School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, Monash University

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Jenn Martin This paper applies a critical geographical perspective to recent utopian theory and practice. With reference to the writing of Kim Stanley Robinson and Ursula K. Le Guin I argue that, while utopia has traditionally been represented as ‘no place’, it is perhaps through the reassertion of local geographies within utopian dreaming that we can come to envision more habitable and working utopias. Just as place has always been a significant resource of the environmental imagination, so it now also functions as a driving force in the revitalisation of the utopian imagination. Jenn Martin is a recent graduate of the University of Sydney’s English Department. Her honours thesis explored the intersection of utopian and environmental discourse in the writing of Kim Stanley Robinson, and the ways in which Robinson’s critical utopian project is inspired by his attachment to the places of Southern California.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Anne Maxwell 1970s science fiction frequently featured environmental catastrophes of apocalyptic proportions as a starting point to imagine a better kind of society. My paper examines one such science-fiction work: Kate Wilhelm’s haunting novel Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976), which features the wide-scale implementation of cloning precisely in order to condemn the technologically dependent life style of late modernity. I argue that in the clones’ inability to display individuality, creativity and self-reliance, and the novel’s wilderness setting, we can discern more than just a dislike and distrust of science and technology; more even than a long-standing desire to reverse the process of deforestation that had started with the decision to open up the American west to settlement, and to stop the pollution of America’s soils and waterways by acid rain and release of toxic chemicals. For what this setting suggests is a deep nostalgia for the more organic, largely agrarian lifestyle that prevailed before the large-scale settlement of America. Anne Maxwell is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Melbourne.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Rebecca Garcia Lucas The philosophical affinity between Aboriginal Law (thousands of years old) and Western ecophilosophy (a few decades old) holds unique potential to develop shared ways of knowing which inform everyday life practices in Australia. Understanding the land as the living community we belong to could guide an intercultural eco-epistemology, a reconciliatory identity, and would be an important part of reconsidering attitudes which have lead to Earth’s ecological crisis. Although Aboriginal philosophy seems to have already done what Western ecophilosophy is only just exploring, joint dialogue is essential for addressing many social and environmental problems of Western modernity. Aboriginal Law holds incomparable knowledge about the connections humans have with Country. Environmental philosophy has emerged from a long tradition of Western thought and culture, and contributes perspectives necessary for bringing a practiced eco- epistemology into a Western urban lifestyle. In what ways can these ecological philosophies work together towards a common ethical relationship with Country? Rebecca lectures at Trinity College and the Arts Faculty, the University of Melbourne. She teaches subjects for the Bachelor of Arts (Extended) program for Indigenous students, and ‘Australian Environmental Philosophy’ in Australian Indigenous Studies.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Adeline Johns-Putra This paper examines the Science in the Capital trilogy, in terms of Robinson’s adaptation of the utopian impulse of his science fiction to the question of climate change. Robinson defines utopia as a ‘working towards’, which, in the Mars trilogy, results in a vivid description of the scientific methods by which Mars is painstakingly terraformed, alongside a detailed explanation of the ‘eco-economics’ developed and debated by the colonisers over hundreds of years. In the Science in the Capital novels, Robinson depicts the ideologically committed terraforming of Earth. However, this time, he must do without the imaginative appeal of the Martian ‘novum’, i.e. the world of ‘strange newness’ that characterises science fiction. He thus locates his progressive utopian impulse in a meticulous description of an ideological and scientific milieu inhabited by an impressive ensemble of characters. This paper explores the extent to which the Science in the Capital novels succeed, both politically and artistically, within these constraints. Adeline Johns-Putra is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Exeter. Her books include Heroes and Housewives: Women’s Epic Poetry (2001), Domestic Ideology in the Romantic Age (2001) and The History of the Epic (2006). She is currently co-writing a monograph on representations of climate change in contemporary fiction.