Review of Timothy Clark\u27s Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept

Corrigan, Paul T.

English

Scholars Commons

The Goose
Volume 15 | No. 1 Article 7
8-21-2016
Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a
Threshold Concept by Timothy Clark
Paul T. Corrigan
Southeastern University - Lakeland
Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America
Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment Commons
Follow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose
This article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by an
authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrante
de la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactez
scholarscommons@wlu.ca.
Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée
Corrigan, Paul T.. "Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy Clark." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 ,
article 7, 2016,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/7.
Messy Thresholds 
 
Ecocriticism on the Edge: The 
Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by 
TIMOTHY CLARK 
Bloomsbury, 2015 $29.95 
 
Reviewed by PAUL T. CORRIGAN 
 
Timothy Clark defines the 
Anthropocene as “the epoch at which . . . 
human impacts on the planet’s basic 
ecological systems have passed a 
dangerous, if imponderable, threshold” (x). 
We have already heard much about this 
threshold’s dangers: rising temperatures, 
rising sea levels, and worse. In Ecocriticism 
on the Edge Clark probes the threshold’s 
imponderability, its messiness and 
multiplicity. However, although thresholds 
are the book’s pivotal concept, Clark does 
little to reflect directly on thresholds as 
thresholds. Strikingly, he entirely overlooks 
the established meaning of a “threshold 
concept.” This gap does not undermine the 
book. But neither is it insignificant. A more 
sustained consideration of thresholds—and 
of threshold concepts specifically—will 
make clearer the import of Clark’s 
contribution to our thinking about life on 
this planet in these liminal times. 
The OED’s first definition for 
threshold refers to the board or stone one 
crosses when entering—or leaving—a 
house. When we use “threshold” 
figuratively to talk about the environment, 
we retain from that literal image a sense of 
a threshold as a place between places. 
When leaving a house, we do not pass 
instantly from indoors to outdoors but 
linger for a moment in a doorway. Not a 
mathematically precise point or line, a 
threshold has depth and width. 
Environmental thresholds, Clark notes, 
likewise do not consist of any single 
“empirically perceptible ‘point’” (93). 
Environmental thresholds are blurry, 
messy—so much so, in fact, that the image 
of a household threshold in some ways 
serves better as foil than analogy. With a 
house, we have just one threshold and we 
know just where it is (at the front door). We 
pass the threshold of a house when we 
consciously decide to and can generally turn 
around and cross it again to go back inside. 
Finally, the threshold in a house is 
smoothed down, so we don’t trip over it. 
Environmental thresholds differ on all of 
these counts. Environmental thresholds are 
neither singular nor predictable. They are 
“uncertain and multiple, arising with the 
cumulative effect of many marginal and 
dispersed decisions” (85). Once we cross, 
we cannot go back. And we will almost 
certainly stumble as we pass through.  
Clark declares the Anthropocene “a 
blurred and messy threshold” (86). In fact, 
the Anthropocene emerges as a 
metathreshold: a threshold of thresholds. 
Without naming or directly distinguishing 
between them, Clark invokes at least seven 
different types of thresholds within the 
Anthropocene. Of these, scalar thresholds 
receive the most attention. We humans 
perceive and think about the world in ways 
largely “bound to the ‘normal’ scale of 
embodied experience on the Earth’s 
surface” (36). We go through life in our 
human bodies one day at a time, look 
around from five or six feet off the ground, 
live decades. In contrast, the Anthropocene 
unfolds on a global, geological scale. Clark 
writes, “at a certain, indeterminate 
threshold, numerous human actions, 
insignificant in themselves . . . come 
together to form a new, imponderable 
physical event, altering the basic ecological 
cycles of the planet” (72). We can observe 
1
Corrigan: Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy Clark
