Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on the Cover Image
- Introduction
- Part I Environmental Histories
- Chapter 1 Scenes of Human Diminishment in Early American Natural History
- Chapter 2 Slavery and the Anthropocene
- Chapter 3 (In)conceivable Futures: Henry David Thoreau and Reproduction’s Queer Ecology
- Chapter 4 Narrating Animal Extinction from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene
- Chapter 5 Pastoral Reborn in the Anthropocene: Henry David Thoreau to Kyle Powys Whyte
- Part II Environmental Genres and Media
- Part III Environmental Spaces, Environmental Methods
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
Chapter 2 - Slavery and the Anthropocene
from Part I - Environmental Histories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2022
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment
- The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on the Cover Image
- Introduction
- Part I Environmental Histories
- Chapter 1 Scenes of Human Diminishment in Early American Natural History
- Chapter 2 Slavery and the Anthropocene
- Chapter 3 (In)conceivable Futures: Henry David Thoreau and Reproduction’s Queer Ecology
- Chapter 4 Narrating Animal Extinction from the Pleistocene to the Anthropocene
- Chapter 5 Pastoral Reborn in the Anthropocene: Henry David Thoreau to Kyle Powys Whyte
- Part II Environmental Genres and Media
- Part III Environmental Spaces, Environmental Methods
- Notes
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
Summary
“Slavery and the Anthropocene” argues for putting US chattel slavery – including both the suffering of enslaved people and the role of the “master” – and not just the steam engine or measurements of spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, at the center of how we understand the Anthropocene. It does so, in part, as a corrective to a tendency in contemporary theoretical work on the Anthropocene to stress the apocalyptic novelty of the problem, a focus on the immediate present and emerging future that, however understandable, nevertheless risks obscuring the profound historical embeddedness of our environmental crises in white supremacy and racial oppression. Drawing on examples from narratives of enslaved people, the chapter asserts that the racialized hierarchies of the plantation continue to shape the very different ways humans understand and experience the Anthropocene.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022