A Storyteller’s Guide to the Anthropocene: Zoë Mertz
Introductions
For my final project, I’ve chosen to retrace my steps through the Anthropocene to try to make sense of what we have studied and learned. In doing so, I have distilled a question that will serve as the central focus of this exploration: what does it mean to tell stories in the age of the Anthropocene? I do not pretend to be able to examine in this project all of the nuances of various types of stories – novels, articles, essays, works of film and media. Rather, I use stories as an umbrella term to refer to the way people attempt to convey their experiences to one another, to share and discover and connect together. As someone whose chosen discipline and career revolves around telling stories, currently living within the time of the Anthropocene, I wish to examine the position of stories in our world – what they can do for us, and why I believe them to be important.
A brief guide to the formatting of the material below: Throughout the quarter, I have collected and reflected on my favorite quotes from within the syllabus; I return to annotate these journal entries with the full content of the course now swirling in my mind. The italicized lines are excerpts from the texts we have studied that I have chosen for various reasons. The plain texts are my original journal entries that I wrote throughout the class. I returned to these quotes after having read texts and discussed them in class, and recorded my thoughts about them. I see these journal entries as artifacts, little parcels of evidence of what and how I was thinking as I made my way through this course, and as such, I have chosen to leave them in their original form, without edits made to refine or streamline my thinking. We are currently living in the age of the Anthropocene, and part of the purpose of this project is to capture that in real time, offering commentary from inside of the era. The bold texts are my annotations written at the conclusion of our course; it is in these segments that I attempt to sort out my thoughts about the material, particularly in reference to the central driving question I have outlined above.
I have chosen to arrange these entries in the order that we experienced the texts as a class, even though some of the entries were written at different points chronologically; this made the most sense to me in terms of how each text informed the ones that came after and the information we had when approaching each new reading in the structure of our syllabus. I hope that this reflective format allows for a holistic view of the Anthropocene, my own version of a storyteller’s guide.
You’ll notice that I have adopted the first person throughout this project, a deviation from the standard of the academic norm. I made this choice for a number of reasons. First of all, my initial journal entries were written in this first-person reflective tone; I wanted to preserve these in their original form for the purposes of capturing my individual journey through the Anthropocene. That brings me to my second reason for my chosen perspective. The Anthropocene as a concept is so vast and unwieldy that it becomes difficult to comprehend it all. A story, on the other hand, is an intimate thing. So instead of attempting to myself represent the entirety of the massive and complex Anthropocene, I have instead offered you my own journey, tried to provide a guide through what I have learned and encountered. My project revolves around stories, and to me, this is what storytellers do: they concentrate things down to the level of the individual, offering a better chance for comprehension, understanding, and empathy all.
Entry One
“People have been telling the life story for ages, in all sorts of words and ways. . .That is why I like novels: instead of heroes, they have people in them.”
Ursula LeGuin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”
The first thing I would like to bring with me into the Anthropocene is Ursula LeGuin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” for a few reasons. First of all, it is one of the texts inspiring our Anthropocene Backpack originally, and I feel that it has a fitting place among my artifacts. Secondly, I seem to be stumbling upon Ursula LeGuin in numerous ways recently (one of my other classes has chosen her writing craft book, Steering the Craft, as our guiding text for the quarter). LeGuin is becoming a familiar and trusted guide who I have faith in to lead me into the murky fog that is our future. But the main reason I would like to bring “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” forth with me is because of the essay itself.
I have included above the quotes that stood out to me most in “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” As a writer myself, I see storytelling as a fundamental aspect of what makes us human. Like any human-made things, stories have the potential to do both great good and great harm. Regardless, the ability to tell them – the ability to look at the stars and see patterns there, to look at the sun and the soil and describe what it is that makes flowers blossom – is one of the traits that I feel defines humanity. We tell stories as compulsively as we breathe: in our names, in our greetings, in our monuments and text messages. Perhaps I’ll be striking up an argument with archeologists everywhere, but if the Anthropocene is the human-made epoch, then I’d argue that our stories are the greatest mark that we leave upon the planet, in whatever form they come.
