Ecofeminist Care at the End of the World: Collaborative Survival in Niccolò Ammaniti's Anna and Maria Rosa Cutrufelli's L'isola delle madri"

Over the last decade, end-of-the-world narratives have become more popular than ever: the majority of these novels are characterized as dystopian or post-apocalyptic and often portray the collapse of civilization due to climate change, wars, or pandemic outbreaks as part of their futuristic settings. The question underlying this chapter is whether moments of crisis and vulnerability can bring about transformations in gender identities, roles, and relations. In particular, our analysis of two novels dealing with the ruinous consequences of human tampering with Nature will explore whether a transformation of traditional essentialist connections among ‘woman’, ‘nature’, and ‘nurture’ can lay the foundations for an extensive societal renewal. We propose a reading of two recent Italian novels, Niccolò Ammaniti’s Anna (2015) and Maria Rosa Cutrufelli’s L’isola delle Madri (2020), both set in Sicily in a future that is deeply intertwined with our contemporary reality of anthropogenic climate change. These novels pinpoint that the end of the world forces humans to redefine their relationship with the Other and propose an ethics of care that is not only rooted in the precarity of life but also acknowledges the interdependent agency of humans and Nature. They offer a reflection on motherhood, traditionally associated with care, which is not idealized but rather transformed into a project of collaborative survival across human and species differences. Our readings are informed by an ecofeminist framework, with a view to underscoring the potential for reconfiguring an ethics of care in times of crisis.