Spectrality and Survivance: Living the Anthropocene

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Description

The notion of the Anthropocene is founded on the premise that traces of human activity on the earth will remain legible in the geological strata for millions of years to come, showing evidence of an anthropogenic signature inscribed in the rock by the human species. Spectrality and Survivance shows how embedded in this understanding of the Anthropocene is a speculative and specular gesture that transforms the notion of the future into an anthropocentric reflection of the present, prohibiting any true engagement with the possibility of a non-anthropocentric and post-anthropocenic world. In this volume, Marija Grech develops an alternative conceptual paradigm from which to think the Anthropocene beyond any limited notion of human language, human thought, human systems of meaning, or even a human world. Grech considers how the geological trace of the Anthropocene might be said to survive outside of the possibility of any human readership, and how the very survival of the human in and beyond the Anthropocene might necessitate such thought.

Reviews

Combining materialist and Derridean approaches, Grechs book is a tour de force when it comes to thinking the Anthropocene away from the standard debates and arguments that continue to perpetuate human exceptionalism. This exceptionalism is powerfully challenged when Grech argues that the constructed boundaries between the human and nonhuman, living and non-living, organic and inorganic, biological and discursive are entangled. In making this argument, Grech, at the same time, convincingly and carefully critiques the uninformed dismissals of Derridas work as simply a cultural system of linguistic and language references that exist outside the material domain. Accessible, clear and beautifully written this book is a must-read.

-- Nicole Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Derrida Today journal and Director of the Institute for Humanities Research, Arizona State University

Grechs research is exemplary in its breadth and detail. Her ability to weave evidence from the sciences through more familiar approaches in the humanities offers a much-needed example of how a rigorous, cross-disciplinary exploration of entanglement might be done. This book is timely and provocative.

-- Vicki Kirby, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, University of New South Wales

Grech has a very good sense of the field, and while literature on the Anthropocene is reaching peak levels, this book still manages to carve out a space unique in its exploration of inscription (and the related notions of spectrality and survivance).

-- Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparkes Professor of English, Penn State University

Author Bio

Marija Grech is a lecturer in English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of Malta, and a visiting fellow with the School of Humanities & Languages at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.