The Disimagination of the Anthropocene (original) (raw)
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Theoretical research on Dhruv Bhatt – one of the most important contemporary Gujarati novelists – has remained restricted to simplistic ecocritical reading(s). In this article, I analyse Bhatt’s novel Akoopār (2010) to investigate how layered exploration(s) of the ‘female’ as human, ancestor, myth, or affective attitude, as negotiated by the artist-anthropologist narrator, prises open the violence of centres (the Anglophone/the urban/colonialist) and offers an alternative narrative of the Anthropocene by tracing human intervention in the environment through local-cultural mytho-history. In doing so, the novel recentres the subject from eco-‘logy’ whose definition is often hijacked by the ‘logos’ of ‘discovery’, to ‘ecosystem’ depicted as a complex network of environment, cultural knowledge(s), linguistic practices, myth, memory, and collective action. I also use the theoretical approach of ecofeminism to highlight the use of ‘female’ as an approach of resistance in battling ecologic...
The environmental crises referenced by the term Anthropocene incite responses that reflect different understandings about the right way to live on Earth. This, one would expect, should generate a proliferation of disagreements and an expansion of politics. Yet, so-called post-political authors warn that, instead, the way in which the Anthropocene has been brought to the public eye implies an emptying out of politics and a disavowal of the inherently conflictive pursuit of different visions about the right way to live on Earth. To counter this, they propose that the problematic of the Anthropocene needs to be displaced onto the terrain of the ''properly political.'' In this paper I probe what the ''properly political'' might mean in the context of the Anthropocene.
Power in the Anthropocene: Pasts, Presents, Futures
The Anthropocene designates the present geological epoch in which humans have irreversibly changed planet Earth, with impacts discernible in the atmosphere, biosphere, and more. The term has also become a "charismatic megacategory" in the humanities and social sciences; some critique the very concept, while others focus on how power dynamics, political economy, racial capitalism, and human/non-human relations manifest-and often accelerate-Anthropocenic transformations. This PhD-level course dives into these debates, drawing on work in a wide range of fields in the humanities, social sciences, arts, and natural science (the latter with works accessible to non-expert audiences). The course involves considerable reading. Written assignments are varied and often experimental. The format of the final assignment is flexible, with options that can be adapted to the needs and interests of individual students.
The Anthropocene Event in Social Theory: On Ways of Problematizing the Non-Human
2018
Signaling that ‘humanity’ has radically changed the Earth’s environmental parame-ters, the notion of the Anthropocene currently generates debate across the socio-cultural sciences. Noticeably, neo-Marxist and new materialist approaches stand out for the argument that the Anthropocene obliges social theory to 'catch up' with new material realities. While sharing the conviction that the Anthropocene might institute a genuine event for social theory and practice, however, we discuss in this paper some unresolved issues of scientism and economic totalization which, we argue, ne-cessitates a search for alternative ways of 'dramatizing' our eco-political predica-ment. In search of such paths, we turn to science and technology studies (STS) and actor-network theory (ANT), whose long-standing focus on nonhuman agency is pro-longed by Isabelle Stengers’ forceful argument that we must “accept" the reality of Gaia's intrusion into collective historicity. Stengers’ challenge, we suggest, requires the development of an art of immanent attention to the politics of varied matters as they unfold across diverse ecologies of practice. Well beyond the present preoccupa-tions of Euro-American social theory, environmental history, activism and politics offer sites of resistance and experimentation whose political efficacies and conceptual capacities are far from exhausted. Slowing down theory sufficiently to learn from the-se multiple sites, we argue, should be the starting point for an approach adequate to the problems posed by the Anthropocene event, and an irritable, ticklish Gaia. Keywords: Anthropocene; Gaia; new materialism; neo-Marxism; science and technology studies (STS)
Technoetic Arts, 2022
What does it mean to be human? This question has made a meteoric career for itself, becoming a focal point of almost every thread of the transhumanist debate. Significant as it is, the question eludes any definitive answer, since it directly engenders an array of related queries. This Special Issue questions our notions of the human being, human subjectivity, superiority and uniqueness, which tend to be underpinned by simplistic and simplifying dichotomies entrenched in western philosophy, science and art..... For more see here: https://ta.pubpub.org/20-1-2-dismantling-the-anthropocene
Pro-Fil – An Internet Journal of Philosophy - MUNI Journals, 2024
The paper focuses on identifying the possible, and assumed, implications of the concept of the Anthropocene for thinking about the human in a philosophy that accepts the transition from Holocene to Anthropocene thinking. The aim of the paper is to produce a systematic treatment of the philosophical-anthropological presuppositions of the concept of the Anthropocene. Illuminating the relationship between the concepts of the Earth System, the planetary boundaries and the Anthropocene has to be the focus if we are to delineate the basic anthropological issues so that they can be further conceptually elaborated from a philosophical-anthropological perspective. Such an approach aims to highlight the various interpretive disagreements not only in understanding the concept of the Anthropocene but also in understanding the meaning of the concept of humanity as a geobiophysical force.
