Extinction Fever

Abstract

For the first time in human history, extinction has expanded into the common parlance of everyday life. Not only is it no longer special, but it has also entered into the vast machinations of the culture industry. The certainty of our extinction is, however, grounded in the paradox of the uncertainty of how it will all play out. And so, despite the seeming inevitability of extinction, its presumed factualities sound fictional and, indeed, science fiction has had a field day. The opening up of awareness of the vast time scales at play has also created a new temporal condition based on a basic truth: we, the human species, will not have time to “evolve” into something else. In other words, despite the long-drawn-out processes of our evolution, we are now stuck in the awkward fixity of our supposed “humanity” as something that is now both permanently endangered and permanently fragile.