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Crises of the Universal in Anglophone Literatures and Criticism (19th-21st centuries)

Navigating Universality in the Anthropocene: The Contested “Anthropos” in Bewilderment (2021) and The Red Deal (2021)

Marina Pingler

Abstracts

This paper explores the diverse and often conflicting interpretations of the concept of the Anthropocene, extending the debate from academic discourses in the natural sciences and humanities to cultural representations in literature and activism. Widely recognized in the natural sciences as an epoch in which human activity has become the dominant influence on the planet, the Anthropocene’s universalizing framework has been critiqued by scholars in the humanities and social sciences. These critics argue that the concept overlooks significant social, racial, and economic disparities that determine who is responsible for environmental degradation and who suffers its impacts. Central to this debate is the tension between the notion of humanity as a homogeneous geological force and as a culturally and economically differentiated entity. Scale emerges as a critical lens, illuminating how human agency is conceptualized differently at planetary, collective, and individual levels. By juxtaposing Richard Powers’s novel Bewilderment and the manifesto The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our World, this paper examines how literary and activist engagements navigate tensions between conceptualizing humanity as a geological force and addressing socio-historical inequalities. Bewilderment imagines humanity’s universal impact as a geological force, while The Red Deal critiques capitalism and colonialism as root causes of ecological crises, emphasizing socio-historical specificity. This analysis argues that the universalizing frameworks of Earth System Science and the differentiated responsibilities highlighted by the humanities are not mutually exclusive but exist in productive tension. Rather than seeking to resolve these tensions, this paper suggests that engaging with them enriches understandings of humanity’s shared impact on the planet while recognizing critical differences shaped by historical and socio-political contexts.

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  • 1 The Anthropocene Working Group’s proposal to formally recognize the Anthropocene was rejected in 20 (...)
  • 2 Sylvia Wynter has highlighted how the West has historically constructed the notion of the “human.” (...)
  • 3 See Zimmer (171–74), who traces the conceptual origins of the Anthropocene and argues that it shoul (...)

1The concept of the Anthropocene, proposed as a geological epoch marked by human-induced disruptions in the Earth system, has sparked significant debate within the scientific community, generating epistemological and political tensions across disciplines. Central to this debate is the contested notion of the anthropos, which is criticized for its universalizing nature and the way it conceptualizes the human species as a geological force with dramatic planetary impacts. Despite general acceptance by natural scientists of the “Anthropocene” as a marker for human-induced disruptions in the Earth system—though notably not officially recognized as a geo­logical epoch1—its conceptualization faces resistance in the humanities. Critics argue that it generalizes humanity under a singular, universal category, neglecting the complexities of individual and collective identities. For instance, Marxist, postcolonial, decolonial, and Indigenous studies theorists have argued that this species thinking erases crucial differences and hierarchies based on race, gender, and economics that continue to structure who produces and who suffers from the environmental crisis (Gómez‑Barris, Haraway, Moore 2016a, Whyte 2018, Tsing, Yusoff). Daniel Zimmer situates these critiques within a broader antihumanist framework, according to which the concept is seen as a regression to the notion of the “Enlightenment Man”2 and risks reinforcing a problematic notion of intrinsic “human nature,” suggesting that environmental crises are merely tragic and inevitable consequences of this nature rather than outcomes of historically contingent social systems.3 To address these concerns, alternative designations, such as the “Capitalocene” (Moore), “colonial Anthropocene” (Gómez-Barris), and “Plantationocene” (Haraway and Tsing), have been proposed. These terms shift the focus from humanity as a whole to specific systems and groups, such as capitalism and colonialism, thus emphasizing the political dimensions of environmental change.

  • 4 Earth System Science (ESS) is a transdisciplinary field that emerged in the late 20th century, mark (...)

2However, some scholars approaching the issue from within the epistemological framework of Earth System Science4—the discipline that introduced the concept of the Anthropocene and forms its epistemological foundation—argue that the humanities and social sciences’ critique is “unjustified and misplaced,” as it denies “the radical novelty of the Anthropocene condition” (Simon 2020b, 186, 188). The concept of the Anthropocene was proposed within Earth System Science as a “conceptual effort to capture radical novelty,” as it envisions the crossing of thresholds and planetary boundaries that would mean escaping the state of the Earth system in which human societies have evolved (Simon 2021, 502). Zoltán Boldizsár Simon notes that concepts such as the “colonial Anthropocene” or “Capitalocene” are bound to result in a “domestication of its novelty.” Put differently, it is very tempting to establish continuity between the Anthropocene and, for instance, capitalism and colonialism. However, as Simon puts it, “in trying to connect with the past by smoothing past, present, and future into a pattern of deep continuity, it disconnects from the discourse in which the Anthropocene was proposed as a conceptual effort to capture radical novelty” (Simon 2021, 510). According to Clive Hamilton, the problem with the humanities and social sciences’ understanding of the Anthropocene is their tendency to “read the Anthropocene into the old disciplines with which they are comfortable,” ignoring the paradigm shift that accompanies the novel concept of Earth System Science (20).

3This paper seeks to navigate the tensions between opposing perspectives on the Anthropocene. I neither intend to celebrate nor reject the concept outright; instead, I argue for a more integrative approach that bridges the universality of the Anthropocene with the socio-historical specificity of frameworks like the “Capitalocene” and “colonial Anthropocene.” My analysis incorporates insights from literary texts and activism that demonstrate the necessity of conceiving humanity as a species while also acknowledging the differentiated responsibilities and causes of environmental crises. Consequently, I challenge two prevalent assumptions: first, the claim that the anthropos in Earth System Science necessarily signifies a return to Enlightenment-era universalism, and second, the notion that the Anthropocene should be understood solely through the lens of its “radical novelty.” A critical issue in early scholarship on the Anthropocene is its tendency to dehistoricize the conditions that have led to the current epoch. Such an approach risks erasing the historical processes that have shaped humanity’s planetary impact. Rather than viewing concepts like the Capitalocene and colonial Anthropocene as counterpoints to the Anthropocene, I position them as complementary frameworks that enrich its universal dimensions with necessary historical and socio-political specificity.

