Ends of worlds or the continuation of the planet? Postcolonial theory, the Anthropocene, and the nonhuman

Abstract

Set in the near future, the Australian novelist James Bradley ’ s cli- fi Clade closes with a description of natural illuminations named ‘ the Shimmer ’ : They have a proper name … but most people call them the Shimmer. Nobody knows what is causing them: the best guess of most scientists is that they are related to a new instability in the Earth ’ s magnetic fi elds, an instability that may presage the poles fl ipping from north to south, as they have occasionally in the distant past, although why that should be happening now is unclear. Some argue that it is a natural phenomenon. But there are also those who believe the process has been hastened by the events of the last century, claiming that the incremental changes to the Earth ’ s rotation caused by the melting of ice and the shifting of the crust as it adapted to its loss have destabilized the fi elds in new and unpredictable ways. 1 us the catastrophic imaginary orienting and – – formations sunlight and soil. When Pipi pressed the Rastas for ways of speeding up the maturation of the yams, for cultivation techniques suited to the steep inclines of ravines, or the rocky fl eet of cli ff s, for grafts that might change the growth rate of some vegetables and even their size, he met with fi erce hostility. The Rastas ’ humility before the was they scorned these ideas.