Anglophone Literature and Culture in the Anthropocene

Book excerpt: Defined as an ecological epoch in which humans have the most impact on the environment, the Anthropocene poses challenging questions to literary and cultural studies. If, in the Anthropocene, the distinction between nature and culture increasingly collapses, we have to rethink our division between historiography and natural history, as well as notions of the subject and of agency since the Enlightenment. This anthology collects papers from literary and cultural studies that address various issues surrounding the topic. Even though the new epoch seems to require a collective self-understanding as a unified species, readings of the Anthropocene and conceptualizations of human-nature relationships largely differ in Anglophone literatures and cultures. These differing perspectives are reflected in the structure of this book, which is divided into five separate sections: the introductory part familiarizes the reader with the concept and the challenges it poses for the humanities in general and for literary and cultural studies in particular, and the three following sections combine broader, more theoretical, essays with in-depth critical readings of US, Canadian, and Australian representations of the Anthropocene in literature. The final part moves beyond literature to include media theoretical perspectives and discussions of photography and cinema in the Anthropocene.