Death and the Anthropocene: Cormac McCarthy's World of Unliving

The events of the Anthropocene, as engendered by humanity's actions, in some ways function to destabilise the security of humanity's survival. This essay examines differing responses to humanity's death made imminent in Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel The Road. Taking an approach informed by Jacques Derrida's interrogations of “death” as aporia and “death” as “loss of the archive,” a “thinking” of the beyond of contemporary “death thinking” is proposed.