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Archives of the Anthropocene

Visual Grammars of Deep Time

Cover of Archives of the Anthropocene is a mixed media graphic featuring different textures and colors such as maps, photographs, text, and images.

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Book

Pages: 314

Illustrations: 20 illustrations

Release Date: September 29, 2026

Author: Yuriko Furuhata

From geological maps to photographs and films of snow, ice, clouds, and coral reefs, visual inscriptions mediate the construction and codification of extractive modes of seeing Earth’s subterranean depths and aerial heights. Tracing the territorial ambitions of the archipelagic empires of Japan and the United States in the twentieth century, Archives of the Anthropocene explores crucial moments of overlap between the geoscientific history of studying Earth’s deep time and the geopolitical history of territorialization, militarization, and extraction in the Pacific and polar regions. By engaging with contemporary critiques of settler colonialism, liberal humanism, and nonhuman labor from the perspective of environmental media studies, Yuriko Furuhata unsettles the anthropocentric and universalist narrative of the Anthropocene, calling us to instead imagine an anti-colonial and anti-imperial future for the planet.

Praise

“Archives of the Anthropocene is a groundbreaking work in environmental media studies, not only for its historical and theoretical contributions but also for a complex architecture that folds the story of Japan’s archipelagic empire into histories of science. Furuhata’s lucid narration guides readers through the intricate media-geological analyses, vast archival finds, and gripping histories that constitute this book.” - Bishnupriya Ghosh, author of The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media

“In this ambitious book, Yuriko Furuhata brilliantly pulls media studies into site-specificity by re-framing questions of empire, extractivism, histories of science, and of ‘the archive’ in one sweep. The result is a groundbreaking reconsideration of mediation through snowflakes, corals reefs, and colonial violence.” - Alexander Zahlten, author of The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Yuriko Furuhata is Professor of East Asian Studies and Associate Member of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. She is the author of Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control and Cinema of Actuality: Japanese Avant-Garde Filmmaking in the Season of Image Politics, both published by Duke University Press.

Table Of Contents

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Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction  1
1. Indexing Fossil Archives  33
2. Recording Ice Archives  70
3. Forming Snow Archives  105
4. Classifying Cloud Archives  140
5. Building Coral Archives  174
Conclusion  211
Notes  217
Bibliography  263
Index

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Additional Information

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Related Links Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3894-8 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-3359-2 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6253-0 /