Haunted Nature, Haunted Humans: Intelligent Trees, Gaia, and the Apocalypse Meme

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Serval ID
serval:BIB_F1DA3A681E0F
Type
A part of a book
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Haunted Nature, Haunted Humans: Intelligent Trees, Gaia, and the Apocalypse Meme
Title of the book
Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and Nonhuman
Author(s)
Soltysik Monnet Agnieszka
Publisher
Blazan, Sladja
Publication state
Published
Issued date
01/01/2022
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Language
english
Abstract
This essay examines two examples of what could be called ‘apocalyptic ecogothic’, both based on the premise that trees are intelligent and have decided to remove human beings from the earth for the sake of planetary equilibrium: M. Night’s Shyamalan’s The Happening (2008) and the recent graphic novel The End (2018, by Swiss cartoonist Zep). While both texts give nature more agency, intelligence and autonomous consciousness than earlier ecogothic narratives, they also tend to erase racial and gender diversity from their imagined futures. The essay thus concludes that there is a racial unconscious which haunts the apocalypse meme so important to ecological movement and the environmental imagination.
Keywords
eco-gothic, R. Night Shyamalan, The Happening, Zep, The End, apocalypse, eco-criticism
Create date
17/01/2022 22:56
Last modification date
19/01/2023 7:54
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