Climate crisis and Precarity: the politics of representation in Emmi Itäranta's Memory of Water.

This article investigates the representation of precarity in Finnish writer Emmi Itäranta's ecodystopian novel Memory of Water (2014). The novel depicts a state of ecoprecarity in which the lives of future populations are not only vulnerable, but also a broad spectrum of precarity defines them. Draw...

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Published in:Journal for Cultural Research Vol. 29; no. 3; pp. 415 - 429
Main Authors: Rajbanshi, Manoj, Kumar, Nagendra
Format: Literary Criticism
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Sep2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        10.1080/14797585.2025.2523746
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        atl: Climate crisis and Precarity: the politics of representation in Emmi Itäranta's Memory of Water.
      aug:
        au:
          Rajbanshi, Manoj
          Kumar, Nagendra
        affil: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India
      su:
        Precarity
        Climate change
        Authorship
        Water shortages
        Social theory
        Butler, Judith, 1956-
        Postcolonialism
      sug:
        subj:
          Precarity
          Climate change
          Authorship
          Water shortages
          Social theory
          Butler, Judith, 1956-
          Postcolonialism
      keyword:
        Anthropocene
        Climate fiction
        ecodystopia
        ecoprecarity
        precarity
        vulnerability
      ab: This article investigates the representation of precarity in Finnish writer Emmi Itäranta's ecodystopian novel Memory of Water (2014). The novel depicts a state of ecoprecarity in which the lives of future populations are not only vulnerable, but also a broad spectrum of precarity defines them. Drawing on Judith Butler's conception of precarity, this article argues that at the advent of crisis, the state apparatuses become more dominant by enacting differentiated violence and exposing certain populations to increased vulnerability, insecurity, and uncertainty, thus giving rise to precarity. Furthermore, this article also presents a Global South perspective on the text's representation of precarity, highlighting connections between the Global North's imaginings and the Global South's lived realities.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Literary Criticism
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    language: English
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