4Central to this debate is the rethinking of human agency in the Anthropocene, a task that demands grappling with tensions between two conceptions of the human. Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that the real challenge of conceptualizing the human in the Anthropocene lies precisely in the “collision” of different conceptions of the human. Chakrabarty distinguishes between two understandings of the human—as homo and as anthropos. Homo denotes “humanity as a divided political subject,” a rational self-determining being, while anthropos refers to the “collective and unintended forms of existence of the human, as a geological force, as a species, and as part of the history of life on this planet” (2015, 154–65, 167–73). Consequently, he argues that recognizing humans as geological agents necessitates:

[…] to scale up our imagination of the human. Humans are biological agents, both collectively and as individuals. They have always been so […]. But we can become geological agents only historically and collectively, that is, when we have reached numbers and developed technologies that have an impact on a sufficient scale to affect the planet. (2009, 206–7)

5Importantly, as Hannes Bergthaller and Eva Horn emphasize, the two perspectives on humanity—“the first as a cultural and social being, and the second as a biological species”—should be seen as addressing two “complementary conceptions of the human” (68). Moreover, they write that “one needs to view these conceptions as standing in an irresolvable but indispensable tension” (68).

  • 5 DiCaglio draws on Derek Woods’ “scale critique” to explore the complexities of scalar interactions (...)

6This tension between homo and anthropos also raises questions of scale. The Anthropocene demands a reconceptualization of human agency that spans individual, collective, and planetary dimensions. Scalar thinking becomes essential in this context, as it highlights how the universalizing frameworks of anthropos in Earth System Science coexist—in inherent tension—with the differentiated, socio-political frameworks of homo in the humanities. Joshua DiCaglio emphasizes how the term Anthropocene inherently conflates vastly different scales, such as individual human actions and planetary-scale geological processes, overlaying these perspectives without sufficiently marking their difference (229–230).5 Drawing on Chakra­barty, DiCaglio underscores that humans become geological agents “historically and collectively,” through the accumulation of technologies and activities that transcend individual agency and operate at a planetary scale. As DiCaglio explains, “to get from humans to the Anthropocene, one must first cross a scale domain where this phenomenon ‘human’ now becomes something different” (229). These scales are qualitatively different, yet they must not be viewed as mutually exclusive.

  • 6 There has already been extensive scholarly engagement revisiting universalism. For instance, Mustap (...)
  • 7 The Red Deal was created by The Red Nation, a grassroots Indigenous organization dedicated to decol (...)

7Rather than attempting to resolve these tensions, I argue that they are central to understanding the complexities of the Anthropocene and must be critically engaged with. Thus, it should be clarified that this paper does not propose a new theoretical model of universalism.6 Instead, it demonstrates how placing diverse theoretical approaches in dialogue provides a richer and more comprehensive understanding of humanity’s conditions and responsibilities in the Anthropocene. Following Horn and Bergthaller, the analysis remains intentionally within the productive tensions between the universal and socio-historical specificity. To challenge the “mutual exclusivity” often attributed to these conceptions of the human, I juxtapose two texts that are typically not read together: Richard Powers’s novel Bewilderment (2021) and The Red Deal (2021), a political manifesto by an Indigenous activist collective.7 I argue that despite their generic differences, both texts can productively be read as examples of speculative fiction—not just as a literary genre but as a critical mode for exploring alternative futures at the intersection of science, politics, and narrative imagination. Just as Powers’s Bewilderment imagines ecological futures shaped by humanity’s geological impact, The Red Deal envisions transformative socio-political futures through explicit activist demands.

  • 8 For example, Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism (1909) and Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto (18 (...)

8Reading these texts together is justified precisely by their shared speculative dimensions, narrative strategies, and their imaginative projection of transformative futures. Manifestos inherently propose alternative socio-political systems and structurally align with speculative fiction, demonstrating that the boundary between literary and political texts is often porous. Traditionally viewed as political documents, manifestos are increasingly recognized as literary texts due to their rhetorical and performative qualities (Yanoshevsky, Puchner 2005).8 Historical examples like the Futurist Manifesto and The Communist Manifesto highlight this literary dimension. Furthermore, the act of future envisioning itself is inherently speculative, regardless of whether it occurs through literary texts, manifestos, or even scientific climate models. As Gereon Uerz argues, “Despite variations in method, content, temporal scope, or validity, visions of the future are always hybrids of reality and fiction, since statements about future events and developments cannot, at the moment of their articulation, be judged according to criteria of factual or fictional, true or false” (13, translation mine). Climate scientists themselves acknowledge this speculative dimension explicitly:

Climate models are our crystal balls to get a glimpse of the future, an age-old dream of humanity. But what they offer is not prediction—rather, it comes as a bundle of scenarios [...]. Natural scientists cannot in principle predict the future of climate, because it depends on human actions [...]. That is a matter of choice, not a pre-determined future. What we can do, however, is calculate scenarios in “what if” style (Archer and Rahmstorf 126).

9By bringing Bewilderment and The Red Deal into dialogue, this paper expands the critical and literary scope of speculative fiction, enriching understandings of its role in articulating human experience in the Anthropocene. Ultimately, comparing these texts illuminates how each prioritizes different conceptions of the human, directly linked to the scales at which they operate. While Richard Powers’s Bewilderment “scales up human imagination” (Chakra­barty 2009, 206–7) to envision humanity as a geological force, encompassing ecology and the history of life on the planet, The Red Deal operates on a different scale, exploring the history of human civilization through frameworks such as the “colonial Anthropocene” and “Capitalocene.” Rather than diminishing each other, these perspectives complementarily illustrate the unresolved tensions defining humanity’s condition in the Anthropocene. Moreover, both texts independently reflect these tensions. Bewilderment emphasizes humanity’s planetary-scale impact while also—albeit to a limited degree—gesturing toward socio-political failures, specifically those caused by a populist administration, that exacerbate ecological crises. In contrast, The Red Deal foregrounds the socio-political causes of environmental degradation, while still acknowledging humanity’s shared impact on the Earth system.

Systems thinking and mass extinction in Richard Powers’s Bewilderment (2021)

10Richard Powers’s Bewilderment engages with debates surrounding the concept of universality in the Anthropocene, emphasizing the impact of the human species as a whole. The novel explores this through the lens of mass extinction, highlighting the existential risks that arise when human activities disrupt the biogeochemical processes essential to life on Earth. Today, human activity is widely acknowledged as the main cause of rapid biodiversity decline and as the principal force driving the ongoing sixth mass extinction. Mass extinction, as Simon argues, represents one of the most striking manifestations of the Anthropocene, a “suddenly erupting game-changer event” that brings unprecedented changes to Earth’s systems. Through manifestations like mass extinction, the Anthropocene challenges the linear teleology of human history, since it “threatens to put an end to the human subject of entangled stories” (Simon 2020b, 192). In other words, the Anthropocene disrupts traditional narratives of linear human progress because it raises the possibility of an end to humanity itself.

