Ina Batzke, Lea Spinoza Garrido and Linda M. Hess (eds.), Life Writing in the Posthuman Anthropocene

Abstract

Life Writing in the Posthuman Anthropocene (2022) belongs to the Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, an interdisciplinary series edited by Clare Brant and Max Saunders that engages life writing with critical thinking across disciplines. Situated within the environmental humanities, this volume examines a variety of life writing in the context of the Anthropocene. It builds the argument that life writing has a critical role in contesting human self-centredness which has caused the ecological damage that continues to define the Anthropocene. As such, the book rests on a paradox: how can a genre defined by the figure of a ‘human self’ contribute to dismantling power structures, such as speciesism, without perpetuating these damaging structures of domination? Seven chapters and one interview emphasise that the Anthropocene has been a discursively produced narrative of fatal material consequences; for this reason, minimising and hopefully restoring some ecological damage requires that we find more equal and responsible ways of relating to non-human life forms and the environment in language.