Tara Kennette (Temple University)
In her book Erosion: Essays of Undoing, Terry Tempest Williams utilizes the vastness of geologic time to encourage a reevaluation of societal focus, urging humans to direct their attention outside of themselves and their immediate experiences. Geologic time is massive, almost incomprehensible, as compared to an anthropocentric temporality, and Williams uses the awe-inspiring landscape of the American Southwest, specifically the Grand Canyon, to supplement her and her readers’ understanding of this scale. In a time of climate crisis and global urgency, a cultural moment when so often it seems that time is running out, Williams works with the American landscape to reposition readers towards a perspective that suggests, under certain circumstances, an excess of time; from a geologic, non-anthropocentric point of view there has always been and will always be enough time.
The question for active participants in the Anthropocene, then, is how to respond to this perspective. Does the hugeness of geologic time inspire hope? Does it overwhelm to the point of paralysis and indecision? Does it engender nihilistic despair or impassioned activism? Williams and other environmental writers attempt to answer, or at least explore, these possibilities in their texts, often oscillating between eco- and anthropocentric points of view, utilizing unfamiliar and non-linear expressions of time, and relying on the physical environment to guide readers towards novel and nuanced positionalities. This roundtable invites participants to investigate and discuss texts that ponder the immensity of non-human perspectives of time and humanity’s potential response.