From Global Risk to Private Catastrophe: The Domestic and the Planetary in Daniel Kramb’s From Here and Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort
Climate change is at the heart of recent critical debates about the role of the global and the local in the critical practice of the environmental humanities. While critics like Ursula K. Heise and Timothy Clark have argued for putting the global at the conceptual centre of inquiry, others have warn...
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fttriple:oai:gotriple.eu:oai:doaj.org/article:3739e96f154b4006ac5b64d473bd0758 2023-05-15T17:58:03+02:00 From Global Risk to Private Catastrophe: The Domestic and the Planetary in Daniel Kramb’s From Here and Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort Karsten Levihn-Kutzler 2018-12-01 https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.378 https://doaj.org/article/3739e96f154b4006ac5b64d473bd0758 en es eng spa Open Library of Humanities 2056-6700 doi:10.16995/olh.378 https://doaj.org/article/3739e96f154b4006ac5b64d473bd0758 undefined Open Library of Humanities, Vol 4, Iss 2 (2018) hisphilso socio Journal Article https://vocabularies.coar-repositories.org/resource_types/c_6501/ 2018 fttriple https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.378 2023-01-22T19:35:45Z Climate change is at the heart of recent critical debates about the role of the global and the local in the critical practice of the environmental humanities. While critics like Ursula K. Heise and Timothy Clark have argued for putting the global at the conceptual centre of inquiry, others have warned that such a wide focus obscures the localized effects of climate change and their connection to histories of colonial and capitalist exploitation. Rather than privileging one side of this argument over the other, this paper seeks to put both perspectives into a productive dialogue that focusses on how literature can connect the local histories and global environmental risks. The paper draws on two relatively unknown novels, Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort (2007) and Daniel Kramb’s From Here (2012), in order to show how the threat of climate change disrupts understandings of scale that structure our social lives by linking global forces to moments of domestic and intimate crisis. From Here’s protagonist is a cosmopolitan culture worker, whose perpetual uprootedness becomes the vantage point for her political engagement with the threat of climate change. Cold Comfort’s Alaska Native protagonist finds her house literally tilting due to the melting permafrost ground, while domestic violence and sexual abuse make her home uninhabitable. Despite the huge disjuncture in the contexts they portray, the texts share an interest in the disjuncture between awareness and agency, in the impact of climate change on domestic and intimate relationships, and in links between the private, the political and the planetary. Article in Journal/Newspaper permafrost Alaska Unknown Tilting ENVELOPE(-54.065,-54.065,49.700,49.700) Open Library of Humanities 4 2 |
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hisphilso socio Karsten Levihn-Kutzler From Global Risk to Private Catastrophe: The Domestic and the Planetary in Daniel Kramb’s From Here and Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort |
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Climate change is at the heart of recent critical debates about the role of the global and the local in the critical practice of the environmental humanities. While critics like Ursula K. Heise and Timothy Clark have argued for putting the global at the conceptual centre of inquiry, others have warned that such a wide focus obscures the localized effects of climate change and their connection to histories of colonial and capitalist exploitation. Rather than privileging one side of this argument over the other, this paper seeks to put both perspectives into a productive dialogue that focusses on how literature can connect the local histories and global environmental risks. The paper draws on two relatively unknown novels, Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort (2007) and Daniel Kramb’s From Here (2012), in order to show how the threat of climate change disrupts understandings of scale that structure our social lives by linking global forces to moments of domestic and intimate crisis. From Here’s protagonist is a cosmopolitan culture worker, whose perpetual uprootedness becomes the vantage point for her political engagement with the threat of climate change. Cold Comfort’s Alaska Native protagonist finds her house literally tilting due to the melting permafrost ground, while domestic violence and sexual abuse make her home uninhabitable. Despite the huge disjuncture in the contexts they portray, the texts share an interest in the disjuncture between awareness and agency, in the impact of climate change on domestic and intimate relationships, and in links between the private, the political and the planetary. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Karsten Levihn-Kutzler |
author_facet |
Karsten Levihn-Kutzler |
author_sort |
Karsten Levihn-Kutzler |
title |
From Global Risk to Private Catastrophe: The Domestic and the Planetary in Daniel Kramb’s From Here and Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort |
title_short |
From Global Risk to Private Catastrophe: The Domestic and the Planetary in Daniel Kramb’s From Here and Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort |
title_full |
From Global Risk to Private Catastrophe: The Domestic and the Planetary in Daniel Kramb’s From Here and Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort |
title_fullStr |
From Global Risk to Private Catastrophe: The Domestic and the Planetary in Daniel Kramb’s From Here and Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort |
title_full_unstemmed |
From Global Risk to Private Catastrophe: The Domestic and the Planetary in Daniel Kramb’s From Here and Susannah Waters’ Cold Comfort |
title_sort |
from global risk to private catastrophe: the domestic and the planetary in daniel kramb’s from here and susannah waters’ cold comfort |
publisher |
Open Library of Humanities |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.378 https://doaj.org/article/3739e96f154b4006ac5b64d473bd0758 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-54.065,-54.065,49.700,49.700) |
geographic |
Tilting |
geographic_facet |
Tilting |
genre |
permafrost Alaska |
genre_facet |
permafrost Alaska |
op_source |
Open Library of Humanities, Vol 4, Iss 2 (2018) |
op_relation |
2056-6700 doi:10.16995/olh.378 https://doaj.org/article/3739e96f154b4006ac5b64d473bd0758 |
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op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.378 |
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Open Library of Humanities |
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4 |
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2 |
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