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We are delighted to announce the latest title in the
Critical Climate Chaos, Irreversibility series: Stephanie
Wakefield's very
timely <i>Anthropocene Back Loop: Experimentation in Unsafe
Operating Space.</i>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Like all Open Humanities Press books, <i>Anthropocene
Back Loop</i>
is available for free: </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a
href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/anthropocene-backloop/">http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/anthropocene-backloop/</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">In the face
of climate chaos, post-truth politics, and growing tribalisms,
it’s clear that
liberalism’s old structures are unraveling. Drawing on
resilience ecology,
Stephanie Wakefield suggests we understand such phenomena to be
indicators that
we are entering the Anthropocene’s back loop, a time of release
and collapse,
confusion and reorientation, in which not only populations and
climates are
being upended but also physical and metaphysical grounds. <i>Anthropocene
Back
Loop</i> takes us on a journey though different responses and
manifestations of
the back loop, exploring urban resilience infrastructures,
post-apocalyptic
imaginaries in fiction and critical theory, and a range of
everyday practices
from survival skills and physical fitness to experimentation
with one’s soul. Rather
than returning to liberalism’s safe operating space, what is
needed and what
can be seen in many contemporary practices, Wakefield argues,
are forms of
experimentation geared toward charting autonomous modes of
living within the
back loop’s new unsafe operating spaces. Such efforts often let
go of old
frameworks, hubristically experiment with new uses, cultivate an
allowance for
the unknown, and embrace a confidence in exploring one’s own
pathways. What
these iterations suggest is that the back loop, long imagined in
the singular,
is spiraling out into myriad trajectories. After all, if we take
seriously the
idea that liberalism’s single world order is unraveling, we have
the
opportunity - one many have long fought for - to create our own
new codes, if
not new worlds. Being in the back loop means that we have
already crossed
various tipping points, and that in doing so, everything from
social practices,
technologies, and truth to plants, animals, and places have
become shaken out
of their normal frameworks. We are free to move on new planes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">‘Announcing the apocalypse is easy. But doing
something
constructive with planetary catastrophe is rare and precious.
Stephanie
Wakefield’s repurposing of the ecological 'back loop’ for the
badlands of the
Anthropocene will not only fire your imagination, it will wind you
up and send
you out to slash, burn, pump, hammer, rivet and rewire a liveable
world into
existence.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><i>- Nigel Clark</i>
– Chair of
Social Sustainability, Lancaster University</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Are we just survivors? Is our fate to endlessly
– and
aimlessly — govern the climate crisis? In this unexpected and
inspiring book,
Stephanie Wakefield reclaims the Anthropocene ‘back loop’ as a
time for
experimentation rather than fear, a time to probe possibilities
rather than desperately
cling to a ‘safe operating space’ that is safe only for a few.
Anthropocene
Back Loop returns to a key insight: Being is a question, not a
blueprint. What
other modes of life can we invent?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:36.0pt"><i>- Bruce Braun</i>
– Professor,
University of Minnesota</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">Author Bio</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">Stephanie
Wakefield is an urban geographer and teacher. She is currently
an Urban Studies
Foundation International Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at
Florida
International University in the Department of Global and
Sociocultural Studies
and Institute of Environment. She writes frequently for popular,
art, and
academic journals.</span></p>
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lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">Best, Gary,
David and Sigi</span></p>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Director of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Coventry University:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/areas-of-research/postdigital-cultures">http://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/areas-of-research/postdigital-cultures</a>
Director of Open Humanities Press: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.openhumanitiespress.org">http://www.openhumanitiespress.org</a>
Website <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.garyhall.info">http://www.garyhall.info</a>
Latest:
‘How to Be An Anti-Bourgeois Theorist: Postdigital Politics in a Time of Pandemics IV’: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2020/5/12/how-to-be-an-anti-bourgeois-theorist-postdigital-politics-in.html">http://garyhall.squarespace.com/journal/2020/5/12/how-to-be-an-anti-bourgeois-theorist-postdigital-politics-in.html</a>
</pre>
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