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possibilities of interspecies revolt in pursuit of alternatives to a civilisation predicated on exploitation of the non-human, from animals to plants to minerals and beyond. The film-makers’ attention to the entangled faiths of human and non-human animals is attuned to problems afflicting the epoch that has become known as the Anthropocene, even as the bulk of their films predate its naming, in which the human imprint on earth shapes the planet in ways that encompass unpredictable changes in geology, atmosphere, and biodiversity. 3 Here, I will argue that Kaplan’s and
6 The twilight of the Anthropocene: sustaining literature Claire Colebrook Over the last decade the claims made for the importance of literary understanding, environmental humanities and imaginative reflection have received a (perhaps tragic) reinforcement from the inverse relation between the threats facing humans and other species, and the capacity for action. It is almost as if the prospect of calamity and unprecedented change is so intense that the practical, rational and imaginative resources we have for thinking about the future are simply and woefully
Introduction Floods, fires, famines and pestilences (with the COVID-19 pandemic as the latest example): these are the conditions playing out across the globe within the Anthropocene – where human-centricity, driven by patriarchal hierarchies, has dominated and decimated ecological networks for at least 2000 years (Plumwood 1993 ). More recently, across more than
Anthropocene ’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 115 : 33 , 8252 – 9 , doi: 10.1073/pnas.1810141115 . Stoddard , A. , Harmer , A. and Czwarno , M. ( 2017 ), Aid Worker Security Report 2017: Behind the Attacks: A Look at the Perpetrators of Violence against Aid
), Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene: An Introduction to Mapping, Sensing and Hacking ( London : Routledge ). Chouliaraki , L. ( 2013 ), The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism ( Cambridge and Malden, MA : Polity Press ). Cooper , M. ( 2011 ), ‘ Complexity Theory after the Financial Crisis: The Death of Neoliberalism or the Triumph of Hayek? ’, Journal of Cultural Economy , 4 : 4 , 371 – 85 . Corlett , A. ( 2017 ), As Time
The ecological eye aims to align the discipline of art history with ecology, climate change, the Anthropocene and the range of politics and theoretical positions that will help to ground such an approach. It looks both backwards and forwards in order to promote the capacities of close attention, vital materialism, nonhierarchy, care and political ecology. The book seeks to place the history of art alongside its ecocritical colleagues in other humanities disciplines. Three main directions are discussed: the diverse histories of art history itself, for evidence of exemplary work already available; the politics of social ecology, Marxist ecologies and anarchy, showing its largely untapped relevance for work in art history and visual culture; and finally, emerging work in posthumanism and new materialism, that challenges unhelpful hierarchies across the human, animal, botanical and geological spheres. The ecological eye concludes with an appeal to the discipline to respond positively to the environmental justice movement.
's 1980 double album The River in 2016, ‘don't fear what the future holds as much as [they] fear not being alive long enough to see it.’ 5 The Reagan years had been dominated by dread of and nostalgia for the Cold War years around 1962; the twenty-first century has been dominated by a similarly conflicted inheritance from those Reagan years, even as what once was known as the nuclear age has been reformulated and incorporated into geology's deep-time vision as the Anthropocene
address the question: how ‘to act when the consequences of our actions will affect not only the well-being of future people but their very existence?’ 86 In Derek Parfit's population ethics and his student Toby Ord's philosophical analysis of present-day responsibility for ensuring the long-term survival of the human race, we find also embedded a highly political question, a cost–benefit analysis of the Anthropocene and its threats to humanity. As Jim Holt phrases it, ‘How much should we be willing to sacrifice today in
pressing in the current day. In many ways the ecological imperative has enabled a discourse around frugality that is less ‘moral’ in a limited Marxist way than it used to be, and more ‘ethical’ in terms of finding ways to live differently for quite practical reasons. Most recently, these concerns have been crystalised in the increasingly mainstream term –Anthropocene. The term, coined by ecologist Eugene Stoermer and atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, describes the current geological era, positing it as a massive increase in human influence on the world during the last
Cormac McCarthy: a complexity theory of literature examines McCarthy’s works as a case study demonstrating how literary texts can make chaotic and complex systems imaginable. This book offers the first sustained analysis of McCarthy’s literary engagement with complex systems, from food webs to evolutionary economics. Focusing on McCarthy’s depiction of the role of economics and art on global inequality and eco-disaster, it argues that McCarthy’s works offer a case study in the role of literature in challenging us to imagine the consequences of our world’s unmaking, and to recognize what creativity and ethos is needed to make it again in the ‘very maelstrom of its undoing.’