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Abstract
Geologists propose the term Anthropocene to reflect the dramatic changes that humans have made to the planet. While scientists pursue the reality of our current epoch, technology and media create an increasingly spectacular narrative surrounding environmental events. I look to critiques from Guy Debord and other media theorists as well as Patrick Modiano’s In the Café of Lost Youth to outline modes of détournement and resistance to an increasingly mediated world. Contemporary environmental aesthetics must face the challenge of critiquing technological immersion even while making use of these very same technologies to reveal material and affective connections between humans and the environment.
disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 It is worth noting that the Anthropocene has yet to be recognized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The ICS recently commissioned an Anthropocene Working Group to develop a formal application for the adoption of the term.
2 Moore cites Andreas Malm and David Ruccio as early proponents of the term (5).
3 For a good analysis of the rhetoric of geo-engineering, see Sikka.
4 For more on the physicality of technology, see Short.
5 Hereinafter cited as SS.
6 Moore also notes the emergence of the digital in the contemporary era, citing the role of satellite imagery for planetary monitoring, but he does not take into account the ways in which capitalism also profits from the information age.
7 A reference to Ed van der Elsken’s Love on the Left Bank, published in 1956.
8 Notably, Guy de Vere is the name of the fiancé in Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “Lenore,” which similarly laments the death of a young woman.
9 Established in 1783 by Louis XVI. Now Mines ParisTech, one of the most prominent engineering schools in France with a strong international reputation.
10 The Mexico was closed in 1995. The space is now Corcoran’s Irish Pub.
11 This project has been extended and enriched as The Crystal Reef, a virtual reality film project by Cody Karutz, Jeremy Bailenson, and Lauren Knapp, that debuted in 2016 at the Tribeca Film Festival.