Science, Technology and the Imaginations of Modernity." Dreamscapes of Modernity: Socio-Technical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power, edited by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang Hyun Kim, Chicago UP, 2015, pp. 1–33.
  30. Levy, David L., and André Spicer. "Contested Imaginaries and the Cultural Political Economy of Climate Change." Organization, vol. 20, no. 5, 2013, pp. 659–78, https://doi.org/10.1177/1350508413489816.
  31. Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. "Defining the Anthropocene." Nature, vol. 519, 2015, pp. 171–80.
  32. Linne, Lena. "Meta-Epic Reflection in Twenty-First-Century Rewritings of Homer, or: The Meta-Epic Novel." Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, vol. 31, 2022, 56–84, https://doi.org/10.25623/conn031-linne-1.
  33. Little Badger, Darcie. A Snake Falls to Earth. Levine Querido, 2021.
  34. Logan, Lisa M. "'Cross-Cultural Conversations': The Captivity Narrative." A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America, edited by Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer, Blackwell, 2005, pp. 464–79.
  35. Martens, Reuben. "Petromelancholia, the Energopolitical Violence of Settler Colonialism in Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow." American Imago, vol. 77, no. 1, 2020, pp. 193–211, https://doi.org/10.1353/aim.2020.0010.
  36. McKittrick, Katherine. Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Duke UP, 2015.
  37. McQueen, Alison. Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times. Cambridge UP, 2018.
  38. Mni Wiconi: The Stand at Standing Rock. Directed by Lucian Read, Divided Films, 2016.
  39. Night Raiders. Directed by Danis Goulet, XYZ Films, 2021.
  40. Pingler, Marina. "'The Colonial Anthropocene' Imaginary: Amitav Ghosh's The Nutmeg's Curse, Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves, and Rita Indiana's Tentacle." Proceedings of the 2022 University Tübingen GAAS/DGfA Conference, June 9-11, 2022, edited by Katharina Luther et al., forthcoming.
  41. Quijano, Anibal. "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America." Nepantla: View from South, vol. 1, no. 3, 2000, pp. 533–80.
  42. Rice, Waubgeshig. Moon of the Crusted Snow. ECW P, 2018.
  43. Roanhorse, Rebecca. Trail of Lightning. Saga P, 2018.
  44. Rowlandson, Mary. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed, Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, edited by Neal Salisbury, Bedford Books, 1997.
  45. Simon, Zoltán B. "Domesticating the Future through History." Time and Society: Special Issues Temporal Comparison, vol. 30, no. 4, 2021, pp. 494–516, https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X211014804.
  46. Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. Minnesota UP, 2017.
  47. Smith, Mick, and Jason Young. Does the Earth Care? Indifference, Providence, and Provisional Ecology. Minnesota UP, 2022.
  48. Streeby, Shelley. Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making through Science-Fiction and Activism. California UP, 2018.
  49. Strong, Pauline Turner. "Transforming Outsiders: Captivity, Adoption, and Slavery Reconsidered." A Companion to American Indian History, edited by Philip J. Deloria and Neal Salisbury, Blackwell, 2002, pp. 339–57.
  50. Trischler, Helmuth. "The Anthropocene: A Challenge for History of Science, Technology, and the Environment." NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaft, Technik und Medizin. Springer International Publishing, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 309–35, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00048-016-0146-3.
  51. Whyte, Kyle Powys. "Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene." English Language Notes, vol. 55, no. 1–2, 2017, pp. 153–62.
  52. Whyte, Kyle Powys. "Indigenous Science (Fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral Dystopias and Fantasies of Climate Change Crisis." Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, vol. 1, no. 1–2, 2018, pp. 225–38.
  53. Wynter, Sylvia. "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, after Man, Its Overrepresentation – An Argument." CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 257–337.
  54. Yusoff, Kathryn. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minnesota UP, 2018.
  55. Zafar, Rafia. "Capturing the Captivity: African Americans among the Puritans." MELUS, vol. 17, no. 2, 1992, pp. 19–35, https://doi.org/10.2307/466997.

Similar Articles

1-10 of 104

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.