Scalar ambiguities

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on an interrelation of various scales of perception in Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (2015). Basing itself on Timothy Clark’s delineation of scalar ambiguities, it argues that Satin Island’s main protagonist, U, embodies a process of growing awareness of the world’s infinite complexity, discovering personal authenticity by withdrawing from action. His perspective is contrasted with the all-pervading Koob-Sassen, which represents a level of complicatedness that contradicts an individual perspective and the possibility of causal thinking. Finally, U’s entire narrative is cast into doubt by an oil spil, signifying a global occurrence whose rift effects are impossible to gauge, let alone predict. As these various scales are explored, the article shows that the novel thematises different levels of what Clark terms the Anthropocene disorder, in which human action can counterintuitively bring about catastrophic consequences.