History, Melancholy, and the Anthropocene: H. G. Wells on ‘Mind at the End of its Tether’

ABSTRACT

H. G. Wells confronts in his final writings a world that has experienced more than can be historically comprehended; where history seems incapable of offering succour to human life in its pursuit of intellectual repose and stability. He speaks presciently to our situation in the Anthropocene, evincing a pervasive sense of melancholy symptomatic of existence in a constantly self-historicizing world. I conclude that in the Anthropocene human beings ultimately confront an enduring mismatch between historical comprehension and the circumstances of immediate existence; a mismatch made all the more disturbing given our traditional reliance upon history to affirm our continuity with the past. Wells ultimately alerts us to a hyper-historicized world that has superseded its previous history, that has left it behind forever, and is, as the Anthropocene affirms, continuously antiquating itself with its means of technological refinement.

KEYWORDS:

• History
• Anthropocene
• historicization
• H. G. Wells
• historical comprehension
• historicized world
• melancholy

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Alexandre Leskanich

Alexandre Leskanich is an Independent Scholar in London with interests in the philosophy of history, intellectual history, and Modern European thought and culture. His first book, The Anthropocene and the Sense of History: Reflections from Precarious Life, is under contract with Routledge.