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Earth Reads: The Anthropocene Unconscious

  • Lost City Books 2467 18th Street Northwest Washington, DC, 20009 United States (map)

Hosted by Eliza from Lost City Books, Earth Reads will explore how to live through late-capitalist global climate catastrophe from a radical lens, and how to dream new ways of being on this planet. Next up is Mark Bould's The Anthropocene Unconscious!

About The Anthropocene Unconscious:

From Ducks, Newburyport to zombie movies to Fast and Furious, how climate anxiety permeates our culture

The art and literature of our time is pregnant with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness and weirdness. The Anthropocene—the term given to this geological epoch in which humans, anthropos, are wreaking havoc on the earth—is to be found bubbling away everywhere in contemporary cultural production. The Anthropocene, Mark Bould argues, constitutes the unconscious of “the art and literature of our time.”

Tracing the outlines of the Anthropocene unconscious in a range of film, television and literature—across a range of genres and with utter disregard for high-low culture distinctions—this playful and riveting book draws out some of the things that are repressed and obscured by the term “the Anthropocene,” including capital, class, imperialism, inequality, alienation, violence, commodification, patriarchy and racial formations. The Anthropocene Unconscious is about a kind of rewriting. It asks: what happens when we stop assuming that the text is not about the anthropogenic biosphere crises engulfing us? What if all the stories we tell are stories about the Anthropocene? About climate change?

This book club will be hosted via ZOOM, a video conferencing app for computers and phones. Open to all -- please just rsvp with a ticket for access to the ZOOM meeting. You can also purchase a copy of the book here which will give you:

  • a copy of Mark Bould's The Anthropocene Unconscious

  • access to the guided ZOOM discussion with our host, Eliza , from Lost City Books

*** We ask that participants be aware that you will need to download the ZOOM app to join the meeting. Within ZOOM, your camera's audio will pull your video to center-screen so it is advisable to set up in a quiet area. Additionally we ask that participants be courteous and take turns speaking/remain aware of your floor time so that everyone can get the most out of the book club experience.