I also appreciated how LeGuin reshaped her perception of humanity and their role as storytellers over the course of the essay. One of the things I strive for in my writing is to tell what she calls the “untold” tales – stories of events and people who have not been valued enough previously to be placed at the forefront and distributed. I think the idea that all types of stories are worth telling is such an important one. I loves slice-of-life stories, stories of babies and breakfasts and summer afternoons. I think these stories are just as important in the chronology of humanity as stories of battles and bloodshed and victors who get to decide on the narrative. Like LeGuin, I like stories that have people in them, gathering their wild oats with their carrier bags formed from the dust of stars.
I read Ursula LeGuin’s “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” to help center and ground myself at the start of my Anthropocene journey, particularly because the idea of shaping our own Anthropocene Backpacks derived from this essay originally. Now, at the conclusion of our course, this essay and particularly the excerpted quote continues to offer me structure and clarity as I address the concept of stories. I adapted LeGuin’s mindset in looking at many of our texts this quarter, always seeking out the human story within the larger societal and ecological repercussions. Though the Anthropocene is considered the human epoch, many of its critical features are broad and global, not tied to any one being. Telling the life story brings the story of the Anthropocene back down to the human level, the domain which our funny little brains trapped inside of our skulls can comprehend. I think this is one of the things that makes stories unique, even special. As I mention in my entry, humans have been using stories for generations to help them to understand the world around them. This essay suggests to me that storytelling’s purpose is no different in the Anthropocene age. We can use stories to recognize the problems that are facing our world, and to recognize our own complicity in creating them. Stories with people in them help us to realize who we are and how we got here – and where we must go from here.
Entry Two
“These words were often not only two-syllabled but two-sided. They were coins, obverse and reverse. Sha’ab meant god, or numinous entity, or powerful being; it also meant… translator.”
The Word For World Is Forest, pg 123, Ursula LeGuin
This quote was powerful to me as a statement on creation and communication both. In equating the words for god and translator in the tongue of her alien species, LeGuin draws parallels between almighty beings who hold power and sway over their universes, and those with the ability to speak to others and help them to understand. Language is one of the most powerful tools we have for connection between beings. It empowers those of us who have chosen to study language as critical for the functionality of the world. Science and data are only effective if they can be explained to and understood by the masses. Violence and wars only make change if someone remains to tell and shape the tale. Language and communication are the lifeblood of these systems, what grants and permits them the power they have.
What makes Selver a powerful figure in The Word For World Is Forest is not the violence he teaches to the race of Athsheans or the revolution he incites. He is granted the title of god for being a translator, for bringing change to the world through his ability to communicate between Lyubov and the other humans, and the newly united tribes of Athshea. I think this novel can inform the value and treatment of those skilled in language and communication in our world, speak to the power of storytellers and stories. In the age of the Anthropocene, where violence both inter- and between species is already emergent, it is critical that we find our translators, those able to build bridges and forge connections between all that call this world home, before the coming of the irreversible destruction that threatens to reign.
This entry came later to me than most, one of the last I wrote despite its discussion of a text from early in our course. I think at the time that we studied LeGuin’s novel, I did not quite have the perspective to explain this quote, or the words to express what it meant to my view of the Anthropocene. In reflecting now, I realize that one of the interesting things about this work is that LeGuin contradicts herself here. The Word for World is Forest is not a life story, or even a human story, strictly speaking. It’s not even set on Earth, where the Anthropocene is unfolding. Instead, LeGuin uses the (literally) alien elements of science fiction to frame a story whose problems and circumstances are not so distant from our own. This quote shows how the problems of the Anthropocene transcend divisions of species and race, discipline and worldview. If the problems go beyond these divides, then the solutions must also, and that is where stories become key. Stories allow us to project our problems onto a different mind, a different planet, and examine them from the outside, so that hopefully when we finish and return to ourselves, we are able to look at our world from a new perspective. By experiencing the world through alien eyes, we are able to better recognize the parallels within our own world, and begin to seek out solutions. Stories thus become a tool that empower the individual to begin the process of understanding that helps prompt action and change on a broader scale.
