1: Processing the Poetics of the Anthropocene (original) (raw)
In the first Chapter Processing the Poetics of the Anthropocene I introduce the ecocritical discussion as a departure point for my own research into the wider environmental discussion in humanities. I have chosen this discussion, as it recognises one of the most pressing challenges in the current time of ecological crisis, which the eco-philosopher Freya Mathews has called “the re-negotiation of our relationship with reality” (Mathews 2010, p. 8). At the same time Greg Garrad recognises a “failed promise of authenticity” (Garrad 2004, p. 172) in the majority of the ecocritical writing of the beginning of the 21st Century. Here Garrad problematises how we meaningfully relate to our surroundings beyond the local and beyond something that is not directly accessible to us via our senses and how this is then dealt with in literature. Following Garrad’s observation of the “failed promise of authenticity” (Garrad 2004, p. 172) in the popular environmental, as well as ecocritical, discussion I take up his call for a conceptual shift from a poetics of authenticity to a poetics of responsibility. I further elaborate on Garrad’s poetics of responsibility by correlating it with theories by other ecocritical writers including Ursula Heise, George Monbiot and Timothy Morton. Here I focus on Morton’s theory of dark ecology, Heise’s concept of eco-cosmopolitan environmentalism and George Monbiot’s concept of rewilding. Combined these elaborations become the testing ground to examine whether contemporary media arts practice can contribute to the quest for such a poetics. I do so, by introducing to Bruno Latour’s post-global aesthetics (Latour 2013). This notion is of particularly significance to the development of my argument, because it criticises the mere visual representation of the globe as sphere. In addition I discuss environmental and spatial aesthetics of listening in current contemporary art and media theory. Here I will contrast the theoretical work of art historian Grant Kester, who stresses the creative role of listening in his concept of dialogical aesthetics, with the writings of media theorist John Durheim Peters. Peters sees the 20th Century as marked by a distortion of dialogue through contemporary media that connect us across time and space, and with the dead, animals and aliens. In order to knit together the different theoretical elaborations I focus on how they deal with the notion ambiguity. It becomes the red thread running through this chapter.
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