In the Dark (Antoine Volodine)

This essay engages with the inclination of recent ecocritical thought to disqualify postapocalyptic fiction and, often by extension, dystopian fiction from the ranks of those responses to the Anthropocene deemed helpful or appropriate. After a survey of recent antidystopian pronouncements and a discussion of their implications, this essay argues that Antoine Volodine’s dark fiction offers tools for imagining why one might assert the validity—if not the productivity—of dark modes of thought. Specifically, it shows how Volodine’s darkness explores literary intransitivity and defiant nonpurposiveness, where stark pessimism about the ecological impacts of human life allows for the cultivation of hospitable ideas of a posthuman future.