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016
and experience a person driving to work 
over several years. But that’s not where the 
Anthropocene takes place. It takes place in 
the actions (including driving) of billions of 
people over centuries, adding up to a 
totality we cannot wrap our minds around. 
Changing scale changes everything. Clark 
urges us to think “at several scales at once” 
(108). 
Inescapably interwoven with scalar 
thresholds are physical, cognitive, ethical, 
aesthetic, and ontological thresholds. 
Physical thresholds are already widely 
associated with the Anthropocene. They 
include planetary changes such as global 
warming, biodiversity loss, and ocean 
acidification that “could have disastrous 
consequences for humanity” (Rockström et 
al. 472). These physical thresholds serve 
largely as a backdrop for Clark’s discussion, 
directly addressed only on occasion (e.g., 
“the melting threshold of arctic tundra” 
[10]) but always implicit as a motivating 
concern. Cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic 
thresholds involve our ability to respond to 
the Anthropocene—or, more accurately, 
the limits of our ability to respond. We’ve 
lived our whole lives at the human scale. 
Human scale delimits our thought, art, 
ethics, and sense of who we are. But for 
Clark, “the Anthropocene represents . . . a 
threshold across which things become more 
complicated” (110). This change “render[s] 
obsolete . . . the kinds of thinking almost all 
people try to live by” (9). Similarly, the 
Anthropocene also troubles the idea of 
doing the right thing. At certain scales, 
what’s always been “normal or 
insignificant” can become “destructive, 
simply by virtue of human numbers and 
power” (61). Partially because what’s good 
for those living now could kill those living 
later, we may simply run out of ethical 
options (12, 80). Likewise, literature and 
other arts run into limits as well, perhaps 
even the very “limits of the human psyche 
and imagination” (176). The arts cannot 
adequately engage the planet’s changes if 
they deal only with images and narratives of 
human scale. But the arts may be 
transformed in the Anthropocene. Finally, 
we also face an ontological threshold where 
it is no “longer sufficient to talk about 
‘human nature’ at all as a given” (60). Clark 
describes the Anthropocene as “a threshold 
at which humanity becomes” something 
different than it has been (60). Specifically, 
he writes, “the human en mass” emerges 
“as a new kind of thing, a Leviathan more 
like a geological force than a reflective 
being” (147). In addition to everything else, 
the Anthropocene represents a threshold 
for the meaning of humanity itself. 
In light of these multiple, messy 
thresholds of the Anthropocene, what does 
it mean for the Anthropocene to be a 
“threshold concept”? Clark uses this very 
term in his title and at least twice in the text 
of the book (15, 151), declining to define it 
and overlooking its already established 
meaning. Jan H. F. Meyer and Ray Land 
write: “A threshold concept can be 
considered as akin to a portal, opening up a 
new and previously inaccessible way of 
thinking about something. It represents a 
transformed way of understanding . . . 
without which the learner cannot progress” 
(3). They further explain, these pedagogical 
thresholds tend to be “troublesome”—
difficult to come to terms with—and 
“transformative”—changing the way we 
see, think, and act (7-8). Threshold concepts 
are not about thresholds; they are 
thresholds, thresholds of learning. Clark’s 
picture of the Anthropocene is necessary, 
troublesome, and transformative in 
precisely the way Meyer and Land describe. 
We may have difficulty coming to terms 
2
The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 7
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/7
with the Anthropocene, but unless we do 
we cannot move forward in our thinking, 
and once we do we cannot go back. It is as a 
threshold concept that the Anthropocene 
represents not just threat but promise. If 
we only see the Anthropocene as a 
confluence of scalar, physical, cognitive, 
ethical, aesthetic, and ontological 
thresholds, it may well overwhelm us (Clark 
writes of “paralysis”). But if we see the 
Anthropocene as a threshold of learning as 
well, then it can push us toward deeper 
understandings (“new insights” [xi]) of our 
changing planet and our changing selves. 
 
Works Cited 
Meyer, Jan H. F. and Ray Land. “Threshold 
Concepts and Troublesome 
Knowledge: An Introduction.” 
Overcoming Barriers to Student 
Understanding: Threshold Concepts 
and Troublesome Knowledge. Eds. 
Jan H. F. Meyer and Ray Land. 
Routledge: Abingdon, 2006. 3-18. 
Print. 
Rockström, Johan, et al. “A Safe Operating 
Space for Humanity.” Nature 461 
(2009): 472-75. Print. 
“threshold, n.” OED Online. Oxford UP, 
March 2016. Web. 5 June 2016. 
 
PAUL T. CORRIGAN is an associate 
professor of English at Southeastern 
University. He lives in the Peace River 
Watershed, where he walks to work. 
paultcorrigan.com 
 
3
Corrigan: Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy Clark
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016


Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy Clark

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 15 | No. 1 Article 78-21-2016Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as aThreshold Concept by Timothy ClarkPaul T. CorriganSoutheastern University - LakelandPart of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North AmericaCommons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment CommonsFollow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegooseThis article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrantede la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactezscholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended Citation / Citation recommandéeCorrigan, Paul T.. "Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy Clark." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 ,article 7, 2016,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/7.Messy Thresholds  Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by TIMOTHY CLARK Bloomsbury, 2015 $29.95  Reviewed by PAUL T. CORRIGAN  Timothy Clark defines the Anthropocene as “the epoch at which . . . human impacts on the planet’s basic ecological systems have passed a dangerous, if imponderable, threshold” (x). We have already heard much about this threshold’s dangers: rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and worse. In Ecocriticism on the Edge Clark probes the threshold’s imponderability, its messiness and multiplicity. However, although thresholds are the book’s pivotal concept, Clark does little to reflect directly on thresholds as thresholds. Strikingly, he entirely overlooks the established meaning of a “threshold concept.” This gap does not undermine the book. But neither is it insignificant. A more sustained consideration of thresholds—and of threshold concepts specifically—will make clearer the import of Clark’s contribution to our thinking about life on this planet in these liminal times. The OED’s first definition for threshold refers to the board or stone one crosses when entering—or leaving—a house. When we use “threshold” figuratively to talk about the environment, we retain from that literal image a sense of a threshold as a place between places. When leaving a house, we do not pass instantly from indoors to outdoors but linger for a moment in a doorway. Not a mathematically precise point or line, a threshold has depth and width. Environmental thresholds, Clark notes, likewise do not consist of any single “empirically perceptible ‘point’” (93). Environmental thresholds are blurry, messy—so much so, in fact, that the image of a household threshold in some ways serves better as foil than analogy. With a house, we have just one threshold and we know just where it is (at the front door). We pass the threshold of a house when we consciously decide to and can generally turn around and cross it again to go back inside. Finally, the threshold in a house is smoothed down, so we don’t trip over it. Environmental thresholds differ on all of these counts. Environmental thresholds are neither singular nor predictable. They are “uncertain and multiple, arising with the cumulative effect of many marginal and dispersed decisions” (85). Once we cross, we cannot go back. And we will almost certainly stumble as we pass through.  Clark declares the Anthropocene “a blurred and messy threshold” (86). In fact, the Anthropocene emerges as a metathreshold: a threshold of thresholds. Without naming or directly distinguishing between them, Clark invokes at least seven different types of thresholds within the Anthropocene. Of these, scalar thresholds receive the most attention. We humans perceive and think about the world in ways largely “bound to the ‘normal’ scale of embodied experience on the Earth’s surface” (36). We go through life in our human bodies one day at a time, look around from five or six feet off the ground, live decades. In contrast, the Anthropocene unfolds on a global, geological scale. Clark writes, “at a certain, indeterminate threshold, numerous human actions, insignificant in themselves . . . come together to form a new, imponderable physical event, altering the basic ecological cycles of the planet” (72). We can observe 1Corrigan: Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy ClarkPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016and