Morton, Timothy. “The Oedipal Logic of Ecological Awareness.” Environmental Humanities, vol. 1 (November 2012): 7–21.
The Anthropocene is the radical intersection of human history and geological time. Humans have belatedly realised that they have become a geophysical force on a planetary scale. This creeping realisation has an Oedipal logic, that is to say, it is a strange loop in which one level of activity—industrial agriculture and the swiftly ensuing industrial revolution—crosses into an entirely new level of planetary force and, following from that, an uncanny recognition of this force. This essay argues that the Oedipal logic is embedded in the technical, logistical, and philosophical framework of agriculture as such. — Adapted from the author’s abstract.
© Timothy Morton 2012. Environmental Humanities is available online only and is published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).