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Nationalism, Masculinity, and the Politics of Climate Change in the Novels of Kim Stanley Robinson and Michael Crichton

2013; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 54; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3828/extr.2013.3

2047-7708

Jeanne Hamming,

Climate Change and Geoengineering

This paper explores the complex interplay between narratives of American masculinity, nationalism, and environmentalism in novels by Michael Crichton (State of Fear) and Kim Stanley Robinson (Science in the Capital trilogy). Considered in the context of public debates about climate change as well as the discourse of the "war on terror," this article argues that these novels enlist climate change as an occasion to dramatize the recovery of an imperiled national masculinity, adding to the crowded stage of perceived challenges to the privileges of an elite majority whose supposed "citizen trauma" (Berlant) threatens to overshadow the real consequences of environmental calamity.