FROM ANTHROPOCENTRISM TO ECO-CENTRISM: A COMPARATIVE ECO-CRITICAL STUDY OF J.M. COETZEE, TIM WINTON, KIM STANLEY ROBINSON, AND ISAAC ASIMOV

Abstract

This paper reviews the current critical literature on four authors, representing multiple genres and historical periods, which each mark a different engagement with literature and nature: J.M. Coetzee, Tim Winton, Kim Stanley Robinson and Isaac Asimov. The paper documents a shift in perspective from anthropocentric nature as a resource or setting to eco-centric nature as interdependent and a planet bearing responsibility in the course of the reviewed literature that brings together the following titles: Life & Times of Michael K, Disgrace, Dirt Music and The Riders, The Ministry for the Future, and Foundation and The Caves of Steel. This is an ecocriticism, postcolonial ecocriticism, and eco-cosmopolitanism study that argues that the four genres of postcolonial realism, regional fiction, speculative fiction and climate fiction are not distinct archives of environmental thought, but rather complementary genres, and that the comparative, cross-genre gap that has been left by genre-bound scholarship needs attention.