Entry Three
“‘What I’ve learned, I learned in books,’ Boukaka said emphatically from the door. ‘But what I know, everything I know, I took from fire and water, from water and flame…’”
In the Palm of Darkness, pg. 97, Matra Montero
I chose this quote to carry forth with me into the Anthropocene on both a personal level and a more wide-reaching scale. As someone who’s always loved learning and school and academia, who’s had her nose in a book for as long as she can remember, this quote connected with me because of the different modalities I’ve learned to embrace over time. I’ve discovered the difference between reading about something and experiencing it, for better or worse. While I am still a fierce advocate of books and literature as a means of living vicariously through someone else, experiencing times and places and identities that I never could on my own, I also understand that some experiences have to be lived, not just read about.
On a broader level than just my own experience, I chose this quote because of the way it examines various forms of knowledge and knowing. As we move forth through the Anthropocene, there is an essential place for both scholarly and non-academic experiences and ways of knowing. There is a risk in academia of idolizing scholarly knowledge and methodologies above all others, deferring to these as the only valid sources of information. While scholarly knowledge is certainly critical and should be respected in many cases (for instance, with regards to COVID-19 and all related issues of public health), there is also room in our world for different forms of knowledge – lived experience, indigenous and cultural knowledge, intuition derived from attunement with the Earth and its creatures. I think that this concept is central to the novel In The Palm of Darkness: there are forces at work in the world that even top scholars in a field cannot understand, and there are people with no formal schooling that have knowledge that scholars do not, simply from living and experiencing the world around them. As we move forward through the Anthropocene, we must arm ourselves will all the forces of knowledge that we can, in whatever ways they appear. Of course, we must also always discern what information to trust, but we must move forward with the ability to at least consider any and all possibilities, and respect ways of knowing outside of solely the academic tradition.
This quote was not a central one in In The Palm of Darkness, but it stood out to me anyway. As I delved into it more in this entry and in class discussion, I came to realize why I found this line so important. This quote offers an alternate perspective on what stories can look like and the ways we might interact with them. Stories might come in the form of scholarly media: textbooks, articles, historical documents. They might also come in the form of accounts of firsthand experience or legends passed down. As I reference in my journal entry, this quote serves as a reminder of the variety of knowledge that can come from different kinds of stories. All of humanity, all of life as we know it is what makes up the Anthropocene, and so all stories that come out of it are Anthropocene stories. As a student and scholar, I must be cautious not to limit my perception and understanding of stories, and remain open to the multiplicity of knowledge that can come from stories in every form. I particularly think this is relevant with regards to stories that come from people who society has conventionally looked down upon, whose stories who have not been included in the canon. Stories become a tool for these voices to be broadcasted, and for others to witness the struggles of those on the bottom, most affected by the problems of the Anthropocene despite contributing the least harm. This perspective of listening and learning from these stories remained with me throughout the rest of our course, and guided my readings of our final two novels.
Entry Four
“…speech was only a bag of tricks that fooled you into believing that you could see through the eyes of another being.”
The Hungry Tide, pg, 132, Amitav Ghosh
I was inspired by our discussion in class this week to choose this quote. One of the reasons I was so intrigued by this quote is that I have taken many English classes where the power and importance of language is emphasized – indeed, in many ways it is the foundation of the discipline. Yet this quote points out the fallacies contained within language (particularly the spoken word, but I interpreted the quote as speaking about language more generally).
We use language to communicate our experiences with the world, in the hopes that others might be able to recognize and perhaps understand them. Because language is such a powerful tool, many people, myself included, tend to value it extremely highly, as the ultimate tool. This creates unnecessary divides both between humans who lack a common language and between humans and other creatures who do not prioritize language as their form of communication. In The Hungry Tide, Piya and Fokir are somewhat able to overcome this divide and forge connections with each other using minimal words. Piya to some extent attempts to do similar with the dolphins she studies, trying to understand their views and their place in the world without being able to speak with them at all. I believe that Ghosh makes the claim in this novel that language can be more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to understanding another being, full of double meanings and overcomplicated prose (as exemplified in the character of Kanai and his lack of connection with the communities around him despite his multilingualism and proficiency as a translator). While I don’t fully agree with this claim, as I do feel that language has its merits to be able to represent and communicate stories and experiences that are outside of the individual (as novels themselves do), I do recognize that alternative methods of communication have their merits and are well worth exploring.
