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A review by thisiscourt
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I think the premise is great, but not as well-executed as it could’ve been.
The thread tying together all the essays on the Ghost side was a lot tighter and clearer; this wasn’t really the case on the Monster side. The essays on the Monster side all felt pretty disconnected and not really related to the metaphor of monsters/monstrosity. Until the “coda” essay, I didn’t have a clear idea of what the thesis was for putting these essays together. The Ghost side was a lot more consistent with the metaphor/theme and honestly maybe the whole anthology could have been just about ghosts.
I felt that the little summaries of the essays that came before every group of 2-3 was redundant. It was restating all the same ideas as the essay, and the main summary of the essays for each side did the exact same thing.
I also felt that some of these essays were a little too science-y for my liking. There were a good handful that I really liked and were less nitty-gritty academic, but I found myself getting lost a lot on the more science-heavy essays.
That said, I did learn a lot from each of these essays, and I do have a new way to think about the Anthropocene.
The thread tying together all the essays on the Ghost side was a lot tighter and clearer; this wasn’t really the case on the Monster side. The essays on the Monster side all felt pretty disconnected and not really related to the metaphor of monsters/monstrosity. Until the “coda” essay, I didn’t have a clear idea of what the thesis was for putting these essays together. The Ghost side was a lot more consistent with the metaphor/theme and honestly maybe the whole anthology could have been just about ghosts.
I felt that the little summaries of the essays that came before every group of 2-3 was redundant. It was restating all the same ideas as the essay, and the main summary of the essays for each side did the exact same thing.
I also felt that some of these essays were a little too science-y for my liking. There were a good handful that I really liked and were less nitty-gritty academic, but I found myself getting lost a lot on the more science-heavy essays.
That said, I did learn a lot from each of these essays, and I do have a new way to think about the Anthropocene.