The Terror and the Terroir: The Ecological Uncanny in

New Weird Exploration Narratives

Siobhan Carroll
University of Delaware

Abstract

This article examines three recent New Weird texts that use the figure
of the scientific explorer to engage with the long history of imperialism
and environmental change. The scientific explorer is a figure traditionally
invested both in the psychic separation of self from natural environment
and in the claiming of natural landscapes for capitalist uses. The scientific
explorer is therefore a harbinger of the Anthropocene, as well as a figure
vulnerable to the return of the environmental repressed. The explorers
in Dan Simmons's The Terror (2007), Jeff VanderMeer's AREA X: THE
SourHERN REACH TRtWCY(20l4), and China Mieville's "Polynia" (2015)
are undone by various fonns of the ecological uncanny. Rather than the
ecological uncanny being portrayed as a pure manifestation of horror,
however, these New Weird texts argue for the embracing of the ecological
uncanny as a means of changing the cultural practices contributing to
global environmental crisis.

1. The Return of the Uncanny

In The Ecological Thought, Timothy Morton claims that "Sigmund

Freud's essay 'The Uncanny' is essential for grasping ' the ecological"'
(52). The uncanny, in Morton's formulation, provides a useful lens via
which to process the return of our repressed awareness of humanity's
implication in a natural world. If traditional Nature discourse " works
to delineate the familiar- the anthropogenic-in nature, and encode it
as Unfamiliar" (Giggs 201), the ecological uncanny undoes this cultural
work, exposing the human in the natural and vice versa. The ecological
uncanny is thus a particular aesthetic expression of what Ursula Heise
describes as the postmodern moment "where a conception of nature as the
real m outside human society becomes difficult or impossible" (450-451 ).
The ecological uncanny is an aesthetic form routinely deployed in
the New Weird, a speculative subgenre characterized in its early years
as a renewed engagement with the " unheimlich" (qtd. in VanderMeer
New Weird 318). The working definition of the New Weird that Jeff
VanderMeer offered in 2008 - "a type of urban, secondary-world fiction
Paradoxa, No. 28 ©2016
68 SIOBHAN CARROLL
that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional
fantasy" (xvi)-recalls Morton's characterization of the ecological
uncanny as revealing the entanglement of urban landscapes with natural
elsewheres, while the subgenre's preoccupation with grotesque bodies
reproduces ecocriticism's challenges to the human-animal binary. In
certain recent examples of New Weird fiction , authors such as Jeff
VanderMeer have become overtly environmental in their engagements,
situating their tales in and around natural landscapes that might, at first
glance, resemble the "hermetically sealed . .. Antarctica" (xvi) that
VanderMeer dismissed as a potential New Weird setting in 2008. But
these ostensibly "wild" spaces are by no means hermetically sealed.
Instead, these New Weird tales reveal natural atopias-natural spaces
inhospitable to human dwelling-to be intimately connected with the
manmade atopias of global capital. 1
In this article, I examine three recent overtly environmental New
Weird narratives - Dan Sirnmons 's The Terror (2007), Jeff VanderMeer 's
AREA X: THE SouTHERN REACH TRILOGY (2014) , and China Mieville's
"Polynia" (2015)-that use the familiar character type of the explorer
as a fulcrum for their uncanny unveilings. Ifwe think of "the explorer"
as a figure who traditionally mediates elsewhere for domestic readers,
who performs incorruptibility of national character in the face of a
hostile Nature, and who anticipates , even in death, his nation's future
mastery of the inhuman environment, the susceptibility of this figure to
uncanny disintegration becomes clear. As a scientific figure and as an
employee-a person dispatched on "a mission organized and commanded
from home base ... that had precise objectives" (Bourguet 261)-the
explorer also affords New Weird writers the possibility of exposing the
long history of capitalism's scientific and political engagement with
the planetary environment. The three "lost expeditions" at the heart of
these weird tales thus serve as staging grounds from which Simmons,
VanderMeer, and Mieville can describe what Jason W. Moore has dubbed
"the Capitalocene," an alternate designation for the Anthropocene that
emphasizes the fundamental role of capitalist structures in shaping
the planetary environment. In allying a false construction of Nature
with capitalism's "audacious strategies of global conquest, endless
commodification, and relentless rationaJization" (Moore "Capitalocene"
5), these writers shift the activist implications of their fiction away from
the elimination of individual polluting technologies and toward the
1 Atopia, or non-place, is the term used by critics like Vittorio Gregotti and Marc
Auge to describe space that cannot function as Heideggcrian place, by virtue of its
resistance to habitation and dwelling. For a discussion of the relationship between
atopias and the traditional settings of speculative fiction, see Carroll l - 18.
THE TERROR AND THE TERROIR 69
reirnagining of social relations. As with Moore's Capitalocene argument,
these narratives ultimately suggest that the only effective response to
what Rob Nixon has termed the "slow violence" (2) of environmental
degradation is a transcendence of the capitalist power relations that have
forged the modem world.
2. Mapping "the Explorer"
What exactly is an explorer? As Adriana Craciun notes, the
connotations attached to early versions of the word "explorer" were less-
than-savory, describing "a person employed to collect information, esp.
with regard to an enemy, or an enemy's country; a scout; a spy" (OED,
exploratory, n .) . Although the word gained more positive connotations in
later centuries, the suggestion that explorers served as de-facto advance
scouts for invasion and colonization often proved true in practice. During
the Enlightenment, a new rationale for exploration-the scientific
investigation-reframed military-run expeditions in more politic terms,
as quests for the advancement of human knowledge. The rise of the
scientific explorer not only associated the word "exploration" with
science, but fundamentally shaped the European public's understanding
of the emergent figure of the scientist. Thus, when in Frankenstein the
eponymous scientist hails the polar explorer Captain Walton as a version
of his earlier self - "You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did"
( 17) - his words reflect an early nineteenth century perception of these
two types as equivalent. When we consider the figure of the explorer,
then, it trails at its feet a legacy of associations that link it to militant
imperialism, colonization, science, and authorship-associations which,
as Frankenstein indicates, speculative fiction has Jong put to use.2
The scientific explorer in particular affords writers an unusual vantage
point from which to unpick the scientific ethos , because even in the
nineteenth century they represented a type of scientific figure who
problematized objectivity. While on one hand, scientific explorers took
pains to demonstrate the kind of "self-mastery" (40) that, as Lorraine
J. Daston and Peter Galison have argued, became an important facet of
2
Other literary works inspired by the Romantics' resurgent interest in polar
exploration include S.T. Coleridge's Rime ofthe Ancient Mariner and Edgar Allan
Poe 's The Narrative ofArthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. When Weird authors such
as H.P. Lovecraft turned to the Arctic and Antarctica as settings, they drew heavily on
the.fictitious as well as nonfictional legacy of the polar geo-imaginary, representing
their own doomed expeditions entering lands trod both by Pym and Franklin. For
more on the poles as imagined spaces, sec Leane.
