Introduction: Life Writing in the Posthuman Anthropocene

Abstract

This introduction to Life Writing in the Posthuman Anthropocene summarizes recent interventions in the field of life writing studies that engage with posthumanism and ecocriticism and posits that re-envisioning life writing through these theoretical lenses calls for abandonment or reinvention of traditional characteristics of life writing in order to prioritize a focus on relationality and materiality over the focus on the human self. Such an approach, however, risks, among other things, disguising and disregarding the disproportionate ethical responsibility that humans carry for and in the Anthropocene. Against this background, the contributions in this volume engage with posthumanist theories such as a relational understanding of all species, but at the same time avert asserting the same agency and particularly responsibility to them, as doing so would diffuse the fatal role (some) humans have played and continue to play in shaping our current planetary life-world.