Anthropocene lit

3. • Quick primer on ecocriticism
1.First wave: nature/wilderness as morally restorative (Thoreau,
Muir, Leopold, criticism in 60s-80s)
2.Second wave: introduction of cultural dimensions (diverse
environments, including built ones, more of a social orientation:
environmental justice, gender/class/race and environment; still
an abiding faith in the existence and moral superiority of green
spaces and nature)
3.Third wave: Anthropocene, no remaining nature; materialism,
anti-humanism, animal studies (i.e. there’s nothing special about
humans, we are just a particularly complex form of material
agent alongside other material agents in the world)

4. altered the course of Earth’s deep history”; more extensive outline of the
process, but also proposes another start date: after 1945, where
radioactive nucleotides have been globally dispersed into the earth’s
sediment
• Even if the debates seem specifically scientific, they prompt philosophical
and cultural reflection because of their connection to three broad spheres:
◦ Time: clash of time scales, intrusion of deep time into
everyday/historical time/orientation toward the future
◦ Space: the finitude of Earth, the death of nature, the transformation of
environments, the speculative possibilities of going “off planet”
◦ Humanity: the Anthropocene asks us to think of humanity in a
contradictory way: on the one hand, we are the species that had the
technical knowledge to alter earth in such fundamental ways; on the
other hand, we are now no longer “in control” of the processes we have
LITERARY THEORY