Pollution, sci-fi, and the sublime

Dirt is taking on a new character in the twenty-first century. It is becoming a thing of art, a thing represented by and representative of humanity. This article reviews some of the important theories in the growing body of work on garbage to discuss the implications of Patricia Yaeger's argument in PMLA that "postmodern detritus has unexpectedly taken on the sublimity that was once associated with nature." The article begins by offering a distinction between cli-fi and sci-cli-fi and argues throughout that the latter produces an affect of detachment that runs very much counter to any sense of activist engagement and that it does so primarily through its production of sublime objects. The waste that has become such an integral component of the Anthropocene is sublime and incomprehensible in its enormity, and the result is paralyzing.