This book brings together the most current thinking about the Anthropocene in the field of Environmental Political Theory ('EPT'). It displays the distinctive contribution EPT makes to the task of thinking through what 'the environment' means in this time of pervasive human influence over natural systems. Across its chapters the book helps develop the idea of 'socionatural relations'--an idea that frames the environment in the Anthropocene in terms of the interconnected relationship between human beings and their surroundings. Coming from both (...) well-established and newer voices in the field, the chapters in the book show the diversity of points of view theorists take toward the Anthropocene idea, and socionatural relations more generally. However, all the chapters exemplify a characteristic of work in EPT: the self-conscious effort to provide normative interpretations that are responsive to scientific accounts. The Introduction explains the complicated interaction between science and EPT, showing how it positions EPT to consider the Anthropocene. And the Afterword, by a pioneer in the field, relates all the chapters to a perspective that has been deeply influential in EPT. This book will be of interest to scholars already engaged in EPT. But it will also serve as an introduction to the field for students of Political Theory, Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and related disciplines, who will learn about the EPT approach from the Introduction, and then see it applied to the pressing question of the Anthropocene in the ensuing chapters. The book will also help readers interested in the Anthropocene from any disciplinary perspective develop a critical understanding of its political meanings. (shrink)

The Anthropocene is a radical reconceptualisation of the relationship between humanity and nature. It posits that we have entered a new geological epoch in which the human species is now the dominant Earth-shaping force, and it is rapidly gaining traction in both the natural and social sciences. This article critically explores the scientific representation of the concept and argues that the Anthropocene is less a scientific concept than the ideational underpinning for a particular worldview. It is paradigm dressed (...) as epoch. In particular, it normalises a certain portion of humanity as the ‘human’ of the Anthropocene, reinserting ‘man’ into nature only to re-elevate ‘him’ above it. This move promotes instrumental reason. It implies that humanity and its planet are in an exceptional state, explicitly invoking the idea of planetary management and legitimising major interventions into the workings of the earth, such as geoengineering. I conclude that the scientific origins of the term have diminished its radical potential, and ask whether the concept’s radical core can be retrieved. (shrink)

This article argues for the relevance of mythical signification in our geological epoch. More than this, it contends that we need to revise our assumptions about media and communication systems in order to grasp the importance of myth in an era where the future of human and nonhuman life on the Earth is entirely uncertain. To make this case, I focus on the growing consensus in the sciences and theoretical humanities that mythical stories about geological and planetary (...) processes cannot simply be disqualified or disregarded because they do not conform to the norms of modern scientific epistemology. Whether these stories come to us from pre-modern civilizations and attempt to give... (shrink)

John Fleming , later professor in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, made his combative contribution to natural history between 1812 and 1832. As an Edinburgh student he had followed Robert Jameson's ‘Wernerian’ lead. His earliest publications, from 1813, expressed what was to be a lifelong hostility to the work of James Hutton. Yet his own thinking moved increasingly towards a ‘uniformitarian’ as opposed to a ‘catastrophist’ view of earth history. His Philosophy of Zoology embodied criticism of Cuvier. More dramatically, he became embroiled (...) in controversy with Buckland and later with Conybeare. By then the ‘uniformitarian’ hypothesis had been adopted by Lyell, with whom Fleming was in close touch from the mid-1820s. Fleming may have had some grounds for feeling that his priority in advocating uniformitarianism was later overlooked. His History of British Animals included a preface in which he elaborated his earlier hypothesis as to ‘revolutions … in the animal kingdom’ correlated with six geological epochs. Tension had then developed in Fleming's relationship with Jameson, and the early 1830s found him in a mood of increasing frustration. Reconciliation with Buckland and approval by Sedgwick still left ‘the Zoological Ishmael’ feeling that his advancement in the scientific world was blocked, perhaps permanently. In historical perspective Fleming may be seen as a minor but not insubstantial figure in the scientific landscape of the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

The Anthropocene, in which humankind has become a geological force, is a major scientific proposal; but it also means that the conceptions of the natural and social worlds on which sociology, political science, history, law, economics and philosophy rest are called into question. The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis captures some of the radical new thinking prompted by the arrival of the Anthropocene and opens up the social sciences and humanities to the profound meaning of the new (...) class='Hi'>geological epoch, the 'Age of Humans'. Drawing on the expertise of world-recognised scholars and thought-provoking intellectuals, the book explores the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history to the foundational ideas of modern social science. If in the Anthropocene humans have become a force of nature, changing the functioning of the Earth system as volcanism and glacial cycles do, then it means the end of the idea of nature as no more than the inert backdrop to the drama of human affairs. It means the end of the 'social-only' understanding of human history and agency. These pillars of modernity are now destabilised. The scale and pace of the shifts occurring on Earth are beyond human experience and expose the anachronisms of 'Holocene thinking'. The book explores what kinds of narratives are emerging around the scientific idea of the new geological epoch, and what it means for the 'politics of unsustainability'. (shrink)

In the Parthenon frieze, the time of mortals and the time of gods seem to merge. Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that with the advent of the Anthropocene the times of human history and of the Earth are similarly coming together. Are humans entering the ‘monumental time’ of the Earth, to stand alongside the Olympian gods of the other geological forces? This article first looks at the cultural shifts leading to the modern idea of separate human and Earth histories. It (...) examines the changing use of monuments to mediate between human and other temporalities. It explores the use of ‘stratigraphic sections’ as natural monuments to mark transitions between the major time units of Earth history, and the erection of intentional monuments nearby. It suggests that the Anthropocene, as a geological epoch-in-the-making, may challenge the whole system of monumental semiotics used to stabilize our way of thinking about deep time. (shrink)

History in times of crisis is practical: future action depends on historical framing. Moving beyond “human scales” to include the evolutionary and the geological, and beyond humans to include other species, demands different approaches and new “archives” like ice-cores. This paper considers history in the Long Now, and particularly how museums and big public arts institutions develop new sorts of history through practical story-telling, taking seriously the notion that “the central role of museums [is] both an expression of cultural (...) identity and … a powerful force for human development and education.” The museum has a particular value as “slow media”, deepening news stories in times of rapid change. The new epoch of Earth, the Anthropocene, where humans have become a geological force, poses challenges for exhibitions, but also reshapes museums themselves. Crucial to managing stories, collections and objects in Anthropocene times is the capacity to change course, to remain open to new developments, using performances, events and “pop-up” exhibitions alongside traditional museum offerings. New Museology regards stories as the fundamental unit of museums. Thus, the curation of stories is central work. No longer are museums defined solely by objects: the artistic and the ephemeral are all part of story-telling. (shrink)

This book presents a philosophical journey into the Anthropocene that views this geological epoch as the potential métarécit of our age and the planetary framework within which technology becomes the environment for human life. The appropriate name for this epochal phenomenon is, as a result, not Anthropocene, but Technocene.

