Postcolonial Remainders: Revisiting the Trace from the Standpoint of the Anthropocene

Abstract

This article responds to Srinivas Aravamudan's call to revisit the notion of the trace from the standpoint of the Anthropocene. A Derridean understanding of the trace shows how postcolonial difference challenges the humanist distinction between human and nature by questioning the distinction between life and death that is central to metaphysics. This discussion thus reframes the prospect of extinction signaled by the Anthropocene by means of a return to a Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic and deconstructive trajectory within postcolonial thought.