Critical Climate

Abstract

Critical Climate Kaila Brown (bio) Impasses of the Post-Global: Theory in the Era of Climate Change, Volume II. Henry Sussman. Open Humanities Press. http://openhumanitiespress.org. 312 pages; paper, $23.99; free PDF. Click for larger view View full resolution Detail from Cover In the past decade, ecocriticism and environmentalist response more generally has come under increasing critical scrutiny. Provocative work from Slavoj Žižek, Timothy Morton, Cary Wolfe, Ben Dibley, and David Wood, among others, has criticized the widespread apocalyptic fetishism, if not lurking anthropocentricism, surrounding “the ecological crisis,” particularly as embraced by humanist scholars in the wave of poststructuralism. Editors Tom Cohen and Claire Colbrooke have been at the forefront of this emerging recalibration of ecological thought and response. The IC3 project takes very seriously the implications of material and ecological exhaustion on modes of production and contemporary Humanities discourse. Critique must not only address the geopolitical, cultural, and material reality of climate change; it must be thoroughly be changed by it. This means that for the contributors to IC3 series, there burns an intense focus on contemporariness, both in timely publication and responsiveness to current events, as well as a “redefinition of disciplinary fields” by expanding the subjects of investigation. It is within this framework of “change” and “transformation” that the series’ two-volume publication Theory in the Era of Climate Change emerges with new challenges, provocations, and manifestos to shake the conceptual templates remaining within humanist (and post-humanist) critique. Telemorphosis: Theory in the Era of Climate Change, edited by Tom Cohen, and its companion, Impasses of the Post-Global: Theory in the Era of Climate Change, edited by Henry Sussman, assemble a diverse set of articles ranging in their specialty and style, offering even seasoned readers in ecocriticism and contemporary critical theory a fresh set of perspectives. In his introduction, Sussman writes that the articles assembled work partially as “a collaborative reality-check regarding the current sequence of catastrophes, shocks, and aftershocks.” Fittingly, the energetic and at times scathing opening article from Tom Cohen, “Anecographics,” sets a sharp tempo and trajectory for the subsequent chapters and what he hopes will be new critical orientations. His article seems initially to engage the dubious compatibility of environmentalism and deconstruction, but quickly erupts into a tour de force, exposing the stakes of the so-called Derridawars, arguing for a conceptualization of “climate change” over and against “environmentalism” and imagining deconstruction without Derrida. Cohen indicts what he terms the prevalent “discourse of mourning” produced in last decade by writers including Judith Butler, N. Katherine Hayles, James Lovelock, Donna Haraway, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, John Protevi, and so on. His criticism reads best, though, when he articulates what “imagined future reader” these discourses take for granted. Cohen’s inventive move to an “anecographic thought” which is “un-invested in any proper name it would ennoble or recuperate as legacy” (Derrida) allows for a “premise of irreversibility (and the positive apprehension of extinction…).” Engaging and perceptive, Cohen’s stunning chapter draws the reader into the IC3 project, expanding what we imagine in our imagining “climate change.” From Cohen’s opening chapter to Sussman’s conclusion, “Auto-Immunity,” a scant but apparent logic organizes the book. Beginning with the more or less explicit “ecological” focus of Cohen, Bruce Clarke’s straightforward illumination of the overlapping and contesting histories of autopoieses and Gaia theory introduces new readers to the terms of engagement between theories of self-referential systems and climate change. Even seasoned readers will benefit from his clear approach. Yates McKee elegantly reads Subhanker Banerjee’s photography and brave call for “climate justice” accounting for the “disproportionate responsibilities for greenhouse emissions on the part of corporations, governments, and consumers in the Global North.” Balancing Clarke and McKee, Tian Song and James Bunn each submit uniquely stylized contemplative critiques of garbage and water, respectively. Chapters 6 through 9 turn our attention ever so slightly from climate change, conceived [End Page 12] ecologically to “climate changes” needed or apparent in critique of the twenty-first century. Rey Chow’s article “Sacrifice, Mimesis, and the Theorizing of Victimhood (A Speculative Essay)” diagnoses Agamben’s departure from Foucault while linking the former’s critique...