Narratives of the Anthropocene in Literature and Science: Themes, Structures and Poetics

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gabriele Dürbeck
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 318516285

The concept of the Anthropocene demarcates an influential discourse that has emerged since the millennium, thematising a world in which human activities have become the dominant geophysical force on global scale. While contributions to the Anthropocene debate have been dominantly generated by the natural and social sciences, the approaches simultaneously articulate powerful narratives about the position of men and society in exchange with the planetary ecosystem and under the horizon of an ecologically enlarged history of mankind. Origin, structure and cultural resonance of these narratives have not yet been sufficiently analysed. A literary and culture studies perspective on the narratives of the Anthropocene addresses the challenge that the Anthropocene debate lacks reflexivity with regard to its narrative structures and the underlying assumptions, metaphors and patterns of meaning-making. The proposed project therefore initially analyses narrative elements in key texts of the Anthropocene discourse. Subsequently we will examine how the novel themes that are marked up by the Anthropocene concept precipitate in contemporary literature and their narrative forms and how these literary texts and forms help a broader audience to understand, process and critically engage with the more abstract concept. In doing so, the project aims firstly to contribute to further development of the ecocriticism approach; secondly to explore non-anthropocentric modes of narrating and to provide new impulses to the established research on literature and knowledge; and thirdly to develop the outlines of a poetics of the Anthropocene with a view to explaining how literary texts have repercussions on broader public debates and thereby generate societal relevance. Overall the project will improve the preconditions for an effective contribution of perspectives from the literary and culture studies to the interdisciplinary Anthropocene discourse.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants