Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

The Swan Book, a 2013 novel by Indigenous Australian author and land rights activist Alexis Wright, has been called “the first great novel of climate change… and perhaps the first truly planetary novel.”

Reflecting on Wright’s opaque Aboriginal realist and hybrid aesthetics, this lecture will investigate how Wright’s novel, still carrying and re-potentializing expression and sensation, revitalizes our apprehension of our entangled relations with lives beyond ourselves. Wright’s outlandish story calls our ethics of reading into question; we are taught hard lessons about readership endurance, the art of paying attention, and the necessity to better listen to voices evolving from beyond our perceptual range. Wright’s politically-charged, anti-linear dystopia challenges received Western ideals of teleological progress and brings us to wonder about the meaning of land and land rights without such ideals to define them.

Born in French Polynesia, Temiti Lehartel is an environmental activist (350 Pacific) and graduate student in the Département d’Études anglophones, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3, France. Her research focuses primarily on the effects of climate change in Oceania, indigenous struggle in Australia, ethical international development, and the emerging literature of Pacific Island climate fiction, in particular the work of Indigenous Australian author Alexis Wright.  This presentation will be in English.