Starting from Aleida Assmann’s semiotic-philosophical concepts “homo interpres” and “wild semiosis”, I propose a reading of four contemporary novels to open up a wider discussion of how to engage with more-than-human landscapes – and particularly wetlands – through human language. Creation Lake (2024) by Rachel Kushner, Venomous Lumpsucker (2022) by Ned Beauman, The Extinction of Irena Rey (2024) by Jennifer Croft and Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series (2014-2024) operate with notions of ‘wilderness’ and ‘nature’ while foreclosing any possibility of applying a ‘purity politics’ (Alexis Shotwell) that would allow to cleanly separate human and non-human aspects of the landscapes in question or to deem them useful or useless, beautiful or ugly, productive or destructive.

These novels deal with deep time perspectives and extinction as hyperobject, and more-than-human liveliness that is barely graspable through language. However, these novels are far from what you would usually call nature writing. While their settings include rural areas, the bottom of the ocean, old growth forests, swamps and caves, their protagonists and focal points are, for the most part, very confused humans, p.ex. translators, spies, activists and corporate executives, who are mingled in very human affairs, like plotting, spying, pretending, worrying about social status, filling out forms, reporting to their bosses, …

In a short lecture will, I will highlight the interesting and strange contrast between petty bureaucracy and ecological abundance that emerge in the reading of these novels. We will read some passages of these novels together as well as some theoretical inputs on more-than-human communication/expression. Taking this case study as a starting point, we will discuss different ways of what is often referred to as “giving voice to the non-human” (which could also be interpreted in a political democratic framework) – and why this is something writers and readers aspire to. If this connects to your own work, please feel free to bring further examples.

Bio: Julia Grillmayr is a visiting professor of cultural studies at the Art University Linz, Austria (Kunstuniversität Linz). She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Vienna. Her key research areas are science fiction cultures and environmental humanities. https://juliagrillmayr.at/