"Man tror sig gå framåt men faller i stället hela tiden baklänges, mot sin egen utplåning" : En psykoanalytisk och ekokritisk läsning av Lyra Kolis Allting växer

Sammanfattning

This is a psychoanalytical and ecocritical reading of Lyra Koli’s dystopian novel Allting växer based on Sigmund Freud’s theories about human drives and culture, and Timothy Morton’s Dark ecology. In the novel a resistance towards society develops through nature. It starts with the cult-like movement Organisationen, that strives for a closer relationship with nature, and in the characters Monica and Jossi, whose destinies meander into each other. The nature they seek isn’t that which in the novel’s post-apocalyptic world is described as nature, but something else. The surrounding nature is, like Morton’s dark ecology, beyond rescue. Destroyed by man. The characters inherent nature still has a chance to survive, thus controlled by society via medical implants. Despite the implants regulation of hormones Jossi develops anxiety. In the attempt to get rid of it she slowly transforms into something else beyond her fixed form as a human and her culture, which no longer brings her any pleasure even though it should be according to Freud. Jossi returns to something fundamental in her search and in a society that no longer acknowledges the past or even death. In this Jossi gets an equalization of inner tensions, in Freudian terms. Albeit in a destructive way, a form of death drive, that ends in her own destruction. Jossi becomes a symbol of liberation of nature in a society that no longer acknowledges it. She finds her inner peace and dies for the Organisationen’s cause – with plants growing out of her body. The anxiety is gone and so is Jossi. Left is Monica, who experimented on her, with an insight and guilt about what she’s done.