AustLit

'The essay as a genre in the tradition of Montaigne stages the inadequacies of attempts to grasp at objects and what connects us to them and them to us and us to each other, and then slings away the safety wheels by wondering: who we are anyway? But what happens to the essay in the age of ‘hyperobjects’ (Morton 2013) like global warming? This essay examines how the anti-methodical techniques of the essay (personal, lyric) might be placed to respond to life in the Anthropocene, when the ‘I’ of the essayist finds itself in increasingly uncharted waters, when ‘nature’ itself, let alone ‘human nature’, begin to look like quaint conceptual knick-knacks, and when humans can no longer claim special ontological status over nonhumans. Philosophers, anthropologists, environmental humanists and other scholars are increasingly experimenting with modes of writing enmeshing scientific data and critical theory with affectively charged, embodied and intimate accounts. At the same time, essayists are rethinking the boundaries of the personal, and trying new ways to write from a standpoint rejecting human/nonhuman binaries. This essay seeks to draw connections across the disciplines, to invite further alliances between creative writers and fellow academics, as together we essay the Anthropocene with entangled nonfiction.' (Introduction)