Transmediations of the Anthropocene – Climate change and its effect on the relation between Man and other Species in Children’s Picture books

• The aim of this paper is to investigate transmediations of the Anthropocene discourse into two picture books from the northern hemisphere, both published in 2007, I skogen (In the wood) by Eva Lindström and Winston of Churchill: One Bear’s Battle Against Global Warming by Jean Davis Okimoto.  The analysis is focused on how the combined pictorial and verbal narrative transmediate scientific media of climate change and its threat to biodiversity. The focus is on how the representation of man as a species is transmediated as well as its relation to other species of fauna and flora. In the Anthropocene discourse nature is no longer a passive and static context for human actions. (Crutzen 2002).  Rachel Carson was among the first to state that the human control of nature is an illusion born in an age “when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man”. (2002)[1962]. Since Darwin man is defined as one species among many and since the rise of Ecology man is defined as a species subsumed into an ecosystem. Ecologist Tormod Valaand Burkey sketches an ethics where economy and man´s practices and values must adapt to a larger ecological context (2013). In this paper I will direct my attention to how man is depicted in relation to other species of fauna and flora from an ecological perspective. The analysis will concentrate on attitudes, actions and ethical values shown by protagonists when dealing with climate change in relation to an Anthropocene ethics where human rights are closely knit with animal rights and biodiversity. 

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Anthropocene

transmediations

picturebook

climate change

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)