11This existential challenge becomes a focal point in Powers’s Bewilderment, which imagines a near-future America shaped by escalating extinction rates of animal and plant species. Set against this backdrop, humanity is forced to confront both the planet’s finitude as well as its own. The story is narrated by Theo, an astrobiologist and the father of Robin, a nine-year-old boy struggling with grief after the death of his mother, Allison, an animal rights lawyer. The im­pending ecological collapse renders Theo’s search for extraterrestrial life increasingly futile. Early in the novel, various physicians diagnose Robin with “ADHD,” “OCD,” “Asperger’s” (97), or suggest that he is “on the spectrum” (5). Theo contemplates the fluidity and subjectivity of these diagnoses, resisting any straightforward categorization and asserting that “[e]veryone alive on this fluke little planet is on the spectrum. That’s what a spectrum is” (5). The severe consequences of mass extinction are portrayed in Bewilderment through the lens of a child grappling with the loss of his mother and mourning the demise of the non-human world. Robin’s profound empathy for non-human life forms translates into deep emotional distress over biodiversity loss, manifesting in physical meltdowns. As Robin’s emotional outbursts become more frequent, Theo enrolls him in an experimental therapy that uses decoded neural feedback. In this therapy, Robin is paired with an artificial intelligence (AI) that has been trained using the brain of his deceased mother, Allison. The training enhances Robin’s capacity for ecological “ecstasy,” as he cultivates an intuitive understanding of the interconnectedness among living beings and sharpens his observational skills (94).

12Drawing on Bewilderment, I demonstrate how the anthropos of Earth System Science represents a conceptual shift in understanding human impact. This shift, as analyzed by Zimmer, distinguishes anthropos from the exclusionary notion of Enlightenment Man. To properly distinguish the two, it is essential to consider the paradigm shift that led to the emergence of Earth System Science in the 1980s and the subsequent development of the concept of the Anthropocene. The conceptual precursor to the Anthropocene dates back to the 1950s, as highlighted by Zimmer, evolving from concerns about nuclear extinction and cybernetics to the foundations of modern Earth System Science (176–7). These existential risks catalyzed a new way of thinking about humanity, emphasizing its interconnectedness with Earth’s systems. Zimmer underscores that the looming threat of “universal death” (175) prompted an understanding that “humankind as a whole is killable” (Günther Anders, quoted in Zimmer, 174). This recognition led to the realization that the sum total of human activity must be accounted for when modeling Earth’s systems. Unlike the essentialist claims associated with Enlightenment Man, Earth System Science focuses on “what the sum total of human activity collectively does” rather than “what humankind as a whole essentially is” (Zimmer 186). Building on this premise that “humanity as a whole is killable,” Powers similarly evokes existential threats in Bewilderment, emphasizing what the human species does rather than what it is. Elizabeth Kolbert discusses two scenarios concerning coping with extinction: one in which “human ingenuity will outrun any disaster it sets in motion” (268) and another that leads to human extinction as a consequence of human activity. In Bewilderment, as I will show, the existential threat stems from the massive die-off of animal and plant species, which by extension raises the possibility of human extinction.

  • 9 See Heise’s “Science Fiction and the Time Scales of the Anthropocene” for an exploration of how the (...)
  • 10 See Heise’s Imagining Extinction for a discussion of the cultural frameworks shaping our under­stan (...)

13Through its exploration of existential risks, the novel “scales up human imagination” (Chakrabarty 2009, 206–7), shifting the perspective from individual experiences to an understanding of humanity’s collective impact. As Horn and Bergthaller put it: “What is at stake in the Anthropocene is above all the global agency of the human as anthropos. The space in which the human being is situated now is no longer that of local environment, but that of the world as a whole” (146). The scale of mass extinction, which encompasses the entire planet, and the existential threat to the planet’s survival cannot be adequately captured through the lens of a mourning child alone. Many scholars have expressed concern that existing narratives fail to adequately represent the scale of the Anthropocene in both spatial and temporal dimensions.9 Bewilderment addresses this gap by incorporating science-fiction elements that expand its narrative into outer space, capturing the enormity of a crisis affecting numerous species and the planet itself. “One of the hallmarks of science fiction,” Ursula K. Heise notes, “has been the engagement with the fate of planet Earth as a whole in far futures on Earth itself, in humans’ migration to extraterrestrial habitats, or in their encounters with civilizations from other planets” (2016, 215).10 In Bewilderment, the so-called “Great Silence” (Powers 8) serves as a powerful metaphor, connecting the silence of space with the ensuing silence from species extinction on the planet. Theo’s pursuit as an astrobiologist, passionately searching for life on exoplanets, draws parallels between the mass extinction on Earth and the mysteries of the Fermi paradox—the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial life and the absence of contact with such civilizations. This paradox not only preoccupies Theo but also deeply influences Robin.

He [Robin] was a boy attuned to loss. Of course the Great Silence hurt him. The outrageous size of emptiness made him ask the same question Enrico Fermi did over that famous lunch in Los Alamos, three quarters of a century ago. If the universe were larger and older than anyone could imagine, we had an obvious problem. (8)

  • 11 Italicized dialogue in the novel signifies Robin’s words, distinguishing them from the dialogue of (...)

14On a father-son trip to the Smoky Mountains, Robin spends two days worrying over the silence of a galaxy that ought to be crawling with civilizations. “Dad? With all those places to live, how come nobody’s anywhere?” (8).11 As Theo is unable to settle on a single answer, Robin offers his own interpretation: “That’s why the universe is silent, Dad. Everyone’s hiding. All the smart ones, anyway” (47). The novel intertwines these cosmic questions with Robin’s acute sensitivity to the fading non-human voices of the planet, thereby emphasizing not individual losses but the scope of mass extinction.

15Offering speculative glimpses into extraterrestrial worlds through “bedtime stories,” Theo shares with his son Robin, Bewilderment contextualizes human existence within a broader cosmic framework. Across its 278 pages, the novel includes 25 short chapters—typically ranging from one to three pages each—where the father and son explore the possibilities of life in space. These chapters, reminiscent of 1930s science fiction serials, feature Theo taking Robin on imaginary excursions to planets across the galaxy, based on the models he creates at work. While these planets are inspired by recent exoplanet discoveries, they also include imaginative elements, as father and son, alongside the reader, envision life in these varied worlds. Thus, these bedtime chapters serve as imaginative interludes, punctuating the otherwise straightforward and realist narrative with short science fiction excursions. By doing so, the novel decenters the human species, positioning it as one of many life forms on Earth and in extraterrestrial contexts. In contrast to technophilic ecomodernist conceptions of space as “terra nullius,” justifying space colonization, Bewilderment envisions a galaxy teeming with life. This effectively counters the dominant narrative of human exceptionalism and fosters a less anthropocentric understanding of life within the universe.

