Seminar with Nadine Redmer, PhD-candidate in German literature, University of Stuttgart.

What is the power of fictional literature in humanity’s ongoing struggle of becoming more sustainable? And what do powerful texts look like aesthetically? Thanks to our reading experiences, most of us might have a gut feeling on how to answer these questions: Depending on the type of literature we read, it can help us to handle sustainability challenges by e.g. allowing us to learn about other places, times, beings. Also, literature can point to the contrary: It might invite us to avert our eyes from the predicaments of the Anthropocene and to deny the fallout of mankind’s presence on Earth altogether. So, there is good reason to believe that fictions play a role in our thinking, feeling, and acting when we are facing issues of sustainability. However, we do not dispose over empirical evidence to proof such an intuitive guess. The introduced PhD project prepares the stage to change that. It pushes the limits of existing research in the anthropocentric branch of Ecocriticism and in Sustainability Science by exploring a way to test how far novels can help us to overcome hurdles on humanity’s journey towards a sustainable future. In my presentation, I will introduce a close reading approach that allows readers to question the leverage of literature on their capabilities to transform their spheres of control in an ecologically, economically, and socially sound manner. I developed that approach after having worked my way through an immense, yet under-researched reservoir of sustainability fictions from Germany, France and Norway. Whilst I was reading these texts, I experienced that – as Simon Richter puts it and as I hope to highlight throughout my talk – »an activism based on leveraging literature […] can bring you joy« and that » – even in the midst of [the current climate emergency which is] a thriller with daunting odds and uncertain outcomes« – it is worth the effort to use literature as leverage.