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An Ecology of Plants: The Post-Manufacturing Age in Philip Ridley’s Shivered and David Eldridge’s In Basildon

  • Christian Attinger

    graduated with an M. A. in political sciences, English, and German literature from the University of Augsburg. In April 2021, he completed a PhD in English literature with a thesis on the theatre of Philip Ridley. He currently works for a large multinational corporation in the IT industry but is still passionate about his academic affiliations. His special interests include John Milton’s Paradise Lost and war poetry from the Renaissance to the present day. Internationally, he participated in a research project on representations of precariousness in contemporary drama and gave a presentation on the Romantic concept of organic unity in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer at the NASSR supernumerary conference in Tokyo in 2014. His publications include an article on “Staging Hobbes, or: Theseus Goes to the Theatre. Precariousness, Cultural Memory and Dystopia in Philip Ridley’s Mercury Fur” (2017).

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Published/Copyright: May 14, 2022

Abstract

The article argues that the so-called Capitalocene, proposed by Jason W. Moore, augments Anthropocenic reasoning by addressing the systemic and ideological shortcomings threatening the very basics of human existence that hitherto have so often been neglected or simply missed by “Green Arithmetic” and a naive belief in technology. The readings of Philip Ridley’s Shivered (2012) and David Eldridge’s In Basildon (2012) illustrate that the Capitalocene and its attempts at understanding the ecological and social consequences of global capitalism offer an exciting new lens for the analysis of contemporary political drama, especially with regard to the ecology of industrial plants in the post-manufacturing age.

About the author

Christian Attinger

graduated with an M. A. in political sciences, English, and German literature from the University of Augsburg. In April 2021, he completed a PhD in English literature with a thesis on the theatre of Philip Ridley. He currently works for a large multinational corporation in the IT industry but is still passionate about his academic affiliations. His special interests include John Milton’s Paradise Lost and war poetry from the Renaissance to the present day. Internationally, he participated in a research project on representations of precariousness in contemporary drama and gave a presentation on the Romantic concept of organic unity in William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer at the NASSR supernumerary conference in Tokyo in 2014. His publications include an article on “Staging Hobbes, or: Theseus Goes to the Theatre. Precariousness, Cultural Memory and Dystopia in Philip Ridley’s Mercury Fur” (2017).

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Published Online: 2022-05-14
Published in Print: 2022-05-12

� 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Preliminary Note
  4. Co-Mutability, Nodes, and the Mesh: Critical Theatre Ecologies – An Introduction
  5. Writing in the Green: Imperatives towards an Eco-n-temporary Theatre Canon
  6. Bec(h)oming with Simon Whitehead: Practising a Logic of Sensation
  7. An Art Like Nature: Theatre Environment as Territory in Tim Spooner Performances
  8. Performing Resilience: Anchorage and Leverage in Live Action Role-Play Drama
  9. Encounters in the Chthulucene: Simon McBurney’s Theatre of Compost
  10. To Be Like Water: Material Dramaturgies in Posthumanist Performance
  11. “A Missile to the Future”: The Theatre Ecologies of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away on Spike Island
  12. Symptomatic Spaces: Adam Rapp and American Eco-Drama in the Anthropocene
  13. Kinship and Community in Climate-Change Theatre: Ecodramaturgy in Practice
  14. Eco-Drama, Multinational Corporations, and Climate Change in Nigeria
  15. Playing the Petrocene: Toxicity and Intoxication in Leigh Fondakowski’s Spill and Ella Hickson’s Oil
  16. An Ecology of Plants: The Post-Manufacturing Age in Philip Ridley’s Shivered and David Eldridge’s In Basildon
  17. Alienation, Abjection, and Disgust: Encountering the Capitalocene in Contemporary Eco-Drama
  18. Elaine Aston. Restaging Feminisms. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, viii + 132 pp., £44.99 (hardback), £44.99 (paperback), £35.99 (PDF/EPUB ebook).
  19. Maria Chatzichristodoulou, ed. Live Art in the UK: Contemporary Performances of Precarity. London: Methuen Drama, 2020, x + 212 pp., £65 (hardback), £19.79 (paperback), £15.83 (PDF ebook).
  20. Yana Meerzon, David Dean, and Daniel McNeil, ed. Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, xvi + 298 pp., €124.99 (hardback), €85.59 (PDF ebook).
  21. Mark Brown. Modernism and Scottish Theatre since 1969: A Revolution on Stage. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, xvii + 254 pp., € 80.24 (hardback), € 24.99 (softcover).
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