An affirmative vision of renewable energy as the solution to the crisis of global heating is an underpinning feature of multiple climate and energy imaginaries. Across a wide range of media and discourse,
the turbine is potential; the photovoltaic exudes promise. ‘Clean power’ suggests progressive futures.
Its infrastructures symbolise hope, represent solutions, constitute just transition and even societal
transformation.
What remains less marked in this generally utopian framing is that this renewable landscape of recovery and repair is often heavily freighted with or confronted by the event and figure of the post/apocalypse. Renewables are there in the post-apocalyptic imaginary if we care to look; signal features of the
recovery of a social and material infrastructure shattered by apocalyptic event, whether climate breakdown, pandemic, war. This talk will track the aesthetic signatures of the post-oil ‘renewable imaginary’
in a range of speculative literary and cultural productions of the 21st century and ask what meanings
we can derive for energy transition and its impasses in an age of climate anxiety.
Graeme Macdonald, Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK
the turbine is potential; the photovoltaic exudes promise. ‘Clean power’ suggests progressive futures.
Its infrastructures symbolise hope, represent solutions, constitute just transition and even societal
transformation.
What remains less marked in this generally utopian framing is that this renewable landscape of recovery and repair is often heavily freighted with or confronted by the event and figure of the post/apocalypse. Renewables are there in the post-apocalyptic imaginary if we care to look; signal features of the
recovery of a social and material infrastructure shattered by apocalyptic event, whether climate breakdown, pandemic, war. This talk will track the aesthetic signatures of the post-oil ‘renewable imaginary’
in a range of speculative literary and cultural productions of the 21st century and ask what meanings
we can derive for energy transition and its impasses in an age of climate anxiety.
Graeme Macdonald, Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick, UK
- Arrangør: Arranged by the research group Anthropocene Aesthetics, Dept. for the Study of Culture
- Adresse: Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense M
- Kontakt Email: s.frank@sdu.dk
- https://www.sdu.dk/da/om_sdu/institutter_centre/ikv/ny-cws-overview:
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