Decentring and rewriting the universal story of humanity: the cosmic historiography of J.M.G. Le Clézio and Michel Serres

Abstract
Through the lens of J.M.G. Le Clézio’s early novel Terra Amata (1967) and Michel Serres’s concept of the ‘Grand Récit’ ‘great story’, the purpose of this essay is to launch a call for the inception of a new interdiscipline tentatively named cosmic historiography. The evident goal of this interdiscipline is to bring scholars from many different backgrounds together in an effort to (re-)conceptualise the historical master narrative and the place of humanity in it. At the advent of the Anthropocene epoch, this thought experiment demonstrates the urgency of decentring and expanding the official version of history to include the entire biotic community of life.