ABSTRACT
This chapter treats atmospheric literature itself as an atmosphere that loves to bathe in the pathos of the romanticised indefinable, the je ne sais quoi of the uncanny, the imperceptibility of belonging, the fuzziness of hygge. The aim of this chapter is to go beyond the usual conception of atmospherics as elusive and undefinable, and instead offer some standard conditions under which a successful atmosphere can emerge. In an effort to link the argument up to a planetary atmosphere, the text begins with emotions. The chapter argues that emotions not only are produced “externally” as was thought in Homeric times (in reality, such distinction is not valid since interior and exterior are in a continuum with only artificial divisions) but actually are of nonhuman entities. In that sense, emotions are planetary rather than just human. This means that sharing emotions is sharing a different materiality that cannot be adequately described by the usual phenomenological mechanisms. In our “neo-Homeric” times, therefore, sharing becomes an ethical question and a tool towards the reimagining of different atmospheric constructions. One needs to be careful with atmospherics and especially their construction of immunity and sense of belonging, since they all rely on exclusion and indeed exploitative engulfment of otherness (human and nonhuman).
