Se il Mare del Nord arriva e l’Olanda scompare. L’ecofiction di Eva Meijer

Abstract

In the uchronic novel with dystopian/(post)apocalyptic features Zee Nu (Sea Now) by Dutch philosopher Eva Meijer (2022) the Netherlands is submerged by an exceptional high tide that does not recede. The government reacts slowly and inadequately: the country is flooded and the surviving Dutch become climate refugees in Germany and Belgium. A scientist, an activist and a young writer embark on a boat (later on, with a dog too) in order to uncover the causes of this extreme phenomenon and to pay tribute to dead people, animals and to the devastated ecosystems. In this article I focus on how the novel fictionalizes environmental issues and foregrounds key issues of contemporary philosophers of the Anthropocene as Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway: the relationship between human and nonhuman, the agency of nonhuman and the ethics of response-ability.

Keywords

• ecofiction
• eva meijer
• nonhuman agency
• response-ability
• ecocriticism
• dutch literature