Editors' introduction to the Special Section: The ethics and politics of the Anthropocene
In recent years "the Anthropocene" has come to represent a new milestone for human-induced destruction of the environment. There is a widespread consensus that industrialization processes within capitalist modernity have ushered humanity into a new geological epoch bearing little resemblance to the climatic stability of "the Holocene," the roughly 10,000-year span within which all known human civilizations were established. Furthermore, there is general agreement that the ending of climatic stability will have a devasting impact on the Earth's ecosystems, making long-term human settlement and global supply chains difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. This Special Section aims to stimulate critical social theories to explore ways of thinking and acting that would equip us humans better to respond to the multiple challenges we face from the increasingly inescapable reach of ecological disaster. In all five contributions, "the Anthropocene" names a historical moment in which we must reconsider the very category of the human and our constitutive interdependencies with the other-than-human. Challenging the view that only humans possess intrinsic value, Arne Vetlesen calls on us to regard other-than-human beings as moral addressees in their own right. At the same time, he argues that only humans can be considered moral agents due to their powers of reflexivity, abstraction, imagination, and future oriented thinking. These powers make humans alone responsible for their actions. Although at first glance his asymmetric model may seem in tension with it, Vetlesen's argument resonates with Maeve Cooke's call for ecologically attuned relationships between humans and other-than-humans, in which human knowledges are not deemed in principle superior to the knowledges of other-than-human entities and ethical goodness is not determined solely by human concerns and interests but has a partial independence of them. Nonetheless, like Vetlesen, she highlights the continued importance of ethically motivated human action, leading her to propose a reimagined, rearticulated conception of human freedom as ecologically attuned, self-directing, self-transforming agency. The proposed conception aims to break decisively with the ideal of the sovereign subject as it has emerged within capitalist modernity. Yann Allard-Tremblay makes a similar argument, urging us to recognize our embeddedness in the natural world while at the same time asserting our capacity for reflexive, responsible self-direction; he calls on us to seek concrete ways in which our relationships to one another and to other-than-humans can be renewed in their localized contexts. For Indigenous peoples, this process necessitates political resurgence and the revitalization of lifeways impacted by the destructive legacy of colonialism. In the case of non-Indigenous peoples, it may require far-reaching, transformations in relation to the land they live upon. John McGuire, too, holds onto the value of selfdetermining human agency, while drawing attention to its historical entanglement with notions of autarkic mastery and warning against the uncritical embrace of technological innovation as the surest means of meliorating ecological disaster. In the same vein, Karim Sadek contends that any adequate response to our ecologically disastrous situation is predicated on the human agent's ability to move beyond an egocentric mode of being that generates, shapes, and nourishes self-centered, self-driven, and self-concerned perceiving, thinking, and acting. Like the other contributors, This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.