Degrowth Aesthetics and the Barely-There Novel: Reading Sara Baume

Schoene, Berthold ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6536-9093 (2024) Degrowth Aesthetics and the Barely-There Novel: Reading Sara Baume. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. ISSN 1076-0962

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Abstract

Combining research on the Anthropocene novel with post-work theory and current eco-political debates on degrowth, this article reads Sara Baume’s work as a pioneering example of literary degrowth aesthetics. In content, outlook, and style Baume’s writing embraces an ethos of radical ecological sustainability, which places it in stark opposition to extractivist realism’s traditional championing of progress, self-development, and almost limitless “desire expansion.” The article also investigates the influence British land artist Richard Long’s ethics of “barely-there” artfulness has had on Baume. Like Long’s art, Baume’s work enacts a radical lightening of the burden of western humanity on the planet.