STRAY WRITING: NAVIGATING THE GREAT DERANGEMENT

Many theorists have lamented the lack of serious literary fiction addressing the shifting realities of climate change, or ecological collapse. While the reasons for this lack are diverse, most hinge on the temporal dimensions of the Anthropocene. This paper — via a study of work emerging in the environmental humanities — is an attempt to fragment the totalising rhetoric of geological shift by illustrating that the Anthropocene affects humans and non-humans on narrative timescales that are neither apocalyptic nor gradual. In conclusion, drawing upon Barbara Creed ’ s formulation of the stray (2017), I advocate for the stray novel and provide a series of provocations for further research.