Thinking (and feeling) with Anthropocene (Pacific) islands

Abstract

This commentary responds to David Chandler and Jonathan Pugh’s (2021) thought-provoking article, ‘Anthropocene Islands: There Are Only Islands After the End of the World’. It begins by highlighting the new visibility of Pacific islands and islanders in the discourses and media coverage of climate change and the Anthropocene. I argue that scholars need to be critical of reductionist representations of the Pacific and should, instead, highlight the complexities of Pacific agency, complexity, and subjectivity in order to think more fully about the Anthropocene in the Pacific. Moreover, scholars should delve into the Pacific humanities to become attuned to how Pacific Islanders are feeling the precarity and urgency of climate change.