Imagining the Anthropocene Future

The seeds of this book project were planted during my academic work with Professor Elżbieta Rokosz whose mentorship inspired me to pursue my research interests in Native American literature. I would like to thank Professor Rokosz for her invaluable advice and insightful comments. Her immense knowledge and experience have always encouraged me in my academic research.

I am grateful to Dr Patrycja Austin for her guidance and critical feedback, which helped me crystallize several of the arguments included in the book. Her work has always been a considerable influence, without which I would have never followed this path. I am incredibly grateful for her suggestions that have undoubtedly improved the quality of this book.

Many of the ideas included in the book developed thanks to the conversations I had with friends and colleagues. I would like to thank especially Stefanie Sachsenmaier (Middlesex University London), Lydia Kaye (Regent’s University London) and Natalie Schiller (University of Auckland, New Zealand), for their friendship, late-night and early-morning writing sessions, and mental support. The many conversations that we had gave me strength and inspiration to pursue my writing.

I also wish to thank two reviewers Professor Joanna Ziarkowska-Ciechanowska (University of Warsaw) and Professor Dorota Kołodziejczyk (University of Wrocław), for their critical comments and queries, which helped me shape the final version of the book.

I would like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to the Indigenous scholars, whose books and scholarly works have been a tremendous source of inspiration and knowledge. Their writings have provided invaluable insights into Indigenous cultures, histories, and perspectives, shaping the foundation of this research. I am deeply grateful for their dedication to preserving and sharing Indigenous knowledge, which has contributed immensely to the advancement of academic scholarship and the broader understanding of Indigenous peoples.

As a non-Indigenous researcher, I recognize the importance of acknowledging my position and perspective within the research process. I am aware that my identity and experiences shape the way I approach and understand Indigenous communities and their knowledge systems. I strive to be cognizant of the power dynamics and historical context that influence the relationships between non-Indigenous researchers and Indigenous communities.

Despite numerous warnings from scientists and scientific organizations concerning climate change, most industrialized nations have not put long-term ecological sustainability ahead of short-term corporate profits. Instead, like in Bill Peet’s 1970 children’s book, The Wump World, politicians, business leaders and global elites are behaving like “The Pollutians,” who travel from a continent to a continent, a planet to a planet, polluting and then moving on to other pristine habitats without changing their economic and ecological behaviours. The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are no longer producing adequate growth in public awareness as well. Birgit Schneider points out that “people observe daily weather changes, but they do not perceive climate—something which is, according to its modern definition, a statistically created abstract object of investigation with a long-term assessment period” (2010, 82). Karen Barad also draws our attention to the theoretical treatment of “matter” and “environment” in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries. Matter has been viewed in terms of manageable “bits” and turned into “blank slate” for human inscription. Thus, everything recognizable as “nature” has become an “uncontested ground” for human development (Alaimo 2010, 1).

In her paper on “Developing ecofeminist corporeality,” Mary Phillips explains that the above-mentioned problems result from disconnecting ourselves from our bodies and nature (2016, 57). Human beings physically separate themselves from the effects of the weather in their offices, cars, and homes; as a result, they cannot feel how weather patterns change. For ecofeminists, such an alienation and instrumental use of nature can be attributed to the “logic of patriarchy” (see, e.g. Plumwood 1993; Warren 2000; Kheel 2008). This logic is reinforced through sets of interrelated dualisms, such as man/woman, culture/nature, mind/body, reason/emotion, which can be understood as oppositional concepts that place a higher value on what is identified as “male,” “reason,” “mind,” than on “female,” “emotion,” “body.” In addition, as Phillips points out, “human authenticity is coterminous with idealized, hegemonic masculinity defined in opposition to what is taken to be natural, nature or the biological realm” (2016, 58). This creates a disembodied and disengaged subject “free and rational to the extent that he has fully distinguished himself from the natural and social worlds” such that the “subject withdraws from his own body, which he is able to look as an object” (Taylor 1995, 7).

The above metaphysical assumptions have influenced the relationship between people and the non-human environment¹; privileging culture over nature resulted in the ecological devastation of the natural environment, including species extinction, climate change, deforestation and rising sea levels, to mention a few. Hence, in the 1980s limnologist Eugene F. Stoermer suggested the term “Anthropocene” to name the epoch in which the forces of human existence began to overwhelm all other geological, biological and meteorological forms and forces. The notion was popularized at the inception of the 21^st century by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen (Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007, 614). Although the term has not been officially recognized as a formal unit of geological timescale, it has adopted a variety of meanings in many other areas including philosophy, politics, law or communication. What is more, since many scholars claim that the Anthropocene reinforces the human-centric view of the world which has led to the despoliation of the Earth, several alternative terms to the Anthropocene have been introduced, including the term “Capitalocene” proposed by Jason Moore in his book Capitalism in the Web of Life (2015, 173). The scholar, along with others, such as Naomi Klein, Slavoj Žižek and Andreas Malm, argues that the blame for the ecological crisis should be put not on humanity in general, but at (predominantly white, western and male) capitalism. Robert Macfarlane (2016) points out that as a neologism, the Anthropocene, has already become another “anthropomeme” and spawned a number of other alternative designations, such as “Plastic-ene” (The New York Times 2014), “Mis-anthropocene” (Clover 2014), “Anthrobscene” (Parikka 2015), “Plantationocene” (Tsing 2015), “Chthulucene” (Haraway 2016).²

