ABSTRACT
Even though the Anthropocene has become a popular buzzword in the last decade, it is a term with few explicit supporters. Drawing on a reading of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation (2014), this chapter traces how the Anthropocene names a complex cluster of unprecedented intellectual, political, ethical, scientific, and ultimately also literary challenges. Given this daunting task, it is more productive to see the Anthropocene as a catalyst for debate than as a rigid designator. The chapter surveys different terms that have been proposes as an alternative for the Anthropocene (the Capitalocene, the Plantationocene, the Chthulucene, and the Homogenocene). It locates the contribution that literature and literary studies can make to our understanding of the Anthropocene in four affordances: the capacity for narrative, the engagement with affect, the power of the imagination, and—most surprisingly—literature’s constitutive occupation with the import and the limits of writing and inscription.
