Grossed out by environmental breakdown? Disgust as a literary device within Capitalocene cri-fi (crisis-fiction)

This article proposes, as an alternative to fear and apathy, the usual suspects of environmental affects, an unexpected aesthetic register – disgust. By comparing the functions of disgust in Mariana Enriquez’ and Sayaka Murata’s short stories, I demonstrate how disgust invites readers to imagine themselves as porous interconnected entities, while tying the alienation of this connection to the capitalist systems causing environmental breakdown. This bridges the discrepancy between intimate, emotional experience and the abstract knowledge of the climate crisis. I conclude by proposing a new category within and beyond environmental fiction, one that connects environmental crisis to other crises: cri-fi, crisis fiction. I suggest that cri-fi has the potential to do more than persuade readers of the current crises; it can affect the reader’s understanding and experience of environmental breakdown by viscerally and emotionally demonstrating the complex interrelations of the climate crisis with capitalism through ambivalent negative affects.