Speculative Realism and Science Fiction

2017 | Essays

One of the reasons that speculative materialism challenges anthropomorphism is that a human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. Therefore, when non-human things are taken to be as equally valid objects of investigation as humans, a more responsible and truthful view of the world takes place. Brian Willems draws on the science fiction of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson alongside speculative materialists including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett. By questioning it, these writers and philosophers both develop and challenge anthropomorphism. Willems looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way that language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene.

Brian Willems (Author)