Crossing Rivers, Revisiting Trauma, and Contemplating the Geo

Thinking into the Anthropocenic

Bibliographic Data

ID13100679
AuthorsJustin Westgate (0000-0001-5537-7030, University of Wollongong, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume3
Issue1
Pages233-245
Publication date2017-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeoHumanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2373-5678 • E-ISSN: 2373-566X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/2373566x.2016.1267582
OpenAlexW2587515937
LanguageEN
References cited20

The irony of the Anthropocene—an idea grounded in earth sciences—is that it acts to unground some of the foundational ideas about the world. It asks us to reevaluate and rethink the human–nature binary, to inhabit a world less hospitable and malleable than we dared to believe. I explore this notion of groundlessness by returning to a personally traumatic event that literally swept me off my feet—crossing a river. I argue that the experience of such corporeal vulnerability can provide fertile ground for reorienting our own perception. Delving into such experiences may be used to provoke and expand thinking with a view to grappling with the implications of living within conditions of an Anthropocenic world

Aesthetics · Anthropocene · Art · Common ground · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Event (particle physics · Irony · Literature · Perception · Sociology · Vulnerability (computing · Communication · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism