Disenchanting the Senses

The Element reads literary objects across historical time through contexts of demons, fossil fuel extraction, and capitalist discourse.

The system of linguistic and material networks that capital constructs to deny humans the ability to sense environmental threat can be understood through ideas related to sulfuric demons and the archaeology surrounding toxic sulfuric compounds. This Element reasserts a philosophy of disenchantment into the history of the environment.Specifically standing between humanity and natural perceptions of the environment in the contemporary age of ecological decay are disenchanted meanings of sulfur and evil that changed to support the base of capitalism during the Early Modern Era. The blinding system of linguistic and material networks that capital constructs to deny humans the ability to sense environmental threat can be understood most notably through a history of ideas related to supposedly sulfuric demons and the discursive archaeology surrounding many toxic sulfuric compounds ardently linked with the Anthropocene. Thinking of cause and effect in networks of objects and humans, as well as the structures of modernity and capitalism, this Element reasserts a philosophy of disenchantment into the history of the environment. At the core of modernity, capitalist discourses greenwashed experiences of the body related to evils of environmental threat to protect the means of production from considerable critique during the Industrial Revolution.