Beyond Elemental Loss

Shifting Constellations of Water, Fire, Air, and Earth

Marjolein Oele

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9798855801675, 9798855801682
• eBook ISBN: 9798855801699
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

Offers an important and innovative contribution to environmental philosophy by investigating loss in times of anthropogenic climate change through the elements of water, fire, air, and earth.

Beyond Elemental Loss offers an important and innovative contribution to environmental philosophy by investigating loss in times of anthropogenic climate change through the elements of water, fire, air, and earth. Marjolein Oele argues that the current experience of loss prompts a reassessment of the conventional meaning and conceptualization of loss. She proposes that such loss is best understood through infinitesimal, diachronic shifts occurring in the elemental constellations that structure the world-water, fire, air, and earth-and humanity's incremental inability to cognitively and affectively make sense of this world increasingly transformed by anthropogenic forces. Through a generous yet critical reading of a broad range of interdisciplinary sources tracing changes in our relationship to the elemental over time, Oele's scholarship plumbs the history of philosophy as much as it pulls from Indigenous philosophies, continental thought, mythologies, anthropological and historical sources, science, and ecology. The book's argumentative arc ultimately directs our attention toward constructive transformations in our cognitive and affective habits, and it argues that trust can bring us beyond elemental loss.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Water — Living and Speaking Oceanic Loss: On Extinction, Migration, and Language(s)
• Chapter 2. Fire — Pyrogenic Creation and Destruction: Contemplating the Meaning of Fire, Affect, and Loss in the Pyrocene
• Chapter 3. Air — The Breath of Decaying Constellations: A Phenomenology of Loss, Illness, Allergies, and Bad Air
• Chapter 4. Earth — Silent Tremors: Earthquakes and the Question of Balance and (Dis)Orientation
• Chapter 5. Elemental Trust — Transforming Elemental Loss into Elemental Change
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover