Man in the Anthropocene. Travel-Writing, the Order of Nature, and the Disorder of Ecology
This project looks at changes in the way humans reflect on themselves in the anthropocene. To this end, I explore how travel-writings from South America, Europe, and Australia since 1975 have re-conceptualized questions of space and place, time and history, order and disorder. I am interested in the ways in which these texts challenge notions of local ecologies and global mobility by imbricating geographical knowledge and natural histories with human stories and cultural histories. The backdrop of these ‘travelscapes’ is an inversion: the perceived disorder of ‘ecology’, shaped by global human impact, emerges as a systemic order we cannot comprehend; the perceived order of ‘nature’ emerges as a disorganized cultural archive. The history of the cultural project ‘nature’ provides an important, albeit ambiguous, repository for our ability to imagine a future beyond, or within, the imaginary of disorder, dystopia, and cataclysm that is associated with the global ecological crisis.
Nach dem Studium der Germanistik und moderner Fremdsprachen in Würzburg, Cambridge und Konstanz promovierte Bernhard Malkmus mit einer vergleichenden Arbeit zum modernen Pikaroroman an der University of Cambridge. Journalistische Tätigkeit in München und Frankfurt. Lehrerfahrung an der Karls-Universität in Prag und am Goldsmiths, University of London. Seit 2007 unterrichtet er Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften am Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures der Ohio State University in den USA.
(u. a.): gem. mit Heather Sullivan (Hg.), The Challenge of Ecology to the Humanities. Between Posthumanism and New Humanism, (= Themenheft New German Critique 2015); gem. mit Ian Cooper (Hg.), Dialectic and Paradox. Configurations of the Third in Modernity, Oxford 2013; Das Naturtheater des W.G. Sebald: die ökologischen Aporien eines poeta doctus, in: Gegenwartsliteratur 10, Tübingen 2011; The German Pícaro and Modernity. Between Underdog and Shape-Shifter, New York 2011.
Überall auf der Erde hinterlässt der Mensch seinen Fußabdruck, beeinflusst die Beschaffenheit von Wetter und Meeren – einer geologischen Kraft vergleichbar. Bernhard Malkmus untersucht anhand zeitgenössischer literarischer Werke, wie radikal dieses diffuse Epochenbewusstsein unsere Selbstwahrnehmung verändert.