Anthropocene Aesthetics: Norwegian Literature in a New Geological Epoch (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Anthropocene: A Literary Stimulus for a Global 21st Century
2019
The fundamental aim of this essay is to explore the phenomenon known as that of the Anthropocene, concisely the period of time in which human activity has had an impact on the planet. With an understanding of this period and its effects on literature and human society, it will be interesting to note how this moves in correlation with those changes connected to the event and their influences upon one another. For example, does the existence and legitimisation of the Anthropocene era act as a stimulus for literature, and does therefore the power of literature influence in turn the development of the climate and human in/action? These phases of human history can certainly help comprehend the growing canon of ‘World Literature’ and what this means in an interconnected, global 21st century.
The Anthropocene (and) (in) the Humanities: Possibilities for Literary Studies
This paper aims to briefly discuss the concept of the Anthropocene within the geological sciences, and to consider, more broadly, some of the theoretical unfolding of the term within the humanities. Towards its conclusion, the paper presents the demands the Anthropocene makes, as a geological Epoch (in which the human becomes a geophysical force, capable of changing the Earth’s biophysical systems), of literary studies as a possible field for theoretical articulations that may add to the debates on this historical moment in which climate change, forced dislocations, the mass extinction of several species, and other urgent matters come to the fore.
the minnesota review, 2014
This introduction to the focus section on “Writing the Anthropocene” [in "the minnesota review" vol. 2014, number 82] 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.
No Future, No Past? How Consciousness of the Anthropocene Changes Environmentalist Narratives
Vill jag vistas här bör jag byta blick. Texter om litteratur, miljö och historia tillägnade Pia Maria Ahlbäck, 2020
Cultural criticism since Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s time is often characterized by a triadic structure: (1) it criticizes its own present. (2) It refers to a reconstructed, idealized past. (3) It searches for alternatives in order to create a better future. This structure has also been characteristic for many environmentalist narratives since the ‘ecological turn’ around 1970. Today, however, the insight that irreversible, human-induced environmental change on a geological scale has already taken place – that the Holocene has ended and that we are now living in the Anthropocene – fundamentally challenges this conventional narrative structure of both environmentalist fiction and nonfiction. Using as examples Magnús Viðar Sigurðsson’s documentary movie Last Days of the Arctic (2011) and Jostein Gaarder’s novel Anna (2013), this essay argues that consciousness of the Anthropocene and of its implications can both lead to an abandonment of conventional narrative structures and give rise to narrative innovation.
Form, Science, and Narrative in the Anthropocene
Narrative, 2019
A significant strand of contemporary fiction engages with scientific models that highlight a constitutive interdependency between humanity and material realities such as the climate or the geological history of our planet. This article looks at the ways in which narrative may capture this human-nonhuman interrelation, which occupies the foreground of debates on the so-called Anthropocene. I argue that the formal dimension of scientific knowledge—as manifested by diagrams or metaphors used by scientists—is central to this narrative remediation. I explore two analogical strategies through which narrative may pursue a formal dialogue with science: clusters of metaphorical language and the global structuring of the plot. Rivka Galchen’s novel Atmospheric Disturbances (2008), for instance, builds on a visual representation of meteorological patterns in a storm (lifted from an actual scientific paper) to stage the narrator’s mental illness. Two other contemporary works (Orfeo by Richard Powers and A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki) integrate scientific models through the overall design of the plot. By offering close readings of these novels, I seek to expand work in the area of New Formalism and show how formal choices are crucial to bringing together the human-scale world and more-than-human phenomena.
2018
In both literature and philosophy, geologic matter has been imagined as a vector of extending perception and analysis into the territory of not only the non-human, but also the non-living, challenging the very distinctions between life and non-life, agile and inert matter. Recently, the debates over the concept of the Anthropocene amplified our fascination with the geologic, bringing into view the inescapable bond of human and Earth’s history. The article probes the possibilities of the geologic turn through two short stories published in the era of the Anthropocene debates—Margaret Atwood’s “Stone Mattress” (2013) and A.S. Byatt’s “Stone Woman” (2003). The stories’ interest in a geologic setting, their staging of human-mineral intimacies, and their geologically-infused aesthetics positions these two stories as fictions of the geologic turn. I examine how these writers—through reconfiguring the relations between bios and geos, human and nonhuman—forge alternatives to an extractive relation to the geos, as well as refuse to accept the figure of Earth as either an inert object or a victim. In this reframing, they also exemplify feminist critique of the imagined unity of “Anthropos” that is named by the Anthropocene thinkers.
