Radically hopeful dystopian climate fiction: Exploring social dreaming, temporal re-sensitisation, and katharsis in Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne

Kirkbride, Jasmin (2025) Radically hopeful dystopian climate fiction: Exploring social dreaming, temporal re-sensitisation, and katharsis in Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne. Comparative American Studies, 22 (1-2). pp. 88-105. ISSN 1477-5700

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Abstract

This article applies Jonathan Lear’s concept of radical hope to dystopian climate fiction, using Jeff Vandermeer’s weird fiction novel Borne as a vehicle to explore the intra- and extra-textual impacts of revivals in dystopian climate fiction. Fuelled by the protagonist’s actions as a radically hopeful individual, Borne’s revival is weird and uncanny, subverting dominant Messianic and redemptive concepts of revival to reframe it as a critical act (Ursula Heise, L. T. Sargant, Tom Moylan, and Rafaella Baccolini), thereby enabling radically hopeful katharsis and temporal re-sensitisation in the reader (Kyle P. Whyte). This article argues that in dystopian climate fiction, not all revivals are not to be taken literally but, supported by evidence from empirical ecocriticism (Matthew Schneider-Mayerson) and psychoanalysis (W. G. Lawrence), are cathartic acts of social dreaming on the part of writers and readers alike. n this way—far from being promises of utopia, comfort, or even continuity—fictive radically hopeful revivals in dystopian climate fiction can support a needed examination of temporality, dreams, and impermanence to redefine what it means to be radical, courageous, and honourable in the face of the climate crisis.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Published in issue “Wild Possibility”: American Literatures, Climate Change, and Hope in the Anthropocene - Part 2; guest edited by Rebecca Tillett and Wendy McMahon
Uncontrolled Keywords:	cli-fi,climate change,climate fiction,dystopia,empirical ecocriticism,radical hope,reader affect,social dreaming,spiral time,weird fiction,cultural studies,sociology and political science,arts and humanities(all),sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3316
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies (former - to 2024) Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	29 Sep 2025 10:30
Last Modified:	01 Oct 2025 14:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100490
DOI:	10.1080/14775700.2025.2490336

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