Presenter: Maxfield Lydum
Faculty Mentor: Parker Krieg
Presentation Type: Oral
Primary Research Area: Humanities
Major: English
The project approaches the relationship between the Anthropocene, the proposed name for a new geologic time period in which humans are the primary force of change, and narrative. The project sets out to discover the ways in which the Anthropocene can change the way we tell stories about ourselves. The project introduces Roy Scranton’s claim that the Anthropocene means the end of human life as we know it and argues that this creates a new challenge for authors: to create narrative that arises out of an Anthropocene consciousness. With Don DeLillo’s Point Omega as a focal point, the essay describes what this consciousness can look like. It is characterized by an understanding of the human’s presence in space and time, a development that might signal an essential change in human identity. Our entering into the Anthropocene is also an entering into the realm of space-time. The document itself claims that the Anthropocene will indeed force us to reimagine the possibilities of narrative because it has already forced us to rethink identity. Narrative has the possibility of giving this Anthropocene-consciousness a body and allowing it to press its feet into the sands of geologic time.