Venice and the Anthropocene: An ecocritical guide

by Cristina Baldacci (Editor), Shaul Bassi (Editor), Lucio De Capitani (Editor)

What does Venice look like when observed from the perspective of climate change, environmental collapse, and human-animal relations in an age of industrialization and mass extinction? That is, as a privileged observatory of the Anthropocene?

This guide, composed of several voices, forms a new, illuminating and disturbing mosaic of Venice and its Lagoon. What does the Venetian School of Painting tell us about our relationship with the environment and animals? What do peripheral places in the Lagoon like Porto Marghera and Pellestrina reveal about the advent and impact of modernity? What stories of extinction lie behind local delicacies like baccalà mantecato? What does the centuries-old relationship of Venetians with water tell us about other cities threatened by an increasingly hostile climate?

The guidebook, accompanied by a map, is intended as a tool for learning about the city in a new way. Venice emerges here as a unique ecosystem at risk, but also as a key to understanding our increasingly vulnerable world.

Preface by Serenella Iovino

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

239 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 15, 2023

Reviews

[Michiel Kamphuis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great alternative - largely academic - guide to Venice. Picked up some great ideas to see there in culture and nature. I also got a better understanding of Venice's and its lagoon's problems with not only the high tides and rising water but also the low tides and historical times of low water. The main negative is that I now have to go back, because I bought this book over there and read it afterwards.

[Kylie Gambrill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this gem while in Venice (July 2023). A deeply intelligent and multifaceted exploration of the Anthropocene and its impacts on the Venetian socio-environment. I enjoyed how this guide stepped out of the confines of words on a page to become a multimedia immersion into the authors’ experience of Venice in the Anthropocene.

[maja · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 interesting in terms of situating venice as a city in the larger conversation of climate change and the anthropocene but does little to add much new insight to the larger topic. definitely worth the read though, especially if visiting venice.

[Zachariasz Czerwiński · Rating 2 out of 5]

liked the diversity of topics and interesting connections made but i think it’d benefit from having fewer but longer chapters. 2-3 pages per topic is not enough for the author to properly get into what they’re writing about, as a result a lot of the entries feel surface level, repeating the same points.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and pertinent reading of Venice and its surrounding islands that centres this space as hydropolis and anthropocenic site through a myriad of lenses. Each contribution is around 3-4 pages (varying in form between essays, short stories, poems and audiovisual works), and I enjoyed them as bite-sized accounts, propositions and provocations that trace ways of living, histories and memory within this wonderful, complicated city, while also exploring it as a point of multispecies confluence and site of stark ecological change within the increasingly volatile and fragile Lagoon.

This guidebook and its beautiful foreword will stick with me - Venice is a "thinking machine"

[Delaney Ross · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read this for a class, and thought it would be way more interesting than it was- one of my classmates used the word “pretentious” to describe it and I kinda agree. I lot of it felt like the contributors were really really trying to make a big statement out of something that really wasn’t saying anything OR out of something that’s beauty lies in its simplicity. It was all just kind of snooty academic stuff but I wanted to learn about Venice :/

[SilviaM. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mah, sicuramente degli spunti interessanti ci sono, ma l'impianto generale, diviso in saggi così brevi, non lascia davvero apprezzare l'argomento. Troppi contributi, troppa carne al fuoco, troppo! Alcune ricerche, soprattutto verso la fine, opinabili.

[Rachel Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in Venice about a week ago, and bought this book while visiting. Reading it transported me back. The essays were really well selected and I became more immersed in the editor’s ecocritical paradigm the more I read. The pictures were stunning as well.

[Isla · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF👉48% done