Pascale Petit: Entanglement, Animals, and the ‘Anthropocene Extinction’

Ecologists have begun to refer to ‘the Anthropocene’s biological extinction crisis’ (Cebaddos et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114.30 (Jul 25 2017): E6089–96). If scholars such as Stacy Alaimo have criticised Anthropocene culture for focusing on inert rock strata rather than living organisms (Alaimo, Stacy. ‘Your Shell on Acid: Material Immersion, Anthropocene Dissolves.’ In Richard Grusin, ed. Anthropocene Feminism. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP (2017). Pp. 89–120), Pascale Petit’s work throws the sixth mass extinction into relief. This chapter takes scholarship that analyses cultural representations of extinction as its starting point, showing how Petit develops a feminist poetic response to the biodiversity crisis and its causes. Global locations, from the Amazon rainforest to Indian tiger reserves, are the focus of politically charged poetry that grapples with extinction. Petit’s work links extinction to both climate change and the capitalist commodification of rainforests and wildlife. Research on Petit’s private archive, to which I have had exclusive scholarly access, shows how her poems were crafted, linking published work to her scientific research notes. Petit’s quiet engagement with Extinction Rebellion is brought to scholarly attention, and a new interview with the author illuminates her decades-long concerns about declining biodiversity.