As I move forward through the Anthropocene, particularly as an English major and student of the written word, I must remember the other forms of communication that exist that can be equally effective and powerful. Language can be a helpful tool, but also has its faults, as all tools do. Thus, language must be one of many mechanisms used to forge interactions between myself and the world, one of many threads in the web that ties everything together. I feel this also ties into the larger conclusion about the Anthropocene that I am beginning to develop, which the world that humans have created is so vast and complex and diverse that no one method of anything is sufficient at all times. I feel that to survive in the Anthropocene, it is more important than ever that human beings recognize the importance of interdisciplinary, inter-cultural, and inter-species ways of thinking, learning, and being.
This quote again had me reconsidering preconceived notions I held. This perspective was a difficult one for me due to my fierce love and respect for the written word, but it was important to me to reexamine my thinking epistemologically. My perspective and way of navigating the world is not the only one, and others can be equally powerful. However, if language is a flawed and imperfect tool, why do I choose to rely on it? Why do I bother putting my faith in storytelling when stories cannot fully capture the breadth and depth of the Anthropocene? Ghosh himself poses this argument, particularly with regards to novels, in another essay we examined for this course, The Great Derangement. He makes the claim that novels dilute the problems of the Anthropocene to a point where they are no longer comprehendible as the massive, overarching crises that they are. Novels are too individualized, too specific, to capture Anthropocenic issues like climate change. While I don’t disagree with this claim of Ghosh’s, I do want to contradict his view of individualism as a detriment of novels. I feel that examining the Anthropocene through the lens of fiction helps bring it down to a scale that is manageable. Novels help readers to understand and empathize with the problems they present, and empathy can be a powerful tool to motivate people to enact change. Similarly, language, though imperfect, is still an important means of connecting people, prompting communication and understanding. As residents of the Anthropocene, I think it is important to question the methods that we have long relied on, particularly the ones that are no longer working, and especially those that are actively causing harm. However, in my view, language and stories have not transcended into the realm of danger. In fact, I feel they have far more benefits in helping to address the problems of the Anthropocene, and because of this they remain relevant and important throughout this changing age.
Entry Five
“I fell asleep with the movie still playing, thinking there was something sad about a people who were born and lived and died on water, on rusty ships and boats and fantastic balloons, their days and nights filled with the hope of someday finding dry earth, their wars and industries and relationships and culture all driven by the myth of dry land.”
Oil On Water, pg. 96, Helon Habila
This quote stood out to me for a few reasons. The first and the simplest is that the prose reminded me of something that I would write, or at least that I would try to. “Rusty ships and fantastic balloons” remind me of a scene out of an animation or a painting, a delightful image even in describing a dying world. It definitely made me appreciate the vivid power of prose and the way that the written word can bring stories to life – one of my favorite things about writing in general, but always a delight to be reminded. I also think this quote is important in signifying that despite the fact that Rufus is a journalist, Halima himself is a novelist and storyteller, and uses his words accordingly as tools of art and beauty alongside the grit and pain of their messages.
The second reason this quote stood out to me is in the context of the Anthropocene and the novel both. Though Rufus describes here images from a dystopian movie, the picture is not so far off from the way the novel itself opens, on the Nigerian river delta, the story tied to the boat they are on, seeking land where they can find shelter for the night. The similarities remind me as a reader that the experiences of the characters in this novel are not so far off from that dystopia. This recognition tied into part of our discussion from class surrounding The Great Derangement. Someone suggested that part of the reason that science fiction may not be a useful tool in portraying the climate crisis is because it feels too distant from lived experience. The extremes portrayed in a dying sci fi planet do not feel tangible to readers living in the age of the Anthropocene, but this quote and this novel overall show that they are not so far off from reality as readers may assume. The inhabitants of the Niger river delta may still have dry land to live on, but in terms of access to resources and economic prosperity, they in many cases may as well be tied to boats and balloons, if only to avoid the skirmishes that await them onshore and the foreigners that abuse them without justifiable reason and the violence that wrecks their homes and their families. I think that this quote and this novel overall emphasize the human damage that accompany our journey into the Anthropocene, alongside the environmental consequences.
I feel like this entry represents how many of my thoughts about the Anthropocene started to come together as the course progressed, my representation of an attempt to make meaning from it all. I think I began to get a sense here of another reason why stories are told. Aside from their usefulness, their conveyance of problem and situation and experience, stories are also beautiful. Humans are drawn to beauty in the way that we give people flowers to show that we love them, and the way we rub sleep from our eyes and drag ourselves out of bed to witness the rising sun staining the sky. I maintain that stories are intricate things with many purposes, but I think at the same time that a thing can exist just for its beauty. The Anthropocene is an era of hardship, of problems that are far bigger than ourselves, but despite or even perhaps because of this, I think it is just as important to recognize the beauty when we can find it. A beautiful story can perhaps be a motivation to push forward, to survive and fighting, another day and another day and another day.
Entry Six
“‘What we really seek is not them but a greater meaning. Remember that the story is not the final goal.’ ‘Then what is?’ ‘The meaning of the story, and only a lucky few ever discover that.”
Oil on Water, pg. 5-6, Helon Habila
I felt this quote was fitting for one of my final contributions to my Anthropocene Backpack. We are spending our final few weeks of the quarter trying to find order in the chaos, both within the class and in the world outside. We’re trying to find the meaning in all the stories we’ve studied and tried to interpret, and those that we’ve lived as well.
In Oil on Water, Rufus is a journalist trying to capture and portray the world around him, but as the world around him becomes more and more complex, with violence blurring the lines of morality, and people turning out to have more dimensions than expected, he realizes that the story isn’t so easy to tell. The novel itself becomes Rufus’ story, intermingling fact and fiction as it does so.
As a writer myself, I seek to understand how and why to tell the story just as Rufus does, oftentimes wrestling with the fact that things aren’t as simple as they seem. The smallest of lines or throwaway details can have vast repercussions depending on the audience engaging with the work, and so care and attention are a must in that regard, to ensure that no meaning is accidental or prone to misinterpretation. But there is a larger force of work as well: a desire for understanding, a means of grappling with a world that rarely makes sense. This is the power of art as a medium, and the power that I find in fiction specifically. The problems on a page mirror and reflect back our own, however distorted through the lens of the story. Stories allow us to interpret things outside of our own disciplines and experiences. We can find truth and meaning if we search long and hard enough, take fragments from various texts to piece together a larger picture, find ways that these stories speak truths about ourselves into existence and extend them beyond just us. Whether they are ones that we read or write, I believe that experiencing stories allows us to get as close as we can come to finding meaning and understanding in the topsy-turvy chaos that is life and our world.
I included two quotes from Oil On Water in my backpack not so much because the novel spoke to me more than any of the others, but because by this point in my journey through the Anthropocene, I felt I was starting to understand what it was I wanted to consider most. I think this quote really touches on the purpose of stories in the age of the Anthropocene. The final goal is to make meaning of it all, to try and understand this crazy world that we call home. The style and intent of these meanings may vary depending on form. Though Oil On Water is a novel, its protagonist Rufus is a journalist, and as referenced above, I myself am a writer, primarily of short fiction. I have equated these experiences in my above entry, but really, not only is each form and genre of story unique, but stories themselves are individual experiences for author and reader both, never able to be replicated by another in quite the same way. We interact with stories – listening to them, telling them – as a way of seeking out this meaning. As the existentialists might suggest, the only way to make sense of the chaos of the world is to find our own meanings – our own reasons for living – amidst it all. This is what storytelling does, for me at least. It is why I think that they matter.
Entry Seven
“If humans are gone, what does it mean to describe something as a story?”
