Fantastic futures? Cli-fi, climate justice, and queer futurity
Evans, Rebecca. “Fantastic futures? Cli-fi, climate justice, and queer futurity.” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 4, no. 2-3 (2017): 94-110.
This essay seeks to add new dimensions to current critical understandings of cli-fi’s relationship to environmental futurity. It suggests that cli-fi is not in fact a coherent genre but rather a literary preoccupation with climate futures that draws from a wide range of popular genres. Th e critical response to cli- fi has thus far generically fl attened the term, emphasizing its association with the realistic literary strategies commonly associated with scientifi c knowledge while excluding other genres. Yet a more nuanced account of cli- fi ’s generic constitution reveals new aspects of the relationship between cli- fi and ecological futurity. Indeed, cli- fi ’s use of multiple genres is an integral part of the way it narratively conjures the future— a conjuring that infl ects the representation of climate justice and the queer politics of futurity itself.
Addresses the concept of “allegorical fantasy” (100-101, 105)