Solastalgia

In this paper I discuss the origin and meaning of a particular term: solastalgia. Starting from anticipatory experien- ces, passing through globally diffused social and cultural dramas (the suicide of Australian farmers, alcoholism in indigenous reserves), up to the current explosions in the global environmentalist movements, the term solastalgia give s a connotation to a particular event’s cluster, whose center lies in the “fracture between ecosystem and human health” (as its founder, Glenn Albrecht defines it) or in the recognition that ecological damage to the environment invariably produces damage (physical, psychological, social and cultural) to the people who are forced to cope with, and suffer, them. Since its creation in 2005, the term solastalgia has become increasingly known and used because it manages to illuminate some “naturcultural” phenomena that characterize our era.