Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”: Unearthing the barriers between environmental criticism and utopian studies | Catherine Hannon

Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Catherine Hannon This paper explores the antipathies at the heart of the relationship between utopian studies and environmental criticism. Lawrence Buell suggested a lack of sophistication in science-fiction writing as the culprit, while alongside this prejudice stands a suspicion of the seeming artifice of speculative fictions in a critical theory heavily reliant upon a reinstatiation of mimetic representation. These critical positions have, however, a great deal to gain through a dialogue with one another. Ecocriticism, as defined by the majority of its proponents, has, at its core, an activist element, as does utopian studies. An engagement with the latter would offer the former the promise of a more diverse, perhaps more contemporary readership, alongside a different perspective on the relationship between human and non-human spheres. Utopian studies, for its part, finds itself reinvigorated by a central concern, pertinent to humanity at large and capable of reigniting a utopianism that has suffered at the hands of global corporate depoliticisation. Catherine Hannon is a PhD student in Trinity College, Dublin, researching representations of politicised environmentalism in utopian, dystopian, and apocalyptic fictions since the 1960s.