The rise of the idea of the Anthropocene is promoting multiple reflections on its meaning. As we consider entering this new geological epoch, we realize the pervasiveness of humankind’s deconstruction and reconstruction of the Earth, in both geophysical and discursive terms. As the body of the Earth is marked and reshaped, so is its idea. From a hostile territory to be subjugated and exploited through sovereign commands, the Earth is now reframed as a vulnerable domain in need of (...) protection. The mode of sovereignty, which has accompanied human and legal history and practice during modernity and its project of mastery, is no longer useful. Humanity’s control of the Earth is being reimagined and reconfigured along biopolitical coordinates of thought and action. Biopolitics shifts the focus of power, changes its modalities of interventions, and rearticulates its legitimacy on the idea of taking responsibility for the Earth, for nature. A biopolitical re-orientation of law captures the fundamental aim of caring for nature, of fostering its vital possibilities and of enhancing its productive potential. Yet, biopolitics engulfs nature in its entirety under its framework of control, where protection and subjugation, vulnerability and productivity, life and death are constantly entangled in a reciprocal and inevitable relation of indistinguishability. Sovereignty becomes thus a key modality of biopolitical intervention, when nature is recalcitrant, wild, spontaneous, unpredictable, violent, dangerous. Biopolitics, thus, remains caught in an undecidable dilemma, where in order to protect the Earth, it must subjugate it; to save it, it must condemn it. In this respect, biopolitics remains utterly modern, or as argued by Roberto Esposito, modernity has always been biopolitical, insofar as modernity has emerged as a framework for the protection of life against life’s own excesses. But how can we escape the biopolitical reframing and enframing of the Earth and its total subsumption under its matrix of control? How can we rethink the encounter between law and nature without remaining entangled in the aporetic dilemma of biopolitics? An aesthetics of wonder may offer a way. (shrink)

The nomenclature of the Anthropocene for this geological epoch marks in a novel way the global impact of human activity on the world. Consequently, it creatively raises the alarm bell of global environmental devastation. However, the narrative implicit in the Anthropocene presents challenges to use it as a departure point for developing an ethics of responsibility, as it contains morally relevant but ambiguous etiologies, phenomenological challenges to discrete human agency, and the potential erasure of both causes and victims (...) of global environmental degradation. This challenge compounds the challenges to traditional models of responsibility‐as‐imputation by global forms of environmental degradation signaled in the Anthropocene. Our new epoch demands new models of responsibility. This article draws upon neglected work by Paul Ricoeur to reconstruct a twofold model of responsibility: (1) responsibility‐as‐imputation and (2) responsibility for the fragile other and the domains that amplify fragility. It shows that a twofold model can more completely respond to harms elicited by anthropogenic environmental degradation by maintaining the benefits of traditional models of responsibility‐as‐accountability while dramatically expanding the subject and objects of responsibility through attention to the fragile and thus better serving us as we navigate responsibility in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This article addresses the question raised by the Anthropocene of rethinking the concept of autonomy which, in the conditions of the new geological epoch, is subject to a crisis of legitimation. It explores the ‘strong hypothesis’ according to which nature is a necessary condition of our qualitative experience of the world and a constitutive relation of autonomy defined as the self-realisation of individual identity. With this aim in mind, the article attempts to rethink the concept of recognition in (...) order to conceive a recognising attitude of nature in the form of love of nature as a form of adequate recognition. Rethinking recognition can serve as foundation of an ‘objective’ theory of autonomy, that is, a theory that explains how nature can be defined as a condition and constitutive relation of autonomy. The article, therefore, proposes to reformulate the concept of autonomy as the self-realisation of an ecological or environmental identity in the form of the self-realisation of an ecological ethos, that is, an attitude of respect and care for nature. This enquiry, ultimately, is a contribution to the task of rethinking the basis of our conceptions of autonomy and freedom in the Anthropocene, so that the idea of autonomy can legitimately constitute the central value of the social transformation that is needed to face the ecological crisis. (shrink)

Industrialisation, urbanisation and economic development have produced unprecedented improvements in human health. They have also produced unprecedented exploitation of Earth’s life support systems, moving the planet into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene—one defined by human influence on natural systems. The health sector has been complicit in this influence. Bioethics, too, must acknowledge its role—the environmental threats that will shape human health in this century represent a ‘perfect moral storm’ challenging the ethical theories of the last. The US (...) conservationist Aldo Leopold saw this gathering storm more clearly than many, and in his Land Ethic describes the beginnings of a route to safe passage. Its starting point is a reinterpretation of the ethical relationship between humanity and the ‘land community’, the ecosystems we live within and depend upon; moving us from ‘conqueror’ to ‘plain member and citizen’ of that community. The justice of the Land Ethic questions many presuppositions implicit to discussions of the topic in biomedical ethics. By valuing the community in itself—in a way irreducible to the welfare of its members—it steps away from the individualism axiomatic in contemporary bioethics. Viewing ourselves as citizens of the land community also extends the moral horizons of healthcare from a solely human focus. Taking into account the ‘stability’ of the community requires intergenerational justice. The resulting vision of justice in healthcare—one that takes climate and environmental justice seriously—could offer health workers an ethic fit for the future. (shrink)