16Through these “bedtime stories,” the novel accomplishes what Theo does as part of his job as an astrobiologist. To “test [his] model, [he] look[s] upon the earth from far away, seeing our atmosphere as pale, fuzzy pixels of light reflected off the moon” (172). The novel offers an external view of the Earth reminiscent of the historic “Blue Marble” photograph taken by the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 (NASA). This image has become “an omnipresent emblem of the Anthropocene,” embodying an “all-encompassing, totalizing, and external gaze on the Earth,” while simultaneously highlighting the planet’s vulnerability (Bergthaller and Horn 147–8). However, Bewilderment zooms further out by portraying Earth as just one of many planets. One bedtime story takes Theo and Robin to the planet Statis, which remarkably resembles Earth: “The flowing water and green mountains where we touched down, the woody trees and flowering plants, the snails and worms and flying beetles, even the bony creatures were cousins to those we knew” (38). As one of many, Earth—and by extension, the human species—appears less exceptional. “In a universe ninety-three billion light-years across, Rare Earths sprang up like weeds” (113).

17In addition to the distanced and externalizing gaze from space, the novel incorporates a micro­scopic gaze, focusing on humanity’s embeddedness within Earth’s endangered life forms. While it expands humanity’s perspective, it consistently repositions humans as part of Earth’s eco­logical web, underscoring that Earth remains humanity’s only viable future. By the end of the narrative, Robin reaches a conclusion concerning the Fermi paradox. Questioning adults’ capacity to recognize and appreciate life forms, both on this planet and beyond, he asks, “How would we ever know aliens? We can’t even know birds” (231; emphasis mine). It is not that extra­terrestrial life does not want to be found; rather, it is that adults have forgotten how to actively listen. As Theo puts it concerning the Fermi paradox, “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” (230). Accordingly, the metaphor of “The Great Silence,” which initially stood for the impending silence caused by mass extinction and the disappearing sounds of the non-human world, changes its meaning by the end of the narrative. It now symbolizes the inability to listen—a silence only for those who are not able to actively listen, unlike Robin, who can.

18Through Robin’s way of being in the world, Bewilderment engages with what Horn and Bergthaller see as one of “the fundamental difficulties which an aesthetics of the Anthropocene must tackle”—namely, “entanglement, a new awareness of coexistence and immanence” (102). The novel not only draws on sound metaphorically in the form of “silence,” but through Robin’s listening to the abundance of non-human sounds, it also draws on an understanding of listening as an active practice—a different way of knowing the natural world as well as of knowing loss. This knowing does not mean mere conceptual knowledge but rather a recognition of being in relation to the world. Steven Feld’s concept of “acoustemology,” which merges “acoustics” with “epistemology,” offers a fitting lens for understanding Robin’s engagement with the world in the novel (12). The novel challenges the typical modes of knowledge production in the Anthropocene, which are often reduced to merely knowing about things. “Knowing through relations insists that one does not simply ‘acquire’ knowledge but, rather, that one knows through an ongoing cumulative and interactive process of participation and reflection” (13–14). The novel explores how engagement with sound is integral to comprehending the human species’ relationship with the endangered non-human world. The fact that Robin is “attuned to loss” (8) around him indicates a participatory relationship with the natural world, where loss is not merely known but felt.

19During a tranquil moment, Theo and Robin, equipped with binoculars, discover that Robin’s interest tends less toward “spotting individual birds” and more toward “listening to the calls that fill the ocean of air” (229). This “ocean of air” teems with diverse sounds from various species, each contributing to the sonic biodiversity. Sound, much like water in an ocean, envelops and surrounds, creating an immersive environment in which all creatures coexist. Focusing on sound rather than sight makes a significant difference. As Feld observes, sound, with its immersive qualities, offers a different modality of knowing and being in the world; it “both emanates from and penetrates bodies” and “tunes bodies to specific places and times through their sounding potential” (184), highlighting the world-making aspects of auditory perception and sound production. Specifically, through active listening, Robin con­ceives of his own place in the world: “I’m all mixed into a really huge thing. That’s the coolest part” (204). Robin’s focused listening exemplifies an epistemology rooted in attentive­ness and immersion, creating possibilities for surrounding, and relating to the non-human.

20This attentiveness fundamentally counters one of the most common concerns associated with the Anthropocene concept—namely, that it fosters a sense of human hubris. However, from a posthumanist perspective, conceiving of the human as anthropos can lead to the opposite effect. Through Robin’s way of being, the novel “radicalizes the conception of the anthropos” (Bergthaller and Horn 70), typical of ecological posthumanism. Ecological posthumanists propose to radically abandon any notion of human exceptionalism and consider the human exclusively as anthropos—a life form, among others, entangled in dependencies and symbioses that define what it means to be human. Importantly, this view asserts that:

The new geological epoch demands stories in which (post-)humans recognize the agency of the nonhuman world, renounce the project of mastering it, and hopefully bring about a reversal of fortune. (Bergthaller 215)

21This is evident in Bewilderment through the character Robin and his way of being: “Dad, I feel like I’m waking up. Like I’m inside everything. Look where we are! That tree. This grass! Every­body’s inside everyone!” (177). The human species appears as merely one constitutive species within the world at large, albeit not necessarily one whose flourishing is indispensable for the survival of a large ecosystem. “Don’t worry, Dad. We might not figure it out. But earth will” (182), Robin explains to his father, “Spring will keep coming back” (259). Ultimately, Bewilderment emphasizes humanity’s impact on the planet, advocating for the recognition of humanity’s part in a larger, interconnected ecological system rather than as dominators. Notably, the novel illustrates that while the anthropos of Earth System Science can indeed be mis­used in the exclusionary sense of Enlightenment Man, it need not always be understood this way.

22Importantly, returning to the “irreconcilable yet indispensable tensions” (68) between different conceptions of the human in the Anthropocene, as described by Horn and Bergthaller, Bewilderment does not limit itself to the planetary scale of humanity as an uncontrollable geological force. It also critiques the socio-political failures that exacerbate ecological collapse. Published in 2021, the novel portrays a dystopian near-future United States ruled by a populist administration strongly reminiscent of Trump-era politics, which actively undermines scientific efforts to combat environmental crises. This “chaos-seeking administration” (235) manipulates public opinion through anti-science rhetoric, exemplified by the President’s tweet deriding scientific funding as a “BOTTOMLESS PIT that will never return a SINGLE CENT on investment” (174). Another tweet reads: “So-called ‘Science’ should stop inventing facts and charging them to the American People!!” (174). Such populist governance, as illustrated through the administration’s actions, reflects broader socio-political dynamics that hinder meaningful climate action and foster divisions within society. Through this dual lens, Bewilderment captures the tension of “a humanity that is at the same time culturally and economically differentiated and a unitary species […] an active power that is both a blind geological force and a consciously exercised capacity” (Bergthaller and Horn 12).

