June 23, 2022

Green Earth, Episode 8: "Terraforming Earth," "The Dominoes Fall," and "You Get What You Get": Unintelligibility, the Everyday, and Climate Politics

1 hour 32 minutes

In this FINAL episode of our discussion of Green Earth, Matt and Hilary talk about the themes of unintelligibility throughout the novel(s) and think about the ways the novel(s) insert climate change into both the political and the everyday lived realities of people who are used to living relatively comfortable lives.

We work through some issues on the historical contexts of the novel's publication and our reading of it a mere 18 (or 7) years later, but in what feels like a radically different world both politically and with regards to climate.

The ways the novel does show in a subtle way some of the holes in the kinds of solutions it posits, like the Quiblers' possibility of moving in with the Khembalis, the questionable nature of American democracy vis a vis the fixed (or unfixed) presidential election, and the cloudy relationship between capitalism and liberal democracy, especially in light of the role China plays in the denouement.

We touch on metaphor, science, Buddhism, 1000-year projects, the Chemosphere, class consciousness among the PMC, and so, so much more.

Thanks for listening to this season! We'll be taking a bit of a break for a few weeks and will return with a series of episodes on the ALIEN movie franchise, then probably an episode on the book Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future by Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann. And eventually we'll return to KSR--we still have at least five books left to read!

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Music by Spirit of Space

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