Interrogating The Drowned World through Timothy Morton's Hyperobjectivity

Abstract: Although J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World was published in 1962, decades before Anthropocentricism and Timothy Morton’s Theory of Hyperobjectivity came into existence, it perfectly anticipates the challenges posed by climate change in the 21^st century. The novel serves as a literary articulation of the theory postulated by Timothy Morton in his work Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. In Ballard’s The Drowned World, climate change acts as a dominant force that shapes human perception, the ecosystem and non-human agencies. This article argues that the flooded world in The Drowned World complies with the properties of hyperobjects as defined by Timothy Morton- viscosity, nonlocality, temporal undulation, phasing and interobjectivity; demonstrating that Ballard’s novel anticipates the challenges posed by climate change decades before they are named.

Keywords: J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World, Hyperobjectivity, Climate Change, Timothy Morton