23Unfortunately, Robin’s ecstatic connection to the environment is short-lived. He spirals into destructive habits after the anti-environment president slashes funding for neural therapy. Unable to modulate his reactions to anthropogenic damage, he experiences a severe breakdown. Toward the end of the narrative, Robin tragically dies in an accident while attempting to remove cairns from a river in the Smoky Mountains, which threaten riverine life. This tragic event signifies that the hoped-for reversal of fortune, where humans recognize and align with the agency of the non-human world, is not achieved. The final “bedtime story” chapter unfolds after his death and contrasts with the other bedtime stories in length, comprising just three sentences instead of the usual one to three pages. It encapsulates the dire consequences of life’s disregard : “There was a planet that couldn’t figure out where everyone was. It died of lone­liness. That happened billions of times in our galaxy alone” (275). Unlike previous stories that imaginatively visit far-off planets, this brief story, told in just three sentences, tells the story of Planet Earth. Theo, as an overt first-person narrator, disappears. Moreover, shifting to the past tense and through a temporal leap that exceeds the human timeline reflects the finitude of the planet. The existential threat is evoked not only through the looming specter of mass extinction but by the explicit reflection that occurs after the planet has already ceased to exist.

24The planet’s finitude, experienced from hindsight, is imagined yet again by the very final chapter of the main plotline in which Theo, now through an AI session trained on Robin’s brain patterns, seeks closeness to his deceased son. On a final journey, they ascend together into orbit, high above the place they have been visiting. As readers embark on this final journey into orbit, they find themselves in a vertical position, peering down at Earth and picturing Earth as a planet. “Can you believe where we just were?” (278), Theo hears Robin asking him. For the final time, the novel reframes the reader’s object of attention, in which humanity as a totality faces its own potential finitude:

Oh, this planet was a good one. And we, too, were good, as good as the burn of the sun and the rain’s sting and the smell of living soil, the all-over song of endless solutions singing in the air of a changing world that by every calculation ought never to have been. (278)

25This perspective, from an ostensibly impossible vantage point after humanity’s extinction, transitions the familial “we” of father and son into a collective “we” that encompasses all humanity. The novel thus stretches human and geological timescales, positioning humanity’s existence as a transient episode in the vast timeline of the universe. Like “the rain’s sting” or “the smell of living soil,” humanity’s existence is portrayed as a fleeting moment in the grand timeline of the universe. Under the looming shadow of its own extinction, humanity’s impact on the planet is rendered most vividly. Moreover, just as Earth “by every calculation ought never to have been,” by extension, the human, which has collectively turned into a powerful force within nature, nevertheless remains a small, almost accidental part of the universe. Hope in the novel, therefore, does not stem from the survival of the human species, but the fact that despite the potential extinction of humanity, life will prevail.

The Red Deal (2021) : Exploring the “Capitalocene” and the “colonial Anthropocene”

26It is undeniable that the responsibilities for climate change, mass extinction, and the associated impacts are disproportionately distributed across species, classes, races, and genders. Yet, determining cause and moral responsibility requires considering humans as rational beings with agency, rather than as an unintentional geological force (Chakrabarty 2018) operating on a planetary scale. The key point is that the anthropos is fundamentally different from homo and should be considered on its own terms. As DiCaglio puts it,

the ambiguity of the ‘us’ for the attribution of agency and the work performed “historically and collectively” creates a potential scalar conflation that manifests as the double binds of environmentalism [...] : we both are and are not the agents (229).

27So far, I have shown how Bewilderment, by incorporating sci-fi elements, evokes humanity in its entirety, thus scaling up the imagination from the individual to the human species as a geo­logical force. By contrast, in the remainder of this paper, I will focus on the form of the manifesto, which, “infused with the history of revolution and struggle against all forms of oppressions,” (Hanna 33) begins from a position of difference. As I demonstrate, it shifts from the planetary scale, where humanity collectively operates as anthropos, to a scale, where humanity is understood as a historically and culturally differentiated subject.

28The Red Deal: Indigenous Actions to Save Our Earth was published in 2021 by Common Notions Press and authored by the Native American activist group The Red Nation. It un­apologetically adopts a leftist stance. The term “Red” signifies a dual commitment to Indi­genous liberation and revolutionary left politics. At the heart of The Red Deal’s philosophy are intertwined themes of anti-capitalism and decolonization. In my analysis of Richard Power’s Bewilderment, I have demonstrated how the novel uses the looming possibility of mass extinction to challenge the reader’s perception of humanity’s role within the Earth system. This perspective does not necessarily erase the diverse experiences and differentiated responsibilities of the human as a politically divided subject. Simon explains that “the assumption that different kinds of Anthropocene narratives anesthetize (at best) or inactivate each other (at worst) is based on the deeper conviction that these stories are about the same thing” (2020b, 187). By putting Bewilderment into dialogue with the activist manifesto The Red Deal, it becomes apparent that they operate on entirely different scales and tell different stories of the Anthropocene.

29The Red Deal manifesto frames the environmental crisis as a result of capitalism’s exploitative nature. The notion of the “Capitalocene,” for Jason Moore, serves as a critique of the Anthro­pocene concept by arguing that capitalism’s commodification of nature—treating it merely as a resource—is the actual driver of today’s environmental crisis, not the vague, all-encompassing entity known as “humanity” (Moore 2016b). By framing environmental collapse through the lens of the “Capitalocene,” The Red Deal, much like Richard Power’s Bewilderment, highlights the pressing issue of mass extinction, emphasizing that “there is no longer any doubt that we have entered the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history” (The Red Nation 125). However, it diverges from Bewilderment by not highlighting the shared impact of humanity as a geological force within the larger Earth system. Instead, it primarily focuses on specific human-made systems as a root cause of the environmental crisis: “Capitalism, with its unrelenting demand for profit, uses and destroys the land without consideration for future generations. Extractive industries, logging, infrastructure encroachment, deforestation, and improper agri­cul­tural practices such as monocropping and overgrazing all contribute to a decline in soil structure” (126-7).

