Jemma Deer, "Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

Nov 16, 2025

Jemma Deer, a researcher at the Rachel Carson Center and author of Radical Animism, discusses her innovative perspectives on literature and the environment. She challenges human-centric views, linking animism to the Anthropocene and redefining literature's role in addressing climate change. Deer explores how texts like Virginia Woolf’s works decenter human perspectives, urges readers to engage with non-human elements, and invites contemplation on our relationship with the inanimate world. Her current projects delve into extinction and the interconnections within fungi.

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ANECDOTE

PhD Pause Sparked By Climate Anxiety

Jemma Deer left her PhD for a year because climate anxiety made literary study feel pointless.
She returned determined to merge literature and environmental concerns in her research.

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INSIGHT

Anthropocene As Fourth Blow To Narcissism

Deer positions the Anthropocene as a fourth blow to human narcissism that materializes earlier intellectual blows.
Climate change forces us to confront that humans aren't central, independent, or fully rational agents.

insights

INSIGHT

Literature Lives Beyond Authorial Intent

Deer reads literature as animate: words, rhythms, and texts have lives beyond authorial intent.
Texts gain new meanings in the Anthropocene as non-human agencies reframe what counts as human progress.

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Deer's academic background and shift to environmental concerns

01:42 • 3min

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What is animism and the Anthropocene's fourth blow

04:17 • 5min

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How literature participates in the Anthropocene

09:17 • 4min

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Etymology, Derrida, and the materiality of language

13:12 • 4min

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The generalized notion of text in animism

Forms of Anthropocene reading

23:08 • 2min

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Virginia Woolf as a post-Copernican, animistic writer

25:31 • 3min

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Comparing Woolf's To the Lighthouse and The Waves

28:57 • 2min

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Reading Alice in Wonderland through Darwinian animism

30:45 • 6min

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Hamlet, Freud, and language's autonomous influences

36:43 • 4min

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Reading for the end of the world: apocalyptic and affirmative meanings

40:29 • 2min

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Deer's current projects: extinction and fungi

• Mentioned in 4 episodes

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Sigmund Freud

In 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle,' Sigmund Freud expands his earlier theories on libido and the role of pleasure-seeking in human behavior. He introduces the concept of the death drive (Thanatos) and the life drive (Eros), arguing that these two opposing instincts are fundamental to human behavior. Freud questions the dominance of the pleasure principle, which posits that people seek pleasure and avoid pain, and instead suggests that human behavior is driven by an interplay between the life and death instincts. This work marks a significant turn in Freud's thinking, deepening the understanding of the human psyche and its often contradictory motivations. It also links Western psychoanalysis with Eastern perspectives on life and death, making it essential reading for students of psychology, history, and literature.

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• Mentioned in 15 episodes

Through the looking-glass

Lewis Carroll

In this sequel to 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', Alice climbs through a mirror and enters a world where everything is reversed, much like a reflection. Here, she finds herself in a land laid out like a giant chessboard, where she must navigate to the eighth rank to become a queen. Along her journey, she meets a variety of bizarre characters, including the Red Queen, the White Queen, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and Humpty Dumpty. The story is filled with Carroll's signature nonsensical logic, word play, and imaginative world-building.

H's for Hawke

Helen Macdonald

'H is for Hawk' is a memoir by Helen Macdonald that chronicles her experience of training a goshawk named Mabel in the aftermath of her father's sudden death. Macdonald intertwines her personal grief with the challenges and rewards of falconry, exploring themes of loss, nature, and the human-animal bond. As she trains Mabel, Macdonald reflects on her own identity and confronts her emotional struggles, finding solace and connection in the wildness of the hawk. The book is notable for its lyrical prose, its evocative descriptions of the natural world, and its insightful exploration of grief and healing. Macdonald's unique perspective and her ability to blend personal narrative with natural history have made 'H is for Hawk' a critically acclaimed and widely read memoir.

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• Mentioned in 84 episodes

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

The play revolves around Prince Hamlet's journey to avenge his father's murder, which was committed by his uncle Claudius. Hamlet's father's ghost appears and reveals that he was poisoned by Claudius, who then married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Hamlet feigns madness while he investigates and plots his revenge. The play explores themes of betrayal, mortality, and the human condition, culminating in a tragic finale where nearly all main characters die, including Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, and several others.

• Mentioned in 21 episodes

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll

Ghost Reak Publications

Radical Animism

Reading for the End of the World

• Mentioned in 17 episodes

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse, published in 1927, is a groundbreaking work of modernist literature by Virginia Woolf. The novel is divided into three sections: 'The Window,' 'Time Passes,' and 'The Lighthouse. ' It follows the Ramsay family during their summer visits to the Isle of Skye, delving into the inner thoughts and emotions of the characters through stream-of-consciousness techniques. The novel reflects the impact of World War I on the family and society, and it explores themes such as loss, subjectivity, the nature of art, and the problem of perception. Woolf's intricate prose and rich exploration of consciousness make this novel a masterpiece of world literature.

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In the Waves

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Rachel "Big Spinach" Lance

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Jemma Deer’s Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2020) invites the reader to take a moment and to ponder on the way of reading. In her book, the author challenges the narcissistic position of the human being: a status that has been established for some time and which has already been challenged before but does not seem to be changing quickly. The Anthropocene reveals the dangers which are connected to the human centrality and power; on the other hand, it requires new ways of engaging with the environment. These new ways are not limited to the gestures of consideration in relation to the profound changes that led to climate change in particular. They ask for a new mode of thinking when the inanimate is part and parcel of the human being. In this regard, Jemma Deer draws attention to reading and writing as ways and modes of engaging with the inanimate and with the environment that serves as a habitat for the acts of reading and writing. The book offers strategies for reading literary texts across cultures and times: the works by Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf reveal new echoes in the context of the Anthropocene. Radical Animism is a gentle invitation to abandon human superiority and to explore the ways that subvert a conventional hierarchy of the human and the non-human.

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