Angry Planet: Decolonial Fiction and the American Third World

Before the Anthropocene, there was the angry planet. Angry planet fiction emerged in the 1990s and offered a decolonial ontology, bringing Black and Indigenous thought into conversation and offering a fresh account of globalization in the 1990s. This knowledge is crucial to incipient struggles of our contemporary era, as our political imaginaries grapple with white nationalism and climate change denial.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 264 pages
Publication date: 31 January 2023
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Before the concept of the Anthropocene emerged, there existed a perception of the Earth as an angry planet. This idea permeated numerous novels from the late 20th century, where the Earth was portrayed as actively intervening in human affairs, causing dramatic and non-human-driven changes. In her book, Angry Planet, Anne Stewart utilizes this literature to develop a theoretical framework for reading with and through planetary motion. This literary genre, characterized by authors such as Colson Whitehead, Octavia Butler, and Leslie Marmon Silko, foreshadowed contemporary critical concepts such as entanglement, withdrawal, delinking, and resurgence. Angry planet fiction gained prominence in the 1990s, shaping the contours of a decolonial ontology. Stewart demonstrates how this fiction brought Black and Indigenous thought into conversation, offering a fresh perspective on globalization in the 1990s from the perspective of the American Third World. She interprets this era as the one that first connected environmental crises with antiracist and decolonial struggles. By synthesizing these significant intersections of thought production in the final decades of the 20th century, Stewart provides a recent history of dissent that resonates with the young movements of the 21st century. As she reveals, this knowledge is crucial for the emerging struggles of our contemporary era, as our political imaginations grapple with the formidable challenges of white nationalism and climate change denial.

Weight: 340g
Dimension: 216 x 140 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781517914110