Contenu du sommaire : Le catastrophisme environnemental

The term “apocalypse” is frequently used in Germany for characterizing big catastrophes. Journalists as well as politicians, for instance, described the catastrophe of Fukushima in 2011 as “apocalyptic”. This catchword is being used also for catastrophes that are expected in the future. At present, one fears the future effects of the climate change, the pollution of the atmosphere, the warming-up of the climate, periods of drought, famine. The term “apocalypse” elicits associations of grand devastations, of death and destruction, even of the end of the world. The term is also used in order to stir up and induce measures that could prevent these effects. On the other hand, the frequent use of dreadful images and visions involves the danger that people become bunted and indifferent. It is still undecided whether or not the warnings of the climate change will lead to effective political actions and to a change of behavior.

The ninth thesis called Angelus Novus from Walter Benjamin's last work, the theses On the concept of History (1940), is a major text on catastrophe thought in historical philosophy. The critique on progress, which is formulated there, applies easily on the ecological thoughts of catastrophe in the Anthropocene age. From a vaster reading which also involves texts related to Benjamin's opus magnum in the Arcades Project, the point of view of Benjamin's critique on progress gets reversed into what we can call “prognostic thought of catastrophe” which describes the upcoming ecological threats provoked by Humankind, instead of the past catastrophes. This concept gets depicted in Hans Magnus Enzensberger's The Sinking of the Titanic (1978). The critical thought of catastrophe by Benjamin gains more importance in the second half of the 20th century with the critique of progress by philosophers like Günther Anders, Hans Jonas and Ulrich Beck.

This contribution shows how the German philosopher Rudolf Bahro borrowed the notion of exterminism from the critique of capitalism by the British New Left (Edward P. Thompson) to make it a pivot of his ecological thinking. While in The Alternative better days were anticipated in an utopian third part entitled “Strategy of a Communist Alternative”, Bahro's departure for West Germany in 1979 led to a shift in his thinking after his meeting with the new Green Party, of which he became a representative figure until 1985. In Logik der Rettung (1987), utopia took the form of a “Prince of the ecological turn” who would save humanity from the irreversible ecological disaster induced by the fundamentally “exterministic” character of civilization. The analysis is based on documents from the Bahro collection of the Grünes Gedächtnis archives in Berlin.

Environmental catastrophism has often been questioned through the study of “avant-garde” trends, often led at the margins of intellectual and political fields. This article explores the birth of a specific set of reports and books on environmental catastrophes in the 1970-1980's that took an important part in the shaping of new public policies regarding industrial hazards. During this period, often described as a time of political invention of the environment, we emphasize that French civil servants in charge of environmental and industrial issues shaped administrative practices that aimed at forecasting and dealing with industrial accidents. This paper analyzes the rise of a “technocratic catastrophism”, based on several types of reports and academic publications, mainly written by engineers or social scientists. While the 1980's are often seen as a time of “environmental backlash” on the international level, we argue that this period could also be seen as a “catastrophist moment” within public policies. Not only strictly administrative, this moment is characterized by a shift in the way the administration envisions upcoming industrial developments and the regulation of its hazards.

Doom-mongering raises the question of extreme hazards at the same time as that of unknown, unthinkable events. Thinking about disaster reintroduces caution into risk analysis, reminding us that precaution is only a translation of the ethics of responsibility that are so dear to Hans Jonas. It concerns a proven risk whose probability is very low just as much as it concerns a potential risk whose scenario remains to be constructed. This contribution returns to situations of rupture or blindness that are statistically qualified as aberrant events and which put conventional expertise procedures to the test. Are the risks still unpredictable? To answer the question, this contribution contains two parts. First, we define the extraordinary framework in which an improbable black swan flourishes. Second, we characterize the notion of disaster by insisting on the need to think of catastrophic scenarios to better manage the present.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) is regarded as having triggered the green movement in the USA. Carson warns against the massive use of pesticide, among which the insecticide DDT, that leads to poisoning of nature and living beings. Her plea for change in the way we think and act takes the form of a scientifically-based tale. It sparked fierce criticism from conservative politicians, scientists and industrialists, who accused her of hysterical panic-mongering and (female) ignorance while simultaneously praising technical and scientific progress. This article studies the discourses, motives and strategies of both sides and questions their radicalism through the prism of the concept of catastrophism. The comparison with selected Spiegel articles from the 1960s stresses the emotionalization of the debates on environmental and health problems while providing insights into the transnational dynamics and complex stratifications of fear during Cold War.

