ABSTRACT

This article is a response to the neoliberalist/right-wing populist backlashes in times of crisis and their reflection in the media, as well as the multidirectional crises that Europe is facing at the moment, most notably the war in Ukraine and the recent Covid-19 pandemic. I argue that these appeared as crises within crises, happening to an already socially precarious world, laying bare the shortcomings and deepening the multiple inequalities that already existed. I turn to the fictional representations of the discourses and practices which simultaneously explicate the problematic workings of today’s reality and provide tentative hope through literary imagination, employing the methods of feminist criticism and ecocriticism. Using Ali Smith’s novel Summer (2020) as an example, I draw attention to language and its agency to both construct a provisional reality, and to be deconstructed to reveal other agencies, i.e. the material workings of nature, bodies and seasons. I argue that Smith connects events, characters and temporalities in cyclical repetitions to interrogate the agenda of humanism, sociality, history and nature, presenting the pandemic as a global phenomenon which cannot be countered by individual choices, in a world that is connected on multiple scales that affect all lives, because of our material and transcorporeal connections.

摘要

本文是对危机时期新自由主义/右翼民粹主义的反弹及其在媒体中的反映，以及欧洲目前面临的多方危机，尤其是乌克兰战争和最近的新冠肺炎疫情的回应。 19 流行病。我认为，这些似乎是危机中的危机，发生在一个社会已经岌岌可危的世界，暴露了缺点并加深了已经存在的多重不平等。我转向话语和实践的虚构再现，这些话语和实践同时解释了当今现实的问题运作，并通过文学想象提供了初步的希望，采用了女权主义批评和生态批评的方法。使用阿里史密斯的小说《夏天》（2020）作为一个例子，我提请注意语言及其代理，以构建一个临时的现实，并被解构以揭示其他代理，即自然、身体和季节的物质运作。我认为，史密斯以循环重复的方式将事件、人物和时间性联系起来，以质疑人文主义、社会性、历史和自然的议程，将大流行作为一种全球现象，在一个多尺度连接的世界中，无法通过个人选择来对抗。由于我们的物质和超物质联系，这会影响所有生命。