The Aesthetics and Politics of Elemental Agency
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8103337 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Moritz Ingwersen (0000-0002-2612-5456, Technische Universität Dresden, corresponding author), Timo Müller (0009-0005-5630-8682, American Studies, University of Konstanz , Fach 166, 78457 Konstanz , Germany, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 3-22 |
| Publication date | 2022-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0044-2305 • E-ISSN: 2196-4726 |
| Publisher | De Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/zaa-2022-2046 |
| OpenAlex | W4220912701 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 28 |
The elements and the elemental have emerged as increasingly productive concepts at the intersection of media theory, ecocriticism, and environmental philosophy. The article builds on this scholarship to discuss the potentials of an elemental approach in literary and cultural studies. Against the backdrop of the climate crisis, it outlines the stakes of an elemental aesthetics capable of interrelating modes of sensory, epistemological, and artistic mediation of ecological relations. As a signifier of animated environments, specific material substances, figurative notions of place, and enabling infrastructures, the elements are key for understanding agency as always already compositional, situated, and distributed. Exploring methodologies of elemental analysis with a focus on American literature and culture, the article concludes by illustrating how an aesthetically grounded conceptualization of agency as elemental is particularly useful for addressing the politics of exposure, emplacement, and extraction in the Anthropocene
Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Anthropocene · Anthropocentrism · Conceptualization · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Linguistics · Mediation · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Situated · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Philosophy
The Forge and the Crucible
A Geology of Media
The Enchantment of Modern Life
A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
The Great Derangement
Bodies of Water
On Constructing a Reality
Air as Medium
The Marvelous Clouds
Exposed
Elemental infrastructures for atmospheric media
Geologic Life
Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |