Anthropocide
An Essay in Green Cultural Criminology
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published:17th Jan '25
Should be back in stock very soon
Through an examination of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, this book demonstrates the ability of cinematic fictions, and other complex narrative fictions, to contribute to meeting the climate challenge by shaping the desires of audiences.
What if there was a single feature film that showed us everything we need to know about climate catastrophe culture? What if that same film also made the philosophies of Slavoj Žižek, Mark Fisher, Francis Fukuyama, and Fredric Jameson accessible? Identifying the climate challenge as a cultural challenge, this book provides an unprecedented criminological analysis of both Children of Men and Fisher’s oeuvre from 1998 to 2022 and demonstrates the capacity of cinematic narratives to shape climate catastrophe culture. Seeking to be part of the solution to the climate challenge, it is the first criminological study to link the capacity of cinematic fictions to shape desire to solutions to the climate crisis. It is also one of the most detailed and most rigorous criminological case studies of a cinematic work to date.
Anthropocide: An Essay in Green Cultural Criminology will be of great interest to students and scholars of green criminology, cultural criminology, narrative criminology, film theory, philosophy of film, and ecocriticism.
“From the science of climate change, through insights from history and cultural criticism, to discussion of aesthetics and representation, this is an immensely accomplished essay about a world made barren. Focused on the existential meaning of the 2006 film Children of Men, McGregor describes maladies that are with us now – Anthropocide, de-civilization, over-reliance on technology – and makes us wonder how far fiction represents or misrepresents reality?”
Nigel South, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex
“Rafe McGregor is the master of the short monograph, the most creative contemporary critical theorist, and the closest thing this generation has to Fredric Jameson.”
Avi Brisman, Professor of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University
“Rafe McGregor has written a solid and thought-provoking essay about the anthropocide we are facing, which he states will be experienced as economic, political, and social collapse, as a reversal of Elias’ civilizing process. He postulates that climate change is foremost a cultural challenge which must be responded to with cultural means, whereupon he in a pedagogical manner conveys how narrative representations, such as the film (and book) Children of Men, can be a resource for the insight, analysis, and evaluation of attitudes to and desires about the current crisis. I hereby strongly recommend the book, which I consider a great intellectual achievement. With this essay McGregor firmly establishes his place within green cultural criminology.”
Ragnhild Sollund, Professor of Criminology, University of Oslo
ISBN: 9781032934242
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 376g
112 pages