United States
£ GBP
What can a pesticide pump, a jar full of sand, or an old calico print tell us about the Anthropocene – the age of humans? Just as palaeontologists look to fossil remains to infer past conditions of life on earth, so might past and present-day objects offer clues to intertwined human and natural histories that shape our planetary futures. In this era of aggressive hydrocarbon extraction, extreme weather, and severe economic disparity, how might certain objects make visible the uneven interplay of economic, material, and social forces that shape relationships among human and nonhuman beings?
Future Remains is a thoughtful and creative meditation on these questions. The fifteen objects gathered in Future Remains resemble more the tarots of a fortuneteller than the archaeological finds of an expedition – they speak of planetary futures. Marco Armiero, Robert S. Emmett, and Gregg Mitman have assembled a cabinet of curiosities for the Anthropocene, bringing together a mix of lively essays, creatively chosen objects, and stunning photographs by acclaimed photographer Tim Flach. The result is a book that interrogates the origins, implications, and potential dangers of the Anthropocene and makes us wonder anew about what exactly human history is made of.
- Acknowledgments
- Preface / Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero, and Robert S. Emmett
Th-e Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea / Rob Nixon
Hubris
- Anthropocene in a Jar / Tomas Matza and Nicole Heller
- Concretes Speak / Rachel Harkness, Cristián Simonetti, and Judith Winter
- The Age of (a) Man / Joseph Masco
- The Manual Pesticide Spray Pump / Michelle Mart and Cameron Muir
Hubris or Humility: Genealogies of the Anthropocene / Gregg Mitman
Living and Dying
- Huia Echoes / Julianne Lutz Warren
- Snarge / Gary Kroll
- Marine Animal Satellite Tags / Nils Hanwahr
- Artificial Coral Reef / Josh Wodak
- Freezing Life in the Anthropocene / Elizabeth Hennessy
Racism and the Anthropocene / Laura Pulido
Sabotaging the Anthropocene; or, In the Praise of Mutiny / Marco Armiero
Laboring
- On Possibility; or, The Monkey Wrench / Daegan Miller
- The German Calico Quilt / Bethany Wiggin
Anthropocene Aesthetics / Robert S. Emmett
Making
- The Mirror—Testing the Counter-Anthropocene / Sverker Sörlin
- Objects from Anna Schwartz’s Cabinet of Curiosities / Judit Hersko
- Technofossil / Jared Farmer
- Davies Creek Road / Trisha Carroll and Mandy Martin
Anthropocene Cabinets of Curiosity: Objects of Strange Change / Libby Robin
Contributors
Gregg Mitman is the Vilas Research and William Coleman Professor of History of Science, Medical History, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes and coeditor of Documenting the World: Film, Photography, and the Scientific Record, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Marco Armiero is associate professor of environmental history and the director of the Environmental Humanities Lab at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He is the author of A Rugged Nation: Mountains and the Making of Italy and coeditor of Nature and History in Modern Italy and A History of Environmentalism: Local Struggles, Global Histories.
Robert S. Emmett is visiting assistant professor of environmental studies at Roanoke College, Virginia. He is the author of Cultivating Environmental Justice: A Literary History of US Garden Writing.
"Evocative [...] A brief review cannot do justice to all that these haunting Anthropocene objects and their accompanying essays say about the future. The essays offer strikingly original and often lyrical meditations on the ecological and moral tragedies of the Anthropocene as well as the possibilities for creative adaptation and radical hope. The collection's considerable literary merits are complemented by the aesthetic beauty of the photographs by Tim Flach. This book compels the reader to ponder the material, intellectual, and moral experiences of the Anthropocene and is richly deserving of a wide readership in the academy and beyond."
– Environmental History
"A significant take on an important yet somewhat nebulous concept, surveying as it does a variety of ways in which people have used or reshaped the planet and its material wealth."
– Times Literary Supplement
"In this collection of essays edited by Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero, and Robert S. Emmett, objects take center stage and are enlivened with clever metaphor and meaning to narrate the tale of the Anthropocene. Each object presented in this volume is intricately interconnected to place, space, and time, and to the larger planetary scale within which scholars are increasingly starting to explore [...] Each essay is well written, some are in an almost poetic prose, while others present as personal stories or dialogues, but each tells its own material journey into the Anthropocene."
– Human Ecology
"Objects, cabinets, remains: here is an assembling of wonders from a damaged planet, brought together in order to cultivate the arts of remembering effectively, so as to care seriously, to care for, to care with. Each essay is a provocation to curiosity in the sense of incitement to feel, know, care, and respond. Writing and images converge to make objects present so as to render remaining futures vital."
– Donna Haraway, author of Staying with the Trouble
"This book addresses the vexing issues posed by the Anthropocene – the idea that humans have become a bio-physical force of nature – in an excitingly original way by showing how the material objects of our time will one day become uncanny future fossils. Its imaginative sweep feels as futuristic as science fiction, yet each object is located deftly within its historical and contemporary context. The contributors make up a who's who of modern scholarship. It should become the go-to book for understanding the implications and significance of the most challenging idea and problem of our time."
– Iain McCalman, author of The Reef: A Passionate History
"Future Remains explores the ways in which scholarship and art can come together to experiment with the consequences of thinking the oxymoronic power and powerlessness of humans entailed by the implications of an age of humans. It is able to both eulogize and mock the losses and aspirations that the anthropogenic illusion of control has brought about the planet [...] It should be read as an invitation to start collecting by asking objects for their stories, their specific entanglements with humans and nature and, hence, to contribute object stories to this Wunderkammer in the hope that it is more alive than it might seem at first glance."
– Ecozona: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment
