Allegories of the Anthropocene, by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey (original) (raw)

The Anthropocene: A Critical Exploration

The Anthropocene is everywhere in academia. There are Anthropocene journals, Anthropocene courses, Anthropocene conferences, Anthropocene panels, Anthropocene podcasts, and more. It is very safe to say that the Anthropocene is having a moment. But is this just a case of fifteen minutes of fame, name recognition, and bandwagon style publishing? The authors in this issue of ARES think not, and we would like to help lend a critical sensibility to the anthropological consideration of the concept and its dissemination.

Perspectives on the Anthropocene

Academic Quarter | Akademisk kvarter

This article falls into two sections. First, the Anthropocene is outlined in terms of a fundamental and unique shock to the imagination. Secondly, the article sketches out a range of responses and attitudes to the Anthropocene shock, including apathy, activism, and intervention.

Allegories of the Anthropocene, Introduction and full-text PDF

Allegories of the Anthropocene, 2019

In Allegories of the Anthropocene Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey traces how Indigenous and postcolonial peoples in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands grapple with the enormity of colonialism and anthropogenic climate change through art, poetry, and literature. In these works, authors and artists use allegory as a means to understand the multiscalar complexities of the Anthropocene and to critique the violence of capitalism, militarism, and the postcolonial state. DeLoughrey examines the work of a wide range of artists and writers—including poets Kamau Brathwaite and Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, Dominican installation artist Tony Capellán, and authors Keri Hulme and Erna Brodber—whose work addresses Caribbean plantations, irradiated Pacific atolls, global flows of waste, and allegorical representations of the ocean and the island. In examining how island writers and artists address the experience of finding themselves at the forefront of the existential threat posed by climate change, DeLoughrey demonstrates how the Anthropocene and empire are mutually constitutive and establishes the vital importance of allegorical art and literature in understanding our global environmental crisis.

Unpacking the Anthropocene: The Good, the Evil and the Critical Reading

Graz Law Working Paper Series, 2023

Regular heat waves and draughts in the Mediterranean, hurricanes near coasts, frequent floods worldwide, drastic temperature increases in the Arctic, melting ice on the polar caps, dwindling glaciers, dying coral reefs, mass extinction of animal and plant species, acidified oceans, polluted groundwater and, in the end, the threat of the annihilation of the human species – all these catastrophic events and scenarios are related to the concept of the Anthropocene: the age of humans has begun with their extinction on the horizon. This paper gives a brief systematic overview of the very diverse and lively discourse surrounding the emphatic term Anthropocene and seeks to outline its roots and understanding in some detail. In doing so, this text presents three possible readings of Anthropocene: Good, Evil, and Critical Anthropocene.

The Question Concerning the Anthropocene (2016)

Public lecture delivered to a general audience at Yachay Tech, 3 March 2016. A second part is intended, and will hopefully follow in the next few days. It really represents the starting point of an argument that will be developed further in another, forthcoming text.

NOTES FOR A MINOR ANTHROPOCENE

Pre-printed version of a paper host in the journal Azimuth, n. 8, 2017, "The Battlefield of the Anthropocene", ed. by Sara Baranzoni and Paolo Vignola. (Many thanks to Dan Ross for the English proof-reading)