Death and the Anthropocene: Cormac McCarthy’s World of Unliving
Death and the Anthropocene: Cormac McCarthy’s World of Unliving
The events of the Anthropocene, as engendered by humanity's actions, in some ways function to destabilise the security of humanity's survival. This essay examines differing responses to humanity's death made imminent in Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel The Road. Taking an approach informed by Jacques Derrida's interrogations of ‘death’ as aporia and ‘death’ as ‘loss of the archive,’ a ‘thinking’ of the beyond of contemporary ‘death thinking’ is proposed.
Anthropocene, death awareness, Cormac McCarthy, Literature, Environment
211-228
Squire, Louise
3ef04954-5715-497b-9834-13b9f5859b3d
6 December 2012
Squire, Louise
3ef04954-5715-497b-9834-13b9f5859b3d
Squire, Louise
(2012)
Death and the Anthropocene: Cormac McCarthy’s World of Unliving.
Oxford Literary Review, 34 (2), , [3].
(doi:10.3366/olr.2012.0042).
Abstract
The events of the Anthropocene, as engendered by humanity's actions, in some ways function to destabilise the security of humanity's survival. This essay examines differing responses to humanity's death made imminent in Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel The Road. Taking an approach informed by Jacques Derrida's interrogations of ‘death’ as aporia and ‘death’ as ‘loss of the archive,’ a ‘thinking’ of the beyond of contemporary ‘death thinking’ is proposed.
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Published date: 6 December 2012
Keywords:
Anthropocene, death awareness, Cormac McCarthy, Literature, Environment
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Local EPrints ID: 507569
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/507569
PURE UUID: 8e431cdb-dfed-4b4c-8f18-c3dfc85b5828
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Date deposited: 12 Dec 2025 17:45
Last modified: 13 Dec 2025 03:08
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Author:
Louise Squire
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