What does reading do in the Anthropocene?
Author
Faculty Advisor
Date
2024
Keywords
literary criticism, anthropocene
Abstract (summary)
Antoine Traisnel's Capture and Jennifer Wenzel's The Disposition of Nature are two new publications in animal studies and postcolonial ecocriticism respectively that chart very different paths for environmental scholarship in the wake of the nonhuman turn, yet they are both shaped by a context that exceeds their stated methodological frames. My aim here is to give short accounts of each work before addressing a broader shift in the field of literary studies, which I describe as a reconsideration of texts’ political and material efficacy in the face of anthropogenic climate change and species extinction. I suggest that a unique set of institutional factors, including neoliberal austerity measures underwriting the turn to “postcritique,” as well as the rise of environmental justice–oriented ecocriticism, have rendered the fields embracing the nonhuman turn newly uncertain about what texts (and the work of studying texts) do in the Anthropocene. The different tracks Traisnel and Wenzel take in addressing this uncertainty can nevertheless put them in a fruitful conversation with one another about the future of ecological approaches to literature despite their significant divergences in focus and method.
Publication Information
Hollingshead, D. (2024). What Does Reading Do in the Anthropocene? Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 57(1), 109–117. https://doi.org/10.1215/00295132-11052401
Notes
Item Type
Article Post-Print
Language
Rights
All Rights Reserved