Abstract

American Immanence begins with the following premise: as the Earth becomes increasingly a product of human existence, we are faced with a radical unsettling of our traditional modes of self-understanding, both in relation to each other and to the broader environment. As Hogue succinctly observes, “By making the Earth homo imago, by terraforming our own self-image into the Earth, we have discovered ourselves as earth creatures, terra bēstiae”. The anthropogenic shifts that have beset our ecological, religious, and political climates, he insists, require us to reconceive many of our basic anthropological, ethical, and theological assumptions. These shifts signify the paradoxicality of the Anthropocene as, at...