Eco-trauma fiction: representing the psychological impact of climate change in Liz Jensen’s The Rapture

The psychological impact of climate change is a still underacknowledged issue in contemporary societies. The notion of eco-trauma, or climate trauma, refers to the various forms of individual and collective trauma directly or indirectly connected to climate change. Through theoretical references to key scholars in various fields, ranging from seminal works in trauma theory (Caruth 1995), ecocriticism (Buell 1996) and apocalyptic writing (Berger 1999) to more recent studies on the psychological impact of climate change (Coyle & Van Susteren 2012; Bednarek 2021) and on climate trauma (Narine 2015; Kaplan 2016; Woodbury 2019), I aim to illustrate and exemplify eco-trauma fiction as a new genre at the crossroads of cli-fi, trauma fiction, and the postapocalyptic novel. Liz Jensen’s The Rapture (2009) perfectly epitomises this new genre, as the whole novel is underpinned by the notion of eco-trauma, which includes not only PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), but also pre-trauma, that is, an anticipatory anxiety about possible future catastrophes, as well as elements of apocalyptic writing. Following the most recent developments in ecocritical and trauma theory, this paper explores Jensen’s representation of eco-trauma and other related issues such as the use of myth, religion, and apocalyptic tropes, “collective fetishistic disavowal” (Žižek 2010: x), and the rhetoric of fear.