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This paper examines how recent posthuman narratives articulate in literature and film a set of essential ethical and political dimensions through which to rethink human relationships with the environment. Drawing on the works of Timothy Morton and Greg Garrard, I examine how the narratives in J.M. Coetzee’s novels and Jia Zhangke’s films invite expanded affective engagement toward landscapes, animals, and objects. By contrast, I would argue that these narratives lure audiences into forging regenerative relationships with the nonhuman world through the erasure of rigid human-nature binary opposition and the subversion of traditional human-centred stories. Drawing on the theory of environmental imagination as expounded by Lawrence Buell, this essay examines how these stories function as ecocentric ecologies of cultural meaning. This approach, drawing on multiple disciplines, deepens our appreciation of the ethical underpinnings of these stories and the nuances involved in the nature-culture divide. Further, I utilize the empirical understanding gained from empirical ecocriticism. Therefore, this work examines how posthuman stories’ immersive settings and narrative techniques can influence ecological awareness and pro-environmental behaviour. The current research accentuates the stories’ ability to shift ecological consciousness, hence pressing readers and viewers toward developing a sense of kinship with non-human agents and engaging in ethics toward nature. In other words, this research posits that posthuman narratives represent a cultural methodology through which a sustainable, interconnected future may be shaped within an ecological paradigm, which is also constantly changing.

This article considers the performative aspects of environmental narratives, based on the example of the cultural image of the plastic bag. In contemporary culture, disposable plastic bags have become a symbol of the collective guilt related to the role of plastics in the environmental catastrophe. Their perception is affected by various environmental narratives and social campaigns, in which the image of a plastic bag is to evoke fear, aversion, anger, or disgust, reinforcing the view of plastic as an unnatural material that pollutes the planet. The effectiveness of these narratives is limited, as the number of plastic bags in the environment continues to increase. The author explores the possibility of imagining other, less anthropocentric and potentially more effective modes of relating to single-use plastic. She uses performative methods to analyze the short film Plastic Bag (dir. Ramin Bahrani, 2009). Her interpretation draws mainly on Jane Bennett’s concept of vital materialism and Timothy Morton’s dark ecology to focus on the agency of plastic bags in various settings and offer a different perspective on their potential roles in more-than-human relationships.

The paper focuses on the philosophical foundations of the problem of the relationship between humans and the environment. The authors analyze the interpretations existing in the contemporary intellectual discourse. The authors search for an adequate concept of a current ecological subject. Based on the study of the principles of “deep ecology” by A. Naess and the main provisions of the “dark ecology” project by T. Morton, the authors reveal the critical aspects of the criticism of ecological egocentrism. It consists in the fact that humanity always thought of themselves as the center and the highest link in the evolutionary development of the Universe, not recognizing the autonomy of nature. Moreover, all values projected onto nature are initially anthropocentric and presuppose an orientation towards serving people’s interests. The authors argue that a complimentary program of approaches is the call for the transformation of ecological thinking and its ethical reorientation. However, these approaches have fundamental differences. “Deep ecology” focuses on recognizing the intrinsic value of all life forms on the Earth and proposes a strategy of active, responsible attitude to the ecosystem. In turn, “dark ecology” removes the concept of “nature” from the ecological discourse and orientates a person to the praxis of non-interference and passive, contemplative existence in the world of complex “strange” objects.

This article examines the Norwegian climate fiction television series [ ] (2015–), focusing on the ways in which it reveals the complicity of Nordic subjects in an ecological dystopia. I argue that in illuminating this complicity, the series reimagines the Norwegian national self-conception rooted in a discourse of Norway's exceptionalist relation to nature. I show how Norway's green (self-)image is expressed through what I call “white ecology” – an aesthetics of whiteness encoded in neoromantic mountainous winter landscapes widely associated with the North, but also in the figure of the Norwegian white male polar explorer. I argue in this article that challenges this white-ecological masculine discourse through “dark ecology” ( ), embodied by Russia and expressed by the avoidance of spectacular landscape aesthetics as well as by the strategy of “enmeshment”, facilitated by the medium of televisual long-form storytelling and the eco-noir aesthetics.

This article examines the Norwegian climate fiction television series Okkupert [Occupied] (2015–), focusing on the ways in which it reveals the complicity of Nordic subjects in an ecological dystopia. I argue that in illuminating this complicity, the series reimagines the Norwegian national self-conception rooted in a discourse of Norway's exceptionalist relation to nature. I show how Norway's green (self-)image is expressed through what I call “white ecology” – an aesthetics of whiteness encoded in neoromantic mountainous winter landscapes widely associated with the North, but also in the figure of the Norwegian white male polar explorer. I argue in this article that Occupied challenges this white-ecological masculine discourse through “dark ecology” (Morton, 2007), embodied by Russia and expressed by the avoidance of spectacular landscape aesthetics as well as by the strategy of “enmeshment”, facilitated by the medium of televisual long-form storytelling and the eco-noir aesthetics.

