In this experimental work of ecocriticism, Vincent Bruyere
confronts the seeming pointlessness of the humanities amid
spectacularly negative future projections of environmental
collapse. The vanitas paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries dazzlingly depict heaps of riches alongside skulls,
shells, and hourglasses. Sometimes even featuring the illusion that
their canvases are peeling away, vanitas images openly declare
their own pointlessness in relation to the future. This book takes
inspiration from the vanitas tradition to fearlessly contemplate
the stakes of the humanities in the Anthropocene present, when the
accumulated human record could well outlast the climate conditions
for our survival. Staging a series of unsettling encounters with
early modern texts and images whose claims of relevance have long
since expired, Bruyere experiments with the interpretive
affordances of allegory and fairytale, still life and travelogues.
Each chapter places a vanitas motif—canvas, debris, toxics,
paper, ark, meat, and light—in conversation with stories and
images of the Anthropocene, from the Pleistocene Park
geoengineering project to toxic legacies to in-vitro meat.
Considering questions of quiet erasure and environmental memory,
this book argues we ought to keep reading, even by the flickering
light of extinction.
General
Imprint: |
Stanford University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
September 2023 |
First published: |
2023 |
Authors: |
Vincent Bruyere
|
Dimensions: |
216 x 140mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
176 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-5036-3863-1 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
1-5036-3863-4 |
Barcode: |
9781503638631 |
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