Re: <nettime> Democracy Net Zero

The first page opens with a “fable” about a lifeless town, but she puts that conceit to rest just a few paragraphs later: “This town does not actually exist, but it might easily have a thousand counterparts in America or elsewhere in the world. I know of no community that has experienced all the misfortunes I describe. Yet every one of these disasters has actually happened somewhere, and many real communities have already suffered a substantial number of them. A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know. What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain.” There isn’t a word in the ensuing 350-odd pages that could be mistaken for fiction. Carson went to great lengths to have her work reviewed by scientists and experts across several relevant fields, and the resulting prose reflects her commitment to clearly and accurately presenting the truth.

On Jun 1, 2021, 12:53 AM -0600, [email protected], wrote:

Hi Ryan, yes I take your point that calling Silent Spring 'fiction'
when maybe the word fable might not have been more appropriate was a
mistake.

I guess this usage followed without enough reflection on from work I
have been doing over the last few years around the idea of 'fiction
as method'
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/events/asif/.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fiction-method

This particularly applied to an exhibition I curated in 2017/18 called
'How Much of this is Fiction'. Which worked with artists whose work
used simulations or hoaxes to satirise or un-veil hidden political
realities.https://www.fact.co.uk/event/how-much-of-this-is-fiction

That said I was probably quite clumsy in the way I characterised
Carson's ground breaking work.

Best

David

On 2021-05-30 18:52, Ryan Griffis wrote:

Thanks for this David!

Minor point: "Silent Spring" is not a work of fiction in any sense of
the word; the short first chapter "Fable for Tomorrow," is, as its
title suggests, a fable (of a "town that does not actually exist").
That chapter is obviously a literary device that establishes the
stakes up front and in an accessible and compressed manner, but I
wouldn't use it to classify the rest of the book as even "creative
nonfiction." The book is otherwise a work of reportage, probably *the*
model for popular contemporary climate/science journalists such as
Elizabeth Kolbert who rely on a combination of first-person
observations, interviews, and syntheses of scientific papers and
policy documents.
Unfortunately, it's still deeply relevant 50 years later...

Take care all,
Ryan

"To get a comparative sense of where we currently stand its useful to
contrast today?s environmental politics with the political impact of
Rachel Carson?s ?Silent Spring? published in 1962. As is well known
this
was an account of an imaginary community afflicted by environmental
calamity. Although a fiction the narrative drew on detailed evidence
from events that had already actually happened in a number of separate

incidents. Carson had simply and brilliantly drawn these threads
together into a worst-case scenario."
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