Jesse Oak Taylor, in reference to Yetta Morrison’s Darkness
In all my consideration of stories, I never once stopped to think about whether stories were rooted in humanity. We have seen stories this quarter that discuss non-human animals, such as The Hungry Tide, or even those that take on the perspectives of other species, like The Word For World is Forest. We have read narratives of those on the bottom of society, those who have been exploited and neglected, their voices silenced. But all of these texts are still human-created, human driven – until Darkness. Morrison’s piece is the opposite. Though still crafted by a human artist, it removes the beating hearts from Heart of Darkness, leaving behind only ironic swaths of white – and the words remaining that depict natural images. This reframing begs the question of what a story is – and whether without humans, it can even be considered a story.
What would a world look like without humanity? Is it even possible to remove the humans from the Earth, to slice and sever and erase them from the narrative? The idea of the Anthropocene as a geological age suggests not – suggests that humans have left a mark on this planet that can never be removed or undone. And if humans were gone, miraculously, either wiped out as a result of the inexorable decline we’ve started ourselves on, or somehow never in existence at all, then what of stories? Can stories exist with no pen to record them, no speech to give them voice? Or do they live on in the roots of the trees and the cells of the leaves, the reactions between molecules that grow and burst and die? Is there a kind of natural narrative that exists without humans to craft it – or are stories a uniquely human thing, a creation that cannot survive our extinction or uncreation? I do not have answers, but considering these questions has prompted me to reconsider what being a storyteller means in the Anthropocene age.
This was another late edition entry, prompted by a quote during one of our class discussions that tied so exactly into my Anthropocene-based interests that I immediately wrote it down to return to later. It helped me to consider not only what it means to tell stories, but how stories fit into the age of the Anthropocene. I do not know whether or not stories can exist without humans, but I do know that they feel important for humanity, regardless of whether they are unique. Stories help us to navigate the worlds around us and within us, help us to share our comprehensions of these worlds. And even if stories cannot survive without humanity, that doesn’t change the fact that since the beginning, humanity has relied on stories. Regardless of whether stories are uniquely human, regardless of whether they transcend us as a species, they are still an aspect of living a human life in this human age.
Entry Eight
“The Anthropocene embraces even more than this, encapsulating all the immense and far-reaching impacts of human actions on Earth. It says: this changes everything, forever.”
The Human Planet, pg 6, Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin
I chose this quote for what will likely be my final contribution to my Anthropocene Backpack because I think it effectively and concisely sums up the idea of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is everything that we know about our world. It is not a concept of liberal or conservative, of science or humanities, of human or nature. It is the plants in the ground and the breeze in the skies, the creatures that make their homes in trees and logs and burrows beneath the earth. It is every person we have ever loved or hated or lost or found again. And that is exactly what is at stake if we continue along the path we are on: everything. Our ways of life. Our species and every other. Our world.
Everything that we read and watch and listen to and examine must be placed within context, our context as humans as a whole, but also the context of our lives as individuals. Thus, our evaluation of the Anthropocene, complex and ever-changing, contains at least these two layers, the broadest and the most personal, all the minds and a mind in singular. After spending so many weeks focusing in on texts, interpreting meaning from lines and phrases, this quote feels like scaling out again, evaluating the full picture. The fibers have all been twisted and woven and it is time for the tapestry to emerge. This quote is an invitation to look back on what we have read and written, follow the strands, untangle the threads. It is a chance to reflect. And then it is a chance to step away from our pages and screens and go out in the world and make change.
Looking back, I wonder if The Human Planet might have served as an excellent introduction to the course and the idea of the Anthropocene overall. Equally, this entry could have served as the start of my guide, but instead it is here, at the end. I think what this piece provides as a conclusion is perspective that I – and probably you, reader – did not have at the beginning of this journey. I have taken this time to reflect on the purpose and value of stories and whether or not they belong in this epoch. I have shared my thoughts – and now it is up to you to decide what to do with them. A journey through the Anthropocene involves two stages, though both are recursive and reoccurring. There is the learning, some of which I have documented and compiled here. And then there is the living – the moving throughout the Anthropocene from within, every day, past and future. The study of the Anthropocene has certainly informed the ways I will operate – how I consume media, how I plan to seek out the unheard voices and stories, and how I choose to tell stories myself. Now, it is time for you to take this knowledge, these stories that I’ve shared, and move forth with them into the world beyond.