World, Earth, Planet: A Time and Place for Nihilation in Ecocriticism
World, Earth, Planet: A Time and Place for Nihilation in Ecocriticism

Summary/Abstract: This essay argues that opening a space and a time for the questions of ecological, terrestrial and cosmic nihilation in ecocriticism, one that takes seriously the end of the relational notion of ‘world,’ implores us to imagine or invent alternatives for a more just living together. While speculative realism, and object-oriented ontology in particular, have made important advances in describing the withdrawal of the real from its relations, I suggest that deconstruction affords us a more radical way to think this withholding, particularly where it intersects with the literary. Drawing from two unpublished seminars of Derrida’s, I contrast speculative realist criticism in supernatural horror, romanticism and science fiction with a notion of habituating oneself to nothing; not to the thing, but to its radical and irreversible annihilation.

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