Richard Powers’ Gain (1998): Literature and Agency in the Anthropocene
2020
Denne oppgaven utforsker fremstillingen av mennesket i relasjon til dets naturlige og konstruerte omgivelser i Richard Powers' roman Gain (1998). Romanen leses i lys av periodens fremvoksende miljøbevegelse og settes i kontekst av det nye feltet «antropocen fiksjon og litteraer fremstilling». Som et resultat av Powers' litteraere prosjekt føyer romanen seg inn i en rekke tverrfaglige litteraere verk og gransker den historiske utviklingen av menneskets relasjon til bedrifter og deres videre utvikling til aksjeselskaper. Overordnet kan romanen sies å omhandle menneskets tap av handlingskraft og frihet i møte med voksende økonomisk makt og press. Jeg benytter meg av både økokritiske og posthumanistiske teorier for best å fange romanens samtidskritiske kommentar på hva jeg velger å kalle antropocene problemstillinger. Blant disse er Cary Wolfes definisjon av post-og transhumanisme sentral. Fremstillingen av romanens menneskelige karakterer illustrerer hvordan menneskets posisjon, vaeremåte og eksistensielle selvbilde har blitt gradvis styrt og påvirket av teknologiske og juridiske konstruksjoner. Romanen fremstiller selskapet «Clare, Incorporated» som en agerende og selvstendig karakter som opererer og eksisterer på et nivå over menneskelig kontroll og fatteevne. Selskapet er kroppsløst, udødelig og tilpasningsdyktig, tilsynelatende ubundet av materielle begrensninger. Jeg argumenterer for at denne fremstillingen kommenterer på den transhumanistiske illusjonen som underbygger nåvaerende miljøfiendtlige praksiser innen moderne produksjon og fremskritt. Romanen fremstiller med andre ord den skadelige effekten av menneskets sviktende forståelse av seg selv som en del av, heller enn overlegen til, det økologiske samspillet i den materielle verden. Det overordnede målet med oppgaven er å skape forståelse for måten samtidslitteraturen deltar i og kommenterer på antropocene utfordringer, spesielt de ontologiske premissene som ligger til grunn for nåvaerende praksiser og oppfatninger av mennesket i relasjon til omverdenen. En slik forståelse kan øke vår evne til å ta litteraturen til hjelp i formidlingen av behovet for både holdnings-og atferdsendring i møte med klimaendringer og dets sosiale og økonomiske konsekvenser. II Acknowledgments I want to thank my supervisor Randi Koppen for her invaluable help, guidance, and patience throughout this project. Thank you for listening to and respecting my ideas and motivations while simultaneously guiding me towards achievable goals. Writing a thesis proved challenging, and I could most certainly not have done it alone. Thank you to everyone who has supported, encouraged, and pushed me towards the finish line. My sanity would have collapsed long ago were it not for you. To those few who went above and beyond in their love and encouragement, I express my deepest gratitude and hope to repay the kindness in equal measures someday. I would especially like to thank Henning Levold for his unconditional and selfless support throughout this prolonged period of stress and self-doubt. I am forever grateful.
The end of the end of nature: the Anthropocene and the fate of the human
In this paper I explore the metaphor of the strata of the earth as ‘great stone book of nature’, and the Anthropocene epoch as its latest chapter. Debates about the geological status of the Anthropocene focus on the identification of stratigraphic ‘signals’ that might be being laid down for the geologist-to-come, but I suggest that marking the base of the Anthropocene layer is not a merely technical task but one which is entangled with questions about the human — about the Anthropos of the Anthropocene. Who would be the ‘onomatophore’ of the Anthropocene, would carry the name of Anthropos? I consider a number of ways of characterising the geological force of the Anthropocene – Homo faber, Homo consumens and Homo gubernans. But I then situate this dispersal of the Anthropos into ‘syntypes’ against the background of a more general dispersal of ‘man’ that is occasioned when human meets geology. I do this by bringing into dialogue two works: Foucault’s Order of Things, and Derrida’s Of Grammatology, focusing on their passages about the end of ‘man’ and the end of ‘the book’ respectively. I suggest the becoming geological of the human in the Anthropocene is both the end of the great stone book of nature and the Aufhebung of ‘man’ —both his apotheosis and his eclipse.
Narrating the Anthropocene, or "Age of Man" (ETH Zukunftsblog, July 2, 2015)
Recently, paired events – a lecture by geographer Kathryn Yusoff and a colorful evening “slam” – took place, organized by the fledgling interdisciplinary group, Environmental Humanities Switzerland. Both explored the potential and limits of the “Anthropocene” thesis: the idea that we’ve entered a new geologic epoch wherein humans are actively altering Earth systems. Published on July 2, 2015 on ETH Zukunftsblog: Facts and Views on Sustainability.