Anthropocene Affordances - Scale, Narrative Form, and the Human in US-American Literature

The current historical moment, often referred to as the Anthropocene, is defined by profound human influence on the planetary system. Lena Pfeifer examines how contemporary US-American literature negotiates the political, ethical, and epistemological challenges posed by the Anthropocene. Connecting new formalist approaches with theories of scale, she develops the concept of 'Anthropocene affordances' as a new methodological framework for analyzing narrative responses to the recent ecological crisis that reconfigure conventional forms and narrative strategies to critically discuss the role of the human as a geological force.