Narrating the Anthropocene: Language, Aesthetics, and the Ethics of Storytelling in a Human-Altered World

Abstract

According to the definition by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, Anthropocene is the epoch, where human influence became a geological force restructuring ecosystems, climate, and future. However, in addition to using the language of science, the Anthropocene requires new language, aesthetics, and narratives to describe ecological precarity and non-human agency. The paper discusses the way in which the literature and storytelling negotiate the three overlapping issues: the representation of the non-human, aesthetics of the Anthropocene in literature and poetry, and the ethics of displacement and environmental witness. Citing eco-critical and posthumanist theories and recent work on narratives of the posthuman and multispecies, it posits literary forms as both testament and speculative coping mechanism to environmental crisis. Finally, the article suggests that Anthropocene poetics perform an ethical disposition to interdependence, which provides narrative by which to conjure survival, belonging, and justice within a world fundamentally shaped by humanity.