Bewilderment

During the Romantic period, cathartic expressions of eco-anxiety resulted in a collective effort to evoke change through an influential wave of art, literature, music, science, and philosophy that spread across Europe, North America, and beyond. Due to the similar sense of loss and uncertainty that accompanies today’s rapidly changing climate, Romantic voices and ideals continue to be called upon to highlight the vital connection between humans and nature. A rising generation of writers, poets, artists, researchers, and activists across the globe, however, seeks to inspire affirmative climate action while acknowledging and making space for the hidden places, the excluded voices, and the forgotten stories overshadowed by Western Romanticism. This article therefore suggests there is an emerging movement of Romanticism guided by feelings of bewilderment defined in two ways: as isolation, expressing the uncertainty and unfamiliarity accompanying contemporary eco-anxiety; and as attunement, embracing the uncanniness of the Anthropocene by becoming more attentive to non-Western worldviews, deep time perspectives, multispecies encounters, and nonhuman presences. The featured literary and artistic interventions reveal how Anthropocene bewilderment can be harnessed to accessibly translate the ecological data dump, elevate underrepresented voices, and create new pathways for affirmative climate action and more-than-human planetary care.