Books by Hannes Bergthaller
Handbook of the Anthropocene, 2023
This article outlines the role which changes in food production have played in the transition to ... more This article outlines the role which changes in food production have played in the transition to the Anthropocene, focusing particularly on plantation agriculture and the impact of fossil fuels on agricultural practices. It argues that food is crucial in order to understand how the relationship between humans and the Earth has been transformed, and that a further transformation of the food system will be necessary in order for human and nonhuman life to flourish in the new geological epoch.
Papers by Hannes Bergthaller
Springer International Publishing eBooks, 2022
Similar to posthumanist theory, the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch dissolv... more Similar to posthumanist theory, the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch dissolves traditional distinctions between nature and culture. In its original formulation by the Earth system sciences, however, the concept treats the anthropos to whom the ongoing transformation of the Earth system is attributed as a black box. This essay argues that neither the Earth system sciences nor traditional humanist or established posthumanist understandings of the human are in themselves sufficient to render a full account of this anthropos; doing so requires assembling knowledge of human and natural history from across a range of disciplines. James C. Scott’s concept of the domus complex as site of early state-making and Peter K. Haff’s concept of the technosphere are discussed as providing possible templates for such a narrative of humanity in the Anthropocene. Both describe humans as entrained within larger-scale systems whose dynamic they are unable to control, thus raising the question of the scope within which autonomous human agency can be exercised.
      Ecocritics tend to think of environmentalism a... more       Ecocritics tend to think of environmentalism as a form of resistance against the anthropocentrism of Western modernity. Such a view stands in contrast to biopolitical theory, which sees modernity in terms of a naturalization of the human and a generalized effort to increase the productivity of life that cuts across species lines. Building on the work of Roberto Esposito, this process can be described as a radicalized form of ecological immunization whereby humans and their domesticates are protected from the risks that attend membership in ecological communities, resulting in an “unnatural growth of the natural” (H. Arendt). The self-destructive strategies of immunization which characterize biopolitical modernity are based on a conception of life in terms of competition over scarce resources, inevitably leading to Malthusian crises. Lynn Margulis’ understanding of evolution as symbiogenesis offers an alternative on which an affirmative biopolitics balancing the demands of immunity and community can build.      Los ecocríticos tienden a concebir el ecologismo como una forma de resistencia frente al antropocentrismo del Occidente moderno. Esa visión contrasta con la teoría biopolítica, que ve la modernidad como una naturalización del ser humano y un esfuerzo generalizado por aumentar la productividad de la vida que trasciende las fronteras entre especies. Basándose en el trabajo de Roberto Esposito, este proceso puede describirse como una forma radicalizada de inmunización ecológica por la cual los humanos y las criaturas domesticadas por ellos están protegidas de los riesgos que entraña pertenecer a una comunidad ecológica, resultando en un “crecimiento antinatural de lo natural” (H, Arendt). Las estrategias autodestructivas de inmunización que caracterizan la modernidad biopolítica se basan en una concepción de la vida en términos de competición por recursos escasos, llevando inevitablemente a crisis malthusianas. El entendimiento de la evolución de Lynn Margulis como simbiogénesis ofrece una alternativa sobre la que puede construirse una biopolítica afirmativa que equilibre los requisitos de inmunidad y comunidad
Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, 2022
Similar to posthumanist theory, the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch dissolv... more Similar to posthumanist theory, the concept of the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch dissolves traditional distinctions between nature and culture. In its original formulation by the Earth system sciences, however, the concept treats the anthropos to whom the ongoing transformation of the Earth system is attributed as a black box. This essay argues that neither the Earth system sciences nor traditional humanist or established posthumanist understandings of the human are in themselves sufficient to render a full account of this anthropos; doing so requires assembling knowledge of human and natural history from across a range of disciplines. James C. Scott’s concept of the domus complex as site of early state-making and Peter K. Haff’s concept of the technosphere are discussed as providing possible templates for such a narrative of humanity in the Anthropocene. Both describe humans as entrained within larger-scale systems whose dynamic they are unable to control, thus raising the question of the scope within which autonomous human agency can be exercised.
Culture, Creativity and Environment
Abstract For Emerson and those nature writers who followed his lead, it is the belief in nature&a... more Abstract For Emerson and those nature writers who followed his lead, it is the belief in nature's permanence and consistency which allows them to pursue the project of deriving 'spiritual facts' from 'natural facts,'making nature the normative ground on which to raise ...
Peter Lang AG, Jan 21, 2019
Indiana University Press, 2014
Climate and American Literature, 2021
The ascendancy of new materialist theory in the humanities since the turn of the century parallel... more The ascendancy of new materialist theory in the humanities since the turn of the century parallels the rise of anthropogenic climate change as a central political concern. This is not a coincidence: climate change exposes the limitations of both social constructivism and scientific realism – and new materialist ontologies claim to offer a way out of the impasse between these two modes of thought. This essay examines the new materialist approaches to climate change proposed by Bruno Latour, Astrid Neimanis and Rachel Walker Loewen. In Latour’s account, the categorical distinction between nature and culture has prevented climate science from openly embracing the political task of assembling a new polity encompassing both human and nonhuman entities. Neimanis and Walker Loewen, on the other hand, argue that the abstract quality of climate science is the principal reason for society’s failure to respond to anthropogenic climate change, and suggest that it must be reconceived in terms of concrete entanglements between human and nonhuman bodies. In placing their emphasis on embodied experience, however, both approaches fail to account for the rhetorical frames and the larger dynamics of communication which shape how climate change becomes socially relevant.
In >The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities<, eds. John Christensen... more In >The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities<, eds. John Christensen, Ursula K. Heise, and Michelle Niemann. London: Routledge, 2017. 424-432.
Bergthaller's essay originally appeared in the collection, Ecological Thought in Germany. It ... more Bergthaller's essay originally appeared in the collection, Ecological Thought in Germany. It is reprinted here, with permissions from Lexington Books, as part of an ebr gathering-in-process on Natural Media (to be released in the summer of 2018).
Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, 2010
First of all, I would like to thank Barbel Hottges for her perceptive comments on my essay, provi... more First of all, I would like to thank Barbel Hottges for her perceptive comments on my essay, providing a critical counter-point from the perspective of postcolonial theory and affording me an opportunity to clarify somewhat my own argument. What I found particularly helpful was her exposition of Morrison's religious syncretism; whereas I perhaps overemphasized the extent to which Morrison in Beloved distances her characters from the Christian tradition, Hottges rightly insists that the religious practices they engage in are best understood as hybridizations of Christian and African elements. Yet, I am not convinced that the interplay between orality and literacy in the novel is simply another example of the same logic of hybridity, as Hottges argues: "Beloved is not a novel that pretends to be an oral story, and it is certainly not a magic trick that depends on the illusion of orality, but Morrison combines orality and literacy to create something new and distinctively black...
Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, 2014
I have read both responses to my essay on "Poe's Economies" with great interest and... more I have read both responses to my essay on "Poe's Economies" with great interest and pleasure. Whereas William E. Engel makes the piece a starting point for an argument that is largely his own, Dennis Pahl's response takes the form of a direct critique of some of my claims. In the following, I will therefore address myself primarily to Pahl's essay, which provides me with a welcome opportunity to revisit my original argument and to clarify, defend, and, where necessary, amend it.To a considerable extent, Pahl's misgivings seem to spring from a sense that I failed to take Poe's theoretical efforts as seriously as they deserve to be taken. "To understand Poe's scientific pronouncements [...] as a kind of 'intellectual grandstanding' for the purpose of gaining commercial respectability is to overlook the fact that behind the posing is a serious aesthetic intention," Pahl writes (18). I may have invited this misunderstanding by overstat...
Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies, 2006
" Trees are what everyone needs:" The Lorax, anthropocentrism, and the ... more " Trees are what everyone needs:" The Lorax, anthropocentrism, and the problem of mimesis Hannes Bergthaller Abstract: This essay discusses the relation between a biocentric ethics and the project of an ecocritical rehabilitation of outer mimesis as it has been proposed by ...
Addressing Modernity, 2011
Green Letters, 2019
'After His death, God turned into oil, and oil became a surrogate God,' Antti Salminen and Tere V... more 'After His death, God turned into oil, and oil became a surrogate God,' Antti Salminen and Tere Vadén write in Energy and Experience. This essay examines two novels by John Updike in order to validate this startling claim: Rabbit Is Rich presents an intimate chronicle of late 1970s, post-oil crisis malaise. TheCoup presents something like a reverse perspective: narrated from the perspective of the deposed dictator of an African petro-state, the novel satirizes both petroleumfueled American affluence and the futile attempts of a Westerntrained anti-colonial elite to stave off the latter's destructive effects on the local ecology and traditional lifeways. Both novels can be read as a sustained effort to explore the obscure connections between the decline of faith and the rise of consumer culture, to detect the afterglow of a spent religious force in the experiential texture of American society during the age of oil.
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Books by Hannes Bergthaller
Papers by Hannes Bergthaller
Ecologies of the Moving Image was published by Wilfred Laurier University Press as part of it's Environmental Humanities Series in 2013. For further details, visit the publisher's website at https://wlupress.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/ivakhiv.shtml
Anna Åberg defended her PhD in 2013 at the Division for the History of Science, Technology and Environment of the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Stockholm. Her thesis, "A Gap in the Grid," explores the role of natural gas in late 20th century Sweden. She recently received the Fernand Braudel post-doctoral fellowship for a project on fusion energy research in France and the Soviet Union in which she will examine the narrative and imaginative strategies used by different actors to promote, criticize and interpret technological development. In April 2014, she organized a combined film festival and conference, "Tales from Planet Earth," as a cooperation between KTH’s newly-formed Environmental Humanities Laboratory and the Center for Culture, History and the Environment at the University of Wisconsin.
Seth Peabody is a graduate student at Harvard University’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, where he is working on a Ph.D. thesis on German "Mountain Films" of the Weimar Period. He has been affiliated with the Berkeley-Tübingen-Wien-Harvard, BTWH, research network on modernity in German culture since 2009, and spent the past year as a research fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. His research focuses on German cinema.
Hannes Bergthaller is associate professor at National Chung-Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, and currently an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the University of Würzburg. He is the author of Populäre Ökologie: Zu Literatur und Geschichte der modernen Umweltbewegung in den USA, Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2007, and co-editor of Addressing Modernity: Social Systems Theory and US Cultures, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011; with Carsten Schinko. He is immediate past president of EASLCE and book review editor of the journal Ecozon@.
>Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor< was published by Harvard University Press in 2011. For more information, please visit http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674049307.
Stefania Barca is senior researcher at the Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal, where she teaches graduate courses (in English and Portuguese) on the ecological crisis. She is the author of >Enclosing water. Nature and political economy in a Mediterranean valley, 1796-1916< (White Horse Press: Cambridge 2010), recipient of the Turku Book prize in 2011. She has been a vice-president of ESEH in 2011-13 and currently coordinates the Portuguese team in a EU funded network of political ecologists called ‘Entitle’. Her most recent work deals with labor/environment intersections and the transition to a low-carbon society (her article ‘Laboring the earth’ has been just made available in advance access on the Environmental History journal).
Greg Garrard is a member of the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Canada. He is the author of >Ecocriticism<, the first general survey of the field which has recently been re-issued (London: Routledge, 2011), and the editor of >Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies< (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011). He is a past chair of ASLE-UKI and general editor of the journal Green Letters.
In partnership with Sigtunastiftelsen, this installation was the first in a projected series that seeks to explore the environmental humanities as a scholarly domain of growing significance.
Scholars interviewed for this installation include the following ecocritics and historians of science, technology and environment (in their order of appearance in the film): James Fleming, Ursula Heise, Greg Garrard, Sarah Elkind, David Nye, Donald Worster and Hannes Bergthaller.