Eco-realism at the Time of Catastrophe:

Abstract

The Eremocene is defined as the era of solitude. Solitude is human compared to other living entities, i.e. animals, plant life and minerals: non-human. This article takes its shape from five photographs that represents five different points of view on the crisis we are experiencing. The first two images are photographs that, despite representing reality, try to signify something deeper, that is, an ideology that permeates our culture: our point of view on non-human animals as representative objects or symbols and not as subjects. The third and fourth images represent the point of view of the Earth, starting from a descriptive photograph to a prescriptive dystopian image. The first description emerges from what we are doing to our planet, while the second, prescriptive, is taken from a dystopian film that represents what will happen to the planet if we do not change our way of life. The fifth image shows a way to photograph scenarios of Eco-realism, in which we are not separated from what we call “nature”, or the ecological background in its totality. Different theses will be shown throughout the article that will form, at the end, blocks to build a reality beyond the human imaginary. The conclusion will try to direct the philosophical analysis in a direction that opens up new scenarios never encountered before, through narratives that mix the reality with the imaginary. In order to save life and non-life, in the era of catastrophe, it will be necessary to find a new multi-species imaginary to build an Eco-realist philosophy.