Abstract
Coal, and even more so, brown coal or lignite, is currently under-researched in the energy humanities. Lignite still provides approximately 25% of “green” Germany’s energy; its extraction obliterates human settlements and vibrant ecosystems, and its incineration produces more CO2 than any other fossil fuel, contributing massively to climate change. After discussing German mining history, the genres of the energy narrative, the bioregional novel, and ecopoetry, and earlier literary treatments of lignite mining, I analyze recent lignite novels by Anja Wedershoven, Andreas Apelt, Bernhard Sinkel, and Ingrid Bachér, and ecopoems by Max Czollek and Marion Poschmann. I discuss socioenvironmental issues such as “slow violence” and “environmental injustice” enacted upon rural communities that are being resettled in “sacrifice zones” for national energy needs; political–economic entanglements, and activism against this complete devastation of the naturalcultural landscape; differences in representation in narrative and lyrical texts; and how the authors frame local perceptions of the mining operations and the resulting “moonscape” within the larger temporal and spatial scales of the Anthropocene. I argue that these literary texts prefigure where the Earth may be headed in the Anthropocene, and that Germany’s lignite extractivism can be considered a trope for the Anthropocene.
Highlights
Activism to protest the devastation of the ancient Hambach Forest blocking an expansion of the opencast lignite mining operation in Germany’s Rhineland in Fall 2018 provided enough spectacle for broad, even international, media coverage
Open-pit lignite excavation destroys it all: the sediment layers bearing testimony to the development of Earth history and of the human history preserved in archeological artifacts underground; the naturalcultural landscape that has emerged from human settlements and agricultural practices that is typical for most of Central Europe
While its exact starting date remains to be scientifically determined by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), based on recommendations of its Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) (Horn and Bergthaller 2020, p. 23), the concept of the Anthropocene, with its planetary spatial scale and attention to the “deep time” of Earth history, has gained currency in the humanities and social sciences (Horn and Bergthaller 2020, p. 4; Münster 2020, pp. 1, 4), which increasingly investigate the cultural, socioenvironmental, and political tensions between smaller-scale local or regional and large-scale global transformations caused by humans
Summary
Activism to protest the devastation of the ancient Hambach Forest blocking an expansion of the opencast lignite mining operation in Germany’s Rhineland in Fall 2018 provided enough spectacle for broad, even international, media coverage. The ongoing expansion of lignite extractive practices threatening to swallow up ever more ancient forests, fertile agricultural land, and village communities with their centuries-old heritage, is experienced in the time frames of human lives and at the individual’s micro-scale Narrating these lived experiences of identifiable, affected humans with all the details of their daily living can convey the material, bodily, and emotional impacts of the many losses caused by this form of fuel extraction in ways that may be more comprehensible than the abstract scientific charts and graphs measuring the physical impacts of climate change or “the Anthropocene.”. EndeGelände, and Fridays for Future (climate activist Greta Thunberg visited in 2019), leading to international attention, as could already be seen in the successful protest against the annihilation of the ancient Hambach forest in 2018
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