Natural scientists have proposed that humankind has entered a new geologic epoch. Termed the “Anthropocene,” this new reality revolves around the central role of human activity in multiple Earth ecosystems. That challenge requires a rethinking of social science explanations of organization and environment relationships. In this article, we discuss the need to politicize institutional theory as a means understanding “Anthropocene Society,” and in turn what that resultant society means for the Anthropocene in the natural environment. We modify the constitutive (...) elements of institutional orders and a set of main change mechanisms to explore three scenarios around which future Anthropocene Societies might be built—Collapsing Systems, Market Rules, and Cultural Re-Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we use observations from the Anthropocene to expose limitations in present institutional theory and propose extensions to remedy them. Overall, this article challenges organizational scholars to consider a new paradigm under which research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place. (shrink)

Problem Statement. The process of global evolution has entered the Anthropocene. This fact has almost simultaneously generated two cardinal, inseparable imperatives in the rapidly changing ideological and outlook basis of modern civilization. Firstly, the feeling that the new geological epoch also requires fundamentally new algorithms guiding practical activity and its theoretical comprehension, justification in all spheres of political reality, with inevitable exit to the level of international relations and geopolitics. Secondly, the content of the categories of ANTHROPOCEN and (...) (GLOBAL) CRISIS overlap so diversely and widely that they form an almost inseparable logically and mentally amalgam. The purpose of this publication is to reveal the political aspects of the integration of new biopolitical issues into the life of modern society. The content of the term biopolitics is currently not formalized in a definitive form. In our concept, biopolitics is defined as the processes of implementing biopower, that is, the ability (direct or indirect) of the power structures of society to control and manipulate the performance of the biological functions of certain individuals. Based on a combination of methods of conceptual, discursive and evolutionary-anthropological analysis (the concepts of evolutionary strategy and cultural-ecological niche), possible scenarios for the future development of the political process at the domestic and international levels are identified. The mechanism of transbipolitical transition – the inclusion of civilizational and biological evolution in the political process – is investigated. The conclusion formulates the content of the category “transbiolitics” as the main element of rationalization of the global-evolutionary process in the globalizing world. Transbiolitics in our understanding is an international political problematic related to the rationalization of the global evolutionary process. Technologization of the global evolutionary process, the choice of implemented technological projects and forms of their institutional support is determined primarily by geo- and biopolitical motivation of local elites and humanitarian and other convergent technologies available to them. (shrink)

Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene--this new geological epoch shaped by humankind. Renn reframes the history of science and technology within a much broader history of knowledge, analyzing key episodes such as the evolution of writing, the emergence of science in the ancient world, the Scientific Revolution of early modernity, the globalization of knowledge, (...) industrialization, and the profound transformations wrought by modern science. He investigates the evolution of knowledge using an array of disciplines and methods, from cognitive science and experimental psychology to earth science and evolutionary biology. The result is an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge--and a bold new approach to the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The timeline of the Anthropocene – a geological epoch that Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer say began in the late 18th century with the invention of the steam engine – seems like a brief and inconsequential blip, against the time scales embodied by the microbial communities. Wolbachia bacteria predate Anthropos by some 150 million years, and will likely outlast us. Wolbachia bacteria are worthy of their own geological epoch because they offer a fresh vantage point on (...) one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time: ‘How should we love in a time of extinction?’ Narratives about the Wolbachiacene have the potential to disrupt the overwhelming stories of tragedy orbiting around Anthropos, with disquieting and generative accounts of interspecies romance. Wolbachia often perform queer tricks inside their invertebrate hosts. In some host species these bacteria induce parthenogenesis – completely eliminating males from the population. Wolbachia can also transform genetic males into reproductively viable females. (shrink)

In 2016, a multidisciplinary body of scholars within the International Commission on Stratigraphy—the Anthropocene Working Group—recommended that the world officially recognize the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch. The most contested claim about the Anthropocene, that humans are a major geological and environmental force on par with natural forces, has proven to be a hotbed for discussion well beyond the science of geology. One reason for this is that it compels many natural and social scientists to confront (...) problems and systems that transgress traditional disciplinary boundaries, and as a result, calls for interdisciplinary research are now gaining traction. Proponents of such transgressions have dubbed the new scientific order that will result “Anthropocene Science”, and rhetoric notwithstanding, such discussions exemplify how recent changes within science justify rethinking a prevailing image of how science is done, and with it, the working relationship between scholars in the humanities, natural scientists, and social scientists. (shrink)

The idea that we are living in the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch defined by human activity, has gained substantial currency across the academy and with the broader public. Within the earth sciences, however, the question of the Anthropocene is hotly debated, recognized as a question that gets at both the foundations of geological science and issues of broad philosophical importance. For example, official recognition of the Anthropocene requires us to find a way to use the methods (...) of historical science to make predictions. It also involves determining the role that political motivations should play in establishing scientific kinds. I bring the perspective of philosophy of science to bear on these questions, ultimately arguing that formal recognition of the Anthropocene should be indefinitely deferred. 1A New Epoch 1.1Criteria for designating a new epoch2The Future Geologist’s Perspective 2.1Climate change2.2The fossil record, excluding humans2.3The human fossil record2.4Direct anthropogenic deposits2.5Chemical markers2.6Hydrology2.7Summing up3The Synchronic Perspective4The Anthropocene Is Not yet Set in Stone. (shrink)

This essay critically examines the concept of the Anthropocene, a term referring to a proposed new geological epoch—the age of the human. I begin by foregrounding how the project of Western extractive colonialism has exercised significant influence in structuring the political ecology of the planet within this new era. Considering this influence, I maintain that the era is better understood as the age of “Man”—the fictive idealized human form that stands at the ideological heart of the (neo)colonial project. (...) In order to locate the figure of Man within the Christian imagination, I construct an analogy between the figures of Man and Cain, so that, through this analogy, the Anthropocene can be identified as the age of Cain. The essay concludes by considering the implications of this interpretation of the Anthropocene for contemporary Christian faith. (shrink)

