Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.15291/sic/2.15.lc.10

“We Are the Future”: Solastalgia, Climate Anxiety, and Posthuman Agency in Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne

Jasmine Sharma ; Ambedkar University Delhi, India

Abstract

In this article, I am interested in exploring issues of solastalgia and climate anxiety and how overcoming these emotions leads to the establishment of posthuman agency in Jeff VanderMeer’s ontologically multifaceted novel Borne (2017). I argue that the circumstances of ecological grief can be transformed into an inclusive form of materialist entanglement and intra-active agency, which can eventually create optimal conditions for cross-species understanding. Divided into two core sections, the article first delineates the concept of solastalgia and its dynamics of addressing environmental doom. Through specific textual examples, it examines the conditions of climate anxiety experienced by Rachel, the central protagonist of VanderMeer’s novel, and, secondly, it substantiates how Rachel, by the end of the novel, transforms her solastalgia into an emancipating weapon that helps her, along with Borne as a nonhuman companion, to re-establish a symbiotic relationship with the newly emerging posthuman world.

Keywords

solastalgia, climate anxiety, climate fiction, posthuman, agency, intra-active, materialist entanglement

Hrčak ID:

335102

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/335102

Publication date:

1.6.2025.

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