Ruin Ecology provides a theoretical investigation into the cultural, ecological and political significance of ruins in the Anthropocene. Malvestio conceptualises ruins as processual formations originating from the interaction of human and non-human agencies, rather than static remnants of past civilisations. Tracing a genealogy from Romantic Ruinenlust and coeval theories of the sublime to contemporary representations of decay, abandonment, and environmental slow violence, the author identifies a decisive shift in affective orientation: from distanced aesthetic contemplation to intimate confrontation with ecological instability. Drawing on material ecocriticism, posthumanist theory and ecogothic studies, ruination is framed as a redistribution of agency across biological, geological, chemical and atmospheric forces, while simultaneously emphasising historically situated human responsibility. Ruins emerge as diagnostic sites of ecological precarity, environmental injustice and temporal dislocation through which contemporary culture simultaneously mourns and imagines futures shaped by climate change and uneven exposure to environmental harm.
Federica Campaiola (Sun,) studied this question.