READING THE CLIMATE CRISIS: HUMANITIES AND ACTION IN THE ANTHROPOCENE ERA
#narratives #CultureExperience #CulturalGeology
One of the main epistemological ruptures introduced by the Anthropocene, from within the so-called hard sciences in debates on the environment, life, and nature, is the disjunction between the experience of local climate and the understanding of global climate. Although various theorists have pointed out the challenges posed by this fracture between experience and knowledge, literary and cultural artifacts produced globally address this issue through creative and aesthetic strategies, vindicating a cultural geology that cannot be reduced to a universalized climate science of the Anthropocene. Thus, culture, climate, experience, and knowledge are placed in a disjunctive relationship. However, these fractures in narrative and knowledge do not operate as clear divisions, but rather constitute a field of tensions where literary representations and cultural artifacts play a key role.
In this sense, a fundamental question arises: what kind of narratives allow us to navigate an ecological crisis that is at once local and planetary, historical and anticipatory, cultural and behavioural? The question of narrative and representation is crucial to understanding the Anthropocene, since, by marking a radical break with the past, it poses specific epistemological and ontological challenges. While the Anthropocene is a material phenomenon, measurable and experiential, it is also a representational construct that challenges the way we conceive the planet as a system in crisis. Leveraging the Environmental Humanities, encompassing disciplines such as literature, history, philosophy, and art, facilitates a deeper comprehension of our current planetary moment within the Anthropocene. The Humanities provide critical analytical frameworks necessary for navigating the climate crisis, specifically by addressing foundational issues of environmental ethics, justice, and the politics of cultural memory.
We welcome contributions in these areas, and beyond:
Fractures in Narrative
Fragmentation between micro and macro narratives: difficulty connecting individual stories with planetary processes.
Collapse of modern grand narratives: progress, development, human control over nature.
Dissonance between scientific narratives (data, models, projections) and cultural narratives (stories, myths, lived experiences).
Not only limitations but also creative opportunities. New narrative forms emerge from the cracks.
Narratives of the Ecological Crisis
Apocalyptic narratives (sudden collapse of civilization).
Techno-optimistic narratives (technology will save us).
Transition/transformation narratives (radical paradigm shift: degrowth, circular economy, environmental justice).
Resilience and adaptation narratives (focus on how communities adapt to change).
Geography of narratives.
Anticipatory Futures
The future as an active force shaping current choices, policies, and behaviours.
Anticipation vs. prediction: not predicting “the” future but exploring multiple, contingent futures.
Intergenerational ethics: representing those not yet born.
Literature as a tool to give “voice” to future generations.
The future as a question of justice, not just prediction.
Cultural Memory and the Anthropocene
Memory as an active construction, not simply a matter of preservation.
Memory as a resource for identity, social cohesion, and future orientation.
Role of literature and culture in the Anthropocene.
Literature and culture as spaces of prefiguration.
Beyond the written word in the Anthropocene: visual arts, performance, sound and movement, transmedia and integrated approaches.
Epistemological Ruptures of the Anthropocene
End of the ontological separation between human and natural; need for new conceptual categories, rethinking subject/object.
Need for multi-scalar epistemologies: connecting microbes and planet, seconds and millennia.
Tension between corporeal, sensory, local knowledge and global, abstract scientific knowledge.
Decolonizing environmental knowledge.
Crisis of representation: need for new metaphors, analogies, and expressive forms.
Situated and partial knowledge: all knowledge is geographically, culturally, and historically situated.