70 SIOBHAN CARROLL
the scientific ethos, the genre of the voyage narrative worked against_the
generation of"knowledge that bears no trace of the knower" (Daston and
Galison 17).After all, as Marie-Noelle Bourguet notes, "The explorer's
biography is ... the raw material out of which the scientist constructs his
science" (Bourguet 298). Embedded in the environment they had come
to observe, with one of their frequent objects being the effects of that
environment on their bodies, scientific explorers were often obliged to
include subjective experience in their accounts. Nor was an omission
of subjective experience desired by the reading public: indeed, by the
publication of John Franklin's Narrative of a Journey to the Shores ?f
the Polar Sea in 1823, it was already clear that expeditions full of tragic
incident commanded more attention than dull-but-successful exercises
in data collection.
The ill-fated Sir. John Franklin, the polar explorer remembered
by Joseph Conrad as the "dominating figure" (9) of his youthful
geographical imagination, serves as an illustrative real-world example
of an iconic scientific explorer. Franklin presided over not one but two
sionificant arctic disasters. The first , the Coppermine Expedition of 1819-
22, saw 10 of 16 expedition members die, four allegedly murdered by
a Metis voyageur as a source of food for the remaining members, ｾｮ､＠
one (the voyageur) executed for his cannibalistic actions. ｆｲ｡ｮｫｨｾ＠ 's
further adventures in the polar regions secured him a yet more lastmg
(if unfortunate) fame. In 1845, his two ships, the Erebus and the Terror ,
disappeared into the arctic on a quest for the Northwest Passage, never
to be heard from again. The final Franklin expedition became one of
the most famous "lost expeditions" ever dispatched, sparking a massive
search for the expedition that has continued to be pursued even in the
21 51 century.
The official narrative of Franklin's first arctic expedition illustrates
many of the environmental tropes of exploration narratives. In this
account of their arctic misadventures, Franklin and his men took
pains to distinguish their responses to the environment ｦｲｾｭ＠ _those of
indigenous peoples. Whereas the "moral character of [an md1genous]
hunter is acted upon by the nature of the land he inhabits" (97), the
British explorers claimed to hold themselves separate from the landscape,
regarding it, even at moments of great physical stress, as an object of
objective scientific analysis and aesthetic contemplation. "Impatient as
we were, and blinded with pain, we paid a tribute of admiration, which
this beautiful landscape is capable of exciting" (293) , declares Franklin
of one contemplative moment. As the party's situation becomes dire,
however, self-mastery becomes increasingly difficult. "The fact is, that
with the decay of our strength, our minds decayed, and we were no
71
THE TERROR AND THE TERROIR
longer able to bear the contemplation of the horrors that surrounded
us," notes Dr. John Richardson, one of the expedition's officers, who
hastens to add "yet we were calm and resigned to our fate ... and we
were punctual and fervent in our addresses to the Supreme Being" (338) .
Given the allegations of cannibalism made against him, Richardson had
more than ideological reasons for insisting that his party halted at the
brink of madness but did not go over it. That fate belonged to Michel
Terrehaute, the half-Iroquois voyageur who, in Richardson's account,
fell prey to the inherent weaknesses of his racial temperament, and was
summarily executed by Richardson as a result.
The question of whether explorers (and by extension, the nations that
sent them) were capable of imposing their will on the environments
they sought to master was a question that went to the heart of imperial
ideology. A fundamental justification for nineteenth and twentieth century
imperialism (or, to use Sven Beckert's term, "war capitalism") was
empires' capacity to "improve" the lands and peoples they exerted control
over. The state of local place-the terroir, in the French agricultural
formulation-thus served as an indicator of the success or the failure
of an imperial project. Authors eager to criticize European imperialism
made use of this connection, as when, in Heart of Darkness, Conrad
dwellS on Kurtz's failure to impose his will on the wilderness. On
reaching Kurtz's station, Marlow realizes that not only has Kurtz failed
to erect the expected "enclosure or fence" (157) that would signal the
transformation of wilderness into agricultural property, but that he has
decorated his abortive attempt at a fence with severed heads. Perhaps this
was predictable: Kurtz, an agent of rapacious war capitalism, "wanted
to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him" (166)-to
be a consumer, rather than an improver, of the environment. But "the
wilderness had ... taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic
invasion," Marlow reflects, positioning the natural world as the agent
of Kurtz's psychic destruction: " I think it had whispered to him things
about himself which he did not know" (164) . The "wilderness" has
consumed Kurtz and the imperial ambitions he represented,just as earlier,
it consumed "John Franklin [and] ... the Erebus and Terror, bound on
other conquests" (104), leaving behind only Kurtz 's famous summation
of the European imperialism: "The horror! The horror!"
The explorer thus stands at a confluence point in the history of global
capitalism, embodying an imperial, scientific, and writerly ethos that is
inherently pressured by the explorer's surrounding environment. Explorers
were supposed to function as advance scouts of their civilizations,
preparing the way for the scientific and social orders that would follow.
If, as Jason W. Moore has argued, we should view capitalism as "a way
 73
THE TERROR AND THE TERROIR
72 SIOBHAN CARROLL

In the fictions I discuss in the remainder of this essay, the figure of the
of ｯｾｧ｡ｮｩｺ＠ Ｑｾ｡ｴｵｲ･Ｂ＠ (Moore Capitalism 2), explorers played a key explorer signifies the narrative's interlocution with the history of war
role .m the capitalist _re-?rganization of the planetary environment by capitalism's ecological transformations. The uncanny returns that are
helpmg to extend capitalist power " to new, uncommodified lands" (63). staoed in these texts call into question the efficacy of global capitalism's
They both ｰｲｾ､ｵ｣ ･ ､＠ and signified "the deployment of territorial power ca;acity to manage the planetary environment and call for the rethinking
and ｧ･ｯＮｲｾｰｨＱ｣｡ ｬ＠ knowledge" (63) that Moore argues were key to the of human relations with planetary nature. In the case of Dan Simmons's
｡ｰｲｯｮｴｾ＠ of unacknowledged human and non-human energies. We The Terror (2007), this rethinking may be accomplished by recognizing
can ｴｾｵｳ＠ view explorers as initiating the Nature-Society split, both by the repressed environmental perspectives of indigenous peoples as more
frammg ｴｨｾ＠ spaces they encountered in culturally-appropriate terms, valid than those of the "civilized" cultures that have repressed them.
and by pavmg the way for the advance of capitalism's global frontier.
