In september is het onderzoeksproject ‘Imaginaries of the Future City: Envisioning Climate Change and Technological Cityscapes through Contemporary Speculative Fiction’ van start gegaan. Speculatieve fictie vormt hierin het uitgangspunt om samen met milieuwetenschappers en psychologen na te denken over de verschillende manieren waarop fictieve verhalen de verbeelding van de toekomstige stad vormgeven.
Op 13 december presenteerden Marjolein van Herten en ik de eerste bevindingen tijdens het congres ‘(Un)Fair Cities: Equity, Ideology, Utopia in Urban Texts‘ (Limerick).
Abstract
How does narrative fiction function as an integrating discourse in constructing and shaping (collective) imaginations of a safe future city? This is the departing question of the interdisciplinary research project ‘Imaginaries of the Future City. Envisioning Climate Change and Technological Cityscapes Through Contemporary Speculative Fiction’ of the Open University of the Netherlands. In this project, researchers of different fields of study – literary studies, environmental studies and psychology – cooperate to investigate their use of narratives in thinking about and conceptualizing the future city. Our focus lies with the impact of climate change and technological developments on future city-life. In this paper we would like to share the first findings of our interdisciplinary research group, focusing in particular on the field of literary studies. The notion of ‘speculative fiction’ links to literary narratives that shape and constitute imaginations of the future city and society. In these narratives, cityscapes play a central role: they represent nodal points in which the anxiety surrounding contemporary urban problems and their impact on individuals, societal groups and their environment, are projected. For example, in the Dutch speculative novel De goede zoon (2018) the predominantly grey cityscape has infiltrated ruthlessly into rural areas; even when the protagonist finds himself ‘in nature’ the landscape is highly artificial (the dears in the forest turn out to be robots). Hence, the author confronts the reader with the question of the impact of urban planning in a globalizing world just by imaginatively ‘extrapolating’ present day developments. Even when not explicitly moralizing, the narratives produced within the framework of contemporary speculative fiction show a profound dystopian point of view raising the question to what extend they contribute to productive awareness. By analysing the way speculative fiction represents the future city this paper addresses the question to what extent speculative fiction can contribute to productive awareness of the impact of climate change and technology. Also, it offers reflection on the importance of narrative analysis in contemplating and conceptualizing the future safe city in other fields of study such as environmental studies and psychology.
Het project ‘Imaginaries of the Future City’ wordt gefinancierd door het universiteitsbrede onderzoeksprogramma De Veilige Stad van de Open Universiteit.
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