Disaster Distortion

Environmental fiction increasingly centres on catastrophic disasters. But what does disaster do to narrative? How does it shape not just what stories are about, but how they can be told, and what can be imagined?

This project introduces disaster distortion as a framework for analyzing how catastrophic events influence the imagination of the climate crisis across three levels:

• They rupture foundational expectations: change what counts as “normal”.
• Warp narrative form: temporal ordering, spatial scope, focalization…
• Constrain what becomes imaginable: limit care structures, temporal experience, or cognitive certainty.

These levels cascade and influence each other:

This project demonstrates how disaster placement in narrative structure, either foregrounded or backgrounded, determines whether distortions narrow or expand climate imagination. Drawing on contemporary fiction from Japan, Mexico, and Australia, it argues that the dominance of disaster-centered narratives may inadvertently limit our capacity to imagine transformative climate responses.

Narrative form shapes political imagination. Understanding distortion reveals both what we are and are not imagining – and why.

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Publications

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Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Page | 8 V. 2024/09/12 Guidelines for MSCA-PF projects Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them