“Envisioning a New Anthropocenario”

Abstract

Being more than a geological concept, the Anthropocene mirrors the worldly entanglements of many species in overlapping trajectories of social, ecological, and geological forces. In this perspective the Anthropos figure is no longer envisioned as an epoch-making subject operating across multispecies habitats in messy ways, but as an earth-bound being ultimately inseparable from other species and the environment. This article argues for a new Anthroposcenario in which the stories of earthly agencies can be told in what Donna Haraway calls “multispecies storytelling” practices. But it also contends that multispecies storytelling can be made more effective through the perspective of material ecocriticism, which explores the narrative potential embedded in all forms of matter, positing that humans are not the only beings capable of telling stories. In the new Anthroposcenario, everything that is more than human can reveal the intertwined narratives of interdependence, relation making, and coexistence.