30Moreover, from the very first few pages, it places the “struggle for a carbon-free future” (21) within the broad history of class struggle, portraying the planetary crisis as the next phase in a century-long class struggle. The Red Deal aligns itself with its most famous predecessor, The Communist Manifesto (1848), authored by Marx and Engels. The collective argues that this struggle for a carbon-free future could either set the stage for a “revolutionary trans­formation” (21) or, in a grimmer scenario, lead to outcomes “much worse than what Marx and Engels imagined in 1848, when they cautioned that ‘the common ruin of the contending classes’ was a probable outcome if the capitalist class was not overthrown” (21). The authors expand on the idea of “much worse” and describe it in the following passage: “the common ruin of entire peoples, species, landscapes, grasslands, waterways, oceans, and forests—which has been well underway for centuries” (22). They stress that this environmental destruction, which has been happening for centuries, “has intensified more in the last three decades than in all of human existence” (22). Essentially, the current planetary crisis is attributed to the failure to “overthrow the capitalist class,” win class struggles in favor of the working class, and dismantle capitalism.

31As a result, the manifesto incorporates what is set on a geological timescale in Earth System Science into the timeline of the history of human civilization—more specifically, class history. “The time of human history—the pace at which we tell stories of individuals and institutions—has now collided with the timescales of two other histories, both deep time, the time of evolution of life on the planet, and geological time” (Chakrabarty 2015, 179). Whereas in the Anthro­po­cene of Earth System Science the anthropos becomes an actor on the geological timescale, in The Red Deal, the authors refocus the reader’s attention on the timescale of human history—the history of class struggle. Hence, the document’s reference to the last three decades serves a dual purpose: it underscores the dramatic increase in global carbon dioxide emissions since 1990 and simultaneously marks the symbolic end of the communist era in Eastern Europe, which also occurred in the 1990s. By citing this period, The Red Deal strategically aligns these two events. This temporal alignment implies that the escalation of environmental degradation and the collapse of communist ideologies in Europe are not merely coincidental but inter­con­nected events within the broader context of the historical class struggle and capitalist expansion.

  • 12 Gómez-Barris joins other scholars who have similarly emphasized the links between the Anthropocene (...)

32However, the manifesto should be understood not only through the framework of the “Capitalocene” but also through the lens of the “colonial Anthropocene,” a term first con­cep­tualized by Macarena Gómez-Barris. Gómez-Barris critiques the adequacy of the “nomen­clature of the Anthropocene,” arguing that it both “universalize[s] its effects” and “obscures the ongoing consequences of colonialism” (2).12 Indeed, Gómez-Barris’s concep­tu­al­ization of the “colonial Anthropocene” explicitly draws on Kathryn Yusoff’s A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Yusoff’s notion of “geo-logics” not only critiques the universalizing notion of the anthropos but also reveals how geological and ecological formations themselves are materially embedded in histories of racialized violence and colonial extraction. These theoretical frameworks are integral to understanding The Red Deal, which explicitly treats capitalism and colonialism as two sides of the same coin. “[T]he original imperial violence enacted by the US through Indigenous genocide and colonization in North America” (63) is linked by the document to contemporary instances of resource extraction and violence against Indigenous peoples by settlers, all driven by the pursuit of natural resources, territorial positioning, and profit. Mostly focused on colonization as a horizontal movement, The Red Deal, like Bewilderment, ventures into the vertical: “The atmosphere has become colonized, preventing [the Global South] from following the industrialization and development path that the Global North pursued. The unequal distribution of power—and suffering—is literally in the molecules we breathe and drink” (12). In contrast to Bewilderment, which takes a vertical perspective to highlight the shared impact humanity has on the planet, The Red Deal starts from a position of difference. Here, The Red Deal not only emphasizes socio-political inequalities but highlights how colonialism materially inscribes itself into environmental elements—such as air and water—thus physically shaping human and non-human bodies and landscapes.

33This grounding in both the “Capitalocene” and the “colonial Anthropocene” underscores The Red Deal’s commitment to historicizing the Anthropocene by linking current environ­mental crises to longstanding systems of colonialism and capitalism. “Comparing past states of affairs or conditions to present or expected future states of affairs or conditions,” as Simon notes “is possible only inasmuch as the comparison concerns the past, the present, and the future of an identifiable subject that goes through change over time” (2021, 500; emphasis mine). The identifiable subject undergoing change in the manifesto is the colonized subject seeking emancipation. This change is traced not only with regard to the past but, even more importantly, with regard to the future. The Red Deal, through its lists and demands, envisions a future where Indigenous peoples, united with the working class, will bring about a classless and decolonized future. Thus, it suggests redirecting resources from military aid, policing, and wealth concentration toward a “caretaking economy” that prioritizes the care and well-being of people and the environment over profit and exploitation to supplant capitalist systems (23–25). In con­trast, the Anthropocene of Earth System Science is characterized by “unprecedented change [which] displaces the subject itself. As a future prospect, it entails either extinction prospects or the replacement and supersession of the human by the posthuman […]” (Simon 2020a, 11; emphasis mine). This is clearly highlighted by Powers’s Bewilderment. As the novel imagines the extinction of humanity, it displaces said subject. Accordingly, while both texts speculate about the future, they operate on entirely different scales. The Red Deal operates on the scale of the history of human civilization and necessarily includes a vision of the future that incorporates the human as a changed subject. In contrast, Bewilderment envisions a future without the human.

34Significantly, The Red Deal and concepts like the “colonial Anthropocene” not only rename the current epoch but frame the environmental crisis as a crisis of “intrahuman justice” and add a layer of moral accountability to the discourse. Chakrabarty explains that although the Anthro­pocene in Earth System Science is a “causal term that does not signify any moral culpability” (2015, 157), it often morphs into a moral issue:

It is thus when we think of the climate crisis through the idea of moral—and not causal—responsibility that climate change becomes a question of justice and hence a political question as well. Who should own the moral responsibility for the emission of greenhouse gases ? Who should bear the cost of mitigation and adaptation ? Should the “polluter pays” principle apply ? Global warming then poses problems of intrahuman justice. (2015, 159)

35While Bewilderment primarily focuses on the shared impact of the human on the Earth system, The Red Deal primarily focuses on the causes and argues that the environmental crisis is caused by unequal power distribution, where “A selected few are hoarding the life rafts while also shooting holes in the sinking ship” (19). The document highlights how “the burden of transition” should lie “at the feet of those most responsible for carbon emission-driven climate change, not those most imperilled by it” (12), thus introducing questions of moral culpability into the debate.

