From Post-War to Early Anthropocene: Literary History from the Perspective of the Future

This article asks what happens to literary history if we replace familiar categories such as post-war and secondo Novecento with emergent concepts derived from the Anthropocene debate. I use the term self-conscious Anthropocene to refer to the period since approximately 2000, when the Anthropocene came into view as a transdisciplinary, generative concept in research, policy, and society at large. The term early Anthropocene is used to draw attention to latent structures and forces that have been around for at least fifty years and that are becoming more notable and vehement with the unfolding of the planetary environmental crisis. I suggest that the current meaning of post-war took shape during a period of intense historical retrospection in the late twentieth century. Post-war is partly coextensive with early Anthropocene, but foregrounds different methodological assumptions and political concerns. In the context of the Anthropocene debate, post-war fails to invite engagement with futurity.