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Tom Moylan ‘N-H-N’: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Dialectics of Ecology’ While the catastrophes around us are in the natural world, the causes and solutions for the problems arising from ecological destruction are down to us, the humans who are the self-conscious members of that same world. While we know that the alienation, exploitation, and destruction of nature can be traced back to deeper causes (in the Neolithic division of labor, in patriarchy, in Western rationalism), we also know that in modernity it has been the world system of capitalism that has intensified and expanded the ruination of nature. What we need now is not business as usual but rather critiques and visions of how this world works and how it might be transformed. To make this move we need ways to envision what is to be done and what is not yet. The science fictional imaginary has long been one of the most powerful sources for such a cognitive mapping and re-visioning. In this context, I will talk about Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction in terms of his ecological engagement. Central to Robinson’s ‘consensus vision of what might be’ is the status of nature and humanity’s place in it. From the focus on one town in Pacific Edge (1990), to a city in the Science in the Capital trilogy (2004- 2007) to a continent in Antarctica (1997), to a planet (and solar system and universe beyond) in the Mars trilogy (1992-1996), and to history and life itself in the Years of Rice and Salt (2002), Robinson’s affiliation with nature can be seen throughout his work, as he explores immediate challenges and long-term visions. Robinson’s world-building does not produce a passive landscape for human plots and counterplots; rather his biosphere is the dynamic substrate of all existence, the basis for the eventual transformation of both humanity and nature. It may appear that Robinson sails close to the standpoint of a Western anthropomorphic domination of an external nature, but I argue that his position is rather one of an engaged solidarity within the evolving body of nature itself. Robinson prepares our minds for a break beyond the current system, and in so doing he dialectically transcends the antinomies that stifle us: be they nature and humanity, organic and technical, sacred and secular, personal and political, or red and green politics. Robinson’s utopian science fiction works in terms of a double move of program and impulse, representation and figuration. He has created a series of narratives that unfold utopian programs of human agency and political intervention; but his scenarios and models, his natural and human worlds, also figure the negation of the world as we know it (thus reminding us of the impossibility of utopian resolution in the present reality) and point us toward a radical novum at the horizon. Tom Moylan is Emeritus Professor and Founding Director of the Ralahine Center for Utopian Studies, University of Limerick, author ofDemand the Impossible(1986) andScraps of the Untainted Sky(2000) and co-editor ofDark Horizons (2003).

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Anne Melano The ‘utopia of balance’ is an ideal-world form consciously positioned against dystopias of imbalance. From just two assumptions – firstly that humanity’s needs must be balanced with those of the environment and secondly that social conformity must be balanced with ideals of individual freedom – a number of decisions flow which shape the features that can be seen in utopias of balance from Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890) through to Huxley’s Island (1962), Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1964), Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) through to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge (1990). These decisions shape use of technology (sophisticated but with low impact; a combination of low tech and high tech); social structures (decentralised, village-like clusters); religion (holism, interconnectedness of living things); individuals’ sense of social responsibility; and even leisure. Anne Melano is a PhD student at the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Monash University. Her interests include utopian fictions and fantasy otherworld fictions. She works at the University of Wollongong.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Deborah Rose and Marshall Bell ‘RUtopia’ Professor Deborah Rose and Aboriginal artist Marshall Bell will talk about Bell’s series RUtopia (Roo-topia; R utopia). With PowerPoint and conversation, we will discuss RUtopia: a country with a mythology which tells a story of life, death and return, and with a philosophy of earth, regeneration, transformation and connectivity. We will examine the RUtopian understanding of death and rebirth within a world of creature- kin. We plan to address some of Bell’s more recent work, particularly his elaboration of art on skin, the skin of the world and the world of life’s own embodied energy. We want to contrast connectivity with the stream of modernity that wants to break with tradition, and to show how Bell (and others) find ways to make it possible for their tradition, which is the life that carries their people, to be present in this time through this creative project. Deborah Rose is Professor of Social Inclusion, Macquarie University, and the author ofDingo Makes Us Human (2000), Reports from a Wild Country (2004) and Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction (in press). Marshall Bell is an artist from the Jiman Tribe and Kamilaroi nation Gunedah/Kooma clans.