36However, while the manifesto highlights socio-political disparities rooted in capitalism and colonialism, it does not deny the shared impact of humanity as a species. As with Bewilderment, The Red Deal captures the tension characteristic of the human condition in the Anthropocene by reframing the shared impact of the human species through an Indigenous onto-epistemological framework that emphasizes relationality. The manifesto states, “Often, in Indigenous knowledge, we see humans as the youngest species. Because of this, we rely on our old, non-human relatives to guide us and give us structure on how to live in a good way” (74). Humanity is placed within a broader ecological web, advocating for mutual care and responsibility rather than domination. Crucially, The Red Deal bridges localized Indigenous knowledge systems with a broader acknowledgment of planetary ecological interdependence. It argues that “it is from the plants and animals and the air and the water that we draw our patterns of organization for cultures and societies,” (74) foregrounding the idea that humanity must learn from non-human relatives to live sustainably. This relational perspective offers a counterpoint to the abstraction of Earth System Science, emphasizing a perspective that is simultaneously grounded in localized cultural practices and planetary-scale interconnections.

37To further illuminate how The Red Deal addresses these scalar tensions—especially in comparison to Bewilderment—I now turn explicitly to the manifesto’s form. Just as Powers’s novel uses science-fiction interludes to scale upward to planetary perspectives, the structure of The Red Deal distinctly foregrounds politically differentiated subjects through its very form. I propose that the organizational structure of The Red Deal can be read as an intentional deployment of geological imagery, evoking the stratification characteristic of Earth’s geological layers. However, whereas geological strata in dominant Anthropocene discourse often imply a universalizing framework—conceiving humanity as a singular geological force whose collective impacts are uniformly inscribed into Earth’s geological record—The Red Deal deliberately repurposes stratification to emphasize historical and political specificity rather than universal sameness. Yusoff’s conceptualization of “geosocial strata” provides particularly useful theoretical grounding here, capturing how geological layers and social histories mutually constitute each other. Yusoff argues that geological strata are never merely geological; rather, they are inherently political and social formations, materially and historically shaped by processes of extraction, capitalist exploitation, and racialized colonial practices. She writes: “strata are a material and affective infrastructure through which the social becomes embodied (literally) in forms of subjectivity, modes of social organization, and in the bonds of sociability” (Yusoff, 109). In other words, geological processes actively co-produce not only physical environments but also social identities, relationships, and organizational structures, materially embedding historical injustices into everyday lived realities.

38Building explicitly upon Yusoff’s concept of geosocial strata, the structural organization of The Red Deal explicitly mimics geological layering through its segmentation into four core principles (“What Creates Crisis Cannot Solve It,” “Change from Below and to the Left,” “Politicians Can’t Do What Only Mass Movements Do,” and “From Theory to Action”) and three primary areas of struggle (“Divest,” “Heal Our Bodies,” and “Heal Our Planet”). Early sections such as “Defund Police” (46) and “Abolish Incarceration” (58) function as deep strata embedding historical oppression, with later sections like “Clean Sustainable Energy” (112) and “Protection and Restoration of Sacred Sites” building atop them, proposing restorative actions. This layering highlights colonial and capitalist violence as ongoing sedimented realities. This structured layering underscores how colonial and capitalist violence remains actively sedimented, continuously shaping contemporary social, ecological, and geological realities.

39Moreover, the segmented, layered form of The Red Deal itself formally enacts the ways colonial and capitalist violence become embedded within social and geological structures. By arranging demands, and historical references into discrete yet accumulative layers—akin to geological strata—the manifesto structurally mimics how histories of exploitation tangibly imprint themselves onto landscapes, and bodies. Each distinct section visibly documents specific forms of violence, injustice, or resistance, clearly illustrating Yusoff’s argument that strata are inherently political formations shaped by extraction, capitalist exploitation, and racialized colonial practices. The manifesto explicitly emphasizes this interconnectedness:

Decades of coal mining, uranium mining, and burning of coal in power plants that surround Indigenous lands have contributed to higher asthma rates and possibly greater instances of cancers in Indigenous communities. (95)

40The Red Deal concretely addresses how colonial extraction materially shapes geological and ecological conditions, embedding historical injustices within contemporary lived realities and bodily experiences of Indigenous populations. By directly citing specific practices—coal and uranium mining and coal combustion—the manifesto vividly foregrounds how geosocial strata are continuously reproduced through ongoing extraction and exploitation.

  • 13 See Puchner, who emphasizes that the manifesto genre foregrounds the performative power of language (...)

41Moving beyond the structural organization, the rhetorical and stylistic features of The Red Deal—characterized by brevity, repetition, and rhythm—formally parallel geological processes. As Martin Puchner observes, the manifesto’s syntax can come in “staccato rhythm, which is that of a hammer hitting in sentence after sentence, nailing down point after point” (Puchner 2005, 293). Enumerated demands such as “Decolonize the atmosphere,” “Mass land return,” and “Restore treaty-making with Indigenous nations” (134) accumulate rhetorical force incrementally through repetition. Just as geological layers build up incrementally through repeated deposition, the repetition and rhythmic elements in the manifesto cumulatively build rhetorical force. The parallel structure and repeated phrases (“We can contribute,” “We can use,” “We can unconditionally support” (98)) create a rhythmic momentum, underscoring the collective power and unified direction that the manifesto aims to inspire. This performative dimension,13 central to the manifesto genre, seeks immediate political effects rather than merely informing the reader. Moreover, the recurrent collective pronoun “we” explicitly positions readers within historically and politically specific struggles, consciously constructing differen­tiated political subjectivities opposed to the abstract, universal anthropos.

42Finally, beyond explicitly outlining envisioned futures, the layered form of The Red Deal itself manifests a future-oriented temporality. While explicitly acknowledging historical oppression and colonial violence, its cumulative, stratified structure anticipates and makes visible transformative possibilities. Each rhetorical demand builds incrementally, mirroring geological processes of deposition and sedimentation, thus embedding past injustices into a visible archive that simultaneously projects potential futures. This dual temporality resonates with Patrick Whitmarsh’s notion of Anthropocene archives, which he argues contain not only “the legibility of the past” but also “the obscurity of the future,” embedded “vertically into the geophysical matter of the earth” (Whitmarsh 17). Unlike Bewilderment, which imagines planetary futures beyond human political agency, The Red Deal structurally envisions politically differentiated futures explicitly rooted in restorative justice and Indigenous sovereignty.

