Crisis Final Fantasy

[Ezilda Newnam]

Whilstmany of us today might not consciouslyview nature as a set of mechanical objects to be dissected and plundered, theghost of Rene Descartes is still at large in the gene pool of our culture. Themind-body split might be healing, but the rift between mind and matter isreinforced from birth.

Matter is no longer experienced as animate andsacred. Rocks and rivers no longer have a voice. In our culture, only animalswith a highly developed central nervous system are allowed to have sentience.

An oak tree, for example, has its material attributes: its size, its weight, its water content, but it also possesses immaterial qualities that we feel, sense, and intuit; the way its branches reach and sag over the path, the dark cleft in the trunk that suggests a door, the shifting scents of damp earth when you step into its shadow.

If we had always experienced material nature as eloquent and intelligent would it even have been possible to have had an ecological crisis? Would we clear-cut our ancient forests if we viewed them as sentient and ensouled?

As creators of mythic fiction (fantasy with roots) could we open ourselves to the intelligence of place, allowing the rocks, rivers, winds, and wild others to speak through our stories, helping to restore a sense of the sacred in nature.

Join us for tea and conversation at an Ezra Stiles College Tea with Ruben Reyes Jr., an RITM Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellow. Come to hear Ruben read from his novel and discuss his love for science fantasy and fiction!

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This short article discusses how different fantasy narratives have come together during the Covid-19 crisis in various far-right movements, parties and audiences across the world and how much of these fantasies rely on racialised and gendered notions of a fantastical world-order in which particular forms of emotional governance provide a relief and sense of security to certain societal groups. This involves a close engagement with crisis and crisis narratives in relation to ontological insecurity and anxiety; how such crisis narratives have materialised in fantasies related to borders and corona nationalism, and the emotional governance of these particular fantasies in the hands of populist leaders and their increasingly receptive audiences.

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