Als Teil der XXI. Weltkonferenz der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft (ICLA) zum Thema »Die vielen Sprachen der Literaturwissenschaft« widmete sich das Panel des SPP-Teilprojekts »Die Zeit des Klimas« mit der Frage nach den ›Sprachen des Klimas‹ einer zentralen Praktik der Verzeitlichung von Natur. Die Beiträge warfen Schlaglichter auf historische Entwicklungen, Disziplinen und literarische Texte, die das Sprechen vom Klima in der Moderne ebenso konturieren, wie sie von ihm beeinflusst sind.
Programm
Eva Horn (Universität Wien): Comparing Climates, Comparing Cultures
Isabel Kranz (Universität Wien): From Acclimatization to Assisted Migration: Sociobiological Metaphors in the Discourse on Climate Change
Benjamin Bühler (Universität Konstanz): Closed System and Terraforming. Artificial Climate in Reinhard Jirgls Nichts von Euch auf Erden
Johannes Ungelenk (LMU München): Émile Zola and the Literary Language of Climate Change
Susanne Fuchs (New York University): How Not to Speak of Climate: Narrative Gaps in the Dystopian Genre
Patrick Stoffel (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg): Mit dem Steigen des Meeresspiegels
Achim Küpper (FU Berlin): Raoul Schrott’s Languages of Climate Change and Desertification: Writing and Reading Climate in the Desert
Solvejg Nitzke (Universität Wien): Climate and Biography: Mountaineering Narratives as Climatological Tales
Abstract
Currently, climate is something that is talked about in abundance – but does it have its own language or even languages? If, to borrow Timothy Morton’s phrase, ›weather weathers about climate‹, what does climate do or have to say and how is it being talked, if not ›weathered‹ about?
However, while ›climate change‹ is in the center of attention in recent discussions, the changes in the way climate is framed and understood to express itself, has yet rarely been examined. Taking into account that climate cannot be observed directly but only through its expressions, the central question when looking at languages of climate is what specific knowledge of climate and one’s ability to depict it and to read its expressions is formed and presupposed by any discourse about climate. This task is only seemingly an exclusively scientific one or in dire need of ›scientific literacy‹ – the practices of reading, depicting, and communicating climate rely heavily on cultural narratives and traditions which are equally important to investigate. Moreover, they are to be found in texts which by far precede disciplinary scientific communication within the realm of climatology, meteorology and ecology.
In this workshop we propose to investigate comparative approaches to climate in order to offer a view that is able to take into account the change of ideas of what climate is – from local to global climate, from a determining factor in the conditio humana to a life-threatening force on a human scale – as well as what languages it produces. Entering the discussion by means of comparative literature, we will attempt to recognize climate not as a single (changing) object, but as an environment of life forms as well as texts in its own right.
Solvejg Nitzke · 1. August 2016, 12:55 Uhr