Introduction: Narrating the Nonhuman

Abstract

The opening chapter will introduce and contextualise new forms, contents, tropes, and genres that characterise novel writing in the twenty-first century. Characteristics central to the novel as a form play an important role in providing the imaginative space to explore human-nonhuman relations. Our aim is twofold: first, we want to contextualise our literary approach within wider conversations about nature, globalisation, the Anthropocene, the digital turn, and the concomitant rise in awareness of nonhuman agents. We will situate our volume within existing discourses in the field, relating our volume to approaches from the paradigms of ecocriticism, new materialism, posthumanism, object-oriented philosophy, and actor-network theory. Bringing together different ideas and approaches from these fields, we will show how nonhuman agency emerges in literature where traditional means of meaning-making no longer suffice and categories of the ‘known’ are surpassed. Second, we will provide a general overview over the variety of different approaches that have been established to discuss literary texts and to envision the potential of the nonhuman beyond traditional dualisms. In this section, we will reflect upon the affordances of the novel as a form and its potential to trigger cultural and political change by connecting ethical questions and aesthetic expressions. The introduction will conclude with a short overview of the approaches presented in the following chapters.