Narrating the Anthropocene: Scale, Latency, and Entanglement in Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality

Abstract

This article examines Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality (2022) as a formally innovative response to the representational challenges of the Anthropocene. Drawing on scale theory and assemblage thinking, it argues that the text’s fragmented, polyvocal narratives and temporal disjunctions illuminate three key Anthropocene features: latency, entanglement, and scalar complexity (Horn). Through nonlinear storytelling, Arboreality enmeshes divergent temporalities and perspectives, staging a critical dialogue between ecomodernist and ecological posthumanist imaginaries. It advances Indigenous epistemologies, multispecies kinship, and community-based ecological practices as vital alternatives to technocratic interventions, reconfiguring human-nature relations and offering a compelling aesthetic for imagining resilience amid planetary crisis.