Ecozon@ 11.1. Special Focus Section Spring 2020 Call for papers Cultures of Climate. On Bodies and Atmospheres in Modern Fiction (original) (raw)

Global warming epitomizes a paradox in the relationship between humans and climate. Recognizing the anthropogenic causes of climate change also involves recognizing the immense collective human influence on the earth's life system. The prevailing concept of the climate is, however, one in which human bodies and actions, cultures and societies play no significant role. The current "weather-biased understanding of the atmosphere" (Fleming/Jancovic 2011) has uncoupled climate from human experience and forms of life. Yet climate is omnipresent in the history of cultures and their aesthetic, political and scientific representation -as a condition and product of life, as responsible for and a threat to human existence (Hulme 2017). This themed section aims to retrieve case studies, readings, and theoretical reflections on the relations between cultures and climates. While the representation of climate change is currently being reexamined in fictional and nonfictional writing (Clark 2015, Johns-Putra 2018), we would like to broaden the topic to climate representations beyond climate change. This renewed attention to "human climates," we believe, will illuminate vital dimensions of a crisis not only of climate and climate knowledge but of ecological relationships in general.