Vanderbilt Prof Thinks Fictional Works About Climate Change Are Too White
“often represent white, mostly privileged characters in communities becoming destabilized if not undone by climate catastrophe”
Who knew that climate fiction or ‘cli-fi’ was even a real genre of fiction? And it’s racist, too?
The College Fix reports:
Vanderbilt professor: Climate change stories ‘cater to the white consciousness’
A professor of English at Vanderbilt University recently gave a talk about how the genre of climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” has a problem with “its intersection [of] race and genre.”
Teresa Goddu (pictured), whose advocacy led to the creation of Vanderbilt’s Environmental and Sustainability Studies minor, told an audience at the Novel Seminar Series that climate fiction in the United States “depicts the climate crisis as a whiteness crisis,” The Hustler reports.
Such stories “often represent white, mostly privileged characters in communities becoming destabilized if not undone by climate catastrophe,” Goddu said. “Climate punctures the bubble of safety and security that cocoons the white psyche.”
Goddu added that she is “tired” of the focus on whiteness in climate stories, or “texts that actually just reify whiteness.” As a result, she’s working on “encompassing slave and neo-slave narratives” into such tales to “expand the canon.”
“I really think a lot of climate fiction is being written, but not recognized as such, especially African American literature,” Goddu said. “I want to expand […] what is considered climate fiction and [redefine] what we are actually reading and paying attention to.”
Looking ahead, Goddu said she hopes her work will expand the genre and leverage optimism, satire and new tropes to innovate the body of work and reimagine a better, more sustainable future.
“I am more interested in reading stories that reimagine possible futures or teach me about the structures, historically and currently, that I live within,” Goddu said. “I don’t like literature as policy statements. I don’t like literature to be so instrumental.”
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Undergrad tuition at Vanderbilt is about $57,000/yr.
Four words for you, grandma: “White what you know.”
Everything is racist, I guess. For those despising white this and white that, or think there is too much whiteness in this or that field should look what happens when whites are cast out of their jobs, The place is called South Africa.
I also keep thinking of all those who “went Galt” in the Ayn Rand novel. What would the sniveling whites, and “people of color” do if Whites could go Galt? One of two things: everything would collapse, or the Asians would step in and run things because they have the IQ to do so. Sure, it may be jury-rig repairs and installations (India, Thailand), or installations and maintenance next to flawless (Japanese, others). Too many Asians now?
Gentle reminder:
When we hear about stories like this, it’s only the tip of a very large iceberg.
If you love your children, you will avoid Vanderbilt. And other places where such drivel thrives.
Avoid these 21st Century Centers of Naked Emperors like you would avoid a bad smell.
Like you would avoid a bad pile-up on the highway.
Like you would avoid a bad neighborhood.
Like you would avoid a bad restaurant.
Like you would avoid a bad relationship.
Of course it is; it’s a long-standing subgenre of science fiction. There have been significant works in this subgenre since the beginning of SF, long before anyone thought up the “greenhouse effect” or started worrying about CO2 buildup. We’ve always known that the global climate varies over time, so it was obvious to set stories in pasts or futures with very different climates than the current one, both warmer and colder. And ever since the greenhouse effect was suggested, science fiction writers started to explore it and speculate about what the future might look like if it turned out to be true.
A recent major work in this subgenre, from one of today’s masters of SF, is Neil Stephenson’s Termination Shock, which is set in a universe where the fears of the glowball warmenists are correct, and someone decides to fix it. Professor Goddu will be glad to know that most of the central characters are not straight white males; again, this is typical of science fiction, which has always done diversity, not for ideological or political reasons but because it makes for more interesting stories.