Cymene Howe

Posts by This Author

Verdant Optimism: On How Capitalism Will Never Save the World

Theorizing the Contemporary

Verdant Optimism: On How Capitalism Will Never Save the World

Earth systems continue their collapse and the shadow of recognition spreads that humans (northern capitalist moderns anyway) are to blame. Still, a weird optimi... More

Surprise

Theorizing the Contemporary

Surprise

What is it to be taken by surprise? It is to be startled and maybe shaken, to be enchanted and even made breathless. To be taken by surprise is to be accosted b... More

Tuil

Theorizing the Contemporary

Tuil

My name is Tuil. I am no monster. But I am becoming monstrous. I cannot say exactly when it began, but I remember the ache. That ache became agony as my skin be... More

Melt as Sensory Labor

Theorizing the Contemporary

Melt as Sensory Labor

As the ice of the world melts, heat is made visible. Rapidly rising temperatures draw attention to Earth’s cryosphere as it is increasingly measured, its retr... More

Failure

Theorizing the Contemporary

Failure

Fail. Fall. Frail. Flail. Flounder. Fizzle. Flop.What does it mean to fail together?In ethnographic collaboration there are lots of places to flail, fall, and f... More

Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen

Theorizing the Contemporary

Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen

The idea of an Anthropocene has spread with astonishing speed, dislodging familiar terms like nature and environment from their customary preeminence as signs o... More

Timely

Theorizing the Contemporary

Timely

Some of us remember Watchmen. This was the graphic novel of deconstructed superheroes, nonlinear plot timing, and, perhaps most famously, the bloody smiley face... More

Introduction: Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen

Theorizing the Contemporary

Introduction: Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen

This is a work in progress, and we hope that you might also think of pitching in. We write in the midst of a dramatic revaluation of the epoch at hand, as a sub... More

Queer Futures

Theorizing the Contemporary

Queer Futures

This series brings together a cohort of anthropologists to reflect on queer anthropology as a historically situated intellectual formation and research communit... More

Porous Pleasures

Theorizing the Contemporary

Porous Pleasures

My queered anthropological life began on the streets of San Francisco and from there traveled south to Nicaragua, where I studied the postrevolutionary struggle... More