Ecozon@ (Jan 2012)
Climate Change Futures and the Imagination of the Global in Maeva! by Dirk C. Fleck
Abstract
This article is aimed at making a contribution to the only recently emerging literary criticism of climate change fiction. Facing a global environmental disaster such as climate change requires a departure from an overemphasis on place in ecocriticism. Incorporating ideas from the concept of eco-cosmopolitanism can therefore be helpful for the analysis of literary works dealing with global warming, opening up new planetary perspectives. However, while many climate change novels fall short of engaging with the global, D. Fleck’s Maeva! serves as a counter-example from German science fiction. This article therefore explores the ways in which Fleck’s novel embraces an “eco-cosmopolitan manifesto” as a political vision of dealing with the climatically changed world of tomorrow while showing that this thereby newly created “space” is contested and fragile as interests between the local and the global have to be constantly re-negotiated. Finally, this article also discusses Fleck’s innovative textual approach, which can be read as an attempt at imagineering—creating a manual for critical intervention derived from creative ideas.
