Hope in the Age of the Anthropocene (original) (raw)
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In Arias-Maldonado, M., & Trachtenberg, Z. (Eds.). (2019). Rethinking the Environment for the Anthropocene: Political Theory and Socionatural Relations in the New Geological Epoch. Routledge., 2019
The concept of Anthropocene seems to represent a new opportunity for Earth scientists and social (de)constructivists to definitely abolish the distinction between nature and society, to affirm human power on the planet and to allege the definitive ‘end of nature’. Indeed, the fact that humanity is about to be acknowledged as a new geological force represents the last chance for the Promethean triumphalism, embodied by geo and eco-constructivists (Neyrat, 2015), to prosper upon the wreckage of its own ecological collapse. This position can be summarised in McKibben terms: ‘we now live in a world of our own making’. I will argue, against this view, that to acknowledge that nature and society are more and more intertwined around us - and inside us - is not enough to abandon the analytic distinction between aspects deriving from human societies and those deriving from nature’s ‘non-identity’ (otherness). In other words, natural objects have still agency and human societies themselves are materially anchored in biophysical conditions that transcend them. The contradiction between the claim that humans are new “planetary managers” or “Earth engineers” and our obvious inability to control our environmental impacts on the planet constitutes one major sign of natural agency, or what I call ‘the return of nature’. Moreover, I will show that the concept of Anthropocene aims at pursuing an unapologetically anthropocentric world picture in order to justify further capitalist exploitation of the Earth (Crist, 2013). The Anthropocene promoters, driven by a complex mix of economic, scientific and political motives, tend to encourage the hubristic modern faith in technology to fix problems created by technology itself. Against the arrogance contained in this concept, I argue that the repeated failures of ecological modernisation and environmental managerialism should be an opportunity to re-think our place on the planet and to accept the fragility and vulnerability of the human species in the face of complex and unpredictable natural phenomena. In short, what needs to be developed is not a new form of human hubris but our capacities for gratitude, humility, respect and restraint.
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.
Abstracts Issue 1(2017): The Battlefield of the Anthropocene
Abstracts Issue 1(2017): The Battlefield of the Anthropocene. Limits, Responsibilities and the Duty of Fight, 2017
Capitalizing on the emergent debate of the Anthropocene, this paper provides an overview of the co-evolutionary processes that life has developed over billions of years on our planet. The main intention is to identify their operational principles and strategies in order to learn how to co-evolve in harmony with our environment. Humans have much to learn from Mother Earth to build sustainable futures. The philosophical considerations from nature show us that those co-evolutionary operational principles of ecosystem cooperation must be bio-mimetically copied, emulated, and improved to reduce ecological footprint. In conclusion, biomimicry emerges as a sustainable worldview that uses nature as teacher to face the complex challenges of the Anthropocene.
Living the Anthropocene from 'the End of Nature' to Ethical Prospects
Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics, 2019
This article explores the viability of living after ‘the end of nature’ – as Žižek reports – in the Anthropocene. Humans can no longer consistently rely on their persistent interventions to nature as its source. The end of nature, however, does not only mean that the problem is solely ecological. Instead, it points to the original chaos of catastrophes that disturb the link of man’s relationship to nature. In short, the current predicament of the times does not only expose problems of ecology per se but also of economy, biology, and society. So what comes next? Taking off from Heidegger and Leibniz, ethical prospects after this four-fold end should reopen once again the task of thinking the Anthropocene in various independent but coalescing fronts.
The Politics of the Anthropocene
2018
The Politics of the Anthropocene is a sophisticated yet accessible treatment of how human institutions, practices, and principles need to be re-thought in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene, the emerging epoch of human-induced instability in the Earth system and its life-support capacities. However, the world remains stuck with practices and modes of thinking that were developed in the Holocene – the epoch of around 12,000 years of unusual stability in the Earth system, toward the end of which modern institutions such as states and capitalist markets arose. These institutions persist despite their potentially catastrophic failure to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene, foremost among them a rapidly changing climate and accelerating biodiversity loss. The pathological trajectories of these institutions need to be disrupted by advancing ecological reflexivity: the capacity of structures, systems, and sets of ideas to question their own core commitments, and if ne...
Introduction. The Social Construction of the Anthropocene: Theoretical and Ethical Perspectives
Rivista italiana di filosofia politica, 2023
The ancient one-to-one relationship with the biological life cycle has gradually deteriorated due to the world undergoing a metamorphic process. Such a metamorphosis has affected ecological harmony, in terms of it being both an approach to studying the relationships between living beings and the environment, and a branch of knowledge protecting and promoting ecological balance. One of the crucial aspects of this phenomenon is the need to rethink and redefine the concept of life in an era that has been described as the "Anthropocene". In introducing this special issue of the Journal, the paper aims to investigate the environmental question, which plays a crucial role in contemporary political thought, due to the survival of both nature and mankind being threatened. Since the 1950s, such a complex situation has resulted in two lines of thought whose views follow two opposed ideologies-anthropocentrism and anti-anthropocentrism.
Living Well Wherever You Are: Radical Hope and the Good Life in the Anthropocene
A number of thinkers have pointed to radical hope as both an appropriate affective state to motivate action in a time of radical change and perhaps the only appropriate reaction to the uncertainties expected in the Anthropocene. As Jonathan Lear characterizes it, radical hope is a hope that we might find a meaningful existence without the context and substantial constraints that previously provided one's life with meaning. If we are to appeal to radical hope as an appropriate form of motivation in the Anthropocene, however, we need an appropriate object for that hope. We need some sense of what we are hoping for. In this paper I argue that the most appropriate objects for radical hope are ideals generated from the substantial freedoms required for any recognizably human good life. These substantial freedoms amount to Senian capabilities. While, owing to its inherent uncertainties, we cannot conceptualize with suitable specificity what a good life would be in the Anthropocene, we can recognize that it will be shaped by the substantial freedoms required for most any good life, that is, by capabilities. As capabilities express ideals about the good life, these ideals provide the appropriate object for radical hope. Hoping for ideals of the good life should provide an object for our motivation in a time when the specifics of that good life are unclear. Just as radical hope seems an appropriate response to our changing climate, the ideals underpinning capabilities provide a grounding for that hope suitable for the Anthropocene.
Introduction: The Growing Anthropocene Consensus
Altered Earth: Getting the Anthropocene Right, 2022
This book aims to get the Anthropocene right in three senses. First, it conveys the scientific evidence of our altered Earth, showcasing how the concept of the Anthropocene captures the magnitude and complexity of the planet's dangerous transformation. Second, we try to get the Anthropocene right in human terms, exploring the kaleidoscope of experiences, contingencies, and decisions that led to the Anthropocene, from the deep history of our relationship with infectious diseases to recent nuclear disasters. These histories are echoed and expanded through fiction with two short stories bringing the vast scales of geology and Earth System science "to earth" in emotional and ethical terms, especially around the issues of colonialism and inequality. Finally, we talk about what hope might look like in this pretty hopeless situation, proposing mutualistic cities, greater equity, and new political forms. "Right" in this book means being as accurate as possible in describing