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Emma Nicoletti Climate change is usually addressed by scientists and policy makers; however, the dystopic alternate realities constructed in Jeff Noon’s novel Pollen and the online games Urgent Evoke and Project Bluebird suggest that by playing games rather than moiling. Or, more precisely, by conflating games and play with work. These works invert the common sense relationship between reality and virtual reality to suggest that real-world environmental and social problems can be relieved via game play in virtual worlds. This paper will explore how a semiotic analysis of the ludic excursions and inversions of these texts reflect current ambiguities towards the role of technology in contemporary society; particularly, attitudes regarding the way technologies render the boundaries between play and work, representation and reality, and human and machine indistinct, and the way technology is represented as both the cause and cure of climate change. Emma Nicoletti is a high-school English teacher. She graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) in 2005. Currently, her research is focused upon analysing the representation of games and play in the dystopic novels of science-fiction author Jeff Noon.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Ian Buchanan According to Sylvère Lotringer, Deleuze and Guattari loathed the idea of utopia. While his position is demonstrably false – there are numerous favourable references to such noted utopian thinkers as Fourier as well as countless references to SF authors like Asimov, Bradbury, Lovecraft and Matheson throughout their work – it does nonetheless pose an interesting question: what does utopia mean for Deleuze and Guattari? Not much can be made, I think, of the tantalising suggestion that utopia might be what Adorno meant by negative dialectics, though it is an intriguing enough starting point. Rather, I think we need to track through their work and interrogate the various ways by which they argue the world could or will become a ‘better’ place. At the centre of this discussion must be the notion of ‘becoming’, because as they make clear, it is the constant process of becoming that ensures that no political situation, no matter how intolerable, will ever be completely unendurable. Ian Buchanan is Professor of Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University. He is the author of A Reader’s Guide to Anti-Oedipus and Deleuzism: A Metacommentary and editor of the journal Deleuze Studies.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Adam Brown In its dystopian vision of the future, the Disney/Pixar film Wall-E (2008) portrays human beings as having rendered themselves anonymous and redundant by mass consumerism and automated machines, transforming Earth into a desolate wasteland in the process. Another recent children’s animated science- fiction film, Shane Acker’s 9 (2009), takes this bleak scenario a step further, positing the extinction of all human beings and focusing on the struggles of tiny robots trying to survive in the aftermath of apocalyptic warfare. This paper will examine the growing intersection of environmentalist discourses and dystopian paradigms in children’s cinema, considering the rich intertextual fabric of the genre, which also includes the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar (2009). I will argue that while mainstream films such as these reveal considerable potential for ideological subversion – certainly much more than is commonly recognised – these representations nonetheless entail significant limitations, and one must question the potential for such texts to effectively implicate viewers in the social and environmental problems they purport to critique. Adam Brown teaches history, literature and communication studies at Deakin University and works in the testimonies department at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne. He completed his PhD on Holocaust representation, particularly focusing on how complex human behaviour is explored in cinematic representations of the event.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Katherine Cutts ‘There is no plan B; there is no other planet that we can escape to ...’ proclaimed Kevin Rudd (ex-Prime Minister of Australia) with his circa 2009 comments about human-induced climate change. Herzog intimates the same dire warning in a variety of re-focused environments in many of his films, both documentary and feature. This paper will discuss how the motif of apocalypse endows films such as Fata Morgana (1970), La Soufrière (1977), Where the Green Ants Dream (1984), Lessons of Darkness (1992) and others, with the threat of impending and actual disaster, and how Herzog imbues these cinematic Hausmärchen with a strong sense of the urgency to act to reclaim the earth for its rightful inheritors. Katherine Cutts recently completed a Master of Visual Culture at Monash University, focusing on film theory and criticism. She has an enduring interest in cinema as a powerful creative force. She has taught VCE Media and Studio Arts, and holds a Diploma in Languages (French) from Monash.