Uncivilising the Anthropocene: Post-Environmentalism and The Dark Mountain Project

Abstract

This thesis explores the post-environmentalist network of writers, artists, and thinkers known as The Dark Mountain Project. It does so by examining Dark Mountain as a literary and cultural phenomenon that has generated a burgeoning literary community and subculture of uncivilisation in response to ecocide in the Anthropocene. I implement a method of analysis drawn from the environmental humanities to examine the cultural dynamics of environmental crisis, with particular emphasis on the role of storytellers in shaping perceptions of the future. I utilize a comparative approach to measure the project’s emerging philosophy of uncivilisation against more established concepts in radical ecology, including Timothy Morton’s dark ecology and Deep Ecology. I introduce the concept of negative eco-aesthetics to describe the quality of darkness and negativity that characterizes Dark Mountain’s uncivilised writing, and demonstrate how such writing can reinvigorate our current inability to imagine possible futures beyond the current forecast of collapse.