Narratives of Hope: Imagination and Alternative Futures in Climate Change Literature.

This paper discusses the modes and applicability of 'hope' in narratives on climate change, as found in five ecological pop-science texts written in the years between 2007 to 2021. It seeks to question and unearth the standard narratives about the climate crisis as dominant in Western spaces of science communication. Further, it unpacks the concept of hope and its role and capacity to contribute to a future imaginary that deviates from the standard narratives and finally seeks to uncover what alternative narratives could look like based on the analyzed texts. The analysis is based on narratology and affective theory which presents an 'experiential critique' of the subject on hope, of which the paper provides a thorough conceptual framework. The analysis finds that hope is a concept that is intimately entangled with imaginations of the future; however, hope does not have a universal understanding. Thus, 'hope' can on the one hand be "what we need if we are to put it right" (Pattison 2016), and on the other hand, a principle pandering to structures and demands of 'modernity' which has been complicit in advancing the climate crisis. I propose a concept of ecological hope, which emerges out of an affective experience of loss and crisis. In a first step, the research will dive into background on climate change narratives, the context in which they emerge and their relationship with hope and crisis. It will also look at the importance of imagination and the necessity of cultivating it. It finally analyzes the aforementioned texts on their different imaginings of the future, what narratives matter to this future, their outlining of hope and their suggestions for transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]