Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene

Climate change, species extinction and dwindling biodiversity are inextricably linked to individual human activities. They nonetheless seem complex, abstract and distant. In the Anthropocene, it is necessary for humankind to find responsible ways of dealing with the planet. We need an understanding of the scales in which social, political, ecological and geological dynamics intertwine. Narratives play a pivotal role in dealing with the ambivalence and discontinuity of these non-linear, multi-scale spatial and temporal processes. What can an individual do considering the scope of human action? Can climate change be made tangible by narrating local weather events? How can images or words convey the interrelations between small and large-scale levels? Humanities scholars and social scientists examine the correlation and interaction between aesthetic, literary, scientific and media narratives and the manifold interwoven scales of the Anthropocene.

With the photographer and environmental activist J. Henry Fair, literary scholar Heather Sullivan, sociologist Bronislaw Szerszynski, literary scholars Heather Sullivan and Eva Horn, media scientist Birgit Schneider and many others

An event by the DFG project Narratives of the Anthropocene in Literature and Science: Themes, Structures and Poetics, hosted by HKW