Abstract
The fractured timespace of the Anthropocene brings distant pasts and futures into
the present. Thinking about deep time is challenging: deep time is strange and warps our
sense of belonging and our relationships to Earth forces and creatures. The introduction
to this special section builds on scholarship in the environmental humanities concerning
the ongoing inheritance of biological and geologic processes that stretch back into the deep
past as well as the opening up of multiple vistas of the futures. Rather than understanding
deep time as an abstract concept, we explore how deep time manifests through places, objects,
and practices. Focusing on three modes through which deep time is encountered—
enchantment, violence, and haunting—we introduce deep time as an intimate element woven
into everyday lives. Deep time stories, we suggest, engage with the productive ways in which
deep time reworks questions of narrative, self, and representation. In addressing these
dynamics, this introduction and the accompanying articles place current concerns into the
larger flows of planetary temporalities, revealing deep time as productive, homely, and wondrous
as well as unsettling, uncanny.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 213-225 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Environmental Humanities |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - May 2018 |
Keywords
- deep time
- enchantment
- violence
- haunting
- Anthropocene