Para-texts: Alterity and Infected Reading in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy

Abstract

This thesis examines Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy within an ecocritical and deconstructive framework. Published in quick succession in 2014, the trilogy – composed of Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance – traces the shadowy outline of ‘Area X’, the name given to a mysterious stretch of coast along the Eastern Seaboard. While the official explanation for Area X is an ecological disaster, the reality is much weirder; inside Area X, things transform. Drawing predominantly on Annihilation, I explore how acts of writing manifest within Area X, as well as how this language ‘infects’ the narrative tissue of the trilogy itself. By situating writing outside the human body, I argue that The Southern Reach Trilogy represents writing – and thus language more broadly – as a distinctly nonhuman alterity.