As ､･ｾｬｯｹ＠ in fiction, the appearance of the explorer may thus serve
ｾｳ＠ a k_lld of human ep?chal marker of the Capitalocene, signaling the 3. The Terror: Tracing Imperialism's Environmental Legacy
ｾｴｲｵｳＱｯｮ＠ oftransformattve capitalist epistemologies and political systems
mto an as-yet uncommodified natural landscape. Dan Simmons's The Terror (2007) takes the lost Franklin expedition
The explorer's very function as the vanguard of civilization also as its subject matter, using the framework of the real Victorian mystery
ｭ｡ｫ ･ｾ＠ ｴｾ ･＠ fictive explorer a useful vector for the uncanny. In Sigmund as a blueprint for its tale of a punitive ecological response to the British
Freud s famous formulation, the uncanny, or unheimlich- "that species Empire's penetration of the North. In Simmons's account, the members
of the ｦｾｩｧｨｴ･ｮ＠ that goes back to what was once well known" (Freud of the Franklin expedition are done in by a shapeshifting monster that
124)-is ｧ･ｮｾｲ｡ｴ､＠ by the "irlfantile belief' ( 141) of a person or a culture, brutally attacks and kills the men one by one. The explorers' scientific
ｾ･ｰｲｳ ､＠ dunng maturation, which suddenly appears to be validated. It heuristic for understanding their peril soon collapses, plunging the
1s generated by objects and experiences as varied as dolls, doppelgangers, individual members of the expedition into a violent contest over the
｡ｾ＠ telepath.y, all of which, insofar as they signify the "duplicated, expedition's future. Some of the expedition members descend into
､ｾｶＱ･＠ and mterchanged [self]" (147) of infancy, or the "old animistic cannibalism and murder, while others-notably those who resist earlier
ｶｩ･ｾ＠ of the universe" (147) repressed by Western culture , recall that appeals to racial prejudice- succeed in preserving their moral identities,
which has been suppressed to mind. Nicholas Royle, glossina 0 Freud's

ｵｮ｣ｾｹ＠ ｡ｾ＠ "t?e ･ｾｰｲｮ｣＠

the 1IDpenal 1IDphcat1ons of this concept. Adopted from eighteenth-
｣･ｮｴｾｲｹ＠
that 1s neither purely English .. . nor foreign" (Royle 12) and represents,
Royle sugge.sts, "uncertainties at the origin concerning colonization
and the foreign body" (12). To this I would add the observation that
the Oxford English Dictionary's tracing of the word to Scotland during
the fi.rst phase of the Highland Clearances suggestively associates the
English word Ｂｵｮ｣ｾｹ＠
｡ｮｾ＠ ｴｨｾ＠
as. cns1s of the proper .. . a disturbance of the very idea of personal or
pnvate property" and as "crisis of the natural, touching upon everything
that. ｯｾ･＠
capitalism s traumatic appropriation of human and non-human ecologies.
!he
msofar as the explorer represents the historical and social forces that
have repressed indigenous ecologies in order to construct the networks
of global capital.
if not their lives.
of oneself as foreign body" (Royle 2), notes In Simmons's narrative, the key to understanding the uncanny peril
stalking the expedition is held not by scientific explorers but by colonized
ｾ｣ｯｴｳ Ｌ＠ the English word "uncanny" originates in "a language peoples whose local knowledge and perspectives are suppressed
by Victorian imperialism. This silencing of indigenous peoples is
represented very literally in the figure of an Inuit woman whose tongue,
we are told, has been gnawed off at the root , rendering her mute. "Lady
Silence," as the explorers call her, understands fully what is happening to
the expedition, but her perspective-along with her real name, Silna- is
with the dispossession of indigenous peoples inaccessible for much of the narrative. The Inuit " voice" is accessed in
ｾｲ｡ｮ ｳｦｯ ｲｭ｡ｴＱｯｮ＠ of the landscape. We might thus link the uncanny the final third of the novel, which strikingly pivots away from the points-
of-v.iew and narrative style previously pursued. Not only do individual
characters , like Silna, get to speak, but poetic retellings of Inuit legend
n;ight have thought was 'part of nature"' (Royle 1) with war become chapters unto themselves, taking up the structural prominence
previously enjoyed by "scientific" commentators such as the expedition's
figure of the explorer thus in vites the manifestation of the uncanny doctor. It is only in this perspective that the logic underpinning the
expedition's ordeal is revealed-a logic that has implications for the
Western reader as well as for Crozier, the expedition's sole survivor.
 74 SIOBHAN CARROLL
Simmons deploys two recognizable character types in his portrait of
imperial explorers under stress: Hickey, the Kurtz-like man who would
be "king" (676), whose amoral pursuit of sovereign power destroys
explorers and Inuit alike, and Crozier, the colonized subject turned
imperial worker, whose eventual acceptance of his own heritage triggers
the revelations of the novel's final third. As an Irishman , Crozier resents
his status as a colonial Other within the empire, acknowledging, in
his self-characterization as a "black Irish nigger" (123), that his racial
background will forever associate him with "lesser races" in the minds
of his superiors. Despite his resentment, Crozier does his best to live
up to the British ideal, functioning, in effect, as an Irish mimic man.
However, as events force Crozier into a closer alliance with the Inuit,
whose knowledge of the land he respects , he also finds his efforts to
suppress his Celtic heritage weakening. By the conclusion of the novel,
Crozier's embrace of his repressed Catholic-Celtic past-and with it, the
experience of the colonized-allows him to not only communicate with
Silna but also to cross over into Inuit culture, giving up his identity as
an empire-builder to become instead a member of an Inuit tribe.
In renouncing the identity of an empire-builder, Crozier opens the
door for the reader to gain access to an Inuit understanding of the events
that befell the expedition, an understanding that associates the Franklin
expedition with our own moment of environmental crisis. Inuit legend
reveals that the Inuit have reached a state of balance with the Tuunbaq
spirit pursuing the expedition, as they have with the other forces of nature
that surround them. However, the invasion of the arctic by Franklin's
expedition-an expedition mounted by a nation at the forefront of the
industrial revolution, for the "scientific" goal of mapping the Northwest
Passage and thus enabling a new age of global commerce-will usher
in a new age of destruction . The Inuit foresee a future in which the
Tuunbaq , feasting on the white men's "pale souls" (710), will become
"poisoned ... sicken and die" (710). Simultaneously, the Inuit will
see their cohesive communities undermined by the "drunkenness and
despair" (710) introduced by the white invaders. For we learn elsewhere
that the cultural relationship with arctic ecology signified by the Tuunbaq
will fall victim to European expansion, ushering in scenes of ecological
devastation familiar to The Terror's twenty-first century readers:
When the Tuunbaq dies ... its cold, white domain will begin to
heat and melt and thaw. The white bears will have no ice for a
home, so their cubs will die ... The birds will wheel in circles
and cry to the Raven for help, their breeding grounds gone. (710)
75
THE TERROR AND THE ThRROIR
Stripped of its spiritual significance by Western imperialism, the now-
godless landscape will be degraded by humans who no longer perceive
themselves as meaningfully enmeshed in its ecological networks. The
pathos of dying animals will be ignored , and, in a line that ominously
distorts William Butler Yeats ' famous image from "The Second
Coming," the birds of the arctic desert will "wheel in circles" in a sky
emptied of religious meaning.
