FAFarming lives: The microscopic and the immersive in Contemporary Agrarian Writings

Abstract

First paragraph: The task this paper tentatively stakes out is whether the idea of the small scale, the microscopic, the local in the agrarian novels I read by contemporary Irish and French writers are relevant to the dizzyingly incomprehensible large scale of the global ecological crisis we face. Are the small worlds these novels textualise reactionary, closed off places that feel threatened by or disconnected from the bigger world? Are they about holding uncritically onto so-called authentic traditions for n other reason that this is what we have ‘always done here’? Or are these small scale places repositories of beliefs, practices and value systems that could be useful? In other words, might the small world of the fictional smallholding provide us with a progressive image of place for a more ecologically sensitive global/planetary future?