Apocalypse yesterday: Posthumanism and comics in the Anthropocene

Abstract

It is widely recognised that the growing awareness that we are living in the Anthropocenean unstable geological epoch in which humans and their actions are catalysing catastrophic environmental change-is troubling humanity's understanding and perception of temporality and the ways in which we come to terms with socio-ecological change. This article begins by arguing in favour of posthumanism as an approach to this problem, one in which the prefix 'post' does not come as an apocalyptic warning, but rather signals a new way of thinking, an encouragement to move beyond a humanist perspective, and to abandon a social discourse and a worldview fundamentally centred on the human. The article then explores how the impending environmental catastrophe can be productively reimagined through graphic narratives, arguing that popular culture in general, and comics in particular, emerge as productive sites for geographers to interrogate and develop posthuman methodologies and narratives. Developing our analysis around two comics in particular-Here (McGuire, 2014) and Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller et al., 2015)we show how graphic narrative can help us to move beyond the nature-society divide that is rendered anachronistic by the Anthropocene.

Wiley Lecture 2022. Communicating climate change with comics: Life beyond apocalyptic imaginaries

“…Comics’ ability to manipulate time, temporality, and timescales also opens possibilities for the productive reimagination of climate change futures that move beyond “apocalyptic imaginaries” (Swyngedouw, 2010, p. 214) through their graphic narratives (Menga & Davies, 2020). Indeed, the boundaries of temporality and possible futures can be particularly expansive with comics because they invite their creators to critically visualise alternative realities and futures.…”

The High Priests of Global Development: Capitalism, Religion and the Political Economy of Sacrifice in a Celebrity‐led Water Charity

“…In line with our earlier discussion, the fetishization of microfinance leads to a simplification, and to an extent a disavowal, of the complex relations behind a specific microcredit project and the global water crisis in general. To paraphrase Davis (2006), the limit of this approach is that it attempts to solve the water crisis by treating its symptoms (lack of safe water and sanitation), rather than questioning its cause: poor governance, rapid urbanization, privatization, water grabbing, reckless consumption and economic and political inequality (Bakker, 2010; Boelens et al., 2016; Johnston, 2003; Kaika and Swyngedouw, 2011; Menga and Davies, 2019; Swyngedouw, 2009a; Zwarteveen and Boelens, 2014). This contradiction is eloquently illustrated by the WaterEquity Global Access Fund, a US$ 150 million private investment fund launched by Water.org in 2019 to ‘provide debt capital to high‐performing financial institutions in emerging markets to enable them to scale their water and sanitation micro‐finance portfolios.…”

Opening out ageing: On the entropy of all things

“…A strong current of recent work in geography considers the complex social, cultural, political, economic, and developmental specificities and challenges of the Anthropocene (Castree, 2014; Johnson et al, 2014; Matless, 2017). Much of this work articulates posthumanist ways of thinking and acting needed to respond effectively to the challenges that generations of human‐centred thinking and acting has brought forth (e.g., Menga & Davies, 2020; Narayanan & Bindumadhav, 2019; Watson & Huntington, 2014). Indeed, as Fox and Alldred (2020) note, a posthumanist approach identifies a wide cast of actors (bodies, objects, ideologies, ideas) and their relations, regarding environmental sustainability – or the slowing of entropy increase necessary for system stability and species survival – as a more‐than‐human project.…”