Speculative Worlds and Terrestrial Politics: Reframing Fictional Disasters with Latour’s Down to Earth

This chapter explores how speculative fictional depictions of environmental disaster can help readers imagine more complex relationships with the material world. In Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Bruno Latour argues that we need to develop a richer sense of such interdependency, and he calls this materialist reframing Terrestrial politics. For Latour, Terrestrial politics provide an important counter to what he calls Out-of-this-World thinking. While Terrestrial politics emphasize the connections between humans, nonhuman beings, and the material world, Out-of-this-World thinking downplays such material interdependencies, thereby offering escapist, reactionary responses to environmental threats like climate change. This chapter contends that certain fictional texts can help readers recognize Out-of-this-World attitudes and envision Terrestrial politics, rooted in complex material networks rather than denial or escapism. I also argue that Latour’s Terrestrial politics can provide a critical framework for analyzing depictions of both escapism and community resilience in these fictional works.