Quenched

By the light or remains of five fires, this paper considers how the current extinction crisis might be thought in relation to the future and the past, to speed and acceleration, to ir/reversibility, and to the evolution of human language and consciousness. The thought of extinction as the extinction of thought is elaborated through engagement with J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, Jacques Derrida's ‘No Apocalypse, Not Now’ and ‘White Mythology’, and the October 2018 IPCC report. The paper concludes by speculating upon an answer to the following questions: if we know that there will be an end to thought, what will have been the end of thought? To what end do we think at all

Aesthetics · Consciousness · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Extinction (optical mineralogy · Mythology · Optics · Physics · Relation (database · Theology · Computer Science · History · Philosophy · Religion, Ecology, and Ethics · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life