We witness the beginning of this process in The Terror, which, near
the end of the novel, describes the Tuunbaq feasting on what is arguably
the worst soul in the expedition, the murderous, Kurtz-like Hickey.
Hickey's role as the representative of the excesses of imperialism is
literalized in an early scene in which, dressed as the head of an "obscene
monster" (325), he leads the men in a chorus of "Rule, Britannia."
While muted on the early verses, Hickey and his compatriots bellow
out the lines envisioning the global marketplace forged by Britain's
imperial advance- "THY CITIES SHALL WITH COMMERCE
SHINE .... EVERY SHORE IT CIRCLES THINE!" (326)-hinting,
for readers unfamiliar with imperial history, at the continuities between
nineteenth-century imperialism and twenty-first century globalization.
Hickey ruthlessly pursues power in the novel, murdering his peers and
engineering the deaths of innocent Inuit in order to increase his own
sovereignty over the crew. In his final chapter, the imperial madman
decides that he has achieved ultimate sovereignty: "He had ceased being
a king . He was now a god" (677). Tellingly, like the imperial networks
that aspired not only to dominate people but to dominate planetary
natures, Hickey now believes that he wields power over Nature , and can
impose his will on the arctic weather: "Hickey now knew that he could
command [the storms] to cease at any time" (677). It is while Hickey is
in this final state of mad transcendence that the Tuunbaq encounters him
and devours "his spirit, his soul" (681), likely poisoning not only the
Tuunbaq but "Raven" (682). The integration of Hickey's death into Inuit
cosmology in these passages suggests that he exemplifies the kind of soul
that will destroy Inuit culture, and suggests that the "Age of Darkness"
(678) he anticipates presiding over may coincide with the age of climate
change foretold by Inuit seers. As embodied in the figure of Hickey, war
capitalism's mad pursuit of profit and power not only paves the way for
the rise of global capitalism, but-as in Hickey's delusive belief that
he can control the weather-inculcates a relationship between humans
and the planet that undergirds our own moment of environmental crisis.
Simmons's implication here plays into Moore's concept of the
Capitalocene, insofar as a straight line is drawn from industrial
imperialism to present-day ecological crisis . While Crozier's crossing
 76 SIOBHAN CARROLL
over into Inuit existence does not guarantee the salvation of the world, it
suggests that a renunciation of the privileges of identities created by war
capitalism, such as whiteness, are key to responding to environmental
degradation. In giving the Inuit the key to the Tuunbaq's story, Simmons
reinforces the importance of indigenous environmental knowledge
in addressing the challenges of the Capitalocene. In suggesting that
this knowledge is also shared by other colonized peoples, such as the
Irish, Simmons works to complicate the often limiting identification of
American indigenous peoples with Nature, instead suggesting a global
perspective on war capitalism held by those who have suffered its
effects. While The Terror is perhaps the most classically Weird of the
narratives examined in the article, it thus shares with the stories that
follow a concern with a seemingly localized uncanny that in fact opens
a window into a global environmental crisis .
4. The Terroir: The Return of Repressed Ecology
Jeff VanderMeer's AREA X: THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY (2014) also
features a seemingly localized uncanny with planetary implications.
Like The Terror, it begins with an expedition advancing into a strange
wilderness. This time, however, the region into which the scientific-
explorers venture is one that appears to have become strange in the
wake of a bizarre "Event" that, thirty-two years ago , transformed
"a remote southern stretch known by some as 'the forgotten coast'"
(154). As the phrase "the forgotten coast" suggests, the mysterious
region now known as Area X serves as a repository of an ecological
unconscious. A formerly inhabited landscape-indeed, the childhood
landscape of one of the trilogy's central characters-Area X has been
constructed as a "pristine wilderness" (155) by the Southern Reach,
a governmental organization that dispatches scientific expeditions to
study its mysteries. Such an artificial creation of Nature cannot be
sustained, and the ecological uncanny erupts not only in the Freudian
imagery of Area X itself- a wilderness alive with doppelgangers and
other classicaJly unheimlich machinery-but also, more subversively, in
Mortonesque uncanny that infiltrates the office buildings and laboratories
of the Southern Reach. Both these classic and postmodern iterations of
the ecological uncanny undermine any separation of the human from
the environment. In depicting the Southern Reach 's disastrous attempt
at denying humanity's ecological implications, the trilogy dramatizes
the degree to which maintaining the human-nature binary may impede
humanity's ability to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene.
THE TERROR AND THE TERROIR 77
Related by the last surviving member of a lost scientific expedition to
Area X , Annihilation, the first novel in the trilogy, is overtly situated in a
tradition of explorer tales. Initially, its narrator, a woman known only as
"the biologist," appears to be an uncomplicated devotee of the objective
ethos that separates her from her environment. "We were scientists ,
trained to observe natural phenomena and the results of human activity"
(46), she explains, automatically assigning the natural and the human
to different categories, before continuing, "We had not been trained
to encounter what appeared to be the uncanny" (46). Nevertheless,
she senses that something uncanny impinges on her senses at the very
moments when she enacts her mental separation from the envirorunent.
Observing a pair of otters , she is disturbed when it seems as though the
animals "could see me watching them" (21), adding that "I had to fight
the sensation because it could overwhelm my scientific objectivity" (21 ).
Recognizing her own implication in the environment-that the otters
are indeed affected by her presence and that her behavior is shaping
theirs-threatens to disrupt the act of repression that objectivity requires.
As Bruno Latour remarks of the Anthropocene, "the very notion of
objectivity has been totally subverted by the presence of humans in the
phenomena to be described-and in the politics of tackling them" (2).
To cling to objectivity, as the biologist initially does, is thus to deny
the full dimensions of the human role in environmental change and to
hamper humanity's ability to address environmental crisis.
As the narrative progresses, however, the biologist grows increasingly
suspicious both of the efficacy of her objective stance and of the political
agendas it serves. Reincarnated in future books both as an alien creature
and as a human doppelganger called "Ghost Bird," she will function ,
as this second name suggests, as a piece of ecological uncanny herself,
returning as a revenant figurehead for the Other. This transformation is
triggered when, in the first book of the trilogy, Annihilation, the biologist
is contaminated with alien fungal spores, literally penetrated by the
environment she has come to study. As she is gradually transfonned
by this encounter, the biologist becomes increasingly attendant to the
limitations of her scientific epistemology, and to the political work
accomplished by ostensibly transparent representations of knowledge.
