A Posthumanist Reading of Geological Agency in “The Domain of Arnheim”

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article proposes a posthumanist reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s story of “The Domain of Arnheim” and argues that posthumanism redefines the narrator’s sense of attachment to the shared world. The first part of the article compares two styles of landscape-gardening and the preference of the posthumanist model over the anthropocentric model implies the narrator’s endeavor to build a new relationship with the environment in which multiple species form a respectful and harmonious symbiosis. To reach this posthumanist world, the narrator proposes the descent of anthropocentrism and ascent of non-human agency. The insertion of human history into the evolutionary time of the Earth repositions men in the world and amplifies human awareness of geological forces of nature. Together the cooperation of human beings and geological agents have created an idealized landscape-garden.