Writing the Anthropocene

Abstract

This introduction to the focus section on “Writing the Anthropocene” examines the challenges that the entry of our species into a new geological epoch poses for the humanities in general and for literary and media theory in particular. It proposes the hypothesis that the Anthropocene can best be understood as a form of writing, a process by which humankind inscribes permanent messages into the geological, climatological, and biochemical records of our planet and is forced, in turn, to study those records for messages pertaining to its future. It discusses the relationship of the Anthropocene to the wider discourse of posthumanism and also touches upon the importance of speculative realism as well as genres like the science-fiction novel to help us conceptualize our new condition. A brief summary of each of the ten essays in the focus section follows.

Writing on Writing is a Method of Encounter. Correspondences with Ursula K. Le Guin and the World [Redux]

“…A most practical distillation of this arises in the discussion of a 'good' versus 'bad' Anthropocene (Hamilton, 2016 heating cannot but manifest the ongoing structural logics and momentum of inhuman, world-rending forces; for the latter, it can activate encounters with more-than-hu-2 Este cuerpo de literatura está creciendo y encamina de muchas formas diferentes la cuestión de lo real y de lo realmente "de otro modo". Ver, por ejemplo: Boes & Marshall, 2014;Schalk, 2018;Swanson et al, 2015. 3 Para un estudio breve acerca del debate del Antropoceno, ver: Bonneuil & Fressoz, 2016. Para una evaluación importante de los supuestos históricos del concepto, ver: Davis & Todd, 2017. discusión de un Antropoceno "bueno" contra uno "malo" (Hamilton, 2016).…”

Memory studies and the Anthropocene: A roundtable

“…Anthropocene narratives are archival narratives. As Tobias Boes and Kate Marshall (2014: 64) observe, this epoch ‘is … something that is actively shaped and created through acts of human inscription: through topographical alterations, changes in the geologic and climatological records of our planet, and so on’. Jesse Oak Taylor (2014: 76) describes ‘ice cores’ as ‘literally an atmospheric archive, in that they consist of the actual material stuff that was suspended in the atmosphere and is now impacted in the ice’, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (2015: 11) writes that stone is ‘a communication device that carries into distant futures the archive of a past otherwise lost’.…”

“…If, as literary scholars and environmental historians of early modern England have argued, the long seventeenth century is a critical moment in the histories of ecological degradation, activism, and thought (Boehrer, 2013; Borlik, 2011; Hiltner, 2011; Watson, 2006), then I propose that words circulating in English print culture might have captured and so fossilized this environmental change. More contemporary examples of this phenomenon include the term ‘Anthropocene’ (Boes and Marshall, 2014: 62) and Jussi Parikka’s (2014) ‘Anthrobscene’, a concept that reminds me that the devices and platforms I employ to complete this project are strongly implicated in environmental degradation.…”

The Outside In

“…In this vein, seminal historian Chakrabarty (2009) calls for a new set of conceptual tools that can allow the description of human agency as a geophysical force. Similarly, philosophers, cultural theorists and artists also acknowledge the imperative for novel questions, new forms of enquiry, new methodologies, and new agendas for political engagement, as the social, political, and physical parameters change faster than our capacity to process and analyse them (Johnson et al 2014, Boas andMarshall 2014). The re-making of the future across scales and sites of production, using alternative forms of enquiry (Lehman and Nelson 2014) such as site-specific collage and assemblage, enables a critical and creative framing of the context.…”