Conclusion: A Critical Agenda for the Anthropocene

This conclusion restates the argument of the book that the engagement with islands in many debates today is not merely caught up in the slipstream of contemporary social and philosophical trends but is important to the ontological and onto-epistemological framing and tools of the Anthropocene. It clarifies that the book undertakes an analysis of the ‘work’ that thinking with islands, island imaginaries, island writers, artists, poets, activists, and island problematics is doing in these debates. Not only thinking about, but ‘with ‘islands has become an important resource for alternative and non-modern relational ontologies and understandings in the Anthropocene. The authors suggest that there is a need to not only critically focus upon how the modern episteme reductively grasps islands but to also establish a new critical research agenda focused upon how islands are being enrolled in debates about the Anthropocene as key sites for understanding relational entanglements and in the generation of many different forms of relational ontology and ways of knowing. Working with islands or relational thought per se is not one homogenous ‘other’ to modernist or mainland approaches, and so the chapter clarifies why it is important to start a new conversation about how we engage in working through the rich variety of possibilities and opportunities that these approaches afford. In conclusion the chapter elaborates upon how the authors see this book as an initial opening for a new critical agenda for island studies in the Anthropocene.