“You’re like a vegetarian in leather shoes”: Cognitive Disconnect and Ecogrief in Stacey Gregg’s

Abstract

In this article, we analyse how Northern Irish playwright Stacey Gregg’s Override (2013) can be read through the lens of the Anthropocene, a term from the geological sciences that has been appropriated by the humanities to question issues of human exceptionalism. Firstly, we examine the ways in which the play, by means of Vi and Mark’s failed attempt to escape technological misuse, challenges the nature/culture dichotomy, which is central to the instrumentalisation of nature for human domination Secondly, we consider how ecogrief comes with the loss of social and humanistic elements that were once grounding and grounded, but are now unstable and murky, such as the idea of what entails a human being. Ultimately, we contend that that derives from the cognitive disconnect resulting from not being able to understand one’s role in the development of an ongoing catastrophe.

Keywords

• anthropocene
• nature/culture dichotomy
• ecogrief
• stacey gregg
• override