SurReal: Incredible Stories for Impossible Futures
Why write a collection of stories about climate change in Uruguay?
The simplest answer to this question might be: why not?
Part of the Uruguayan imagination has always consisted of thinking that Uruguay is a country detached from strong emotions, where nothing happens, neither good nor bad. This sometimes deprives us of heroic deeds, but it also protects us from great misfortunes. That exceptional narrative, the “Switzerland of America,” is over 100 years old. And while we might think we have nothing exceptional, at least, in contrast, we are not battered by major financial crises or natural disasters. This sometimes makes us feel a bit alien to the world, the real one, where things do happen, both wonderful and terrible.
When talking about the climate crisis—whether we call it “climate change,” “eco-social crisis,” or something similar—it is common for us to perceive it as an external problem, one belonging to the “first world.” It’s not that we ignore its effects or lack environmental awareness, but the solutions tend to be “techno-optimistic,” costly, and difficult to implement individually, such as recycling without sufficient infrastructure, renewable energies with high initial costs, organic products, or “sustainable fashion,” which are often inaccessible for most. We often pay more attention to our daily actions (like reducing our ecological footprint) than to holding companies and governments accountable, which makes it difficult to understand the true magnitude of the problem.
It also becomes a first-world problem when most of the information, stories, and narratives, including fiction, come from there. Most of these narratives—fiction included—originate from the global north. We rarely find stories that represent us, that tell us from the south. This partly colonizes our imagination with a “made in Hollywood” fiction. This is not new. And while we are certainly capable of dreaming beyond those models, certain genres, such as climate fiction, are heavily influenced by northern perspectives. If we think about fiction, major climate disasters almost always occur there, and even when they don’t, those narratives have been successfully commercialized from those latitudes.
However, climate conflict is becoming increasingly real and present in our environment as well. More extreme weather phenomena, such as torrential rains, frequent floods, and droughts that leave half the country without water, would have seemed more like something out of a science fiction dystopia than our daily reality a few years ago. These are events for which our imagination was (and likely still is) not prepared.
Students from the project worked alongside creative writers and illustrators.
The first 5 stories of the project will be published here soon.
This anthology of stories arises from a pilot project of the ENACT research group (Emotions, Narratives and Agency for a Just Climate Transition), composed of researchers from Swansea University (Wales, UK) along with education professionals and the DiverGénTE collective in Uruguay.
Its objective is to explore our imagination, its reaches and limits, to face the challenges of the inevitable eco-social transition we will have to undertake sooner or later, which the current climate crisis demands. To this end, it seeks to give voice to adolescents aged 16 to 18, who will face the consequences of this crisis most intensely but who will also have the task of imagining a different, fairer, more equitable, and resilient world.
Voices from the South
The work originates in classrooms, with adolescents from Uruguay, from the south, aiming to give voice, empower, and expand the limits that constrain our imagination. It is a collective effort: students, creative writers, teachers, and Uruguayan illustrators thinking and working together on these stories that, although signed, are the result of a collaborative process.
The way we represent the world—even in fiction—affects how we understand it. If climate catastrophe is always imagined from the north, it will be harder to conceive of its impact here, in the south.
Of course, these stories will not solve the climate crisis; fiction does not serve that function. But by imagining different worlds, we can perceive reality in kinder and more generous ways, both towards our fellow humans and towards non-human life. That understanding, that empathy, that hope, is what can indeed change the world.