Time is divided by geologists according to marked shifts in Earth's state. Recent global environmental changes suggest that Earth may have entered a new human-dominated geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Here we review the historical genesis of the idea and assess anthropogenic signatures in the geological record against the formal requirements for the recognition of a new epoch. The evidence suggests that of the various proposed dates two do appear to conform to the criteria to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene: 1610 and 1964. The formal establishment of an Anthropocene Epoch would mark a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the Earth system.

Defining the Anthropocene

Oneself as Another

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Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions

A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, with A Theory of Meaning

Energy and climate change research has been dominated by particular methods and approaches to defining and addressing problems, accomplished by gathering and analysing the corresponding forms of evidence. This special issue starts from the broad concepts of stories, narratives, and storytelling to go beyond these analytic conventions, approaching the intersection of nature, humanity, and technology in multiple ways, using lenses from social sciences, humanities, and practitioners’ perspectives. The contributors use stories as data objects to gather, analyse, and critique; stories as an approach to research an inquiry; narrative analysis as a way of crystallising arguments and assumptions; and storytelling as a way of understanding, communicating, and influencing others. In using these forms of evidence and communication, and applying methods, analytical stances, and interpretations that these invite, something new and different results. This essay is a brief introduction to how, in our view, stories and their kin fit in energy and climate change research. We outline the diversity of data, approaches, and goals represented in the contributions to the special issue. And we reflect on some of the challenges of, and possibilities for, continuing to develop ‘stories’ as data sources, as modes of inquiry, and as creative paths toward social engagement.

https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=usp_fac

Using stories, narratives, and storytelling in energy and climate change research

Introduction PART I: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES Nature in German Culture PART II: CRITIQUES OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Goethe as Ecophilosophical Inspiration and Literary Model From Modernist Catastrophe to Postmodern Survival PART III: NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN NATURE AND CULTURE Heideggerian Ecopoetics and the Nature Poetry Tradition The Call of the Wild Greening the City PART IV: CONCLUSION Nature as a Cultural Project

Nature, Technology and Cultural Change in Twentieth-Century German Literature

This paper explores the creative uses of stories and storytelling to engage groups and individuals with consideration of changes in energy systems across time and place. It summarises three story-based experiments that responded to the theme of ‘energy utopias’. These are drawn from the three core strands of a much wider body of work undertaken within the Stories of Change project. This took stories as a central motif and organising device to refresh public and political conversations about energy and decarbonisation. Our hypothesis was that stories could offer a popular and engaging route into thinking about the past and present of humanity’s lives with energy and a lively way of imagining possible futures. We also wanted to test the degree to which stories could offer a shared intellectual space that might support both interdisciplinary and co-productive working for a core team that includes social science, humanities, media, computing and design researchers as well as creative and community partners. The paper considers some of the practical, methodological and theoretical considerations and reflects on the strengths and limitations of stories as both motif and technique in supporting action on climate change.

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Gathering around stories: interdisciplinary experiments in support of energy system transitions

One of the more frequently lodged, serious, and justifiable complaints about ecocritical work is that it is insufficiently theorized. Ecocritical Theory puts such claims decisively to rest by offering readers a comprehensive collection of sophisticated but accessible essays that productively investigate the relationship between European theory and ecocritique. With its international roster of contributors and subjects, it also militates against the parochialism of ecocritics who work within the limited canon of the American West. Bringing together approaches and orientations based on the work of European philosophers and cultural theorists, this volume is designed to open new pathways for ecocritical theory and practice in the twenty-first century. © 2011 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. All rights reserved.

Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches

Although global warming has been a topic of American and British popular fiction since the 1980s, its literary representation has only recently become an object of academic enquiry. Perhaps a score of German novels on the subject have also appeared, and critical analysis of these is now called for. Following a general outline of the socio-political, philosophical, and ethical issues which climate change raises, and of the particular aesthetic challenges which writing about global warming poses, Ilija Trojanow’s EisTau (Melting Ice, 2011) serves as a basis for discussion of the tensions between confessional and didactic impulses on the one hand, and recognition of the need for an aesthetic facilitating detachment on the other.  Resumen Aunque el calentamiento global ha aparecido en la literatura popular americana y britanica desde los anos 80, su representacion literaria no se ha converitdo en objeto de investigacion academica hasta recientemente. Quiza una veintena de novelas alemanas sobre el tema tambien han aparecido, requiriendo asi un analisis critico. Siguiendo un resumen general de los asuntos socio-politicos, filosoficos y eticos que el cambio climatico ha planteado, y de los desafios esteticos particulares que surgen al escribir sobre el calentamiento global, la novela EisTau (Melting Ice, 2011) de Ilija Trojanow sirve como base para debatir las tensiones entre los impulsos confesionales y didacticos, por un lado, y sobre el reconocimiento de la necesidad de una estetica que facilite el desapego, por otro.

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Melting ice and the paradoxes of Zeno:Didactic impulses and aesthetic distanciation in German climate change fiction

Heimat ist lange als ruckwartsgewandte Utopie, Kompensationsversuch fur Leiden an den Problemen der Gegenwart, und gefahrliche, weil politisch reaktionare Identifikation mit dem Ort und Land der Geburt verstanden worden. In diesem Kapitel wird zunachst die Entwicklung des Heimatbegriffs und der Heimatliteratur im Laufe des 20. Jahrhunderts aus der doppelten Perspektive der Rolle des Raumlichen bei der Identitatsbildung und der des Heimatgefuhls furs Umweltverhalten aufgezeigt. Anschliesend wird anhand von drei Romanen aus der Zeit um 1900 (Bruno Willes Offenbarungen des Wachholderbaums, Hermann Hesses Peter Camenzind und Josef Pontens Siebenquellen) gefragt, ob nicht Spuren des heutigen dynamischen, aktiven, offenen, und pluralen Heimatverstandnisses in der Literatur der Jahrhundertwende zu finden sind. Ausgangspunkt dieses Aufsatzes war die Beobachtung von Parallelen zwischen Aspekten des neueren Heimatdiskurses im deutschsprachigen Raum und Entwicklungen in der internationalen Gesellschaftsund Kulturtheorie, sowie dem englischsprachigen Ecocriticism (d.i. der okologisch orientierten Literaturund Kulturwissenschaft). Einerseits handelt es sich dabei um den etwa gleichzeitigen Verlauf der Wiederentdeckung des Raumes als zentrale Kategorie in der Gesellschaftstheorie mit dem Wiederaufleben offentlichen Interesses an Heimat und der Umdeutung des Begriffs in Richtung eines dynamischen, aktiven, offenen, und pluralen Bezugs zu ihr, der nicht mehr allein durch emotionale Bindung an den Geburtsoder Wohnort bestimmt wird, sondern gewissermasen de-essentialisiert 1 Das neue Interesse am Raum begann in den 1970er Jahren (beispielsweise mit Henri Lefebvres einflussreicher Studie zur sozialen Produktion des Raumes und YiFu Tuans Ausfuhrungen zur Bedeutung raumlicher Verwurzelung fur menschliche Identitat und Wohlbefinden). Neue Raumkonzepte wurden aber vor allem in den achtziger und neunziger Jahren im Zeichen der Postmoderne, der Migration und der Globalisierung entwickelt (etwa bei David Harvey, Edward Soja, Andreas Huyssen, Homi Bhabha, und Arjun Appadurai).

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Axel Goodbody

Papers

Nature, Technology and Cultural Change in Twentieth-Century German Literature

Gathering around stories: interdisciplinary experiments in support of energy system transitions

Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches

Melting ice and the paradoxes of Zeno:Didactic impulses and aesthetic distanciation in German climate change fiction

Heimat als Identität und ökologisches Bewusstsein stiftender Faktor: Zu Ansätzen in Romanen um 1900 von Bruno Wille, Hermann Hesse und Josef Ponten