The purpose of this article is to make a multi-faceted anthropological analysis of selected narratives concerning the ways of experiencing the taiga in the context of local hunting practices used by representatives of the Tofalar community. Tofalars are one of the smallest indigenous ethnic groups in Russia (ca. 800 people). They live in three villages in the eastern part of the Sayan range in the Irkutsk region. Their way of life is connected with the surrounding environment, which in this case is the mountain taiga. My field studies indicate that the inhabitants of Tofalaria experience the taiga in a way that is difficult to describe in the light of Western epistemology based on an anthropocentric perspective. In analysing this problem, I use the work of modern anthropologists who are trying to develop a new anthropological approach, in which the human being is not in a privileged position (e.g. Tim Ingold, Viveiros de Castro, Łukasz Smyrski). The second point of reference for me is the work of contemporary philosophers, associated with the current of speculative realism, which combines a critical attitude to anthropocentrism and frequent references to the category of ‘dark’ (e.g. Timothy Morton’s dark ecology, Ben Woodard’s dark vitalism).

This article examines the Norwegian climate fiction television series Okkupert [ Occupied ] (2015–), focusing on the ways in which it reveals the complicity of Nordic subjects in an ecological dystopia. I argue that in illuminating this complicity, the series reimagines the Norwegian national self-conception rooted in a discourse of Norway's exceptionalist relation to nature. I show how Norway's green (self-)image is expressed through what I call “white ecology” – an aesthetics of whiteness encoded in neoromantic mountainous winter landscapes widely associated with the North, but also in the figure of the Norwegian white male polar explorer. I argue in this article that Occupied challenges this white-ecological masculine discourse through “dark ecology” (Morton, 2007), embodied by Russia and expressed by the avoidance of spectacular landscape aesthetics as well as by the strategy of “enmeshment”, facilitated by the medium of televisual long-form storytelling and the eco-noir aesthetics.

The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is, in the works of Timothy Morton, an ecocritical hermeneutic, in which the world can be subtracted into the parts of objects, of the plant, and of any leaf that exceeds the totality of abstract ‘Nature’. In dividing the whole into the parts, and combining the parts into an imminently subtracted whole, he has recommended a negative dialectic of virtual objects that can be collected into a ‘hyperobject’. This dialectic can, however, be argued to dissolve any whole into parts, and render the hyperobject internally fissured. We can, from the ‘darkness’ of this fissure, begin to read Nature according to the ‘via plantare’, that is, a mystical way of desiring an other as plant so as to know and love the visible light of the invisible God. ‘Vegetal difference’, the difference of the plant from the animal, should, I argue, be read for theology as a finite reflection of the divine difference of the Holy Trinity in a Trinitarian Ontology, in which the originary difference of the Son from the Father is related through the Holy Spirit, and given again in accelerating gratuity—like the light of the leaf that shines forth from any flower.

In this article, I argue that William S. Burroughs’ novel Naked Lunch engages in a “perverse aesthetics” that is analogous to Timothy Morton’s theory of dark ecology. The novel’s main themes of consumption and control are directly related to the Anthropocene’s twin disasters of global warming and mass extinction, and the trope for addiction, junk, reveals Burroughs’ deep analysis of the political and social forces that attempt to control life, what Burroughs calls biocontrol. By placing the novel’s obsession with hanging/lynching in the context of dark ecology, its critique of racism can also be seen as a critique of speciesism.

Artykuł dotyczy performatywnych aspektów narracji ekologicznych, rozpatrywanych na przykładzie kulturowego wizerunku foliówki. Plastikowe torby jednorazowego użytku są we współczesnej kulturze symbolem zbiorowych win związanych z rolą tworzyw sztucznych w katastrofie ekologicznej. Na ich percepcję wpływają rozmaite narracje ekologiczne i kampanie społeczne, w których obraz foliówki ma budzić strach, niechęć, złość czy obrzydzenie i utrwalać opinię o plastiku jako nienaturalnym materiale zanieczyszczającym planetę. Skuteczność tych narracji jest ograniczona, skoro plastikowych toreb w środowisku wciąż przybywa. Autorka zastanawia się, czy można wyobrazić sobie inne, mniej antropocentryczne i potencjalnie bardziej skuteczne sposoby nawiązywania relacji z jednorazowym plastikiem. Wykorzystuje metody performatyczne do analizy krótkometrażowego filmu Plastic Bag (reż. Ramin Bahrani, 2009). Interpretację filmu opiera głównie na witalnym materializmie Jane Bennett oraz ciemnej ekologii Timothy’ego Mortona, by ukazać foliówki jako sprawcze byty związane na wiele sposobów z otaczającym je światem, a także zaproponować odmienne spojrzenie na ich potencjalne role w więcej-niż-ludzkich relacjach.