Ashish Kothari

Kalpavriksh

Apt 5 Shree Datta Krupa

908 Deccan Gymkhana

Pune 411004, India

Tel: 91-20-25654239

https://ashishkothari.in 

CLIMATE CHANGE FICTION AND ITS POTENTIAL FOR TRANSFORMATION: A WEBINAR SERIES

Climate change fiction has come to the fore in recent times as an
offshoot of science/speculative fiction, as a way of coming to terms
with the reality of global warming and climate change and the likely
repercussions for vulnerable species and communities most likely to be
affected in the near future. As extrapolations from current trends,
such imaginative responses have offered a significant critique of
techno-science and the dominant development paradigm and opened out
conceptual alternatives and pathways to transformation.
Kalpavriksh and Global Tapestry of Alternatives plan to host a series
of dialogues and conversations on themes relating to South Asia in
particular, seeking to find the interface between fiction, academia
and activism.

Session 1
Climate Change Fiction: The South Asia Experience

In this interaction between authors, scholars and activists, we hope
to critically explore the reasons for South Asia being foregrounded as
a zone for climate catastrophe in recent Western cli-fi (Kim Stanley
Robinson, Ministry of the Future, Stephen Markley, The Deluge), as
well as discover more about the extent to which this sub-genre has
found roots in this region. Amitav Ghosh has led the way in writing
novels with this theme (The Hungry Tide, Gun Island), besides
critiquing the failure of literary fiction to engage with this set of
questions. Has speculative fiction/cli-fi from South Asia begun to
offer a nuanced and grounded representation of both the survival
mechanisms espoused in the face of existential threats and
possibilities for resistance and organisation at the grassroots level
emerging in the region, as Vandana Singh and others have argued? Can
climate change fiction indicate the scope for alternative paradigms
emerging at present and in times to come?

Panelists
Vandana Singh -- author, Utopias of the Third Kind; physicist & climate change scientist
Anil Menon -- author, The Coincidence Plot; Chief Editor, Bombay Literary Magazine
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyaya -- Assoc. Prof, Univ of Oslo, and Lead, CoFUTURES
Ashish Kothari-- Kalpavriksh, Vikalp Sangam, and Global Tapestry of Alternatives

17 January, 1 pm GMT/UTC; 6.30 pm IST

Information:  https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_climate_change_fiction_webinars:episode_1

To join: