Living entanglements and the ecological thought in the works of Paul Kingsnorth, Tom McCarthy, and Ali Smith

In my thesis, I use the work of Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton, Karen Barad, and Anna Tsing to explore how three contemporary British novelists—Paul Kingsnorth, Tom McCarthy, and Ali Smith—deal with the representational and ethical challenges of writing about nature and climate change within the Anthropocene. The question of how to live and write now is a prominent thread in all their works, which show, in both form and content, the entanglements of ecology, materiality, locality, nationality, and personal identity. In doing so, their stories enable readers to engage with what Morton calls the “ecological thought,” i.e. “a practice and process of becoming fully aware of how human beings are connected with other beings,” and provoke us, as Haraway puts it, “to be truly present . . . as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.”

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Peace, Garrett

Contributors dc:contributor

• Arnett, James J.
• McCarthy, Andrew D.; Palmer, Heather M.
• College of Arts and Sciences

• British literature
• Ecology in literature

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/694

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1862