The Shifting of Spatiotemporal Scales and the Sense of Mobility in the Anthropocene: Elizabeth Bishop’s Floating Species

This study explores the perception and shifting of spatiotemporal scales, as well as the sense of mobility and motion in Elizabeth Bishop’s poems, by applying new concepts of space and scale, which understand space as a product of interrelationships and recognize the topological connections between different scales, recently proposed by new material feminist Karen Barad and Anthropocene thinkers based on the material turn. From the horizontal and vertical movements depicted in Bishop’s “The Man-Moth,” “The Imaginary Iceberg,” and “Crusoe in England,” it senses the adaptability and resilience, or response-ability that human beings must develop in the Anthropocene. For Bishop, vertical movement is not about the desire for hierarchy or dominance but is associated with an active agency that creates space freely without being tied to the Earth’s surface and discovers new ways of enjoying life. This suggests a more hopeful vision of the Anthropocene, where we, interacting with nonhumans, recreate new modes of living beyond merely surviving. This article first examines the shifting of spatiotemporal scales in “The Man-Moth” through a human mutant that embodies the connection between deep time, modern civilization, and humanity’s future. Then, by analyzing the movements of various beings in “The Imaginary Iceberg” and “Crusoe in England,” it suggests that humans and nonhumans are one kind of species home-made within the house of the Earth, and as floating species on shifting stages they should rebuild together alternative ways of living and move toward greater possibilities in response to one another.