Climate and the Limits of Narratability

A panel to be pitched for inclusion in the 2025 conference of the International Society for the Study of Narrative in Miami, April 2–6, 2025.

Organizer: Daniel Aureliano Newman, University of Toronto

Can climate change and other large-scale environmental changes be narrated? According to several narrative scholars, the answer is no—or, at least, not easily. Indeed scholars of narrative and climate change have time and again returned to H. Porter Abbott’s (2003) definition of the unnarratable, which refers to phenomena so complex or so strange that they resist or impede narrative representation and communication (Bergthaller 2018; Ghosh 2016; Horn 2020; Krieg 2022; Raipola 2019). Equally compelling is a distinct meaning of unnarratability proposed by Gerald Prince (1988) and expanded by Robyn Warhol (2005), where the unnarratable is what is unspeakable, either due to its danger and transgressiveness (it must not be narrated) or, alternatively, to its mundanity (it need not be narrated). While certainly relevant to discussions of climate change’s slow violence and catastrophic effects, this understanding of unnarratability has gained little currently in econarratology (but see James 2022). Nor have these two primary interpretations of unnarratability exhausted the term’s potential as a conceptual tool for thinking about the intersections of narrative, science and global change. 

I invite papers to stimulate further and new work on the unnarratable. While papers working with Prince, Abbott and/or Warhol’s versions of the term are very welcome, I’m also open to new and/or creative interpretations of the “unnarratable,” as well as to both literal and figurative takes on “climate.” While I am partial to papers that engage with science or science communication, this is not a requirement.

To be considered for the panel, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a brief academic bio (in the same document) to daniel.newman@utoronto.ca by October 13, 2024. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Works Cited

Abbott, H. Porter. “Unnarratable Knowledge: The Difficulty of Understanding Evolution by Natural Selection.” Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, ed. David Herman. University of Chicago Press, 2003, 143–62.

Bergthaller, Hannes. “Climate Change and Un-narratability.” Metaphora 2 (2018): V-1–V-12.

Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Horn, Eva. “Challenges for an Aesthetics of the Anthropocene.” The Anthropocenic Turn. Routledge, 2020. 159-172.

James, Erin. Narrative in the Anthropocene. Ohio State University Press, 2022.

Krieg, C. Parker. “Archival Earth: Endangered Testimony at the Limits of Narrative.” Partial Answers 20.2 (2022): 337-356.

Prince, Gerald. “The Disnarrated.” Style 22.1 (1988): 1–8.

Raipola, Juha. “Unnarratable Matter: Emergence, Narrative, and Material Ecocriticism." Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture, eds. Sanna Karkulehto, Alno-Kaisa Koistinen and Essi Varis. Routledge, 2019. 263–79.

Warhol, Robyn R. "Neonarrative; or, how to Render the Unnarratable in Realist Fiction and Contemporary Film." A Companion to Narrative Theory, eds James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Blackwell, 2005. 220–231.