The Personal and the Planetary: Gendering Ecology in Theis Ørntoft’s Solar

Abstract

Abstract This paper considers the environmental and gender politics of Theis Ørntoft’s Solar (2018). Much criticism of Solar has focused on its depiction of consumer capitalism in the Anthropocene. As the novel deconstructs its first person narrator—evoking theories of romanticism and poststructuralism—it seems to forward an ecologically progressive, posthumanist politics. I argue, however, that the novel’s preoccupation with structure and surface is underpinned by a regressive, binary conception of gender and an autonomous, masculine subject, which undermines its potential anti-anthropocentric thrust. This reading contributes to existing perspectives on Solar and explores key intersections between gender and ecocriticism.

Keywords

• contemporary Danish literature
• gender studies
• ecocriticism
• critical theory
• contemporaryDanishliterature
• genderstudies