“Complicit Concealments”: Developing ecological consciousness in Sally Abbott’s Closing Down (2017) and Briohny Doyle’s Echolalia (2021)

This article explores the challenges faced by climate fiction writers who address human responses to climate change, emphasising the need to expose the underlying political and economic mechanisms of the climate crisis. It builds on the critique offered by theorists Adam Trexler, Timothy Clark, Mark Fisher and Amitav Ghosh, highlighting the risk of climate fiction novels becoming “complicit concealments” if they fail to focus on the principle drivers of the carbon economy – overconsumption, economic growth and market-based thinking. We analyse a growing trend in Australian climate fiction, where connections between neoliberal capitalism and climate change are becoming major themes. Novels like Sally Abbott’s Closing Down (2010) and Briohny Doyle’s Echolalia (2021) represent characters’ relations to society and the economy and try to capture the complex realities of climate change. Based on this analysis, we propose the concept of “ecological consciousness” as a potential narrative strategy for writers, building on the Marxist concept of class consciousness, which extends awareness beyond traditional class dynamics to encompass the interconnectedness of humans with the environment. The article concludes by emphasising the strength and versatility of this approach, showcasing its potential for providing a holistic perspective on societal and environmental dynamics in climate fiction.