Eco-Theory and Annihilation

Eco-Theory and Annihilation provides a masterful, philosophically informed, and up-to-date overview of the expanding field of eco-theory and its major thinkers. In addition, by pairing eco-theory with practical ecocriticism of Garland’s film version of VanderMeer’s novel Annihilation, it discloses the indispensability of particular contexts of lived experience and practice. Eco-Theory and Annihilation provides us with new ecological thinking needed to cope with life in the Anthropocene and to rethink what it means to be human. * Monika Kaup, Professor, English, University of Washington, USA *Evan Gottlieb’s book takes a deep-time approach to eco-theory in order to draw out, in scene-by-scene, and often shot-by-shot, analyses of the most important implications of Alex Garland’s film Annihilation, the willingly unfaithful adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel. Through concepts such as Donna Haraway’s making kin, Stacy Alaimo’s transcorporeality, and the author’s own carbon-heavy masculinity, Garland’s film is used to argue for an increased realization of the messy and entangled nature of the world in which humanity finds itself. * Brian Willems, Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split, Croatia *

Evan Gottlieb is Professor of English in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University, USA. He is the author of five books, most recently Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory (2020) and Romantic Realities: Speculative Realism and British Romanticism (2018).