Description
Book SynopsisElizabeth M. DeLoughrey traces how indigenous and postcolonial peoples in the Caribbean and Pacific Islands grapple with the enormity of colonialism and anthropogenic climate change through art, poetry, and literature by using allegorical narratives.
Trade Review"DeLoughrey brings her considerable background in environmental humanities and postcolonial literature studies to bear in this volume. . . . This book is not to be missed by those interested in keeping up with recent conversations, across the environmental humanities, around issues of the Anthropocene." -- L. C. Bayne * Choice *
“
Allegoriesof the Anthropocene brings human histories of dispossession, toxicity, and creative survival to the fore where they might get lost in the geologic fixation on sediment. . . . It is powerful that this rich and careful book should end with a turn to the reader, showing how allegory at its most potent is about the entanglement, not leap, between part/whole or island/planet.” -- Isabel Lockhart * Journal of British Studies *
“DeLoughrey’s new book is to be strongly recommended for its highly original tack: focusing upon the rising importance of allegory as a way of making sense of times of rupture and catastrophic environmental change.” -- Jonathan Pugh * Island Studies Journal *
“Whenever Elizabeth DeLoughrey makes a critical intervention within a specific theoretical or literary field, established certainties, or matters of general consensus, seem suddenly in need of recalibration….
Allegories of the Anthropocene does something similar to the overburdened discourse surrounding the proposed geological epoch…. Like an exciting crossword puzzle, the book is delightfully difficult as it deconstructs the complexities and inconsistencies of the Anthropocene discourse.” -- Malcolm Sen * New West Indian Guide *
“This is a meticulously researched, compellingly argued and richly suggestive book that builds on various strands in DeLoughrey’s previous research to produce an important and timely intervention into ecocritical, indigenous and literary / visual studies. DeLoughrey has an enviable ability to summarize and synthesize enormous bodies of scholarship across multiple disciplines, and to bring them into productive relation, also deploying highly nuanced close reading skills in relating (social) scientific discourses to specific literary, artistic and filmic ‘texts.’” -- Michelle Keown * Literary Research *
“[DeLoughrey] shows how thinking beyond the Anthropocene . . . is now required. Then, evoking striking examples from poetry, literature, art, and philosophy, she demonstrates that allegory has been pervasive in modern times and that it remains pointedly relevant to creativity in our contemporary situation.” -- Terry Smith * Art Bulletin *
“
Allegories of the Anthropocene is a resounding success, one that promises to reframe and reshape the environmental humanities for decades to come.” -- Jonathan Elmore * Modern Fiction Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Allegories of the Anthropocene 1
1. Gendering Earth: Excavating Plantation Soil 33
2. Planetarity: Militarized Radiations 63
3. Accelerations: Globalization and States of Waste 98
4. Oceanic Futures: Interspecies Worldings 133
5. An Island Is a World 165
Notes 197
Index 257
