The Death of Clark Glacier
Practices of Mourning and the Possibility of Post-Anthropogenic Memory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/lev92023136281Keywords:
memory studies, the Anthropocene, climate change, climate mitigation, cultural memory, mourning ritualsAbstract
Arguably, the biggest challenge of the 21st century is human-induced climate change. This article proposes the cultural memory of the Anthropocene as the dominant reason for our inadequate climate mitigation, whilst simultaneously arguing for the process of hoping-mourning as a possible solution. As such, this article analyzes the Anthropocene as a cultural memory, arguing for a restructuring of its milieu de mémoire to include other-than-human entities. The article finds that the hyper-separational framework of the Anthropocene limits our conceptual space on several spatiotemporal dimensions, limiting, and simplifying, our perception of time and space, excluding other-than-human entities. Furthermore, it is found that by sustaining corporeal vulnerability, mourning, and mourning rituals broaden the cultural domain, permitting other-than-human entities into our milieu de mémoire, which, through its transformative capabilities, offer new and much needed ways of imagining different futures and thus, essentially, different strategies of mitigation and adaptation.
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