The Anthropocene, Cli-Fi and Food: Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam

Abstract

This article examines Margaret Atwood’s climate fiction novel MaddAddam (2013), a dystopian cautionary text in which food production and eating become ethical choices related to individual agency and linked to sustainability. In the novel, both mainstream environmentalism and deep ecologism are shown to be insufficient and fundamentally irrelevant in the face of a submissive population, in a state of passivity that environmental studies scholar Stacy Alaimo relates to a scientific and masculinist interpretation of the Anthropocene. The article focuses on edibility as a key element in negotiating identity, belonging, cohabitation and the frontiers of the new MaddAddam postapocalyptic community.