Homo Terminus: The Specter of Human Extinction
Shane Greene
Original artwork by Raphael Cornford, Tevin Garcia, and Rossana Mercado-Rojas
Release date: August 1, 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9997930-5-8
The 6th mass extinction is unfolding within the global climate crisis. An uncontrolled experiment in Artificial Intelligence is being thrust upon us and integrated into the infrastructures on which our contemporary lives depend. Microplastics churn through our organs as a global fertility crisis projects an imminent and dramatic population decline.
If the 20th century was haunted by the specter of communism, we are today haunted by a radically different specter: that of human extinction.
Shane Greene knows we’ve become numb to alarmism. Homo Terminus takes a refreshing approach to our collective demise, owning its inevitability with the courage required for both wisdom and dark humor. Extinction is part and parcel of inevitable transformations of life on Earth. Taking the anthropological ideas of Octavia Butler as a central influence, Greene examines the hard reality that “the only lasting truth is Change” through a wide range of different cultural lenses.
In punchy, accessible essays, Shane Greene expertly blends cultural criticism, ethnography, and speculative anthropology to sketch a series of novel thought experiments to guide us from paralyzing anxiety toward a wider pallet of meaningful action.
A collaboration between Greene and artists Raphael Cornford, Tevin Garcia, and Rossana Mercado-Rojas, Homo Terminus includes nine original works of art that visually distill each chapter.
The son of a sheet metal worker and a single mother holding down multiple jobs, Shane Greene is Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. He is the author of Customizing Indigeneity (Stanford University, 2009) and Punk and Revolution (Duke University, 2016).
About the Artists
Raphael Cornford is originally from Oakland, CA and holds an MFA in Printmaking from Indiana University (2016). Raph has ample experience in installation, exhibition, bookmaking, curation, and game design. He is a founder of Noise Gallery and most recently has been invited to do exhibitions at the Grunwald Gallery and I Fell. He is particularly interested in the intersections of science fiction, comics, and pulp fiction style illustration.
Tevin Garcia is a multidisciplinary artist whose work synthesizes a range of visual languages to explore themes of culture, history, and social critique. By navigating across varying modes of representation, Garcia harnesses their unique expressive capacities to deepen subjectivity and amplify social critique. His compositions operate as hybrid visual texts, where the convergence of painting traditions become a means of interrogating complex themes of identity under historical and political frameworks. Through this synthesis, Garcia creates evocative spaces that challenge fixed interpretations and invite sustained critical engagement.
Rossana Mercado-Rojas is a Peruvian born artist residing in Stockholm. With past studies in Biology, she holds a BA in Painting from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (2008), and an MA in Fine Arts from Konstfack University (2012). Her work explores human forms, feminism, decolonial practices, and global immigration via colonial and racial legacies. A founding member of Hysterix, a women’s art collective in Peru, she has done exhibitions and performances in galleries across Europe and Latin America and is a board member of Galleri Majkens.