Paul Kingsnorth's new millenarian literary movement

July 20, 2009 by William Shaw
Filed under: William Shaw 

Paul Kingsnorth, poet, environmentalist, journalist and author of Real England, attempts to kick off a ground-breaking new literary movement this month, The Dark Mountain Project with social-web frontiersman Dougald Hine. Its premise is a radical one;  if I represent it right, it’s that we are on the brink of catastrophe and it’s art’s reponsibility to face that, and to reflect it in its output. We have been telling the wrong stories. It is time to start telling the right ones:

We don’t believe that anyone – not politicians, not economists, not environmentalists, not writers – is really facing up to the scale of this. As a society, we are all still hooked on a vision of the future as an upgraded version of the present. Somehow, technology or political agreements or ethical shopping or mass protest are meant to save our civilisation from self-destruction. Well, we don’t buy it.

Kingsnorth and Hine have written a remarkable manifesto that’s well worth reading; it’s erudite, lyrical and, most of all,  apolcalyptic in an almost William Blake-ish kind of way, seeing civilisation treading on a “thin crust of lava” as the environmental catastrophe looms. Its eight principles of “Uncivilisation” include the following:

3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
4. We will reassert the role of story-telling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.

There is a growing debate here at the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre about the role of apocalyptic art in changing minds. We are fond of quoting Raymond Williams here, “that to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing”. If you want people to change, you have to offer them a way to a future that inspires them, rather than terrifies them. Pessimism convinces nobody.

But what if that act of making hope possible only bluntens the urgency of the situation, dissipates the urge to action?

Kingsnorth and Hine are looking for people to rally to the flag.

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3 Comments on Paul Kingsnorth's new millenarian literary movement

  1. phil korbel on Mon, 20th Jul 2009 2:30 pm

    2. Much as I’d like not to, I empathise with Paul, so your Williams quote is vital if anything constructive is to be grown from his approach. In terms of creating action, if that’s part of the game plan, it’s now all the more important to counter ‘the inner ostrich’, and how do you do that if we have to write about ‘the end’? The beauty of the hope has to be extraordinary if it is to defeat the grim vision.

  2. William Shaw on Mon, 20th Jul 2009 2:35 pm

    3. Brilliantly put, Phil. I think the idea of the inner ostrich could go far, too!

  3. phil korbel on Mon, 20th Jul 2009 2:50 pm

    4. I fight that pesky feathered of mine on a daily basis :)

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