Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds
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ANTHROPOCENE ISLANDS ENTANGLED WORLDS ANTHROPOCENE ISLANDS: ANTHROPOCENE The island has become a key figure of the Anthropocene – an epoch in which human entanglements with nature come increasingly to the fore. For a long time, islands were romanticised or marginalised, seen as lacking modernity’s capacities for progress, vulnerable to the effects of catastrophic climate change and the afterlives of empire and coloniality. Today, however, the island is increasingly important for both policy-oriented and critical imaginaries that seek, more positively, to draw upon the island’s liminal and disruptive capacities, especially the relational entanglements and sensitivities its peoples and modes of life are said to exhibit. ANTHROPOCENE ISLANDS: ENTANGLED WORLDS explores the significant and widespread shift to working with islands for the generation of new or alternative approaches to knowledge, critique and policy practices. It explains how contemporary Anthropocene thinking takes a particular interest in islands as ‘entangled worlds’, which break down the human/nature divide of modernity and enable the generation of new or alternative WORLDS ENTANGLED approaches to ways of being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology). The book draws out core analytics which have risen to prominence (Resilience, Patchworks, Correlation and Storiation) as contemporary policymakers, scholars, critical theorists, artists, poets and activists work with islands to move beyond the constraints of modern approaches. ANTHROPOCENE In doing so, it argues that engaging with islands has become increasingly important for the generation of some of the core frameworks of contemporary thinking and concludes with a new critical agenda for the Anthropocene. ISLANDS ENTANGLED WORLDS JONATHAN PUGH is Reader in Island Studies, University of Newcastle, UK. He is the author of over 70 publications developing relational thinking with islands and, more recently, the figure of the island in the Anthropocene. He leads the ‘Anthropocene Islands’ initiative: https://www.anthropoceneislands.online. DAVID CHANDLER is Professor of International Relations, University of Westminster. He edits the journal Anthropocenes: Human, Inhuman, Posthuman. His recent books Jonathan Pugh and David Chandler Pugh and David Jonathan include Becoming Indigenous: Governing Imaginaries in the Anthropocene (2019) and Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene: An Introduction to Mapping, Sensing and Hacking (2018). ISLAND STUDIES | ANTHROPOCENE STUDIES | HUMAN GEOGRAPHY | ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Jonathan Pugh www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk and David Chandler Anthropocene Islands Entangled Worlds Jonathan Pugh and David Chandler ‘A must read … In this long-awaited book, [Pugh and Chandler] open up a new analytical agenda for the Anthropocene, coherently drawing out the power of thinking with islands.’ —Elena Burgos Martinez, Leiden University ‘This is an essential book. By thinking with islands, Pugh and Chandler articulate new ontologies and epistemologies to help us understand the rela- tional entanglements of the Anthropocene. The four analytics they propose— Resilience, Patchworks, Correlation, and Storiation—offer both a critical agenda for island studies and compass points through which to navigate the haunting past, troubling present, and precarious future.’ —Craig Santos Perez, University of Hawai’i, Manoa ‘All academic books should be like this: hard to put down. Informative, careful, sometimes devasting, yet absolutely necessary – if you read one book about the Anthropocene let it be this. You will never think of islands in the same way again.’ —Kimberley Peters, University of Oldenburg ‘Makes the compelling case that islands have never been merely geocultural objects of study, but rather, generative conceptual “objects” [for understanding and engaging] the wider, planetary, relational matrix within which the condi- tions of the Anthropocene era were created.’ —Michelle Stephens, Rutgers University ‘What if we were to start not with the great drama of the world’s falling apart, but with a myriad of smaller stories of its coming together? … a unique journey into the Anthropocene. Critical, generous and compelling’. —Nigel Clark, Lancaster University ‘Replete with “aha!” and “huh!” moments, this book offers insights for all of us … who may not have recognised … the value of “thinking with” islands more purposively.’ —Lauren Rickards, RMIT University ‘… a must-read … elucidates novel understandings of islands not only as patches of intensified Anthropocene proliferation, but as sites to examine the intricate relationships between life, matter, and meaning in a changing world.’ —Adam Searle, University of Cambridge ‘Anthropocene Islands establishes Pugh and Chandler as two critical and agenda-setting thinkers within island scholarship ... [It] cogently argues that islands have become emblematic figures of the Anthropocene and are moreo- ver influencing the manner in which Anthropocene thinking is developing. … a timely and essential contribution …’ —Adam Grydehøj, Editor-in-Chief, Island Studies Journal Anthropocene Islands Entangled Worlds Jonathan Pugh and David Chandler University of Westminster Press www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk Published by University of Westminster Press 101 Cavendish Street London W1W 6UW www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk Text © Jonathan Pugh and David Chandler First published 2021 Cover image: © Oliver Chandler Print and digital versions typeset by Siliconchips Services Ltd. ISBN (PDF): 978-1-914386-01-5 ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-914386-02-2 ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-914386-03-9 ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-914386-00-8 DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book52 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc -nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This license allows for copying and distributing the work, providing author attribution is clearly stated, that you are not using the material for commercial purposes, and that modified versions are not distributed. The full text of this book has been peer-reviewed to ensure high academic standards. For full review policies, see: http://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/publish/ Suggested citation: Pugh, J. and Chandler, D. 2021. Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book52. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://www .uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/books /10.16997/book52 or scan this QR code with your mobile device: Shall we make ‘island’ a verb? (Teresia Teaiwa, 2007: 514) Contents Preface and Acknowledgements ix 1. There are Only Islands After the End of the World 1 2. Resilience: The Power of Interactive Life 41 3. Patchworks: The Ontology of the World 69 4. Correlation: Registers of Change 109 5. Storiation: Holding the World 141 6. Conclusion: A Critical Agenda for the Anthropocene 179 References 193 Index 225 Preface and Acknowledgements Preface The island has a new found prominence and has become one of the most recognised geographical forms of the Anthropocene. It is a powerful symbol of such forces as global warming, rising sea levels, the fallouts of nuclear proliferation, ocean acidifica- tion, the waste of consumerism, ongoing colonialisms, changing ecologies and evolutionary pathways, disruptive weather pat- terns, including intensified hurricanes and cyclones, and much more besides. But the key argument of this book is that not only does contemporary scholarship and associated practice regularly write about islands, they draw upon and think with islands as key sites for working through today’s overarching problematic of relational entanglements, awareness and feedbacks. Our claim is that islands and islanders appear so often – and in so many dif- ferent ways – in the development of relational thought associated with Anthropocene approaches, as to make the questions ‘why?’ x Anthropocene Islands and ‘how?’ worthy of more focused attention. Islands not only appear in the works of scholars of islands, policymaking, activ- ism or artistic practices explicitly directed at islands or island- ness, they also increasingly appear, implicitly or apparently in the ‘background’, as sites or locations in broader Anthropocene research. Anthropocene Islands articulates why it matters that work seeks to bring island characteristics – or what we might call the generative force of ‘islandness’ – to the forefront for thinking through the Anthropocene. This book schematically draws out why and how contempo- rary thinking engages and works with islands. Our key argument is as follows: The human/nature divide of modernity is today fre- quently argued to have collapsed and work on the Anthropocene intensively focuses upon the new problematic of how humans are relationally entangled with the more-than-human forces of transformative planetary changes. Debates about the Anthro- pocene are characterised by this central and overriding interest in relational entanglements, interactions and feedbacks (Cole- brook and Weinstein, 2017; Colebrook, 2019; Giraud, 2019). It is therefore unsurprising that scholars, artists, poets, activists, policymakers and practitioners would want to engage particular geographical forms which exemplify these new stakes. Anthro- pocene Islands: Entangled Worlds analyses the powerful pull of islands as