The Hum: a novel and Capitalocene connections: alienation and knowledge sharing in climate fiction

Abstract

This Doctor of Creative Arts thesis concerns itself with how climate change novels can effectively communicate with readers about the climate emergency.
The creative component, The Hum, is a speculative gothic novel about Julia, a mother of two primary school-aged children living in the Blue Mountains in the Collapse. When the wealthy suburbs of Sydney are set alight by arsonists, her husband is conscripted to suppress social unrest. As she navigates the demands of full-time work, home learning, intrusive surveillance technology, food shortages and hostile paramilitary squads patrolling her community, Julia is assaulted by an onslaught of long-buried truths, and the ever-louder threatening voices of the bushland that surrounds her home.

The exegetical component is a close textual analysis of two contemporary climate fiction novels that encourage reflection on the climate emergency, James Bradley’s Ghost Species (2020) and Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness (2020). I argue that both novels use a Capitalocene framework to challenge traditional environmental narratives that centre on individual responsibility by exploring structural and economic causes of climate change. The Capitalocene critiques dominant environmental narratives by attributing ecological destruction not to humanity as a whole, but to the socio-economic structures of capitalism (Haraway, 2016; Milner & Burgmann, 2018/2020; Moore, 2016). This narrative strategy helps to close the affective distance between reader and subject matter, a technique increasingly recognised in climate fiction for its capacity to foster ecological consciousness (Fiskio, 2021).

As the alienating effects of the Capitalocene persist despite radically altered social settings and climate collapse, and the narrative challenges and disrupts norms around knowledge acquisition and sharing, I argue this resistance reflects the reader’s experience. Through this disruption, the text recentres the moral imperative to act responsibly in the face of climate change, encouraging readers to critically interrogate the ethical dimensions of decisions made by those in power (Trexler & Johns-Putra, 2011).

Date of Thesis submission	2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Sponsors	Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship
Supervisor	Milissa Deitz (Supervisor), James Gourley (Supervisor) & Lorraine Sim (Supervisor)