At one point she admits to the reader that she has withheld crucial
information because she hoped that "in reading this account, you might
find me a credible , objective witness" (37). In order to achieve her
desired effect, in other words, the biologist has cultivated an appearance
of transparency that actually relies on the occlusion of information.
Elsewhere, the biologist reflects on the power dynamics inherent in
ostensibly "objective" representations , observing that "a map [is] but

78 SIOBHAN CARROLL
a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible"
(44). In paraphrasing J .B. Harley's observation regarding cartographic
silences, the biologist situates her expedition within a larger history of
imperial mapping projects, suggesting that the Southern Reach and its
scientific expeditions have a long, and not particularly neutral, history.
However, while AREA X invokes the long history of imperial
exploration, the uncanny experiences of the biologist's expedition take
place at a different historical moment than those of The Terror. Whereas
Simmons's novel undoes the Nature-Society split by allowing Crozier
to adopt the ecological vision of an Inuit culture not yet fragmented by
colonization, AREA X takes place long after the removal and cultural
alienation of indigenous peoples from local landscapes. Indigenous
ways of ecological thought can no longer be recovered by the characters
inhabiting VanderMeer's late-capitalist world, nor do alternative forms of
community exist to offer them potential escapes from the Capitalocene.
Sitting in a small town cafe tellingly located "at the end of Empire Street"
(282), Control, the protagonist of Authority, the second novel in the
sequence, looks over a landscape transformed by capitalism: "There had
been an indigenous settlement here" he notes, and "the remains of [it] lay
below the fa9ade of the liquor store" along with "a labyrinth of limestone
cradling the aquifer, narrow caves and blind albino crawfish" (220). The
natural and human world that preceded his own historical moment has
been literally built over, "pushed down by the foundations of buildings"
(220) that now appear to dominate the visible portion of the landscape.
As he investigates the events of Annihilation, however, Control becomes
more aware of the intertwined human and natural histories "pushed
down" into the ecological unconscious, which nevertheless continue to
shape his present. Forcibly educated into a different mode of viewing
ecological relations by his investigation of Area X, Control follows a
similar path to The Terror's Crozier in his evolution from a loyal servant
of the system into the adopter of a new ecological perspective, one
whose willingness to embrace self-annihilating transformation offers the
trilogy's most telling expression of hope for the survival of humanity
in the Anthropocene.
Control-whose delusive moniker indicates both his assumed role and
his willing participation in the system he serves-arrives at the Southern
Reach in the capacity of a corporate fixer, sent to repair the organization
in the wake of the events of Annihilation. While at first glance he seems
far removed from the narrator of Annihilation, we gradtlally realize that
he occupies a position very similar to that of the scientific explorers
of the first novel. He, too, has been sent to investigate and establish
sovereign power over a strange (human) ecology. He conceptualizes his
79
THE TERROR AND THE TERROlR
assertions of power over his nominal subordinates in ｴ･ｾｳ＠ rernin.iscent
f the history of imperialism - "Control had wanted to unpose himself
0
Grace's territory" (235)-and the descriptions of his journeys through
ｾＺ･＠ buildings of the Southern Reach, in which he treks down "the path
leading to the expedition wing .. . the continuous seeking tongue .of
the green carpet curling up around him" (240) blur the ｢ｯｵｮ､ｾｳ＠
between the human and the non-human , the artificial and the orgamc, m
ways that recall the twelfth expedition's progress through the ｵｾ｣｡ｮｹ＠
environment of Area X. Like the biologist, Control comes to ｲ･ｾｨｺ＠ ｴｾ｡＠
he is being manipulated by the power he serves, which controls htm usm.g
the same hypnotic commands used to manipulate the explorers. This
triggers for him a new level of uncanny unease, as it problematizes ｴｨｾ＠
distinctions he wants to draw between the human and the non-human.
"people weren't robots, couldn't be made to act like ｲ＿ｾｯｳＮ＠ Or could
they?" (248). Not only does Area X ｰｲｯ｢ｬ･ｭ｡ｴｩｺｾ＠ the ､ｴｶｬｓｯｾ＠ between
human and non-human by transforming humans mto somethmg Other,
but the organization Control serves, and which expects him.to enforce
a Nature-Society binary, is itself eroding that boundary. As his uncanny
encounters continue , Control becomes increasingly alienated fr?m ｾｨ･＠
powers he serves, increasingly disturbed by his ｩｭｰｬ｣｡ｴｾｮ＠ ｩｾ＠ a ｳ｣ＧＮ･ｮｴｾ＠
investigation that seems to reproduce the power dynamics ｭｳｾｲ｟ｩ｢･､＠ m
the "ancient maps of empires" (300), and increasingly suspicious of
the validity of the Nature-Society split in which he has been educated.
Whereas Annihilation tackles scientific objectivity as a strategy
of separation of self from environment, Authority emphasizes ｾｨ･＠
similar role played by cultural constructions of Nature. In analyzmg
the dynamics of the Southern Reach, Control notices his colleagues'
insistence on describing Area X as a "pristine wilderness" (l55).
Echoino William Cronon's famous observation that wilderness is "not
a ｰｲｩｳｴｾ･＠ sanctuary" but is "the creation of very ｰ｡ｲｴｩ｣ｵｬｾ＠ human
cultures" (69), Control realizes that the Southern ｒ･｡｣ｾ＠ has ､･ｨｾｲ｡ｴｬｹ＠
"created a fiction of encountering an undisturbed wilderness ( 157) •
in part to reassure themselves that they are safely separated from the
influence of Area X. In this, the Southern Reach is not alone: " Most
people," Control observes, want to "to be close to but ｾｯｴ｡ｲ＠ ｯｦＧＮＨＱＸｾＩ＠
the natural world. However, the erection of such artificial barriers is
ultimately unsustainable, and the Southern Reach is soon consumed
by the alien environment with which it has always been ･ｾｴ｡ｮｧｬ､Ｎ＠ Just
as " Control's" self-selected name is a pretense of sovereignty over the
Reach, the Southern Reach's pretense of control over its object of study
is inevitably revealed as delusion.

80 SIOBHAN CARROLL
The historical implications of the Southern Reach's behavior is
ｲ･ｶｩｳｴｾ＠ ｩｾ＠ a telling exchange between Control and the scientist Whitby.
