On 9 March 2026, Professor Mario Aquilina delivered a lecture during the English Seminar at the University of Malta titled “Essaying the Planetary: The Essay and Non-Human Scale.” The English Seminar is convened by the Department of English, University of Malta.
The lecture explored the relationship between planetary thinking and the essay form, proposing the idea of the planetary essay as a way of understanding how essayistic thinking can engage with the vast spatial and temporal scales that exceed human experience. Drawing on writers such as Michel de Montaigne, Virginia Woolf, Annie Dillard, and E. B. White, the lecture considered how essays often begin from the immediacy of personal experience yet move outward toward reflections that destabilise the centrality of the human.
Engaging with contemporary planetary theory, the lecture suggested that essayistic thinking is particularly well suited to exploring the tensions of the planetary condition. The essay’s speculative and provisional mode allows thought to move between scales, staging the paradox of the Anthropocene: the simultaneous smallness of human life in planetary time and the immense impact of human activity on the Earth.
The lecture formed part of the ongoing discussions around the planetary essay, a theme central to the Essays Beyond Borders research project and conference.
