‘The buried life’: ecological criticism and the ‘deep’ past 1 The fundamental principles of James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis have been well disseminated and digested within and beyond environ- mentalist discourse. Yet, it is worth revisiting the basics of Lovelock’s thesis as we progress through a discussion of ecology, time and historicity. Famously, the Gaia Hypothesis proposes: ‘A view of the Earth as [. . .] a self-regulating system made up from the totality of organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean and the atmosphere tightly coupled as an evolving system [. . .] this system [has] a goal – the regulation of surface conditions so as always to be as favourable as possible for contemporary life.’ 1 The organicism of the Gaian system, thus, has fuelled much ecocritical argumentation, as it expresses the tenuous equilibrium that holds on the planet by the interacting agencies of humanity and non-human ecological factors. Such explicit and life-sustaining interdependence demands that humanity conduct its affairs in more eco-sensitive and responsible patterns. But, of course, in addition to representing a call to planetary duty and husbandry, Lovelock’s hypothesis speaks to humanity’s long-term historical situation, and to latter-day contentions that assert the changing, and harmful, historical agency of humanity in ecological terms. Lovelock’s theory, which has moved from being a lightly considered, almost ‘new-age’ speculation, to reputable climatic scientific projection, exposes the fallacy that kept human and natural histories in mutual exclusion. Equally, as Lovelock’s final clause above reveals, the Gaian regulation of the planet sustains all ‘life’, and it is not prejudiced in favour of the retention of human life or human civilisation as we know and comprehend them. In tune with the critical and historiographical material manifest throughout our discussion, Lovelock’s thesis is not merely confined, or confinable, to the sphere of environmental science. Gaia theory bears on considerations of human historicity as it enlists deep-time histories to its frameworks of analysis, and, in this way, further undermines anthropo- centric apprehensions of planetary evolution. Diagnosing the political consequences of Lovelock’s hypothesis, the environmentalist Tim Flannery argues: ‘the deep interconnectedness central to the Gaia EÓIN FLANNERY