Ecological Pathology in the Anthropocene: Climate Denial and Psychological Crisis in Ian McEwan’s Solar and The Wall (Published)
This paper explores connections between Anthropocene discourses and ecological fear, and psychological denial in Ian McEwan’s satirical climate novel Solar (2010). By applying psychoanalytic theory and concepts from the environmental humanities to the novel, this paper analyzes how Beard’s individual psychopathology mirrors and reproduces the socio-ecological denial of the systems which produce the climate crisis. The wall of silence and denial surrounding global warming caused by human activity is shown to consist of solipsism, Beard’s instant gratification and his recognition of and subsequent defense against his own cognitive dissonance. By correlating Beard’s moral and physical decay with the ever-accelerating climate crisis, Solar redefines the subgenre of the climate novel and presents the interior, on-going diseasibility of human psychological pathology as the greatest barrier to environmental responsibility in the Anthropocene. For while the Novels of Catastrophe focusing on post-apocalyptic Futures have for long portrayed the ecological crisis in terms of externality and Otherness, Solar focuses on the day-to-day specifics of current human psychopathology, highlighting how narcissism and self-delusion prevent human beings from coming together in a shared eco-accountability.
Keywords: Ecocriticism, Ian McEwan, Psychoanalytic criticism, Solar, anthropocene, climate denial, environmental humanities, human psychopathology