@article{ahip 1090, author = {Theodoros Kyriakides}, title = {Epidemic Strangeness and the Need for Myth in the Anthropocene}, volume = {3}, year = {2022}, url = {https://www.anthropocenes.net/article/id/1090/}, issue = {1}, doi = {10.16997/ahip.1090}, abstract = {<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="font-size:16px;">In this essay I attempt to draw some crucial theoretical parallelisms between ancient Greek cosmology and the Anthropocene. Taking inspiration from Marcel Detienne and Timothy Morton’s work, I deploy the figure of Dionysos as a conceptual persona which can help us think of strangeness as a non-human mode of relationality Anthropocene societies must urgently engage with. Events such as the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic, through which non-humans are brought to the forefront of politics and social relations, traditionally result to attempts of sublating strangeness through human modes of knowledge. As I argue, epidemics instead demand the creation of practices, collectives and techniques through which strangeness is not eliminated or ‘understood’, but rather elevated to a fundamental feature of social relations. In such sense, the ancient world presents a critical vector of intervention to the current state of the Anthropocene, since it showcases a cosmos in which human life and society is constantly embedded and negotiated amid non-human strangeness.</span></p>}, month = {3}, keywords = {cosmology,epidemics,Anthropocene,strangeness,myth}, issn = {2633-4321}, publisher={University of Westminster Press}, journal = {Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman} }