In descnbmg Area X, Whitby utters a phrase that seems to mimic Kurtz's
ｦ｡ｭｯｵｾ＠ pronouncement on African imperialism: "'The terror,' Whitby
had said ... 'The terror."' (205). Like Kurtz, Whitby is soon revealed
ｾｯ＠ already be subverted by Area X, his supposedly objective stance
madequate to preserve him from the influences of the "wi lderness"
he presumes to study. But his statement carries more than individual
implications. When a disturbed Control pushes Whitby to explain his
uncanny pronouncement, Whitby clarifies that he meant "not 'terror' at
all" but Ｂｾ･ｲｯｩ＠ ... the specific characteristics of a place" (217). Terroir's
connotations go beyond the idea of place: borrowed from the French the
word originally designated "Land, territory" (OED) under the ｣ｯｮｴｲｾｬ＠
a_rarticular sovereign power. Its associations with agriculture ominously
situate Area X as a colony-from the Latin colonia or "farm" (OED _
rather than as an area to be colonized. The biologist's characterization
of the Area X as a contact zone between rival attempts "to colonize"
(72) appear to bear this out, as does the revelation, in the third novel,
that Area X has been produced by a terraforrning organism launched in
the wake of an alien biosphere's destruction. It is the alien Area X and
with it, a repressed environmental knowledge that has come to col;nize
the Southern Reach , not the other way around.
The word terroir also grasps at the environmental knowledge repressed
by the ｴ･｣ｨｮｾｲ｡ｩ＠ culture of the Southern Reach, a knowledge that,
ｾｳ＠ the ､ｲ｡ｾｴＱ｣＠ ･ｶｮｾｳ＠ of Authority indicates , is particularly important
m respondmg to envrronmental crisis. As popularized by French wine-
growers, ｴｨｾ＠ word terroir is most familiar in the Anglophone world as
ｾｴ･ｲｭ＠ specific to winemaking, which refers to the "growing conditions
ma particular region, viewed as contributing distinctive flavours to the
grape.s, and hence the wines, produced there" (OED). Climate change
ｮｯｴｲｾｵｳｬｹ＠ ｡ｾｴ･ｲ ｳ＠ terroir. in some cases subtly, by changing the flavor
｡ｳｯ｣ｾｴ･､＠ with .a ｰｬｾ｣･ Ｌ＠ and in some cases drastically, by killing off
the vmes that h1stoncally occupied certain regions. Whitby's phrase
ｴｾｵｳ＠ evokes a. complex ecological system that escapes being fully
' pmned down m language, in which subtle changes can be registered
?Y Ｓ＠
th.e ｨｵｾ｡ｮ ｢ｾ､ｹ＠ even as they escape the conscious mind's precise
1dent1ficat1on. It 1s a system being altered by climate change, in ways that
3
. Like the phrase "je nc sais.quoi," the word "terroir" as commonly used in English
wmc d1scuss10.ns marks the mexprcss1ble by importing a foreign phrase (often, a
shortened vers10n o f the French gout du terroir) into English rather than translating
it. Sec the Oxford English Dictionary on the "reborrowing of the French word" in
the context of wine. .
81
THE TERROR AND THE TERROIR
in rum fundamentally alter the identities-human and non-human-tied
to place. To speak of terroir in English is thus to speak of a ｲ･ｬ｡ｴｩ＿ｮｳｨｾ＠
to the land that is similar to one's relationship to one's unconscious; it
refers to that in the land which cannot be wholly assimilated to language,
cannot be fully perceived or understood, but that nevertheless shapes
the identities with which it is connected.
Over the course of Authority and Acceptance , Control gradually adopts
the new ecological perspective suggested by terroir and learns to renounce
his pretensions of environmental power. While initially skeptical of the
ecological perspective invoked by terroir, in which one "would sn1dy
everything about the history-natural and human ... in addition to all the
other elements" (217)-Control comes to analyze the terroir not only of
Area X but of the urban environments that surround it, recognizing that
of
it is only in thinking the natural and the human together-and in leaving
room for the intuitions suggested by the unconscious- that he can grasp
the processes unfolding around him. He comes to recognize, also, how
language has been literally used to control him via the hypnotic commands
issued by the Southern Reach , and manages, albeit with difficulty, to
free himself from both the hypnosis and from the conceptual limitations
imposed on his thinking by words such as "Nature."
At the c limax of the final novel in the trilogy, Control and Ghost Bird
interact with the alien force engendering Area X's transformations, and
both, in their own ways, renounce human pretensions of environmental
management. Ghost Bird, herself a product of Area X's ecosystem,
briefly entertains the notion that she should "plead for people she has
never met" (555) , but decides not to intervene in the terraforming
process. Control, sneaking past her, approaches the central power of
Area X, and in the process abandons the last vestiges of the problematic
views of human-natural relations concretized in the Southern Reach.
Feeling "an overwhelming sense of connection, that nothing was truly
apart" (572), he notices , and accepts, his own transformation into
something " no longer entirely human" (572). Accepting that "nothing
about language, about communication, could bridge the divide between
human beings and Area X," Control bridges the gap by abandoning
the linguistic category marking the human, and merging with Area X.
Tellingly, we are told that "'Control' fell away" as the character's last
pretensions of power are abandoned; it is instead "John Rodriguez"
who "jumped into the light" (573). As the character most dedicated to
reinscribing the power of his capitalist institution on the world, Control's
final transcendence represents the novel 's most hopeful assertion of
humanity's ability to change in response to the challenges posed by
phenomena such as climate change.
 82 SIOBHAN CARROLL
Indeed, emerging back into a world apparently transformed by this final
encounter, Ghost Bird notes that "something had changed beyond the
climate" (584). Her and Control's renunciation of human environmental
power and Control's final abandonment of the Nature-Society binary
has revealed a world in which "the hegemony of what was real had
been altered, or broken, fore ver" (585). Whether the human race will
survive in this brave new world is unknown. As the third novel's title
Acceptance, suggests, the triumph of characters like Control is no;
that they save the human race, but that they are able to understand and
accept a world that is profoundly not under human control. As the former
director observes on the final page of the novel: "The world we are part
of now is difficult to accept, unimaginably difficult" (593). Transcending
culturally-ingrained strategies of"deniaJ" (593) may prove to be the only
victory available in the Anthropocene, but it is one, the trilogy suggests,
that is worth striving for.
While AREA X: THE Sou THERN R EACH TRILOGY is rife with doppelgangers
and other classically Freudian manifestations of the uncanny, it , like
The Terror, ultimately suggests that embracing repressed ecological
knowledge-and with it, one's own transformation into something
other-represents humanity's only possible hope for the future. lfthere is
an aspect of the uncanny that remains horrific, it is what Freud identifies
as the "compulsion to repeat" (Freud 145)- the compulsion to keep
repeating past ways of viewing and exploiting ecologies, even as they
lead humanity to the brink of destruction. Both the biologist and Control
experience a dizzying moment of vertigo when they learn, separately, of
the mound of journals in Area X "many more than could have possibly
been filled out by only twelve expeditions" (70), and realize that they
are situated at the end of a long history of what the biologist calls "mere
repetition" ( 195) of past ways of engaging with the environment. "Our
superiors seemed to fear any radical reimagining of this situation"
muses the biologist, and, trapped in a cycle of repeating past practices ,
are hoping to "hit upon ... some solution, before the world becomes
Area X" (195). By the conclusion of the trilogy, both Control and the
biologist have managed to escape the cycle of repetition. As we will see
in the next section, Mieville's " Polynia" is similarly preoccupied with
the unexamined aspects of culture that threaten the human race's ability
to survive on the planet. Jn a conclusion that is far more pessimistic
than either The Terror or AREA X , China Mieville's "Polynia" imaCJines
its characters as ultimately failing to break out of the repetitive ｾｹ｣ｬ･＠
of capitalist competition that has brought the human race to the limits
of its planetary niche.