The diagnosis of a new geological epoch, The 'Anthropocene', has implications far beyond geological science. If human activity has disrupted the planet, then this diagnosis potentially disrupts socio-political conventions. This article assesses the implications the Anthropocene has for democratic politics, by delineating three challenges: challenges of knowledge, time and boundary. In contrast to the claim that democratic institutions are unable to adequately respond to these challenges, I suggest that they might be strengthened through an engagement with them. (...) Following an 'agonistic' understanding of politics, I argue that the contestation instigated by the challenges of the Anthropocene is key to democratic renewal. Just as democracy in the Anthropocene can be enhanced through an agonistic approach, agonistic theory can be enriched through an engagement with the Anthropocene. (shrink)

The proposal of the ‘Anthropocene’ as a new geological epoch where humans represent the dominant natural force has renewed artistic interest in the ‘geopoetic’, which is mobilized by cultural producers to incite changes in personal and collective participation in planetary life and politics. This article draws attention to prior engagements with the geophysical and the political: the work of Simone Weil and of the editors of the Martinican cultural journal Tropiques, Suzanne and Aimé Césaire. Synthesizing the political and (...) scientific shifts in human-world relationships of their time, both projects are set against oppressive or narcissistic materialisms and experiment with the image of the ‘cosmic’ to cultivate a preoccupation not with a tangible materialism but with an intangible one that emphasizes process and connectivity across wide spatial and temporal scales. The writers’ movement between poetics and politics will be used to enquire what kind of socio-political work a contemporary geopoetic could potentially do. (shrink)

The archive produces a linear time that reaches towards ‘what could be’ by asserting ‘what has been’, providing us reassurance of our existence through the assertion of a reliably past past. But the Anthropocene is an era of uncontained material ramifications, where the past juts into the future and temporality warps as change accelerates unexpectedly. As an ecological and geologic epoch, documentation of the Anthropocene inherently has a relationship to natural history museums and archives. These institutions, however, troublingly rest (...) on what Elaine Graham calls ‘ontological hygiene’ – the separateness of the human subject from ‘nature’. The Anthropocene however, challenges the western post-Enlightenment binary of man vs. nature, as it (supposedly) naturalizes humans into an earth systems force. As such, documentation of this epoch might resist ontological sanitation. This article outlines an artistic research practice to create artefacts of the Anthropocene – one that invites material idiosyncrasies, objects-in-becoming, ephemerality, and decay. I suggest that artistic ‘anarchices’ prioritize process over objects, and resist linear and static representation in lieu of material, embodied and sensory artefacts. These include relational encounters with waste materials, reworked forms of ‘geology’, edible artefacts and multimedia works at landfills and feral sites. The anarchives are interpolated by a rejection of hegemonic logic, positivism and ‘objective’ truths about environmental phenomena; Situated, ambiguous and material knowledges are inwrought into the so-called Anthropocene (and any alternatives to this term). By focusing on waste as an analytical category, I explore some of the ontological breakdowns present in the Anthropocene and question how to unorder systems and disturb materiality. (shrink)

Abstract:Many scientists argue that the world is becoming increasingly dominated by human activity, much to the detriment of the natural world. In what scholars have dubbed the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch during which time human activity has been the dominating force over climate and the environment, many questions of environmental ethics have arisen. Who does the earth belong to? What is the relationship between humans and the environment? What is the moral standing of non-human life? Locke and (...) Rousseau provide varying answers to these questions, which are central to discussions of environmental ethics. In many ways, Locke and Rousseau's answers are opposed to each other, suggesting a differing world view when it comes to environmental ethics. Locke's understanding of environmental ethics seems to dominate, and perhaps even cause, the onset of the Anthropocene, but Rousseau's response, and a potential turn toward his understanding of environmental ethics marks an ideological shift in the way that humans understand their relationship with the world around them. This paper argues that the writings of Locke and Rousseau correspond to different stages of the Anthropocene with significant effects on both environmental ethics and environmental governance and policy. (shrink)

The debate about a new geological epoch ‘The Anthropocene’ has helped spawn ‘Age of Man Environmentalism’ (AME). According to AME, humans’ planetary impact indicates that respect for independent nature can no longer serve as a guiding value for environmentalism. Traditional goals of nature preservation and restoration are grounded in the illusory ideal of pristine nature. Humans are now fully integrated into nature and must become responsible managers of an earth we have created, governing it by our ideals. This (...) essay repudiates AME, defending traditional environmental values of naturalness and respect for nature’s autonomy. AME’s exaggeration of human influence over Earth manifests an anthropocentric narcissism blind to nature’s ongoing agency. Rather than becoming gods or parents of a nature that allegedly needs us, human flourishing requires we strengthen our commitment to humility, restraint, and respect for nature’s gifted character. Naturalness becomes increasingly valuable the rarer it becomes, even in highly humanized areas. AME’s thoroughly managed future ignores the possibility of rewilding and turning nature loose. Its promotion of non-native species and ‘novel ecosystems’ attempts to polish the image of human-impacted nature and denigrates preserved wild areas. Taking seriously humans’ massive impact on earth does not require abandoning traditional environmental values. (shrink)

The Anthropocene debate is one of the most ambitious scientific programmes of the past 15 or 20 years. Its main argument is that, from a geological point of view, humans are considered a major force of nature, thus implying that our current geological epoch is dominated by human activity. The Anthropocene has slowly become a contemporary meta-narrative that seeks to make sense of the ‘earth-system’ as a whole, and one whose vision of the future is dystopian rather (...) than progressive: as the exploitation of the planet’s natural resources reaches tipping point, the very prospects of the continuity of human life are being questioned. This article aims to explore the implicit notions of the human – indeed of the anthropos – that are being mobilized in the Anthropocene debate. It will proceed in two stages: first, the article will spell out the main arguments of the Anthropocene debate with a particular focus on trying to unpack its implicit ideas of the human. Second, it will use my approach to philosophical sociology to highlight some of the limitations and contradictions of the ideas of agency, reflexivity and responsibility that underpin the Anthropocene debate. (shrink)

