Full Description
Blue Extinction in Literature, Culture, and Art examines literary and cultural representations of aquatic biodiversity loss, bringing together critical perspectives from the blue humanities and extinction studies. It demonstrates the affordances, as well as the limitations, of literary and artistic forms in exposing the plight of aquatic organisms, drawing attention to the social, political, and economic structures that are contributing to their destruction. Together, the essays in this collection demonstrate how literature and art can challenge dominant cultural conceptions and lingering misconceptions surrounding aquatic biodiversity loss, offering new ways of relating to species ranging from whales to oysters.
Contents
Introduction.-Blue Extinction'.-'Amitav Ghosh's Dolphins: Extinction, Figuration and Redemption in The Hungry Tide and Gun Island' .-'The Prospects of Criticism in the Brave New Ocean.- Jackson, Verne, and Toussenel.-'Narwhals for all Seasons.- Representation, Evasion and Absence'.-'"We Will All Be Marine Mammals Soon": Oceanic Intimacy and Extinction from Shakespeare to the Left-to-Die Boat'.- 'Held Together.- Learning Attachment from Oysters' .-'Surreal Seas and Embodied Encounters.- Elizabeth Bishop's Darwinian Poetics' .-'Hydromaterialism and Membrane Logic in Elizabeth-Jane Burnett's Of Sea'.-'A Story of Eight Limbs'.-'Spectral Species in the (Political) Abyss.- From Living Fossils to Presumed Extinctions'.-'Alien Rhythms: Sounding Black Futures from the Ocean Floor'.