43As I have demonstrated, although the anthropos of Earth System Science, as imagined in Bewilderment, offers ways to conceptualize humanity’s impact on the earth system, it is crucial to raise the question of causality and moral culpability to understand who and which human-made systems have precipitated the environmental crisis, as addressed in The Red Deal. Reading these two texts together reveals the essential and productive tension between viewing humanity as an undifferentiated geological force and as politically differentiated historical agents. While individually, each text privileges one perspective over the other—Bewilderment emphasizing ecological posthumanism’s anthropos, The Red Deal stressing socio-political differentiation—juxtaposing them underscores the indispensability of holding these perspectives together. Additionally, both texts, in their own ways, challenge traditional epistemologies and foreground relational forms of knowledge. Robin’s acoustic engagement with sound in Bewilderment evokes a relational understanding of human-nonhuman connections, while The Red Deal explicitly draws on Indigenous knowledge systems that emphasize humanity’s interdependence within ecological webs. Moreover, both texts deploy speculative dimensions, projecting transformative visions of the future from contrasting but complementary scales: the planetary and existential perspective in Powers’s narrative, and the explicitly political, restorative futures envisioned by the manifesto. Ultimately, this analysis suggests that fully grasping the com­plexities of the Anthropocene requires maintaining these productive tensions—between the universal and the particular, the ecological and the political, and speculative visions and grounded realities. By engaging with rather than resolving these tensions, literary and activist texts enrich our understanding of the intersecting scales and diverse responsibilities inherent in addressing ecological crises, as well as the imaginative possibilities necessary to envision more equitable and sustainable futures.

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Notes

1 The Anthropocene Working Group’s proposal to formally recognize the Anthropocene was rejected in 2024 by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). Thus, it remains an informal term. See International Union of Geological Sciences, “Statement on the Anthropocene,” March 20, 2024, https://www.iugs.org/_files/ugd/f1fc07_40d1a7ed58de458c9f8f24de5e739663.pdf.

2 Sylvia Wynter has highlighted how the West has historically constructed the notion of the “human.” According to Wynter, the notion of “Man” that emerged since the Enlightenment is both pervasive and exclusive. It embodies a narrow ideal of the Western middle and upper classes, which is fundamentally racist, violent, and a cornerstone of global exploitation.

3 See Zimmer (171–74), who traces the conceptual origins of the Anthropocene and argues that it should not be dismissed as another form of “spurious universalism” but should be understood on its own terms, offering new theoretical challenges and opportunities.

4 Earth System Science (ESS) is a transdisciplinary field that emerged in the late 20th century, marking a paradigm shift in scientific understanding of the Earth. Unlike earlier frameworks that focus on local and regional eco­systems, ESS conceptualizes the Earth as a unified, dynamic, and integrated system. As Hamilton explains, the foundations of ESS were laid through significant developments in “the 1970s and 1980s that coalesced in the 1990s” (9–10). By the 1990s, ESS had fully coalesced into what Hamilton describes as the “integrative meta-science of the whole planet understood as a unified, complex, evolving system beyond the sum of its parts” (10). For a detailed discussion, see Hamilton.

5 DiCaglio draws on Derek Woods’ “scale critique” to explore the complexities of scalar interactions in the Anthropocene. As DiCaglio notes, Woods’ work highlights the transformative nature of objects as they change across scales (scale variance), providing a crucial framework for analyzing the ambiguities inherent in terms like “Anthropocene” (227–230). See DiCaglio and Woods.

6 There has already been extensive scholarly engagement revisiting universalism. For instance, Mustapha Kamal Pasha critiques Chakrabarty’s call for a “new universalism” in response to the Anthropocene. Pasha argues that Chakrabarty risks reviving a secular-liberal, “one-world” universalism that erases postcolonial differences. As an alternative, Pasha proposes a “differentiated universalism” grounded in human finitude (shared mortality) (364–365). For another recent perspective, see Souleymane Bachir Diagne’s notion of a universalism rooted in cultural pluralism, dialogue, and intercultural translation.

7 The Red Deal was created by The Red Nation, a grassroots Indigenous organization dedicated to decolonization, Indigenous liberation, and environmental justice. For more on The Red Nation, see their website (accessed November 25, 2024): www.therednation.org. The Red Deal was published by Red Media, an imprint of Common Notions, transforming the “Red Nation Pamphlet Manifesto” (originally released online in 2015) into a book in 2021. For further discussion, see Annie C. Mackillican. For a broader historical context on Indigenous resistance and environmental justice, see Nick Estes.

8 For example, Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism (1909) and Marx and Engels’s Communist Manifesto (1848) are often cited not only as political tracts but as influential literary texts in their own right. Such manifestos use vivid rhetoric and poetic imagery to shape visionary narratives—indeed, Galia Yanoshevsky observes that a manifesto “can be political or literary as well” (261) blurring those categories. Likewise, Puchner, in Poetry of the Revolution (2006), underscores the manifesto’s literary dimension, describing the genre as defined by the performative power of its language.

9 See Heise’s “Science Fiction and the Time Scales of the Anthropocene” for an exploration of how the scaling-up of the imagination in the Anthropocene translates into narrative forms, specifically within the genre of science fiction.

10 See Heise’s Imagining Extinction for a discussion of the cultural frameworks shaping our under­standing of extinction and endangered species.

11 Italicized dialogue in the novel signifies Robin’s words, distinguishing them from the dialogue of other characters, which is enclosed in quotation marks, except for Allison. This stylistic choice not only emphasizes Robin’s unique perspective but also serves as a narrative device that foreshadows his death, which an attentive reader might discern. The book is narrated by Theo after the events of the novel have taken place. Theo remembers the characters who had survived differently from those who did not. The words of his son and the words of his wife are qualitatively different from the words of his colleagues or neighbors.

12 Gómez-Barris joins other scholars who have similarly emphasized the links between the Anthropocene and colo­nialism. Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin proposed dating the Anthropocene to the European colo­nization of the Americas, citing the resulting genocide and ecological transformations. Likewise, Heather Davis and Zoe Todd highlight the Anthropocene’s deep roots in settler colonialism and genocide, while Kyle Powys Whyte (2018) emphasizes how colonialism has continuously disrupted Indigenous ecological relations.

13 See Puchner, who emphasizes that the manifesto genre foregrounds the performative power of language through its explicit “investment in the effects and the efficacy of its own language” (2005, 291).

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References

Electronic reference

Marina Pingler, “Navigating Universality in the Anthropocene: The Contested “Anthropos” in Bewilderment (2021) and The Red Deal (2021)”Miranda [Online], 32 | 2025, Online since 13 October 2025, connection on 20 January 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/67443; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/14yoc

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About the author

Marina Pingler

Research Fellow
University of Tübingen
marina.pingler@uni-tuebingen.de

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