We are excited to announce our latest acquisition and the inaugural work in our series Pith: Luigi Russi’s The Catastrophic Nature of Time.
The Anthropocene, the proposition that human activity ushered a new geological era of climate instability, typically induces a sense of urgency in people. The Catastrophic Nature of Time examines this urgency as a glimpse into the human condition.
Urgency in the face of anticipated catastrophe merely intensifies an ordinary, if elusive, experience of time: one with which humans have always been familiar but which we easily forget. To retrieve this elusive experience, as it haunts humanity in the shadow of the Anthropocene, Luigi Russi searches for it in the “ordinary extraordinary” encounters in which it can still be experienced. These include making all manner of mistakes (from pupils in the science classroom to wanderers getting lost in the woods); falling silent before the ruins of Pompeii; and losing one’s footing reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Common to all these experiences is the sense that time is not a substance but a deed: the syncopation, rhythm to mark the course of activity. From this view, the Anthropocene merely reinforces what we have always known—we have never been in charge when it comes to keeping time.
In his provocative view of time as a mediation undertaken at all levels of the biological and physical world, Russi builds on biosemiotics, media ecology, and catastrophe theory to remind readers of the risky and timeless human art of paying attention to the elements to find sync with the world.
The Catastrophic Nature of Time will be published in spring 2026.
“As we are buffeted more and more by the unimagined Anthropocene consequences of our actions, The Catastrophic Nature of Time offers a compelling account of catastrophe, not as end, but as opportunity to open our eyes more fully to our shared world.”
—Vincent Miller, Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture, University of Dayton, and editor of The Theological and Ecological Vision of Laudato Si’: Everything is Connected
“Luigi Russi packs a lot of wisdom—moral, metaphysical, medial—into this elegant series of meditations. He bathes the latest, most pressing issues such as climate change in the light of much older insight.”
—John Durham Peters, Maria Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film and Media Studies, Yale University, and author of The Marvelous Clouds
Luigi Russi (Ph.D., University of Exeter) is Assistant Professor of Education at the Catholic University of the West of France in Angers, where he forms part of the Angers Anthropocene Pedagogues alongside Nathanaël Wallenhorst and Renaud Hétier. Russi is a communication scholar and a member of the Lyceum Institute working at the intersection of semiotics, media theory, and environmental humanities, attempting to reframe the ecological crisis as a media ecological conundrum. He is author of Everything Gardens and Other Stories (University of Plymouth Press, 2015) and Hungry Capital: The Financialization of Food (Zer0 Books, 2013).