Eqqumiitsuliorneq: Haptic Reading, Climate Representation and the Book-Objects of Nancy Campbell

Abstract

This paper marks the first substantial critical engagement with Scottish poet and artist Nancy Campbell, and centres upon two of her works: How to say ‘I love you’ in Greenlandic (2011), and The Night Hunter (2011). Both works mediate their reflections on the precarity of Greenland’s environment and language in the face of climate change through the generation of a haptic mode of reading. This paper reads the unique materiality of Campbell’s climate representation in conjunction with Timothy Morton’s theorisation of climate change as hyperobject. If the hyperobject of climate change risks stifling action for a liveable future through its paralysing vastness, Campbell’s work moves towards a solution by bringing the unimaginable losses of the climate crisis to a graspable scale. The first section reads the sequenced loose pages of How to say ‘I love you’ in Greenlandic as a device that encodes the interlinked losses of Greenlandic language and land. Simultaneously, it argues that Campbell offers resistance to these losses by encouraging the reader to rearrange these pages, thus breaking through cycles of inaction. The second section further delineates the haptic mode of reading demanded by Campbell’s book-objects, with a focus on The Night Hunter’s material elements. These scavenged items materialise the catastrophic violence of climate change as hyperobject, and generate a radical intimacy with nonhumans in the face of this crisis. Overall, the paper argues that the haptic engagement that Campbell fosters offers a way to remain actively engaged in the wake of the climate crisis.