Meinrad Inglin (Schwyz, 1893-1971) is a Swiss country author, inhabited by an animist and pantheist belief, very concerned about the preservation of the sites, fauna and flora of his native country. He opposes life in nature to technician civilization. A citizen activist involved in demonstrations against the construction of dams and roads in Switzerland in the 1950s and 1960s, he committed to preserve the environment. The novel Urwang (1954) shows the catastrophic aspects of the flooding of a valley for the construction of a dam and hydroelectric power plant. This means a turning point in his work: Inglin shows that the individual is negligible when financial interests are at stake and he denounces the ecological disasters induced by the massification of tourism and the industrial development.

The German-language literature for children and adolescents produced “classics of ecocritical literature” comparatively early on. This sub-genre has been placing the dangers pertaining to nuclear weapons and the scenario of a potential nuclear catastrophe at the heart of its narratives. Gudrun Pausewang's bestseller The Cloud. Now we will no longer be able to say that we did not know about anything, which was published one year after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986, holds a central place here. This novel is compared to a more recent French youth novel, Aurélie Wellenstein's La fille de Tchernobyl (2016), which in turn is strongly influenced by Svetlana Alexievitch's documentary novel Chernobyl Prayer. A chronicle of the Future (1997). What are the narrative features of these representations of catastrophes in children's and young people's literature? In the first part of my contribution, I introduce the main female characters of the two youth novels and I address the combination of factual and fictional modes. Then, I analyse the spaces of destruction; in the final part, I demonstrate to what extent these novels function as works of remembrance while simultaneously requiring educational clarification. In other words, I aim to explore the pedagogical goals of these works. Should they be considered as pure “scaremongering” (of which Gudrun Pausewang was accused); or does the narrative context of the “catastrophe” – a concept with a long literary tradition which has been playing a central role in the international environmental movement – have other functions?

Since the end of the 1980s, research has focused on Günter Kunert's cultural and environmental pessimism. This article continues the latest published work (Thomas Koebner, Heinz Puknus, Walter Hinderer, Elke Kasper, Adam Paulsen) with an analysis of Kunert's work (poems, Kurzgeschichten, essays) published since the early 1990s. We return to the influences that have been decisive in understanding the poet's position, those of Primo Levi, Günther Anders, Theodor Lessing. We analyze the recurring images of this Unwelt that run through this work from 1990-2018 and finally we present three Kurzgeschichten that particularly illustrate Kunert's commitment to environmental urgency. As an enlightened catastrophist, Kunert speaks to us of consciousness, lucidity, and the autonomy of the individual.

Austria-born writer and playwright Kathrin Röggla tackles social fragmentation and individual deconstruction. To this effect, she studies the workings of the story-making process, which in her view rely on a “grammar of demise” (Katastrophengrammatik). This study of the prose text entitled die ansprechbare, an excerpt from the 2010 die alarmbereiten collection, aims to answer the following question: What functions does the writer attribute to catastrophism, i.e. the state of emergency triggered by the fear of environmental demise, and to the narratives which spring from it? This essay is partly an analysis of Röggla's literary aesthetics, because it aims to find out to what extent the author performatively tries to trigger the afore-mentioned state of emergency. However, Röggla's often tenuous frontier between narration and play-writing needs analysing as well, along with the long monologues which run through her works, as these monologues contribute to putting the human subject in perspective.

With the publication of novels such as Go! Die Ökodiktatur (1993) by Dirk C. Fleck and Der Schwarm (2004) by Frank Schätzing, the German ecological thriller has become a best-selling genre, especially thanks to the special prominence it gives to environmental disasters. Its latest variant, the climate thriller, aims to shock as well as to entertain; simultaneously, it emphasizes the importance of educating the reader on climate change. By analyzing the way natural disasters are represented in two recent novels, Prophezeiung (2011) by Sven Böttcher and Sturm (2017) by Uwe Laub, it is intended to show that no matter how thought-provoking these thrillers may be and in spite of the perfectly obvious influence of American blockbusters and conspiracy theories, they don't send out a clear political message in favour of the fight against global warming. Like some of the great classics of science fiction, they tend to strengthen the sense of greatness and power of our contemporary society.