The term ‘Anthropocene’ was proposed by the geological and natural sciences community to describe the current geological epoch and show the influence of human activity on the planetary ecosystem and its dynamics. This idea was taken up by Humanities scholars from a wide range of disciplines. It functions within the Humanities as a complex and multi-facetted notion that refers to the simultaneous occurrence of different environmental, technological and social transformations. This focus is particularly marked in the New (...) Humanities, that call for renewed attention for the role of cultural, narrative and social issues in shaping collective responsibility for the future of the Earth. The exact meaning and empirical evidence supporting the Anthropocene however, are also met with criticism. We argue that the concept needs to be supplemented by more specific notions and practices, in order to avoid a growing sense of disciplinary segregation in the emergent areas of Humanities scholarship. (shrink)

Humans are remaking the planet, with the planetary human imprint so profound that all planetary systems are being changed: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and cryosphere (water and ice), the lithosphere (Earth's crust), and the biosphere (the community of life). The changes are so deep and far reaching that a new geological epoch, the first effected by humans, has set in, the Anthropocene. It succeeds the only geological epoch human civilizations have known, the late Holocene. The tattoo (...) of the Holocene, climate stability, is replaced by climate volatility, mass eco-social uncertainty, and extinction. Because the Anthropocene is itself the outcome of cumulative human choices, everything in response also turns on ethics. In this case, that entails rethinking and reforming human responsibility. This essay pursues that, after making the case for climate and the Anthropocene as a new prism for Religious Ethics, one that changes the work of Religious Ethics itself. (shrink)

Following the recent recognition that humans are an active force in nature that gave rise to a new geological epoch, this article explores the implications of the shift to the Anthropocene for social theory. The argument assumes that the emerging conditions compel an expansion and deepening of the timescale of the social-theoretical perspective and that such an enhancement has serious repercussions for the concept of human agency. First, the Anthropocene is conceptualized as a nascent cognitively structured cultural model (...) rather than simply a geological epoch. Second, the vast and deep timescale, in the light of which the new time unit and its generative agency alone make sense, is analysed along with the human world's objective, sociocultural and subjective axes. Finally, the elements of the concept of agency are recomposed in their temporal and relational contexts. At the reflexive level throughout, the need for social theory to develop a cognitive-theoretical approach in conjunction with a weak naturalistic ontology is suggested. (shrink)

This article sets out to draft a preliminary sketch of an environmental history of photography, as opposed to a history of environmental photography. It shows that such a history should be rooted in a conceptualization of our geological epoch as the Capitalocene: the age of capital. Seen in this light, photography can be understood as part of a longer history of what the article describes – building on the work of activist and journalist Raj Patel and environmental historian (...) Jason W. Moore (2018) – as the ‘cheap image’. In this way, photography is shown to offer a succinct expression of the Cartesian dualism that Patel and Moore see as being at the heart of the Capitalocene: the externalized image of capital N nature that this world ecology necessitated. The article considers Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, 2022) a recent exhibition and catalogue that attempted to narrate in exhibition form a history of photography from such a perspective. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the work of several artists from this exhibition who are seen as exemplifying ‘metabolic realism’, a new critical photo-based artistic approach. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Comparative Critical Perspectives on the AnthropoceneAn IntroductionAdeline Johns-Putra (bio) and Xianmin Shen (bio)Ever since Eugene Stoermer coined the term Anthropocene in the 1980s and Nobel Prize laureate Paul Crutzen identified the present period as the Anthropocene, this ecological and geographical concept has been adopted in other disciplines beyond the realm of science and has taken on particular resonance in the environmental humanities. This is because the advent of the (...) Anthropocene not only connotes a physical phenomenon, that is, a possible new geological epoch in which the damaging effect of the human species on all other species and on our planetary home has become so great as to leave a mark in the planet's fabric. It is also a revelation of human liability and responsibility, in which that stratigraphical scar must be recognized and the global socioeconomic dynamics of exceptionalism and exploitation that it belies reckoned with. This reckoning is one between those with the greatest responsibility for that impact, who are also the ones who will feel that impact least, and those with the least responsibility, who will feel that impact most. Moreover, those vulnerabilities lie with both human and nonhuman individuals: the Anthropocene demands that human-nonhuman as well as intra-human injustices are dealt with, that the ways in which global systems are interlocked with planetary ones are properly understood.Such questions of justice require a critical response, in various senses of the word and its origins. This encompasses a measure of scrutiny and critique; an honest judgment and even criticism of faults and shortcomings; and an awareness of urgency and crisis. With this in mind, and with both planetary and global questions of justice before us, we have [End Page 1] sought with this special issue of Intertexts to bring together analyses of sociocultural representations and discourse in the widest sense (not just literary or other artistic texts, but political events). We asked that these analyses consider how such discourse has been shaped by global workings now taken for granted—the trappings of modernity and the impulses of capitalism—and also to ponder the potential for reshaping those dynamics as part of a collective consciousness.Anthropocene Criticality: The Planetary, the Global, and the WorldWhat kind of Anthropocene criticality would be both an act of recognition of human responsibility and a reckoning across boundaries (whether intra- or interspecies) of agency, power, and vulnerability? How, in other words, do we take full stock of what is signified by anthropos in the term Anthropocene? We invoke here a range of frames for understanding the place of anthropos both as and within the collective that experiences—altogether but not all the same—the Anthropocene. We call these the "planetary," the "global," and the "world."1 We are not the first to distinguish between these terms and to employ them as devices for (re)framing and (re)visualizing the web of human-nonhuman as well as human-human relationships. In 1999, Gayatri Spivak spoke of the "imperative to re-imagine the planet" and, in this talk and updates of it in 2012 and 2014, outlined the need to contemplate "planetarity" instead of "globalism" (An Aesthetic Education, 335–50). In the fields of comparative literature and world literature, debates have occurred over what Pheng Cheah suggests is the encroachment of ideas of "globalization" on to notions of "worldliness" (28), with the question complicated more recently by what Sarah Nuttall sees as the possibility for a "planetary literature" (924–41). What we offer here adopts and adapts these conversations, and as we define and deploy our terms below we will indicate how these overlap.Under the rubric of the "planetary" we place Anthropocene discussions of how to truly comprehend the human as species and as geological agent, that is, both as one species of many and as a species that has occupied an outsized positionality alongside any other species (even [End Page 2] the idea of an "alpha species" seems hardly to do justice to the magnitude of anthropogenic effect on every inch of the biospheric fabric, from the deepest oceans to the upper levels of atmosphere, lasting for millennia). This is not merely about sentimental catch-phrasing... (shrink)

The idea of the Anthropocene is not only about environmental issues; it is for a new geologic epoch. Moreover, it is a new worldview, a new philosophy. It provides a new context and perspective for us to re-think some traditional philosophical ideas, including the ancient Confucian philosophy of harmony among heaven, earth, and humanity.

The article discusses the modern philosophical concepts of transhumanism and posthumanism. The central issue of these concepts is “What is the posthuman?” The 21st century is marked by a contradictory understanding of the role and status of the human. On the one hand, there comes the realization of human hegemony over the whole world around: in the 20th century mankind not only began to conquer outer space, invented nuclear weapons, made many amazing discoveries but also shifted its attention to itself (...) or rather to the modification of itself. Transhumanist projects aim to strengthen human influence by transforming human beings into other, more powerful and viable forms of being. Such projects continues the project of human “deification.” On the other hand, acknowledging the onset of the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, there comes the rejection of classical interpretations of the human. The categories of historicity, sociality and subjectivity are no longer so anthropocentric. In the opinion of the posthumanists, the project of the Vitruvian man has proven to be untenable in the present-day environment and is increasingly criticized. The reflection on the phenomenon of the human and his future refers to the concepts that explore not only human but also non-human. Very often we can find a synonymous understanding of transhumanism and posthumanism. Although these movements work with the same modern constructs and concepts but interpret them in a fundamentally different way. The discourse of transhumanism refers to the Cartesian opposition of the body and the mind. Despite the sacralization of technology and the desire to purify the posthuman from such seemingly permanent attributes of the living as aging and death, transhumanism in many ways continues the ideas of the Enlightenment. For posthumanists, the subject is nomadic and a kind of assembly of human, animal, digital, chimerical. Thus, in posthumanism the main maxim of humanism about the human as the highest value is rejected – the human ceases to be “the measure of all things.”. (shrink)

The concept of the Anthropocene, originally proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000, denotes the human-dominated geological epoch that follows the earlier Holocene. This article critically investigates productive potentials, ambiguities, and implications of this concept. It starts with the recent past postmodernist notions as a contrasting background and relates the idea of a pending disaster to the scalar differences between earth systems and human literary and artistic practices. Poiesis is the key concept discussed and explained throughout (...) the article. This proposed concept is based on Marx’s idea of the deployment of productive powers (natural or human) as an end in itself. The discussions encompass arts and literature as well as ontological and ethical issues. The main conclusion, presented in the last section, connects the critique of the concept of Anthropocene to the urgency of a collective project based on what I call the principle of sharing. (shrink)

Recent attempts to rename the geological epoch in which we live, now called the “Holocene,” have produced a number of impressive suggestions. Among these the leading contender at present is the “Anthropocene.” Despite its possible advantages, there are a number of reasons why this term is ultimately misleading and unhelpful in both philosophical and policy deliberations. Especially off-putting is the word’s tendency to identify the human species as a whole as the culprit in controversial changes in Earth’s biosphere (...) whose proximate sources can be more accurately identified. The new candidate term echoes discussions of “Man and...” in countless twentieth-century publications, an outmoded conceit rightly overcome in more recent writings on science, technology and society. (shrink)

More than a decade ago, Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen first suggested that we were now living in the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch in which human dominance of biological, chemical and geological processes on Earth was already an undeniable reality. Crutzen's ideas inspired Christian Schwagerl to do further documentation and to write this stimulating book. Well-equipped to take on such a task, Schwagerl has been a political, science and environmental journalist for more than 20 years. (...) He first studied biology at the University of Berlin, completing his Master of Science degree at the University of Reading (UK). He is a past winner of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for Science Journalism, the IUCN-Reuters Media Awards for excellence in Environmental Reporting (Category Europe, together with Philip Bethge and Rafaela von Bredow) and the Econsense Journalism Award for sustainability. (shrink)

Re-Imagining Ecological Democracy offers an original, thought-provoking, and engaging treatment of why and how democracy should be re-imagined in reaction to today's ecological crisis. The book explains that one need to re-imagine both the view on nature and democratic ideals within the same framework in the Anthropocene, the present geological epoch of human-made instability in the Earth system and its planetary boundaries. This book proposes unique and challenging readings of green political theory and its development of ecological democracy (...) in the last four decades. The book is the first to offer a systematic and detailed interpretation of the role of critical theory vis-à-vis green political theory through an update regarding current non-anthropocentric critical theorists and how they may contribute to the further development of ecological democracy. Re-Imagining Ecological Democracy builds further on deep ecology, ecophenomenology, and animism by articulating an ecocentric view on nature which defends an intrinsic moral value of all existence as well as formulating the democratic principle of all ecologically affected parties. This book provides a sophisticated, convincing, and accessible argument for how to re-imagine ecological democracy as ecocentrism in practice: ecological love. To love ecologically means caring for and encountering all existence on the Earth and in the cosmos. This book is multi-disciplinary and will be of great value to researchers as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students from many disciplines. (shrink)

