Hauntology and Ecological Crisis: A Study of Climate Change Theatre in Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London

Abstract

This paper shows that Mike Bartlett’s play Earthquakes in London is designed as a hauntological text which reveals the temporal and ontological dimensions of the ecological crisis, haunted by the specters of capitalist modernity, that is, the specters of apocalyptic futures and lost possibilities. The play’s non-linear narrative structure, ranging from 1960 to 2525, employs spectrality as a dramaturgical and theoretical device to reveal how the climate catastrophe collapses the linear temporality of anxious anticipation and nostalgic repetition. The paper examines how contemporary climate change theatre, through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s hauntology, articulates the timeframes of the ecological crisis that resist representation. It illustrates how enacted performance may become the tool through which the unbridged contradiction of the Anthropocene can be staged and made visible. Such a staging foregrounds futures that are neither wholly present nor wholly absent. This paper investigates three main research questions: How does Bartlett’s temporal stage, with its many epochs and futural catastrophes, work as a hauntological intervention into climate discourse that collapses the demarcation of past, present, and feared futures? How does the domestic sphere represent a microcosm for macro-level concerns and reveal links between bodily issues of individuals and large-scale environmental catastrophes? The study argues that the play engages the audience in a confrontation with hauntological aesthetics, realizing that the future has already been overtaken by the specters of apocalypse rather than any promise of change.