GATES Morning talk - Poetics of Marginal Environments: The Challenge of Ecoliterature in North Africa and the Middle East

More than a century of imperial and neo-imperial attitudes and practices has resulted in intractable environmental problems as well as in the need for new kinds of environmental discourses. Arab writers have often been keen spokespeople regarding the dangers of these texts and their environmental repercussions, and have contributed with their own narratives of the environment. Such works enable an understanding of how Arabic literary texts intersect with larger social texts regarding the MENA environments and their material implications. I analyze the representation of climate change and environmental crises in contemporary Arabic fiction, and focus, in particular, on two short stories authored by Iraq-born authors, “The Worker” by Diya Jubaili; and the “Gardens of Babylon” by Hassan Blasim, both included in the short story collection Iraq +100 (2016) edited by Blasim. Both stories participate in a wider dystopian trend in post-2011 Arabic literature, as they project a pessimistic view of the future. In both stories, the climate crisis plays an important role in the plot and interlaces with the question of oil resources in the region. The presentation will highlight the shared narrative and aesthetic features of (dystopian) cli-fi, and the contribution of this genre to the global literary discourse on environmental crisis.