Humans have changed the Earth so profoundly that we’ve ushered in the first new geologic period since the ice ages. So, what are we going to do about it? Ever since Nobel Prize–winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the term "Anthropocene" to describe our current era—one in which human impact on the environment has pushed Earth into an entirely new geological epoch—arguments for and against the new designation have been raging. Finally, an official working group of scientists was (...) created to determine once and for all whether we humans have tossed one too many plastic bottles out the car window and wrought a change so profound as to be on par with the end of the last ice age. In summer 2016, the answer came back: Yes. In Making the Most of the Anthropocene, scientist Mark Denny tackles this hard truth head-on and considers burning questions: How did we reach our present technological and ecological state? How are we going to cope with our uncertain future? Will we come out of this, or are we doomed as a species? Is there anything we can do about what happens next? This book • explains what the Anthropocene is and why it is important • offers suggestions for minimizing harm instead of fretting about an impending environmental apocalypse • combines easy-to-grasp scientific, technological, economic, and anthropological analyses In Making the Most of the Anthopocene, there are no equations, no graphs, and no impenetrable jargon. Instead, you'll find a fascinating cast of characters, including journalists from outer space, peppered moths, and unjustly maligned Polynesians. In his bright, lively voice, Denny envisions a future that balances reaction and reason, one in which humanity emerges bloody but unbowed—and in which those of us who are prepared can make the most of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

Roy Scranton argues for a new philosophical humanism as the best response to the existential crisis of the Anthropocene, the new geological epoch for which human industrial activity is responsible. This threat from climate change, Scranton argues, is better met through what he calls photohumanism than by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics alone. This new humanism shares many affinities with pluralistic humanism. A key concern is political action, which is problematized by what Tschaepe calls dopamine democracy. Scranton shares (...) this concern, but his approach puts too great an emphasis on binaries, such as culture and nature, mind and body, and life and death. I offer the philosophical method of reconstruction, as situated within pluralistic humanism and the philosophy of John Dewey. In introducing the need for reconstruction as a method for doing philosophy in a new but ancient sense of learning to die, I reconstruct photohumanism and offer the Deweyan ideal of democracy for overcoming the problem of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

The ambition of this article is to propose a way of visualizing the Anthropocene dialectically. As suggested by the Dutch atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and the professor of biology Eugene F. Stoermer, the term Anthropocene refers to a historical period in which humankind has turned into a geological force that transforms the natural environment in such a way that it is hard to distinguish between the human and the natural world. Crutzen and Stoermer explain that the Anthropocene has begun (...) after the Holocene, the geological epoch that followed the last ice age and lasted until the industrial revolution. Drawing on a number of figures such as the “tenfold” increase in urbanisation, the extreme transformation of land surface by human action, the use of more than 50% of all accessible fresh water by humans, and the massive increase in greenhouse emissions, Crutzen and Stoermer conclude that the term Anthropocene describes aptly mankind's influence on ecological and geological cycles (Crutzen & Stoermer, 20... (shrink)

Inspired by Ursula Le Guin's ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’, contemporary feminist writing in the social sciences and the humanities has been characterised by a strong renewal of interest in storytelling, as is evidenced by the works of Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway among others. How can storytelling grow with and beyond its literary origin to become a political and heuristic tool? And how does the Anthropocene – our specific geologic epoch – require the renewal of the means (...) of expression of such an old tool as storytelling, so that it becomes a human and nonhuman process? To answer those questions, Deleuze's and Haraway's takes on ‘fabulation’ are intermingled along three lines: the part played by storytelling in the construction of earthly knowledges, the imbrication of speculation and politics, and the nonhuman dimension of fabulation that allows for the liberation of forces of life repressed by an anthropocentric approach. (shrink)

The article presents the concept of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch that follows the Holocene, characterized by human impact. While this scientific concept is rather new and still debated among geologists, the idea that humans have a significant and lasting impact on the planet is almost as old the discipline of geology. Various interpretations of the Anthropocene are then presented, and some philosophical consequences of the idea explored.

_ Source: _Volume 9, Issue 2, pp 220 - 239 Art has been crucial for Western philosophy roughly since Kant – that is, for what is becoming known as “correlationist” philosophy – because it has so often had assigned to it a singular ontological status. The artwork, in this view, is material being that has been transfigured and shot through with subjectivity. The work of art, what art does and how it works have all been understood as mediating between the (...) otherwise irreconcilable opposites of historical spirit and the mute material world, between communicative thought and the unresponsiveness otherness of nature. I revisit this aesthetic tradition from the perspective of the Anthropocene, the proposed name of the new geological epoch of the present, distinguished by the fact that collective human action has now acquired the scale of a world-shaping natural force. The Anthropocene is at once a geological epoch and a historical period. What forms of narrative might possibly relate these two temporal orders together? What other aesthetic categories might help us think through the conceptual impasse of the Anthropocene present? How might aesthetic experience illuminate the history of Anthropocene? What natural histories might artworks tell today? My speculative endpoint: the Anthropocene globe is the universal artwork of the contemporary moment. (shrink)

A growing number of geologists, geophysicists, and other Earth scientists now claim that human caused changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere, oceans, and land are so pervasive as to constitute a new geological epoch characterized by humanity’s impact on the planet. They argue that these changes are so profound that future geologists will easily recognize a discernible boundary in the stratigraphy of rock separating this new epoch from the previous geological epoch, i.e., the Holocene. (...) They propose to name this new geological epoch the “Anthropocene,” a term meaning the age of man. Common to this view is the claim that humans are now the ecologically dominant force on Earth. This paper compares the understanding of human self-identity developed by the defenders of the Anthropocene discourse with the understanding of human self-identity developed by radical ecologists. It concludes by arguing that only an ecologically and dialogically informed conception of human self-identity can provide an adequate point of departure for an ecologically benign form of human dwelling on this planet. (shrink)

No one has expressed the destructive power of Darwinian theory more effectively than Daniel Dennett. Others have recognized that the theory of evolution offers us a universal acid, but Dennett, bless his heart, coined the term. Many have appreciated that the mechanism of random variation and natural selection is a substrate-neutral algorithm that operates at every level of organization from the macromolecular to the mental, at every time scale from the geological epoch to the nanosecond. But it took (...) Dennett to express the idea in a polysyllable or two. These two features of Darwinism undermine more wishful thinking about the way the world is than any other brace of notions since mechanism was vindicated in physics. (shrink)

