ABSTRACT
Using the TV series Twin Peaks (1990–1991, 2017) as a starting point, this chapter presents and outlines the themes and approaches employed in this book, as related to the contemporary socio-ecological condition of the Anthropocene and how it relates to the perceptions and narratives of ‘civilisation’. We introduce ‘weirding’ as an approach to seeing civilisation from a different perspective – one that recognises the significance of radical otherness as integral to civilisation, from ancient Mesopotamia to the present-day Western world. We seek to identify aspects of phenomena that do not quite fit with established narratives of civilisation and how it came about in relation to specific topics such as mining, cities, money, and writing. These phenomena are examined from a long-term perspective, with the aim of relating them to various aspects of the present-day world, such as monsters of the Anthropocene. This chapter outlines the concept of this book which is not a culture-historical account of what ‘really happened’ but explores how the idea of going beyond linear space-time (and supposedly causal) narratives can provide a richer understanding of the story of civilisation than the standard accounts.
