On monsters and other matters of housekeeping. Reading Jeff VanderMeer with Donna Haraway and Ursula K. Le Guin

The eco in ecology and economy derives from the Greek oîkos, meaning “house” or “household”. The age we call the Anthropocene is one of wide-ranging domestic violence.
Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern reach Trilogy provides a rich fantastic world to think the nature of that violence, and also the possibility of its antonym. That antonym, I suggest, is perhaps not peace, but ‘importance’ as understood by the philosopher AN Whitehead. The itinerary taking me to that suggestion meanders through the kinship ties between cosmic horror, colonialism, and the Anthropocene as narratives of power and control. I briefly explore those kinship ties in the good company of Donna Haraway and Ursula K. Le Guin.
I then return to the Southern Reach to focus on the role of bounded, situated ecologies in the novels like an overgrown swimming pool, a desolate parking lot and tide pools. It is here that the concept of ‘importance’ takes on meaning and substance. It is here also that I find some rudimentary elements of an answer to the questions that open this chapter: how do the matter of stories and the matter of the living relate to each other? How does fiction help us appreciate and think about ecosystems? And how might ecosystems themselves invite us to turn to fiction?