Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

How might literature help us understand how the Anthropocene feels? Cvetkovich’s work on depression as the “structure of feeling” governing neoliberal capitalism invites us to consider “why we live in a culture whose violence takes the form of systematically making us feel bad.” However, when it comes to anthropogenic climate change, it seems as though the default position is to seek to avoid feeling bad about it, since negative emotions are equated with pessimism and resignation, and are thus seen as barriers to positive collective action. In this paper, I draw on recent examples of global eco-fictions to think about what good can possibly come out of feeling bad. I am most keenly interested in narratives that move away from historically toxic androcentric and anthropocentric visions of care, and instead toward an ethics of connection that recognizes the porous entanglements between the human and the non-human. Embracing the negative implications of Anthropocene thinking, these narratives explore the potential of negative responses—such as guilt, remorse, and terror—to encourage positive communal action. Exhibiting eco-centric ethics of care, they invite us to consider whether the ability to feel responsible, understood fundamentally as being able to respond, might point toward negative effects as potentially generative and collective, rather than as fundamentally paralyzing and individualizing, emotions.