Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Matthew Chrulew In a time of anthropogenic climate change and species extinction, woolly mammoth stories loom large. Whether scientific or fictional, utopian or dystopian, visions of this totemic species speak incisively of our hopes and fears for the future of the Earth and the nature of our impact upon it. In palaeontology, the controversial overkill hypothesis argues for human hunting as the cause of prehistoric megafauna extinctions. At stake is nothing less than anthropogenesis, supposing the sacrifice of the animal at the origin of the human. Today, redemption for this original ecological sin is offered in utopian dreams of restoration: whether the resurrection of the mammoth as a species, or at least the reconstruction of the mammoth ecosystem in an experimental Pleistocene Park. This paper will chart the notable career of the mammoth, which despite its extinction has still managed to exert a significant influence on our thinking, and our dreams. Matthew Chrulew is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University in Sydney. He has published essays in Metamorphoses of the Zoo and The Bible and Critical Theory, and short stories in Aurealis and Antennae, among other places. He is writing the volume Mammoth for Reaktion books.