Environmental destruction is not the only consequence of dualistic thinking. Such thinking is also responsible for the oppression of women, Indigenous peoples, people of colour, queers, and the lower classes, since, in Western thought, they have been defined as creatures closer to “nature” and hence as being outside the domain of rationality, subjectivity, and agency. Many feminist researchers have attempted to separate woman from nature. Nevertheless, by working within the prevalent dualisms, many feminist arguments reinforce a rigid opposition between nature and culture. For instance, the concept of gender, as opposed to biological sex, is based on a stark contrast between nature and culture. What is more, human corporeality, particularly female corporeality, has always been identified with nature in Western thought. Therefore, feminism has been fighting not only essentialism but also biological determinism, which similarly uses the idea of some inherent characteristics to justify male superiority. Social and feminist studies attempt to escape the assumption that some aspects of biology are fixed and thus tend to be used by some people to justify racist, sexist, and heterosexist norms. Stacy Alaimo, a researcher in environmental humanities, disadvises the flight from the concept of nature which is associated with corporeality, mindlessness, and passivity. Instead, the feminist theory should attempt to transform gendered dualisms, including nature/culture, body/mind, resource/agency, and others, which have been used to marginalize and suppress certain humans and non-humans (Alaimo 2000, 4–14).

The only way to overcome humans’ alienation and estrangement from nature is to acknowledge that we are organic beings embedded in nature. Thus, the body is of immense importance in challenging the ways that femininity, nature and emotionality are cast. As Alaimo points out, “human corporeality in all its material fleshiness is inseparable from ‘nature’ or ‘environment’ such that embracing the vulnerability of the body is a recognition of precarious, corporeal openness to the material world where the human is not in nature but of nature” (2008, 238). Therefore, the sensations and emotions experienced through our bodies need to be reaffirmed so that people begin to develop caring engagement with nature and, thus, of ourselves that might lead to more appropriate reactions to the environmental and social issues humanity faces. Alaimo suggests that the only way to deal with the fixed concept of biology and nature is, paradoxically, “to endow them with flesh, to allow them to materialize more fully, and to attend to their precise materializations” (2010, 6).

It is noteworthy that numerous Indigenous³ scholars have critiqued the Euro-Western academy’s present approach to human-environmental relationships and current trends in the Euro-Western humanities—new materialism, posthumanism and the ontological turn, as Eurocentric. While the human/non-human dichotomy has been fundamental for European thought since the Enlightenment, many cultures worldwide do not adopt such a distinction (Descola 2009; 2013), which is reflected in the novels discussed in the following chapters. Hence, Zoe Todd, the Métis scholar, has criticized settler scholars for imagining that they have “discovered” the entanglements of “nature” and “culture,” which is what many Indigenous thinkers around the world have known for millennia. The Western division between mind and matter or matter and spirit is antithetical to Indigenous concepts of matter. Most Indigenous societies, including Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people, believe that humans are made from the land and our flesh is an extension of soil. Remarkably, Indigenous writers attempt to write bodies and natures in ways that emphasize their interrelations.

Native American writing is currently undergoing a new renaissance, including contributions from widely recognized authors and new Indigenous voices. In an interview with Tommy Orange, Louise Erdrich described this flourishing period for Native American literature as “the third wave” of Indigenous writing (Orange and Erdrich 2020). While Native American literature has been associated with poetry, plays, novels, and short stories dealing with the trauma of the colonial past, the perception of what Indigenous authors are capable of writing has recently changed (Taylor 2016). Numerous Indigenous writers have attempted to depart from the Indigenous realism and the traditional representations of the colonial past; instead, they turned to speculative fiction, including fantasy, murder mysteries, science fiction and magical realism, to refer to the colonial history, represent its influence on the present situation of Native Americans and depict decolonized visions of future. Thus, this new current in North American literature, which allows the writers to represent decolonized futures, can be situated within a movement called “Indigenous futurisms,” which encompasses not only literature but also video games, comics and other forms of media expressing Indigenous perspectives of the future. Indigenous Futurisms challenge, subvert, or refuse to engage with colonial, oppressive genre tropes. They also engage with Indigenous knowledge systems, languages, and traditions. Anishinaabe professor Grace L. Dillon first coined the term in his book Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (2012). The idea of Indigenous Futurism pays homage to Afrofuturism, another political and artistic movement that combines traditional knowledge and culture with futuristic settings.