I Am the Island - An Ecocritical Reading of Selected Novels by J.G. Ballard

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide key insights into the ecocritical trajectory contained in a selection of novels by J.G. Ballard. Particularly, I will investigate how the author's concept of 'inner space' evolves in the journey spanning across three novels in order to accommodate not only the growing unmappability of modern urban life, but also the unfolding of environmental collapse parallel and beyond human comprehension. Through this analysis of Concrete Island, High-Rise, and The Drowned World, and drawing on ecocritical and postmodern theories, this thesis will explore the relationship between urban and natural space, subjectivity and collectivity, and ecological crisis. Beginning with the involuntary entrapment of the modern subject within a hybridised wasteland, the analysis will proceed towards the detonation of modern urban collectivity, to culminate in complete ontological dissolution within a beyond human condition. By examining Ballard's selected works, I argue that such fiction does not narratively approach climate change in a cautionary fashion, but dwells within it completely – picturing apocalypse in its different guises anew; not as a tragic end, but as the profound intimacy of the self and the environment brought about by crisis, seen as an immensely transformative experience.