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Chapter 20 - Ecology

from Part IV - Social and Cultural Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Steven Frye
Affiliation:
California State University, Bakersfield
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Summary

Throughout his career, Cormac McCarthy has produced a rich body of literature that examines the complicated and often fraught interactions between humans and the more-than-human world. Encompassing tales about precarity and abandonment, failures of the Western dream to provide new beginnings and new freedoms, philosophical meditations on the limits of human knowledge, and apocalyptic revisions of agency in end times, McCarthy’s writings examine complex entanglements between human and nonhuman characters in an ever-changing material world. His place-based writings reconfigure spatial categories as they unfold across diverse geographical scales that are local, regional, national, transnational, and at times even planetary. Drawing on new developments in materialist ecocriticism and the environmental humanities, this chapter explores how the author engages intersections between economy and ecology; addresses agency across humans, animals, and the more-than-human world; and examines challenges posed by the Anthropocene. Through its depictions of ecology and agriculture, the role of the written word in the conquest of the Americas, and the Great Acceleration resulting from the Cold War global arms race, McCarthy’s writings help readers assess some of the more baffling complexities of our new geologic age.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Ecology
  • Edited by Steven Frye, California State University, Bakersfield
  • Book: Cormac McCarthy in Context
  • Online publication: 12 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108772297.021
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  • Ecology
  • Edited by Steven Frye, California State University, Bakersfield
  • Book: Cormac McCarthy in Context
  • Online publication: 12 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108772297.021
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Ecology
  • Edited by Steven Frye, California State University, Bakersfield
  • Book: Cormac McCarthy in Context
  • Online publication: 12 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108772297.021
Available formats
×