Przez fantastykę do ekokrytyki. Zwrot ku science fiction

Abstract

The author puts forward the thesis that the challenges of the current times resulting from environmental change, the destruction of habitats and ecological disasters direct our sensibilities and aesthetics ever more tangibly towards the fantastic or ecofiction: (eco)horror, (eco)science fiction, or (eco)fantasy. However, while ecohorror mainly exposes the negative aftermath of the Anthropocene, culminating in inevitable disaster, science fiction offers leeway for a more speculative approach, enabling one to construct such visions of reality in which multispecies justice will be observed and cultivated. The author follows K.S. Robinson’s line of thinking that “science fiction is a new realism”, A. Ghosh’s analysis of the relationship between literature and ecology, and D. Haraway’s research on new ways of understanding the relationships between people and non-humans using the speculative potential of sci-fi. It is therefore suggested that there is a great need for a science fiction vision, aesthetic and narration that would be capable of guiding us out of the anthropocentric entanglement and the Anthropocene/Capitalocene into the Chthulucene (as conceived by Haraway).