Ecology of Co-habitation: Objects, Nonhumans, and Worlds

Abstract

Objects, nonhumans, and worlds are keywords by and on which literary studies in the Anthropocene assert themselves. From these vantage points, this essay analyzes the main issues relating to the idea of “lively” matter to investigate how the collective of humans and nonhumans becomes the necessary elements of worlding. Reviewing Correlationism and Object Oriented Ontology, this essay attempts to find clues to the possibility of ecological cohabitation through textual engagement with Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and English Romantic authors. The discussion of the symbiotic economy between humans and nonhumans gives itself to searching for an alternative to the concept of the world built upon human-world correlationism. Object Oriented Ontology exemplifies a realism that works beyond subject-object division and human-world correlation. The three keywords provided here consolidate the framework of fundamental ecology, which supports and works behind all cultural phenomena in the age of men.