CLA Presents a Sabbatical Talk: Cognitive Mapping and Climate Change in Kim Stanley Robinson’s, “The Ministry for the Future”
The College of Liberal Arts presents, Cognitive Mapping and Climate Change in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future
Date: Friday, March 10, 2023
Time: 1:30-3:00pm
Location: LA 4310
Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels are attempts at “cognitive mapping,” which Fredric Jameson defines as “a situational representation on the part of the individual subject to that vaster and properly unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of society’s structures as a whole.” Representation of a “properly unrepresentable totality” is both paradoxical and, necessarily, speculative. Yet it seems compatible with the traditional goals of realist, historical, and science fiction novels. However, in The Ministry for the Future (2020) Robinson attempts “cognitive mapping” at a scale commensurate with the unfolding of global climate change. As a result, the novel’s wide-ranging discursive content often spills over the boundaries of its genre and poses a challenge to readers, as its author explores rarefied subjects like monetary theory and climate change science and employs nonhuman narrators like photons, carbon atoms, and the concept of blockchained cyber currencies.
Tags: General
Categorised in: General
This post was written by Gempp, Karen A.