About the episode

In this interaction between authors, scholars and activists, we hope to critically explore the reasons for South Asia being foregrounded as a zone for climate catastrophe in recent Western cli-fi (Kim Stanley Robinson, Ministry of the Future, Stephen Markley, The Deluge), as well as discover more about the extent to which this sub-genre has found roots in this region. Amitav Ghosh has led the way in writing novels with this theme (The Hungry Tide, Gun Island), besides critiquing the failure of literary fiction to engage with this set of questions.

Has speculative fiction/cli-fi from South Asia begun tooffer a nuanced and grounded representation of both the survival mechanisms espoused in the face of existential threats and possibilities for resistance and organisation at the grassroots level emerging in the region, as Vandana Singh and others have argued? Can climate change fiction indicate the scope for alternative paradigms emerging at present and in times to come?

Date and Time

Date: 17 January 2024

Time: 1 pm GMT/UTC; 6.30 pm IST

Panelists

Vandana Singh – author, Utopias of the Third Kind; physicist & climate change scientist

Anil Menon – author, The Coincidence Plot; Chief Editor, Bombay Literary Magazine

Bodhisattva Chattopadhyaya – Assoc. Prof, Univ of Oslo, and Lead, CoFUTURES

Ashish Kothari – Kalpavriksh, Vikalp Sangam, and Global Tapestry of Alternatives

https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_climate_change_fiction_webinars:episode_1