'Om iets te redden, moet je iets vernietigen.' Een analyse van Nederlandse cli-fi aan de hand van (pan-)inheemse levensopvattingen.
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2023-06-30
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nl
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According to Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, the current form of the novel is mainly based on Western literary conventions that prove to be problematic in such manner that humanity is not able to imagine what is taking place today in climatological sense, and during several decades. The result is that too few people are mobilised to combat climate change, and to tackle this problem Ghosh opts for the implementation of non-Western literary strategies. From that point of view, this thesis scrutinises three Dutch climate novels using the pan-indigenous concept of the "Four R's" – relationship, responsibility, reciprocity, redistribution. To give an impression of how this philosophy is exhibited in both literature and real life, Braiding Sweetgrass by Anishinaabe scholar and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer is being applied in this thesis. By juxtaposing fragments from this book, in which traditional indigenous stories and knowledge of plants amalgamate with modern Western science, with excerpts of the corpus, it is illustrated how the "Four R's" have the potential to provide for a different life philosophy within the examined corpus’s milieu – and the real world. However, the thesis shows that two of the three novels rather display a destructive and human exceptionalist world view, and from which a reader is offered little or no alternative to engage in any form of constructive action. On the other hand, the third Dutch novel does showcase how new ways are being explored in imagining climate change and the natural surroundings, and in which the "Four R's" do appear prominently, thus raising a foundation for a new Dutch narrative form.
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