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Ruins of the Anthropocene: The Aesthetics of Arctic Climate Change
Annals of the American Association of Geographers ( IF 3.982 ) Pub Date : 2020-12-10 , DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1835457
Mia M. Bennett 1
Affiliation  

In the Anthropocene, ruin appreciation is shifting its focus from crumbling architecture to the deteriorating planet. Whereas Romantic and modern ruin gazing privileged nature’s reconquest of the built environment, now, the carbon-intensive infrastructures of global capitalism are turning nature itself to ruin. By critiquing popular representations of the melting Arctic—a visual trope within Anthropocene aesthetics involving images of shrinking icebergs, melting glaciers, and drowning polar bears—this article explicates how both conceptions of ruins and actual, material processes of ruination are shifting away from manmade infrastructure toward the natural environment. I argue that ruins in the Anthropocene are distinct in that natural ruins, especially icy ones, will not persist on the landscape, particularly as environmental degradation accelerates and is upscaled to encompass entire regions like the Arctic, if not the whole planet. By applying Romantic aesthetic principles, I critique the two dominant categories of representations of the current geological epoch: the picturesque and the sublime. As with Romantic and modern ruin iconography, depictions of Anthropocene ruins harness these elements to induce feelings of awe, melancholy, and resignation. These reactions might now be more problematic, however, because helplessness and passive voyeurism could inhibit action on climate change. I thus conclude that refocusing the Anthropocene gaze on the third aesthetic principle—the beautiful, which emphasizes the tangible and comprehensible—might be more conducive to transforming aesthetics into action and fostering an effective rather than affective ethics of planetary care and stewardship.



中文翻译:

人类世遗址:北极气候变化的美学

在人类世,废墟的欣赏正将其重点从倒塌的建筑转移到日益恶化的星球上。浪漫和现代的废墟注视着特权大自然对建筑环境的重新征服,而如今,全球资本主义的碳密集型基础设施正在将自然本身变成了废墟。通过对北极融化的流行描述进行批判-人类世世时代美学中的一个视觉论据,涉及缩小的冰山,融化的冰川和淹没的北极熊的图像-这篇文章阐明了废墟的概念以及实际的,实质性的废墟过程正在如何从人造基础设施转移走向自然环境。我认为人类世的遗迹与众不同之处在于自然遗迹(尤其是冰冷的遗迹)不会在景观上持续存在,尤其是随着环境退化的加速发展,并扩大到包括北极在内的整个地区,甚至不是整个星球。通过运用浪漫主义美学原理,我批评了当前地质时代的两种主要表现形式:风景如画和崇高。与浪漫主义和现代废墟的肖像一样,人类世遗址的描绘也利用这些元素来引发敬畏,忧郁和顺从的感觉。但是,由于无助和被动偷窥可能会抑制对气候变化的行动,因此这些反应现在可能会更加成问题。因此,我得出的结论是,将人类世的目光重新聚焦于第三条美学原则-美丽,

更新日期:2020-12-10
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