Political Poetics and the Power of Things: Nonhuman Agency and Climate Change in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book

Abstract

In Alexis Wright’s novel, The Swan Book (2013), the politics of the human and the non-human other are both inextricably linked and mutually informative. In this article I argue that Wright’s depictions of the environment, non-human animals and human-made objects extend beyond the function of props and setting to create a strong environmental message and an open and inclusive poetics. I draw particularly on Rob Nixon’s eco-criticism, Jane Bennet’s theorisation of thing power and the material and environmental feminism of Claire Colebrook, Astrid Neimanis and Rachel Loewen Walker to explore the ways in which Wright’s depictions of non-human agency complicate conventional understandings of an inert and manipulable nature and how that complication might lead to positive political change.

I focus particularly on Wright’s depiction of the environmental impacts and political discourses of climate change, using Nixon’s theory of “slow violence” to argue that unconventional and creative re-imaginings of ecological realities can play an important role in the fight to stall global warming. However, the political power of Wright’s representations of non-human agency extends beyond any single issue. In The Swan Book, Wright creates a radically ambiguous and alienating poetics that not only challenges restrictive environmental dualisms but also encourages a hospitable and non-reductive mode of interacting with the world around us.