experience a person driving to work over several years. But that’s not where the Anthropocene takes place. It takes place in the actions (including driving) of billions of people over centuries, adding up to a totality we cannot wrap our minds around. Changing scale changes everything. Clark urges us to think “at several scales at once” (108). Inescapably interwoven with scalar thresholds are physical, cognitive, ethical, aesthetic, and ontological thresholds. Physical thresholds are already widely associated with the Anthropocene. They include planetary changes such as global warming, biodiversity loss, and ocean acidification that “could have disastrous consequences for humanity” (Rockström et al. 472). These physical thresholds serve largely as a backdrop for Clark’s discussion, directly addressed only on occasion (e.g., “the melting threshold of arctic tundra” [10]) but always implicit as a motivating concern. Cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic thresholds involve our ability to respond to the Anthropocene—or, more accurately, the limits of our ability to respond. We’ve lived our whole lives at the human scale. Human scale delimits our thought, art, ethics, and sense of who we are. But for Clark, “the Anthropocene represents . . . a threshold across which things become more complicated” (110). This change “render[s] obsolete . . . the kinds of thinking almost all people try to live by” (9). Similarly, the Anthropocene also troubles the idea of doing the right thing. At certain scales, what’s always been “normal or insignificant” can become “destructive, simply by virtue of human numbers and power” (61). Partially because what’s good for those living now could kill those living later, we may simply run out of ethical options (12, 80). Likewise, literature and other arts run into limits as well, perhaps even the very “limits of the human psyche and imagination” (176). The arts cannot adequately engage the planet’s changes if they deal only with images and narratives of human scale. But the arts may be transformed in the Anthropocene. Finally, we also face an ontological threshold where it is no “longer sufficient to talk about ‘human nature’ at all as a given” (60). Clark describes the Anthropocene as “a threshold at which humanity becomes” something different than it has been (60). Specifically, he writes, “the human en mass” emerges “as a new kind of thing, a Leviathan more like a geological force than a reflective being” (147). In addition to everything else, the Anthropocene represents a threshold for the meaning of humanity itself. In light of these multiple, messy thresholds of the Anthropocene, what does it mean for the Anthropocene to be a “threshold concept”? Clark uses this very term in his title and at least twice in the text of the book (15, 151), declining to define it and overlooking its already established meaning. Jan H. F. Meyer and Ray Land write: “A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding . . . without which the learner cannot progress” (3). They further explain, these pedagogical thresholds tend to be “troublesome”—difficult to come to terms with—and “transformative”—changing the way we see, think, and act (7-8). Threshold concepts are not about thresholds; they are thresholds, thresholds of learning. Clark’s picture of the Anthropocene is necessary, troublesome, and transformative in precisely the way Meyer and Land describe. We may have difficulty coming to terms 2The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 7https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/7with the Anthropocene, but unless we do we cannot move forward in our thinking, and once we do we cannot go back. It is as a threshold concept that the Anthropocene represents not just threat but promise. If we only see the Anthropocene as a confluence of scalar, physical, cognitive, ethical, aesthetic, and ontological thresholds, it may well overwhelm us (Clark writes of “paralysis”). But if we see the Anthropocene as a threshold of learning as well, then it can push us toward deeper understandings (“new insights” [xi]) of our changing planet and our changing selves.  Works Cited Meyer, Jan H. F. and Ray Land. “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: An Introduction.” Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. Eds. Jan H. F. Meyer and Ray Land. Routledge: Abingdon, 2006. 3-18. Print. Rockström, Johan, et al. “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature 461 (2009): 472-75. Print. “threshold, n.” OED Online. Oxford UP, March 2016. Web. 5 June 2016.  PAUL T. CORRIGAN is an associate professor of English at Southeastern University. He lives in the Peace River Watershed, where he walks to work. paultcorrigan.com  3Corrigan: Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy ClarkPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016

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Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept by Timothy Clark

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