Chapter 13 - American Modernisms and Climatology

Summary

This chapter offers a critical analysis of the relationship between postmodernism and the environment, in particular the climate and climatic change. It outlines an alternative understanding of postmodernism and the literature of the period that resists normative assumptions regarding culture eclipsing nature during this postmodern period. Reading across canonical postmodern texts, genre fiction, and social movements literature, it identifies within this body of work a persistent preoccupation with resource scarcity, pollution, environmental degradation, and, in particular, anthropogenic climate change. Arguing that this tendency with postmodernism necessitates a rethinking of the archives of climate literature, this chapter argues that the period designation "postmodern" names a transition point in how climate is imagined, a period within which we can identify the emergence of an understanding of the global climate that is focused increasingly on environmental threats, their predictive modeling, and the cumulative effects of industrial and nuclear civilization.