ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the contribution of illness writing to two dominant storylines associated with the Anthropocene discourse and its discussions around extinction—those of demise and of relationality. I turn to degenerative illness memoirs to consider how two such narratives respond to terminal temporality and the process of dying, when the modern social pillars of the recognisable self and its open-ended temporal trajectory (futurity) become unavailable. While forgoing efforts at affirming sovereignty and growth, that is, those features of the self that corroborate its adherence to the secular logic of humanism, these memoirs nonetheless adopt an auto(thanato)graphical voice to signify an uncertain but persistent presence and sociality in the face of demise. In so doing they offer us a language for enduring ‘terminal relationality'.
