ABSTRACT
Memory studies wants to repair the erasures of “homogeneous, empty time” and to restore the temporal complexity of the present. In that sense, it has an elective affinity with the Anthropocene. This chapter traces that rapport in more detail by showing how the current environmental crisis affects memory and how the study of memory, in its turn, can enrich our understanding of the textured temporality of the present. It treats the question of Anthropocene memory under the rubric of “dominations” to foreground the persistence of past injustices in the way the Anthropocene afflicts different communities. Approaching Anthropocene memory through the lens of dominations highlights that the present is marked by the persistence of histories of domination, of engrained inequalities, and of legacies of environmental injustice. Since the beginning of the millennium, the study of memory has broadened its focus from national contexts to the transnational, multidirectional, cosmopolitan, and global drift of memory.
