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"Answering methodological challenges posed by the Anthropocene, this collection retools the empirical study of the socioecological chaos of the contemporary moment across the arts, human science, and natural science. The methodological companion to Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, it provides empirical studies of the multispecies messiness of contemporary life that investigate some of the critical questions of our time"

What does it mean to refuse? To not participate, to not build a better world, to not come up with a plan? To just say "no"? Against the ubiquitous demands for positive solutions, action-oriented policies, and optimistic compromises, The Big No refuses to play. Here leading scholars traverse the wide range of political action when "no" is in the picture, analyzing topics such as collective action, antisocialism, empirical science, the negative and the affirmative in Deleuze and Derrida, the "real" and the "clone," Native sovereignty, and Afropessimism.0In his introduction, Kennan Ferguson sums up the concept of the "Big No," arguing for its political importance. Whatever its form-he identifies various strains-the Big No offers power against systems of oppression. Joshua Clover argues for the importance of Marx and Fanon in understanding how people are alienated and subjugated. Theodore Martin explores the attractions of antisociality in literature and life, citing such novelists as Patricia Highsmith and Richard Wright. Francois Laruelle differentiates nonphilosophy from other forms of French critical theory. Katerina Kolozova applies this insight to the nature of reality itself, arguing that the confusion of thought and reality leads to manipulation, automation, and alienation. Using poetry and autobiography, Frank Wilderson shows how Black people-their bodies and being-are displaced in politics, replaced and erased by the subjectivities of violence, suffering, and absence. Andrew Culp connects these themes of negativity, comparing and contrasting the refusals of antiphilosophy and Afropessimism. 0Thinking critically usually demands alternatives: how would you fix things? But, as The Big No shows, being absolutely critical-declining the demands of world-building-is one necessary response to wrong, to evil. It serves as a powerful reminder that the presumption of political action is always positive

"For years critics have viewed Herman Melville's Captain Ahab as the paradigm of a strong, controlling agent. Farmer and Schroeder's volume aims to rethink Ahab through a series of "materialist" frames, including posthumanism, disability studies, affect theory, animal studies, environmental humanities, systems theory, and oceanic studies. The essays here recast Ahab as a contingent figure, transformed by his environment--by chemistry, electromagnetism, entomology, meteorology, diet, illness, pain, trauma, and neurons firing--in ways that unexpectedly force us to see him as worthy of our empathy and our compassion. Collectively these materialist readings challenge our ways of thinking about the boundaries of both persons and actions, along with the racist and environmental violence caused by 'personhood' and by the 'human"-- Provided by publisher