83
THE TERROR AND THE TERROIR
5. Polynia, or, The Failure of Icebergs
Like AREA X, Mieville's "Polynia" (2015) is attentive to human
behaviors that impede effective responses to the slow violence of
environmental change. At the heart of its tale is a conflict between
children, that , while seemingly tangential to the ecological uncanny, in
fact reveals some of the facets of human action that have contributed
to the degradation of the planetary environment. As with the other
narratives discussed in this essay, Mieville's story deploys the figure
of the explorer and the scientific expedition to situate its ecological
uncanny within a long history of global capitalism. However, Ｎ ｷｨｾｲ･｡ｳ＠
in VanderMeer's and Simmons's work, the focus of the narrattve is on
the explorers themselves, "Polynia" attends to the public who consumes
the exploration mythos, and the lessons regarding Nature that they
accidentally imbibe.
The ecological uncanny of Mieville's tale manifests itself in the form
of the ghostly revenants of vanished Nature, which have rea.ppeared to
haunt global metropolises. Coral reefs enciust Bmssels, while ｾｯｮ､Ｎ＠
is overshadowed by the drifting forms of icebergs that, despite therr
dangerous calvings, periodically restore themselves to magazine-ph?to
perfection. The floating icebergs generate a new age of ｰｾｬ｡ｲ＠ ･ｸｰｬｯｲ｡ｴｾｮ＠
within London itself, which is eagerly followed by the child-protagomsts
of Mieville's story. The narrator recalls how he and his friends eagerly
followed the first iceberg expedition's "terse dispatches, their tweets
and photographs, footage from cameras" (8) , which reveal "the sort
of thing you' d expect from any arctic adventure" (9). The Ｂ ｾｸｰ･｣ｴ､ Ｂ＠
exploration narrative includes tragedy in the form of an accident that
claims the life of a scientist, Dr. Joanna Lund. The narrator also follows a
subsequent expedition mounted by urban explorers. As with the Franklin
expedition, " none of the unauthorized explorers ever came back" (2 1),
but their fragmented reports hint at another world hidden Ｎｮ･ｾｲ＠ the top
of the icebergs. The fantasy of the poles , their role as ｲｾｰｯｳＱｴｮ ･ｳ＠ ?f the
sublime imagination, thus lingers even in an age in which the arctic ｾ｡ ｳ＠
melted away. The resemblance that Mieville's icebergs bear to magazme
photos and polar fictions suggests that they are not so much ghosts of ｲ ｾ ｡ｬ＠
icebergs than of a culturally-constmcted ｎ｡ｴｵｲ･Ｌｾ＠ Nature ,that, ､･ｳｾＱｴ＠
the affection it generated, failed to prevent the real icebergs destruction .
Hovering in the skies above London , the icebergs serve as uncann.y
reminders of the entan(1lement of the urban with the natural. This
entanglement surfaces ･ｾｷｨｲ＠ in Mieville's story, most ｰｲｯｭｩｮ･Ｑｾｴｬｹ＠
in the title itself, a variant spelling of the Russian word polynya, mearung
an "area of open water in the middle of an expanse of sea ice" (OED).
 84 SIOBHAN C ARROLL
The obvious referent of the title is London itself, an area that still teams
with life but which is surrounded by evidence of a dying natural world.
The children play in "dirty parkland" (7) on "rubbishy grass" (10), and
track the icebergs as they float "over brownfield sites and wasteland"
kicking "old brick bits and garbage out of the way, looking for secrets
in the ice's shadow" (13). The "secret" the narrator does not perceive
lies in the evidence of pollution around him, in the chemical poisons of
the brownfield sites he unwittingly disturbs as he follows dead icebergs
across their sky. The natural world as we have known it is gone , and
its ghosts cast ominous shadows on evidence of ongoing pollution.
Mieville's story, in other words , highlights the political consequences
of the complacency bred by the Nature-Culture binary, which in its
most extreme forms can translate into the false assumption that the
degradation of remote wild spaces has no bearing on the health of urban
environments.
How, when characters like the narrator clearly admire the sublime
grandeur of Nature, has the destruction of icebergs, reefs and rainforests
come to pass? This question lies at the heart of Mieville's story, which,
in depicting an ostensibly small conflict between children, hints at the
ways in which the global capital system contributes to the destruction
of the very Nature it constructs and commodifies. At first glance, the
narrator of the tale seems a potential candidate to address, or at least to
comprehend, the environmental crisis hinted at by the icebergs' return.
In addition to his passionate interest in the icebergs, we see hints that
he wishes to "save" the sublime polar world he glimpses in the media.
Following the death of Dr. Joanna Lund, the doomed explorer, the
narrator becomes preoccupied with a photograph of her that was taken
just before her death. The narrator finds this photograph " profoundly
unsettling" (9), and is moved by this uncanny piece of media to fantasize
about saving the falling Lund from annihilation. lf"none of my friends
were watching, I would reach through the wire fence ... and imagine
that I [saved her)" ( 12). As with the ghostly icebergs, which appear to
be uncanny reproductions of the icebergs photographed in an old news
article, the photograph of the doomed scientific explorer represents a
dream of polar purity that the narrator would like to save-but only if
his "friends" aren't watching.
The narrator's dangerous tendency to conform to a competitive system
that labels empathetic actions as foolish also plays out in his persecution
of Ian , a fellow iceberg enthusiast who has been singled out by the
group's domineering leader, Sal, as the children 's scapegoat. Tellingly,
Sal insults Ian with words that align him with the polar environment:
" You're like a fat bear" ( 11). Rather than rising to Ian 's defense, the
THE TERROR AND THE TERROIR 85
narrator tries harder to differentiate himself from his friend , erecting a
social barrier between them that is nearly as fic tive as the one erected
between human society and the natural world. "I wanted the company
of someone who read all the magazines and knew as much as I did," he
admits, " but ... Sal used to look at me scornfully when he and I talked"
(12). The empathy that connects the narrator to lan, and that might , in a
larger sense, prompt a different, more proactive response to the natural
disturbance around him, is suppressed by his desire to succeed with in
the competitive framework established by his peers.
This tension between the narrator and Ian comes to a head in the
story's climax , when the boys successfully recover one of the message
tubes dropped from a floating iceberg by an unauthorized expedition.
