Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer and the ways it grapples with the place and role of humans in 'Nature'. Area X - the setting of The Trilogy - is an uninhabited and abandoned area in the USA that 'Nature' has begun to reclaim, much like the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer and the ways in which it grapples with the place of humans in 'Nature' as a means of thinking through the ways in which we might draw inspiration from fiction to navigate the Anthropocene concept. Jan Zalasiewicz, chair of the AWG, has argued, "the scientific question of the Anthropocene can only be answered through an act of science fiction" (Lorimer, 2017:12). Moreover, sci-fi narratives closely reflect the writings of social and cultural critics of the time.

By analysing a set of sci-fi narratives that regularly depict blighted radioactive landscapes like Chernobyl to speculate on the future of humans and nonhumans in a contaminated world, my forthcoming PhD research will ask how we might configure human-animal relationships and practices of care towards the nonhuman in anthropogenic spaces of contamination as they proliferate.

Area X, then, the setting of The Southern Reach Trilogy, is an uninhabited and abandoned area in the USA that 'Nature' has begun to reclaim, much like the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Area X presents dangers to the humans who enter it: people return with memory loss and cancer, whilst others do not return. A mysterious life force (or alien fungus) is responsible for producing biological novelty, transforming humans into animals, and mimicking/cloning humans.

Area X will be analysed through a posthumanist lens. In particular, the apparent dissolution of the subject when humans enter Area X will be discussed alongside the flourishing of non-human nature in human-abandoned spaces.