‘Family territory’ to the ‘circumference of the earth’: local and planetary memories of climate change in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
Climate change has become a harsh reality of our present times. It is happening here, there, and everywhere unbound by the spatial and temporal dimensions. The vacillating impact of such a global crisis equally demands multiple and concurrent scales in order to accurately comprehend the complexity of the problem. Borrowing the title of my paper from Ursula K. Heise’s book, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global, where she proposes the concept of ‘eco-cosmopolitanism’, this article aims at reflecting upon the globalization of the present ecocatastrophes, musing upon the local (the experiences of the working class people) and the global scale (Unnatural Migration and thereby extinction of the Monarch Butterflies) impact of the climate crisis. Ursula K. Heise believes that the ‘deterritorialization’ of the local knowledge is not always detrimental rather can open up new avenues into ecological consciousness. Giving consideration to a deterritori...
Conciliation and Consilience: Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour
De Gruyter Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, 2016
This chapter argues that climate change politics is characterized by competing temporalities: "warmists" claim time is running out, while skeptics assert that global temperature rise has stopped. In addition, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) process is yielding diminishing returns in terms of public support for emissions reductions, which suggests a broader approach than the purely scientific is required. The chapter examines the specific contribution of Barbara Kingsolv-er's (2012) Flight Behaviour, which epitomizes both "conciliation" of polarized perspectives in the USA and "consilient" integration of scientific and literary knowledge.
Rethinking Climate Change: Cli-fi Dynamics in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour
This article seeks to analyze Barbara Kingsolver‟s 2012 cli-fi Flight Behaviour where the author carefully blends the fictional and real world climate change predicaments, beliefs and disbeliefs to elaborate the inundated ecocatastrophes. The novel indelibly provides insights rather than concrete solutions to decipher the crisis. Kingsolver‟s notion of instigating such alternative perceptions would help one redraw or rethink the existing beliefs about climate change and also instills the indispensable need for a symbiotic living between the human and non-human world. Besides, Flight Behaviour with the dynamics of cli-fi, not only probes deep into the ecological concerns of the real world but also sheds light on the mysterious interplay of the natural world and humans‟ conflicted hearts. The article also infers that Kingsolver‟s flight toward emotional responses is nothing but a journey heading from ignorance to certainty. Keywords: Cli-fi; Ecocriticism; Ecocatastrophe; Ecoconsiousness; Climate change
Woman and Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour
The Creative Launcher
In today’s modern world, climate change is the most pressing important issue that mankind has to deal with. Backed with scientific evidences, there is no denying in the fact that mankind’s sustainability will be largely dictated by its catastrophic or soothing effects. To take the harsh realities of climate changes head on, every single species on this very earth should put forward its foot forward. It is here where we, the human race in general, must embrace the glaring truths of the day around us and exercise our democratic rights to make a difference in the physical world we live in. And in this noble sphere of activities, women can’t lag behind others. Women also have the knowledge and understanding of what is required to be acquired to challenge the changing environmental circumstances in order to determine practical solutions. But, in the face of the prevailing social environment, they remain a largely untapped resource due to existing biases, including restricted land rights,...
Scholar Critic Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour: A Journey towards Eco Consciousness
Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour (2012) is a clarion call for the forestalled eco-apocalypse-climate change or global warming. Unlike the post apocalyptic novels like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), Maggie Gee's The Ice People (1999), Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods (2007), Flight Behaviour does not focus on the aftermath of any global disaster. Rather, it concentrates on the growing urgency for the need of a bond with nature. To Kingsolver, not elaborating the catastrophe is one way of focusing on the challenges of interpretation and reception posed by the environmental crisis. In such a way, she offers insight into the exodus Monarch Butterflies, thereby linking their cocritic to the conduct of humans. The present paper aims to focus on the impending effects of climate change, the ignorance of reality, and the challenges in acknowledging the truth about climate change on the basis of individual, environmental, economical, and political grounds.
Environmental epiphany in Barbara Kingsolver's novel Flight Behaviour
Proceedings of the 1st National Environmental Humanities Conference: Perspectives from Morocco, 2023
In this paper, I argue that the epiphanic view of the monarch butterflies in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Flight Behaviour has positively reshaped the character of the protagonist Dellarobia Turnbow by transforming her into a pro-environmental person worried about the drastic effects of climate change. Based on the works of environmental psychologists Joanne Vining and Melinda Merrick (2012; 2018) and Merrick (2008), this paper unearths the concept of environmental epiphany. It starts with a general introduction of the topic and its significance to the field of environmental humanities. After highlighting the research gap to be minded and the research questions to be answered, this paper provides a synopsis of the author’s life and her novel under scrutiny. Next, it investigates the components of environmental epiphany and the emotional, cognitive, and moral impact of this experience on Dellarobia. Specifically, it describes her strong mixed emotions during her encounter with the butterflies, the new sparks of awareness gained through this experience, and her pro-environmental behaviour towards such fragile yet overwhelming insects. This paper can be a promising step toward empirical work about the impact of environmental epiphany on other people belonging to non-American cultures in other natural contexts than the woods.