This is their opportunity to come face-to-face with the wonder of a
sublime natural world, but the boys are reluctant to share this resource
with each other. When, on opening the container, they find it contains
ice from elsewhere, they wrestle over access to the melting material.
With "that instinct for cruelty that sometimes made me a little bit giddy
around him," the narrator pushes Ian away and breathes in the "old air"
(21) himself. Ian then consumes the water. Rather than working out a
way to share the wondrous ice, the boys have each consumed as much
as he could of the limited resource, to the detriment of the other. This
echo of the "tragedy of the commons" is highlighted when, at the close
of the scene, the narrator protests Ian's attempt to keep the explorers'
letter to himself: "It isn't yours. T hey wrote it to everyone in London"
(21). If the letter belonged to the people of London at large, so did the
ice within the tube, which the letter refers to as a "present" (20) for
London. Within the fantastic framework of the story, the experienced
reader of genre fiction might very well expect the ice and air of the
otherworld above the icebergs to have a supernatural effect on the boys
who consume it. This does not, however, seem to be the case: neither boy
is visibly changed by consuming the explorers' gift. Later, in reflecting
on the different trajectories his and Ian's lives took after that moment,
the narrator's observation of their separate consumptions-"He drank
the water, I breathed the air" (22)-raises the possibility that, if the
ice was to have any magical effects at all , its substances needed to be
consumed together. Because of the boys' separate pursuit of their selfish
interests, that possibility has been lost. Devotion to an ethic of capitalist
competition, in other words, blocks any chance the boys have of being
transformed by their encounter with a fragment of sublime Nature, and
with it, a potential chance at intervening in environmental degradation.
At the close of the story, the narrator reveals the degree to which he has
failed to live up to his early dreams of intervening in the polar disaster.
86 SIOBHAN CARROLL
Rather than becoming a scientist studying the London icebergs, as he
once thought he would, he has taken up a position in "import-export"
(22), working for the global capitalist system that destroyed their
originals. The inutility of the narrator's appreciation for Nature is laid
out in stark terms in the story's conclusion. Conforming to the capitalist
system, he views Nature either as a commodity-"I have a little bottle-
opener of the Belgium flag cut out of coral" (22)-or as a source of
aesthetic pleasure. "I love the London bergs," he concludes. "They still
circle, and they don't get in the way of business" (22) . This, ultimately,
is one of the salient points of "Polynia": that the fetishizing of "pure"
Nature on calendars and in tales of arctic adventure fails to get in the way
of the "business" of environmental destruction. What is needed instead
is an acknowledgment of entanglement, and a complete reirnagining
of the power relations that perpetrate unrestrained competition and
resource consumption. It is in short, an argument for acknowledging
the Capitalocene, and for addressing the dynamics of capitalism that
both contribute to environmental degradation and hamper effective
responses to ecological crisis.
Unlike the protagonists of The Terror and THE SouTHERN TRILOGY, the
main characters of "Polynia" fail to be transformed by their encounter
with the natural sublime. In choosing to see each other as rivals struggling
for resources rather than as part of an ecological community, the boys of
"Polynia" preclude any transformation, either in themselves , or in the
social dynamics that have degraded their environment. Despite being the
least overtly horrific of these New Weird texts, "Polynia" is actually the
most pessimistic in its representation of the Capitalocene, anticipating
a world in which humans neither transform nor are transformed by the
processes leading to the destruction of humanity's planetary habitat.
Whereas in both The Terror and AREA X the reader comes to not only
accept but root for the protagonists' transcendence of their former selves,
Mieville's "Polynia" leaves the reader railing against a character's refusal
to change, stranded in a world tilting inexorably towards ecological
collapse.
6. Conclusions: The Return of the New Weirds Repressed
Dan Simmons's The Terror , VanderMeer's AREA X: THESOUTHERN REACH
TRILOGY, and Mieville's "Polynia" all stand as examples of recent weird
fictions that feature scientific expeditions at the center of eruptions of the
ecological uncanny. In each of these narratives, the vulnerable position
of the explorer affords an opportunity to interrogate the construction of a
87
THE TERROR AND THE TERROIR
separate Nature and situates that construction in relation to contemporary
and historical versions of global capitalism. Not content with merely
undermining the Nature-Society binary with uncanny interruptions, these
stories take stock of the human behaviors and institutional structures
that enable the slow violence of environmental degradation. Unlike
what we might term the "Old Weird" of Lovecraftian horror, the New
Weird narratives discussed in this article actively embrace much of what
Freud suggests generates terror-the duplicated and interchanged self,
the collapse of distinctions between inside and outside, the validation
of animistic or otherwise "primitive" views of the relationship between
men and planetary nature-in an attempt to escape what, in light of the
Anthropocene, is the far more threatening manifestation of the ecological
uncanny -the "compulsion to repeat" (Freud 145) past mistakes. It is
the human compulsion to keep burning fossil fuels , to keep exploiting
planetary resources to the point of exhaustion, that generates horror in
the early twenty-first century, rather than beliefs in the agency of matter
and the hybridity of self. Stories like The Terror ,AREA X, and Mieville's
"Polynia" suggest that, if there is hope for humanity 's survival at all, it
lies not in grand techno-utopian interventions but in the slow political
work of transcending capitalist relations of knowledge and power. In
making this suggestion, they position the New Weird as a subgenre
striving to model new forms of "ecological thought" for the readers,
undoing narrative conventions that reinforce the Nature-Society binary
in favor of new narratives that advocate the transformation of the power
structures undergirding humanity's geophysical transformation of the
planet.
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Chicago Press, 1997. 257-315.
Carroll, Siobhan. An Empire of Air and Water: Uncolonizable Space
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Conrad, Joseph. Geography and Some Explorers. Tales of Hearsay
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Siobhan Carroll is Associate Professor of English at the University
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of Delaware , where she teaches courses on 19th century literature
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and science fiction. Her first book, An Empire of Air and Water:
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts; MIT
Uncolonizable Space in the British Imagination, 1750-1850, describes
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the relevance of "uncolonizable" geographies (such as the North Pole
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and the atmosphere) to British imperialism. Her current book project
raphy in Early Modem Europe. Imago Mundi 40 (1988): 57-76.
examines the relationship between human agency and nature in the
Heise, Ursula K. Martian Ecologies and the Future of Nature. Twen-
tieth Century Literature. 57 (2011): 447-471. long 19th century.
Latour, Bruno. Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene. New Liter-
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Leane, Elizabeth. Antarctica in Fiction: Imaginative Narratives of
the Far South . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Mieville, China. Polynia. Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories.
New York: Del Rey, 2015. 5-22.
Moore,Jason W. TheCapitalocene,Part 1. http://www.jasonwmoore.
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- . Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of
Capital . Brooklyn: Verso, 2015.
Morton, Timothy. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge: Harvard
UP,2010.
Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.