Latest Book: These Survivals
These Survivals: Autobiography of an Extinction
These Survivals is available at Duke University Press as part of the Writing Matters! Series.
This collage-style work in fragments grew out of a year-long fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton in a seminar on Climate Crisis Politics led by Wendy Brown and Timothy Mitchell. The resulting book, These Survivals, brings together philosophy, memoir, poetry, and original multimedia artworks to articulate an ethics of living on a devastated planet. The book explores ruination through assemblages that include over 120 original collage artworks reproduced in full color, sharp-edged prose, and experimental writings such as black-out poetry, weather reports, and abecedarian essays. These Survivals juxtaposes personal struggles in everyday life with the immensity of geological time, recognizing the self’s insignificance in the context of the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. In doing so, I move across autobiographical, political, and literary registers. The book’s purpose is to open space for thought to emerge in unexpected and innovative ways—ways that are grounded in the material practices of writing and living.
These Survivals: Autobiography of an Extinction
This collage-style work in fragments grew out of a year-long fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton in a seminar on Climate Crisis Politics led by Wendy Brown and Timothy Mitchell. The resulting book, These Survivals, brings together philosophy, memoir, poetry, and original multimedia artworks to articulate an ethics of living on a devastated planet. The book explores ruination through assemblages that include over 120 original collage artworks reproduced in full color, sharp-edged prose, and experimental writings such as black-out poetry, weather reports, and abecedarian essays. These Survivals juxtaposes personal struggles in everyday life with the immensity of geological time, recognizing the self’s insignificance in the context of the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. In doing so, I move across autobiographical, political, and literary registers. The book’s purpose is to open space for thought to emerge in unexpected and innovative ways—ways that are grounded in the material practices of writing and living.
These Survivals is available at Duke University Press as part of the Writing Matters! Series.
Lecture on These Survivals
The Climate of Critique: A Differences Colloquium
Pembroke Center, Brown University
Mar. 7, 2025
Endorsements
Lynne Huffer insists on the fragmentary, improvisational nature of anything that can be taken to be whole. This is the profound philosophical stance that informs the book; form and substance combine to convey it. She places her trust in fragments to somehow capture meanings that are otherwise reductive or unattainable. And there is a certain delightful whimsy, a sense of freed-up ability to express herself, that informs it all. At the same time, she offers seriousness and philosophical depth in an entirely new way. These Survivals is a remarkably original book and an objet d’art that one will want to own and share.”
– Joan Wallach Scott, author of The Fantasy of Feminist History
“These Survivals is a brilliant philosophical, aesthetic, and emotional guide to feeling, seeing, and thinking ecological and human devastation. Powerful, spare, and exquisitely subtle, this is auto without ego. There is also a novel method on offer, though possibly Lynne Huffer alone has the rare sensibility to pursue it.”
– Wendy Brown, Institute for Advanced Study