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Verity Burgmann Auberon Waugh noted in 1989 that the ‘broken-down socialist bandwagon’ was transferring its disappointed passengers to ‘the shiny new green machine, bound for the same destination – Utopia – where you can boss other people about’. In 1893, utopian socialist William Lane led 700 Australians to Paraguay to build a perfect collectivist society that would serve as an inspiration around the world. More than a century later, Tim Flannery proposed the creation of Geothermia, a new city on the NSW/South Australia/Queensland border that would harness the site’s abundance of natural gas reserves, geothermal and solar energy, arguing that such a city could be completely energy-efficient and provide a model for future urban development worldwide. This paper explores the utopian model-building theme in the writings of Australian climate change public intellectuals, who seek via such imaginings to motivate the public to activism and politicians to action to mitigate climate change. Verity Burgmann is Professor in the Political Science Department, University of Melbourne. She specialises in studies of labour and social movements and has published extensively in labour history, racism and the history and politics of protest movements. Other areas of expertise include stratification in Australian society and the history of political ideas.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Joseph Gelfer December 21 2012 is believed to mark the end of the thirteenth B’ak’tun cycle in the Long Count of the Mayan calendar. A growing number of people believe this date to mark the end of the world or, at the very least, the end of the world as we know it: a shift to a new form of global consciousness. While predominantly a North American phenomenon, 2012 also has a significant following in Australia and New Zealand. Via a textual analysis of a range of prophetic narratives and science fiction, this paper shows how the future- orientated imagination of the 2012 phenomenon in Australia and New Zealand oscillates between utopian and dystopian outcomes – the utopian largely framed by a transcendent vision of the New Age, the dystopian by immanent environmental destruction. Joseph Gelfer is an Adjunct Research Associate at the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, and is currently editing the volume 2012: Reflections on a Mark in Time. He is editor of the Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality, and author of Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and the Problem of Patriarchy.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Lauren Bliss Extraterrestrials are often represented on screen to be the evil Other. When analysed historically, the perceived motives of extraterrestrials invading Earth shift to reflect the inner fears of Western civilisation. For example, in the 1950s such films generally reflected the concern of nuclear terrorism and the fear of invasion by the Russians. Today, representation has evolved to symbolise the new threat of global warming. Extraterrestrials are visualised as a menace to our planet, intent on destruction and invading our earth to sap the planet of its resources. This visualisation is in fact a mirroring of humanity itself and its actions; it is a denial of our own destructive capabilities, a transferral of responsibility onto the Other and a method of expressing fears about the destruction of our planet. Filmic examples of such representations include Signs (2002), Independence Day (1996), Communion (1989), District 9 (2009) and Avatar (2009). Lauren Bliss is a PhD Candidate in the department of Film and Television Studies, School of ECPS, Monash University.

Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Susan Pyke Part of my fictional work involves a ‘futuristic’ novel with resilient communities operating outside the dominant economic structure. It is developing in concert with my readings of Luce Irigaray’s ‘becoming divine’, working with her idea that writings and readings might nurture ‘the fruit of the covenant between word and nature’. Yet is my work fiction or even futuristic? Leading economists are arguing for fundamental changes to global accounting, correcting their calculations to include the finitude of natural resources. At the same time, philosophical ‘freegans’ and guerrilla gardeners are cutting voluntary simplicity into the edges of mainstream thinking. My ‘speculative’ fiction might simply be chronicling emerging everyday practice. Perhaps it’s not possible to write the world into a radically new state; our fiction merely condemns or applauds our limits. Are my words merely harvesting what is already sown? Perhaps a new language is needed to seed something new. Susan Pyke’s Creative Writing PhD with the University of Melbourne is ‘Unbinding the Divine in the Environs of Wuthering Heights: The ‘Becoming’ Potential of Ghosts, Dreams and Love’. Her creative and non-fiction work can be found in Victorians Institute Journal, Intermedia, Hecate, Overland and Island. She works part-time with Sustainability Victoria.