{"id":12326,"date":"2022-01-17T14:41:57","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T19:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=12326"},"modified":"2022-01-17T14:42:03","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T19:42:03","slug":"the-anthropocene-unconscious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/01\/17\/the-anthropocene-unconscious\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anthropocene Unconscious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mark Bould’s new book The Anthropocene Unconscious<\/em><\/a> makes more or less the same argument as I made in my 2008 New Formations<\/em> article “Stirring the Geopolitical Unconscious: Toward a Jamesonian Ecocriticism<\/a>,” later expanded in the “Terra and Trauma” chapter of Ecologies of the Moving Image<\/a><\/em>, but he applies it to literature rather than film. The level of critical acclaim Bould is getting indicates either that he is a much better writer than I am, that he has access to PR machinery I didn’t have (and\/or the tenacity to promote his work better), that the timing is right for the argument to resonate, or, quite possibly, a mix of all of the above. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bould’s overarching question — “What if all the stories we tell today are fundamentally about climate change,” or at least about the constellation of forces now known as “the Anthropocene”? — was my question except that back in 2008 there wasn’t an obvious and well-known author to use as one’s foil (for Bould, it’s Amitav Ghosh<\/a>). And Bould is drawing out his argument over a much broader canvas. I haven’t read the book yet, so I’m not sure how directly he gets at the geopolitical and psychoanalytical dimensions that I tried to get at. At any rate, it’s great to see the argument getting a broad hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Ride<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Bould’s new book The Anthropocene Unconscious makes more or less the same argument as I made in my 2008 New Formations article “Stirring the Geopolitical Unconscious: Toward a Jamesonian Ecocriticism,” later expanded in the “Terra and Trauma” chapter of Ecologies of the Moving Image, but he applies it to literature rather than film. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615,520594,196,4415],"tags":[692716,692718,692717,4423,692719,692715],"class_list":["post-12326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","category-climate-politics","category-ecoculture","category-ecophilosophy","tag-anthropocene-unconscious","tag-fredric-jameson","tag-geopolitical-unconscious","tag-jameson","tag-jamesonian-ecocriticism","tag-mark-bould"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-3cO","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8265,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/21\/bandwagocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":12326,"position":0},"title":"Bandwagocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"These days, it takes a course release for an academic to keep up with the avalanche of books\u00a0being published with titles that feature the word \"Anthropocene.\" To read them would take a sabbatical. Doing anything approximating a \"slow read\" would require, well, retirement. But that's no reason not to try.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7993,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/01\/17\/anthropocenic-reckoning\/","url_meta":{"origin":12326,"position":1},"title":"Anthropocenic reckoning","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"With environmental and eco-political news in the front pages daily, it's easy to get back into the swing of regular, even daily, posting after the winter holiday lull. Here's more on the \"dating the ecocrisis\" theme... Andy Revkin is reporting that the Anthropocene Working Group has concluded that the middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9310,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/06\/16\/mortonian-prophecies\/","url_meta":{"origin":12326,"position":2},"title":"Mortonian prophecies","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"When one of our cadre of eco-cultural theorists gets noticed -- more so, f\u00eated -- by one of the leading newspapers in the world, we need to take note and celebrate with him. In this case, it's Timothy Morton getting called\u00a0\"the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene\" by The Guardian, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10577,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/29\/image-ecologies-spiritual-polytropy-and-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":12326,"position":3},"title":"Image ecologies, spiritual polytropy, and the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 29, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"An article of mine by that title has appeared in a special issue of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture on \"Popular Culture, Religion, and the Anthropocene.\" The article contains the theoretical core of the book I'm currently writing on image regimes. It builds on my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7645,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/06\/12\/on-naming-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":12326,"position":4},"title":"On naming the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The following are the comments I prepared for the roundtable \"The Arts and Humanities Respond to the Anthropocene.\" They follow in the line of critical thinking on the Anthropocene initiated by\u00a0gatherings like the Anthropocene Project (see here, here, and here, and some of the posts\u00a0at A(S)CENE) and journals like Environmental\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/06\/HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682-275x183.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9856,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/10\/09\/shadowing-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":12326,"position":5},"title":"Shadowing the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times arrived in the mail today. It's published by punctum books, an open-access academic and para-academic publisher I've found to be a real delight to work with. Eileen Joy deserves a medal for her leadership of punctum, and\u00a0Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei's cover and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2018\/10\/180502shadowingtheanthropocene-cover-front-draft-647x1024-174x275.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12326"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12328,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12326\/revisions\/12328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}