Climate Anxiety and the Contemporary American Novel

While the climate crisis continues to erode the preconditions for life on earth, a related psychological crisis has unfolded in parallel: the widespread experience of climate anxiety. Among large parts of the American population, constant worries about ongoing processes of ecological collapse have become commonplace and frequently affect daily functioning.

Jonas Müller explores climate anxiety from a perspective that combines insights from psychological research with literary theory, tracing the affective presence of climate change in the contemporary American novel. Fictional narratives are theorized as both mirrors of anxieties around the climate crisis, as well as emotional laboratories for readers experiencing climate anxiety. What emerges from this discussion is a theory of climate anxiety as a crisis of meaning, which threatens structuring assumptions about everyday life and humanity’s place within the biosphere.