Papers by Stefan Skrimshire
Journal for Cultural Research, 2011
... “There is no God and we are his prophets”: Deconstructing Redemption in Cormac McCarthy'... more ... “There is no God and we are his prophets”: Deconstructing Redemption in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. ... It also opens up more interesting avenues for exploring the theme of redemption and the messianic in contemporary disaster fiction. ...
Environmental Philosophy, 2009
According to recent scientific reports, certain climatic tipping points can be understood as "poi... more According to recent scientific reports, certain climatic tipping points can be understood as "points of no return," in which, for instance, anthropogenic interference changes global temperatures irreversibly. Such an outcome presents a situation unlike any considered before by risk theorists, for it introduces an element of radical uncertainty into the very value (considered ethically, culturally, and politically) of taking action on climate change. In the following I argue that ethical bases for action that rely on traditional concepts of risk (such as the dominant precautionary principle) are vastly ill equipped to make sense of the catastrophes of the scale predicted by most climatologists today. Instead we need to understand the possibilities of political action beyond thresholds assumed by tipping-point calculations. This in turn means investigating action as a form of risktaking and as operating against the conservative connotations of environmental precaution. It also implies acting against the calculative assumption that one's actions are meaningless "unless this happens by this time," a sentiment propelled, perhaps, by the repetition in mainstream media of reference to the finality of points of no return.
This chapter is premised on two claims: First, that eschatological doctrine has often reflected w... more This chapter is premised on two claims: First, that eschatological doctrine has often reflected wider social and political fears aout the future of society and the planet.
When St Augustine found a fossilised dinosaur's tooth whilst walking along the beach at Utica in ... more When St Augustine found a fossilised dinosaur's tooth whilst walking along the beach at Utica in the early 5 th century, he saw in it the image of biblical prehistory: that time before the flood when giants were said to roam the Earth. When we discover traces of the prehistoric past and ask for their meaning, we do so from within stories that run deeply in our blood. How does one 'see' an epoch? Is it possible to imagine deep history? To trace the imprint of geological time? With the birth of a new imagination called Anthropocene, we have been asked to think ourselves into processes we once thought were unthinkable: not only the vast stretches of earth's history before us, but also the possibility of vast futures ahead that humans will not inhabit. How does one do it? There is resistance, no doubt, to the idea of a story that does not contain us, just as there was resistance amongst our eminent scientists before the tools of geology and the discovery of deep time, to the stories within fossils that spoke of eons before our arrival. Perhaps this is mirrored in our troubled vision of the far future -a world without us, perhaps without even the trace of our passing.
For at least as long as the birth of environmentalism, discourses of ecological crisis have adopt... more For at least as long as the birth of environmentalism, discourses of ecological crisis have adopted, both consciously and unconsciously, themes and concepts derived from Jewish and Christian Apocalypses. These are ancient texts remembered best for their cosmic and spiritual revelations about the world and the world to come. The scope and methods of this adoption have varied widely: from symbolic representation (images of the Four Horsemen, for instance) to the influence of end-time belief upon environmental policy. More recently, references to apocalypse have accompanied the study of climate change specifically. However, they have tended to do so without more than a superficial engagement with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of apocalyptic faith. This review article addresses this issue by engaging the meanings of apocalyptic faith within four distinct areas in the interdisciplinary study of climate change: (1) Christian ecotheology; (2) critical and social scientific discourse; (3) policy and media communications; and (4) contemporary philosophy and ethics.
What should we read into the patronising caricature of environmental campaigners as latter day "p... more What should we read into the patronising caricature of environmental campaigners as latter day "prophets" and "apocalyptic" doom-mongers? Unmasking this pejorative association reveals two important, and popular, misunderstandings. The first is the conflation of the genre of apocalypse with that of prophecy, or to be more precise, the casting of Christian apocalyptic as a subgenre (and development) of the Jewish prophetic tradition. And the second is the assumption that in both prophecy and apocalypse what is definitive (indeed what links genre and subgenre and gives "apocalyptic discourse" rhetorical clout in the secular domain) is the practice of forecasting the future. Exposing and critiquing these assumptions is, I hope to show, more than an exercise in theological pedantry. It tells us something important about whatand by whomwe expect from the narration of future scenarios, in contemporary society. The objection will no doubt come that these referenceswhether from sceptics or campaigners -are at best tongue in cheek, at worst provocative secular uses of theological categories. I think they tell us more than that. As historical analogies they reveal important clues about how critical voices about environmental and social futures are received in popular and political cultures. If "prophetic" figures are today derided for their departure from secular, rational discourses, this should make us curious about what this "pre-modern" function was perceived to have been in the first place, and what we assume it has been replaced by today.
Global and Planetary Change, Jan 1, 2010
Keywords: geology geoscience geomorphology catastrophism neocatastrophism uniformitarianism disas... more Keywords: geology geoscience geomorphology catastrophism neocatastrophism uniformitarianism disaster science
Heythrop Journal-a Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology, 2010
Cultural Politics: An International Journal, 2008
Global and Planetary Change, 2010
Literature and Theology, 2006
Scientific and media reports have become enthralled by the apocalyptic overtones of climatic 'tip... more Scientific and media reports have become enthralled by the apocalyptic overtones of climatic 'tipping points'. These are thresholds after which a relatively small shift in the Earth system (e.g. melting Arctic perma-frost) has a big, sudden impact on the overall system. Related is the prospect of runaway or 'irreversible' global warming. But they have also revived an interest in the original sociological sense -i.e. tipping points in social and political movement. How do we relate the two? Given the possibility that certain catastrophic events may be unavoidable, climatic tipping points present a situation of global risk unlike any considered before. They introduce an element of radical uncertainty into the very value of taking action. In this paper I argue that ethical bases for taking action must think beyond thresholds assumed by calculations of traditional probabilities of risk such as the precautionary principle or cost-benefit analysis (or simply the assumption that 'my actions will be meaningless unless this happens by this time'). I demonstrate this by reporting from an emerging political movement in the UK that is demonstrating precisely the value of risktaking in the 'public sphere' of non-violent direct action. Appropriately enough for (Hansen's) reference to the question of redemption (below), theological insight may indeed have something to contribute here. For an ethics that places imperatives for faith in action prior to epistemic certainty (doing, in other words, comes before knowing) lies arguably at the root of many religious or otherwise utopian traditions.
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Papers by Stefan Skrimshire