Fabulating Ecologies undertakes a comprehensive exploration into the world of eco-fabulations within cinematic narratives. The chapters navigate speculative and futuristic dimensions, envisioning entangled existences within domains that transcend the human experience. By doing so, the work provokes a reassessment of established paradigms surrounding environment, apocalyptic scenarios, citizenship, and anthropocentrism, all within the context of a fluid and evolving posthuman thought in cinematic storylines. Many recent films that do not belong to the SF category have effectively exhibited premonitions about impending threats, and the ones explored in this book are a small part of a larger lineage of films. This book recognizes such films as “cautionary” forms of media because they create an instinctive feeling of urgency. Cautionary cinema efficiently transmits narratives of foreboding, comprising the capacity to portray both fear and hope, through a combination of empathetic resonance and disruptive shock. The argument for machinocene being a logical supersedence to the Anthropocene is strengthened by the ubiquitous presence of heavy machinery and unrestrained technology in these ecologies that tilt us toward a calamitous vision of the future.
This book explores cinematic eco-fabulations, examining interwoven existences beyond the human experience and reevaluating notions of environment, apocalyptic scenarios, citizenships, and anthropocentrism in evolving posthuman conditions. The book also presents the notion of a 'machinic apocalypse' signifying the disastrous complexities of sustainability in a technologically-driven Anthropocene.
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This book explores cinematic eco-fabulations, examining interwoven existences beyond the human experience and reevaluating notions of environment, apocalyptic scenarios, citizenships, and anthropocentrism in evolving posthuman conditions.
Foreword by Ritwick Bhattacharjee
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Screening Caution: Elitism, Social Exclusion, and Machinic
Ecologies
Chapter 2: Forest Ecology and the Apocalyptic Vision in Princess Mononoke and
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Chapter 3: Desert Ecologies in Mad Max: Fury Road and Dune
Chapter 4: Alien Ecology in Annihilation
Chapter 5: Simulated Ecologies in Gamer and Ready Player One
Chapter 6: Posthuman Ecologies and Intelligent Life in Jung_E, After Yang,
and Ex Machina
Chapter 7: Apocalyptic and Post-apocalyptic Ecologies: Exploring Children of
Men, Dont Look Up, Blade Runner 2049, The Road, and Waterworld
Conclusion: Aberration, Apathy, Apocalypse
Bibliography
About the Author
Anik Sarkar teaches at Uttar Banga Maheshwari College, affiliated to the University of North Bengal. His books include The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and The Routledge Handbook of Indian Indie Cinema.