ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace in contemporary media to see images of the earth in pieces. Mass animal death, poisoned oceans, and biodiversity destruction are today all featured prominently for global audiences to anxiously consume. Yet while critical scholars have long emphasized the economic forces at work behind the planet’s deepening ecological crisis, too many of these endeavors remain isolated from the disparate efforts taking on the coming ends of the world. Particularly damning in current-day definitions of ecological “resilience” is a discursive strategy akin to what Karl Marx once described as “world historical necromancy”—using the past to inadequately “liberate” the future. This chapter unpacks the trope of “the earth’s dying body” to shift the narrative of global environmental decay away from tones of despair towards a political philosophy of narrative reflexivity. I turn specifically to the utopian, dystopian, and redemptory narratives of a convalescent planet found across contemporary media, to outline the intersection of dangerous assumptions and missed opportunities for political theorizing. Taking Marx at his word, I demonstrate how attempts to narrate the future destruction of the planet resemble a farcical play on the past.
