Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Body & Society, 23 (3), 2017, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2017 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Body & Society page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/bod on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Anthropocene bodies, geological time and the crisis of natality
AU - Clark, Nigel Halcomb
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Body & Society, 23 (3), 2017, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2017 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Body & Society page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/bod on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
PY - 2017/9/1
Y1 - 2017/9/1
N2 - In its explicit engagement with the possibility of human extinction, the Anthropocene thesis might be seen as signalling a `crisis of natality’. Engaging with two works of fiction - Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces (1997) – the paper explores the embodied, affective and intimate dimensions of the struggle to sustain life under catastrophic conditions. Though centred on male protagonists, both novels offer insights into a `stratigraphic time’ (Colebrook, 2009) associated primarily with maternal responsibility – involving a temporal give and take that passes between generations and across thresholds in the Earth itself. If this is a construction of inter-corporeality in which each life and every breath has utmost value, it is also a vision that exceeds the biopolitical prioritization of the organismic body - as evidenced in both McCarthy and Michaels’ gesturing beyond the bounds of the living to a forceful, sensate and enigmatic cosmos.
AB - In its explicit engagement with the possibility of human extinction, the Anthropocene thesis might be seen as signalling a `crisis of natality’. Engaging with two works of fiction - Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces (1997) – the paper explores the embodied, affective and intimate dimensions of the struggle to sustain life under catastrophic conditions. Though centred on male protagonists, both novels offer insights into a `stratigraphic time’ (Colebrook, 2009) associated primarily with maternal responsibility – involving a temporal give and take that passes between generations and across thresholds in the Earth itself. If this is a construction of inter-corporeality in which each life and every breath has utmost value, it is also a vision that exceeds the biopolitical prioritization of the organismic body - as evidenced in both McCarthy and Michaels’ gesturing beyond the bounds of the living to a forceful, sensate and enigmatic cosmos.
KW - Anthropocene
KW - intercorporeality
KW - natality
KW - stratigraphic time
KW - catastrophe
KW - climate change
KW - biopolitics
U2 - 10.1177/1357034X17716520
DO - 10.1177/1357034X17716520
M3 - Journal article
VL - 23
SP - 156
EP - 180
JO - Body and Society
JF - Body and Society
SN - 1357-034X
IS - 3
ER -