Volume V Special Issue IV October 2025

Name of Author : Tamidepati V Aravind, Dr. P. Padma

Title of the paper : Climatic Heterotopias at the End of the World: Eco Speculation in Kim Stanley Robinsons Antarctica

Abstract: This paper explores Michel Foucaults concept of heterotopia and its application in Kim Stanley Robinsons Antarctica 1997, positioning the novel as a critical site for interrogating ecological ethics in the Anthropocene. Foucault defines heterotopias as real, embedded spaces that reflect, invert, or contest dominant social orders spaces marked by multiplicity, contradiction, and non linear temporalities. In Antarctica, Robinson envisions the continent as a climatic heterotopia a remote, politically neutral, and ecologically fragile space where global power dynamics, climate change anxieties, and human vulnerability converge. The novel dramatizes tensions between scientific ethics and corporate extractivism, collective solidarity and neoliberal governance, and technological ambition and environmental limits. Foucaults six principles of heterotopia juxtaposition, crisis, deviation, ritual entry and exclusion, temporal heterogeneity, and compensatory illusion are woven into the Antarctic landscape and its narrative architecture, transforming it into a speculative, philosophical space for ethical reckoning. This paper seeks to map the six heterotopic principles onto specific Antarctic spaces in the novel, identifying how each principle shapes the spatial and symbolic logic of the continent. It also establishes Antarctica as a climatic heterotopia a term this paper refines and theorizes highlighting how crisis and deviation, especially in the context of climate change, are spatially negotiated. Through intersecting storylines, indigenous perspectives, and speculative ecological realism, Antarctica reimagines the frozen continent not merely as a wilderness or scientific outpost, but as a sacred ecological zone and a crucible for rethinking modernity, capitalism, and sustainability. Ultimately, the novel advances a vision of collective responsibility and renewed human-nature relations in the face of climatic collapse.

Keywords : Heterotopia, Foucault, Antarctica, Ecological Ethics, Climate Fiction and Anthropocene

DOI :

Page Number : 108-114