The ›mediocene‹ is different from geological epochs insofar as it is not a story about physical deposits but about relational entanglement. The major change taking place in the mediocene is that the environment has become part of a singular managed global system. This innovation refers to a radical shift in the relationship between life and its environment: Media have coupled everything together to the point where there is no environment left, where the system is everywhere. Das ›Mediozän‹ unterscheidet sich (...) insofern von geologischen Epochen, als es nicht um physische Ablagerungen geht, sondern um relationale Verschränkung. Die wichtigste Veränderung im Mediozän ist, dass die Umwelt Teil eines einzigen verwalteten globalen Systems geworden ist. Diese Innovation bezieht sich auf eine radikale Veränderung der Beziehung zwischen Leben und Umwelt: Medien haben alles so miteinander verbunden, dass es keine Umwelt mehr gibt und das System überall ist. (shrink)

The ›mediocene‹ is different from geological epochs insofar as it is not a story about physical deposits but about relational entanglement. The major change taking place in the mediocene is that the environment has become part of a singular managed global system. This innovation refers to a radical shift in the relationship between life and its environment: Media have coupled everything together to the point where there is no environment left, where the system is everywhere. Das ›Mediozän‹ unterscheidet sich (...) insofern von geologischen Epochen, als es nicht um physische Ablagerungen geht, sondern um relationale Verschränkung. Die wichtigste Veränderung im Mediozän ist, dass die Umwelt Teil eines einzigen verwalteten globalen Systems geworden ist. Diese Innovation bezieht sich auf eine radikale Veränderung der Beziehung zwischen Leben und Umwelt: Medien haben alles so miteinander verbunden, dass es keine Umwelt mehr gibt und das System überall ist. (shrink)

Texts and textures: approaching an age of human-made nature through the particulate, the volatile, and the radiant. We have entered the Anthropocene era—a geological age of our own making, in which what we have understood to be nature is made by man. We need a new way to understand the dynamics of a new epoch. These volumes offer writings that approach the Anthropocene through the perspectives of grain, vapor, and ray—the particulate, the volatile, and the radiant. The first (...) three volumes—each devoted to one of the three textures—offer a series of paired texts, with contemporary writers responding to historic writings. A fourth volume offers a guide to the project as a whole. Grain: Granular materials add up to concrete forms; insignificant specks accumulate into complex entities. The texts in this volume narrate some of the fundamental qualities of the granular. In one pairing of texts, Robert Smithson compares the accumulation of thoughts to the aggregation of sediment, and an environmental historian writes about the stakes for earthly knowledge today. Other authors include Alfred Russel Wallace, Denis Diderot, and Georges Bataille. Vapor: The vaporous represents matter's transformations. In this volume, a political scientist compares Kafka's haunting “Odradek” to “vibrant matter”; a media theorist responds to poems and diagrams by Buckminster Fuller; and more, including texts by Hippocrates, Italo Calvino, and James Clerk Maxwell. Ray: A ray is an act of propagation and diffusion, encompassing a chain of interdependencies between energy and matter. This volume includes texts by Spinoza (with a reconceptualization by a contemporary philosopher), Jacques Lacan (followed by an anthropologist's reflections on temporality), Thomas Pynchon (accompanied by an interpretation of Pynchon's “electro-mysticism”), and others. These volumes constitute a unique experiment in design and composition as well as content. The mingling of texts and the juxtaposition of different areas of knowledge represented in a variety of forms express the dynamics of a world in change. (shrink)

If the Anthropocene represents a new epoch of thought, it also represents a new form of materiality and historicity for the human as strata and stratigrapher of the geologic record. This collision of human and inhuman histories in the strata is a new formation of subjectivity within a geologic horizon that redefines temporal, material, and spatial orders of the human. I argue that the Anthropocene contains within it a form of Anthropogenesis – a new origin story and ontics for (...) man – that radically rewrites material modes of differentiation and concepts of life, from predominantly biopolitical notions of life toward an understanding of life’s geophysical origination. Here, I use the term Anthropogenesis to suggest that two things explicitly happen in the nomination of the Anthropocene: 1) the production of a mythic Anthropos as geologic world-maker/destroyer of worlds, and 2) a material, evolutionary narrative that re-imagines human origins and endings within a geologic rather than an exclusively biological context. In contrast to the homogeneous geomorphizing of the Anthropocene, I suggest that socializing the strata needs a more nuanced notion of ‘geologic life’ that challenges the construction of the Anthropocene as an undifferentiated social stratification. (shrink)

A consensus is building that our planet has entered the so-called age of the Anthropocene—a post-Holocene epoch defined by the significant impact of humans on geological, biotic and climatic planetary processes. On the one hand, there is good reason to exercise caution in relation to this concept of the “Age of Man.” At a time when immoderate anthropogenic impact poses a serious threat to ecological integrity and balance, calling an epoch after ourselves does not necessarily demonstrate the (...) humility we may need to espouse. Moreover, discourses of the Anthropocene risk overwriting important differences among human.. (shrink)

The resurrection of the classical Marxian ecological critique in the context of the current planetary emergency has led to the return of the concept of the dialectics of nature, associated with the work of Frederick Engels in particular. In the century following the deaths of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, the dialectics-of-nature conception played a formative role in the development of the modern ecological critique within science, notably in Britain, and helped inspire the contemporary environmentalist movement. Nevertheless, all of this (...) occurred outside the dominant streams of Marxian thought and practice, where a great chasm had arisen in this area. Whereas official Marxism in the Soviet Union reduced the dialectics of nature to a fixed dogma, Western Marxism rejected it altogether. In the current Anthropocene Epoch in the geological time scale – and in what is referred to here as the Capitalinian Age of the Anthropocene – a new historical-materialist synthesis constructed on classical foundations, reintegrating the dialectics of nature, so as to address the immense ecological challenges confronting humanity, is seen as objectively (and subjectively) necessary. (shrink)