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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Jonathan PughORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This entry introduces the new trope of ‘islands of negation’ to draw out how recent debate has criticised the dominant frameworks through which the environmental humanities have operated, understood, and engaged the world. The environmental humanities have been shaped by a profound ethical and ontological reorientation toward modes of relation, entanglement, and affirmation. Concepts such as more-than-human assemblages, relational ontologies, and an ethics of care have emerged as hopeful tools for reimagining life in the Anthropocene. Here, ‘islands’ have become emblematic sites for the development of such imaginaries – spaces of relational excess, non-linear temporality, and ecological experimentation. The counter-trope of ‘islands of negation’ seeks to move otherwise by engaging the growing interest in refusing the hand of affirmation, hope and the promise of relation, resisting incorporation into dominant epistemological regimes. When even resistance can be appropriated, ‘islands of negation’ ask: what would it mean to unlearn mastery without replacing it with another form of capture?
Author(s): Pugh J
Series Editor(s): Ekman U; Irrgang D;
Publication type: Online Publication
Publication status: Published
Series Title: Environmental humanities: Emergent key terms
Year: 2025
Access Year: 2025
Online publication date: 27/01/2025
Acceptance date: 26/07/2025
Publisher: Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen
Place Published: Copenhagen
Access Date: 28 July
URL: https://artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/art-and-earth/environmental-humanities-glossary/islands-of-negation/
Notes: Series also described as Environmental Humanities Glossary. This glossary is edited by Ulrik Ekman and Daniel Irrgang.