The Unbearable Lightness of Green: Air Travel, Climate Change and Literature
Climate change suffers from a relative lack of moral salience due to its enormous geographical and temporal scale, and the uneven distribution of likely effects. Evolutionary psychologists and sociologists have offered explanations for the lack of political and, for the most part, individual action in response to climatic threats. The essay links these explanations to ecocritical analyses of the problem of literary genre, and presents readings of Ian McEwan's 'Solar', Helen Simpson's 'In-Flight Entertainment' and Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear'.
Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour as an Ecological Dystopia: A Critical Study
Bonfring, Coimbatore, India, 2016
The present article deals with an analysis of the eco-dystopian elements in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour. The article explores the perspectives of critical dystopia along with ecological speculations in order to deal with the socio-political and cultural aspects of the novel. Critical dystopia unlike the conventional dystopian literary genre discards the genre constraints the latter encounters and becomes laudable for endless critical examination. Added, a critical dystopia offers the eutopian impulse—hope, which is concealed in traditional dystopias. The critical dystopian enclaves in the novel closely encircle the facets of the current world’s disturbed environment, which is why the novel becomes appropriate to be analyzed as an ecological dystopia. The declining environmental conditions in the present world and a much similar one in the novel provide an optimal space to study critical dystopia alongside ecocriticism. In such a way, an ecocritical analysis of the text not only sheds light on the need for ecological consciousness in the characters, but also insists on a sustainable way of living in order to save the earth for future.
Amerikastudien/American Studies, 2016
This essay discusses the participation of Barbara Kingsolver’s climate change novel Flight Behavior in the ethical discourse of anthropogenic climate change by paying particular attention to the connection between the representation of geographical mobility and the experience of place. It approaches climate change as a global risk and the novel as a risk narrative that explores the spatial instabilities and transformations caused by climate change. It argues that the novel’s focus on mobility—both nonhuman and human—and on deterritorialized place creates an environmental ethical space that transcends traditional notions of an ethics of proximity, which are based on concepts of place as bounded. Instead, Flight Behavior suggests an ethics of connectivity, a globalized ethics that recognizes mobility and processes of deterritorialization as fundamental to any assessment of the meanings and consequences of the climate change risk.
The Future of Climate Change and Ecofeminism in Barbara Kingsolver's Novels
Creative Saplings, 2022
Thematically, Flight Behavior departs from Prodigal Summer in its examination of the reality and effects of climate change. This novel focuses on those who deny or oppose the reality of climate change and its impact on their lives. The men in Flight Behavior, with the notable exception of the scientist Byron, perpetuate exploitative land use practises. This novel's emphasis on animals and their reproductive success opens up a crucial ecofeminist route. The monarchs have had to relocate their home and nesting grounds due to climate change, and their uncertain yet ominous future is mirrored by other difficult births in the novel: Dellarobia has a traumatic birthing experience with Hester's lambs as she comes to terms with the death of her and Cub's child. Optimism is what readers should take away from the two novels reviewed in this thesis. Understanding how people are connected to everything on Earth will help us revive the planet and stop exploiting people, animals, and nature for profit and pleasure. This paper's final chapter changes from Prodigal Summer's status quo to Flight Behavior's future. The third chapter examined how masculinist land practises replicated patriarchal, exploitative environmental usage and how only the novel's female characters perceived ecological alternatives. This chapter discusses the consequences of ignoring environmental exploitation and climate change. This chapter will cover denial, reality, and climate change mitigation to continue discussing realities and implications. I'll study how humans and nonhumans deny reality. Kingsolver said in an interview that others' denial inspired this novel. I'll list the middle class's environmental needs. Dellarobia becomes a pseudoscientist from a housewife. The environmental movement's butterfly conservationists in Appalachia are a parody. Dellarobia also resembles many of the ladies in chapter two who became reluctant environmentalists. Finally, hope. Dellarobia leads Kingsolver's audience to good change. The novel's ending is uncertain, but I think it's optimistic because of resistance.