Abstract
As an autoethnographic text this thesis chronicles my encounter — via both academic research and my digital media landscapes — with the “overwhelming affectivity of climate change” (Verlie 20122:54) and the Anthropocene more broadly. I draw on autoethnographic methods of critical self-reflection, turning to my journals, thesis notes, and draft documents throughout 2020-2022 as sites of ‘data’, to explore and articulate my experience through this time. Moreover, in recognition of the fact that the ‘self’ is not an isolated individual, but rather a relational composition, I also draw heavily on the digital and traditional media that have been central to my journey through this work. Reflecting autoethnography’s grounding as an affective methodology, as well as Verlie’s call to consider feeling as “a serious and powerful mode of engagement” (2022:2), the aim of this thesis is to evoke the feelings of being in the Anthropocene that I have moved through over the course of this research. In doing so I hope to offer the reader an opportunity to move through the difficult work of facing the emotional and existential weight of life in the Anthropocene.
This thesis unfolds in three distinctive movements. In the first, I use myself, and the ebbs and flows of my own climate anxiety, Anthropocene Horror, and existential despair to contribute an inside perspective to the discourse of ‘climate emotions’, or what I call the ‘Affective Anthropocene’, as well as to showcase the messy process of doing research during periods of both external and internal crisis. The second is an existential exposition on the apocalyptic imaginary as I have experienced it and as it plays out online. Through this, I interrogate the Anthropocene as a concept as well as notions of extinction, and explore how facing existential issues like apocalypse and mortality is vital to building existential resilience (Ray 2020). The final section is my movement through learning the work of care, self-care in particular, and meaningful action. Against the overwhelm of the previous chapters, through this section, I explore how I have learned to live and learned to love despite these times of crisis. The overarching thread of this thesis is the importance of facing the realities of the Anthropocene, of the climate crisis, and in doing so learning how to “stay with the trouble” (Haraway 2016).