Spectrality and Survivance: Living the Anthropocene

Review

Combining materialist and Derridean approaches, Grech’s book is a tour de force when it comes to thinking the Anthropocene away from the standard debates and arguments that continue to perpetuate human exceptionalism. This exceptionalism is powerfully challenged when Grech argues that the constructed boundaries between the human and nonhuman, living and non-living, organic and inorganic, biological and discursive are entangled. In making this argument, Grech, at the same time, convincingly and carefully critiques the uninformed dismissals of Derrida’s work as simply a cultural system of linguistic and language references that exist outside the material domain. Accessible, clear and beautifully written this book is a must-read. -- Nicole Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Derrida Today journal and Director of the Institute for Humanities Research, Arizona State University

Grech’s research is exemplary in its breadth and detail. Her ability to weave evidence from the sciences through more familiar approaches in the humanities offers a much-needed example of how a rigorous, cross-disciplinary exploration of ‘entanglement’ might be done. This book is timely and provocative. -- Vicki Kirby, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, University of New South Wales

Grech has a very good sense of the field, and while literature on the Anthropocene is reaching peak levels, this book still manages to carve out a space unique in its exploration of inscription (and the related notions of spectrality and survivance). -- Claire Colebrook, Edwin Erle Sparkes Professor of English, Penn State University


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About the Author

Marija Grech is a Lecturer in English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of Malta, where she teaches courses on Ecocriticism, Comparative Literature and Critical and Cultural Theory.