Marco Caracciolo is an Associate Professor of English and Literary Theory at Ghent University in Belgium. After receiving a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Bologna in 2012, he has held fellowships in Hamburg, Groningen, and Freiburg. In 2011, he was a visiting scholar within Project Narrative at Ohio State University. His work has been funded by the European Research Council, the Dutch Research Council (NWO), and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is the author of several books, including most recently Slow Narrative and Nonhuman Materialities (University of Nebraska Press, 2022) and Contemporary Fiction and Climate Uncertainty: Narrating Unstable Futures (Bloomsbury, 2022). His articles have appeared in journals including New Literary History, PMLA, SubStance, Poetics Today, and Narrative.

Abstract

Uncertainty is a central dimension of the climate crisis. It is also a feature of digital technologies that build on algorithmic systems. This paper explores the way in which contemporary fiction bridges the gap between these forms of uncertainty by invoking play as both metaphor and material practice. Drawing on Brian Sutton-Smith’s play theory, I examine how the literary imagination taps into, combines, or opposes many of the discourses that coalesce around play (and particularly digital play) in contemporary culture, from gamifying trends to the playfulness of some forms of environmental activism. Focusing on Richard Powers's Playground (2024), I show how play helps negotiate uncertainty by serving as a complex signifier of creative freedom, spiritual aspirations, but also moral crisis and loss of agency.