Antonioni's Images of the Planet in the Anthropocene (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Anthropocene and the Planet
History and Theory, 2023
History and Theory 62:2 (2023), 320-333. Dipesh Chakrabarty's The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is, in three respects, far more than a synthesis of over a decade of pioneering conceptual work aimed at making sense of the Anthropocene/planetary predicament and its implications for historical understanding. First, the book makes visible an intellectual trajectory in which Chakrabarty's conceptual struggles with the Anthropocene gradually move from the centrality of the notion of the Anthropocene toward the centrality of the notion of the planet. Second, it highlights the relational complexities with which one needs to grapple when trying to make sense of the current predicament. Third, and finally, the book showcases a series of often overlapping conceptual distinctions that Chakrabarty has developed while navigating these complexities. Through a discussion of the above key aspects, this review essay highlights the achievements of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age and critically engages with its central themes. In dialogue with the book, it pays special attention to exploring the respective benefits and drawbacks of the notions of the Anthropocene and the planet, and to the character and role of human agency in the Anthropocene/planetary predicament. Finally, the essay concludes with a few thoughts concerning the question of what kind of a reinvention of historical understanding might be triggered, respectively, by the notions of the Anthropocene and the planet.
International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2nd edition, 2020
After a brief account of the emergence of the Anthropocene idea in the Earth sciences, I consider the reception of the hypothesis by critical geographers. Having addressed the issue of who speaks for the Earth we turn to questions of how the Earth might speak or act through us – bringing us to the work of geographers who are beginning to experiment with new ways of thinking with and through planetary processes. This in turn opens up tricky questions about what close conversation with the geosciences might mean for the urgent task of decolonizing our thinking about the Earth.
Anthropocenica. Revista de estudios del Antropoceno y Ecocrítica, 2023
A Philosophical Journey into the Anthropocene. Discovering Terra Incognita is the latest book by Agostino Cera, published this year by Lexington Books. As has already been argued (Sklair, 2021), the Anthropocene is usually described as a "good" Anthropocene. This might sound quite strange given that the usual reports from the media are full of negative information. Catastrophist hypotheses regarding the ecological crisis, as well as eco-modernist readings of the issue are the two most widespread ideas about the Anthropocene and are based on the same theoretical premise: the modern idea of nature. This-follows Bruno Latour's definition of modernity (Latour, 1993)-according to which the main characteristic of this epoch consists of the fundamental dualism between nature and culture. The great merit of Cera's book is proposing an alternative to these two modern readings of the Anthropocene, based on a re-evaluation of this concept, no longer grounded in modern assumptions. The underlying hypothesis is that opening to a different way of thinking about the human-nature relationship will be crucial not only to understanding our historical condition but also to preparing the ground for a new ethical paradigm. To sketch his countermovement, Cera tackles two main research questions: what is and who is the Anthropocene? In the first part of the book, Cera answers the first question. The second part, which comprises the remaining two chapters, is addressed the other. The first chapter, "Epistemic Journey", opens with a lexical and chronological genealogy of the concept of "Anthropocene", first developed in the year 2000 by the chemist Paul J. Crutzen, the biologist Eugene F. Stoermer and the climate researcher Will Steffen (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Steffen & Crutzen et al., 2007). This book plays a central role in the discussion about Anthropocene
Beyond the Anthropocene: UnEarthing an Epoch
As “the Anthropocene” emerges as a geological term and environmental analytic, this paper examines its emerging rhetorical topology. We show that Anthropocene narratives evince a macroscale division between an “inner” and “outer” environment. This division situates an Anthropocenic environment that matters in the surface zone between Earth's subsurface and the extraterrestrial “outer spaces” that we address here. We review literature in the sciences and social sciences to show how contemporary environmental thinking has been informed by understandings of Earth's broader planet-scaled environmental relations. Yet, today's Anthropocene conversation draws analytic attention inward and downward. Bringing in literature from scholars who examine the role of the extraterrestrial and outer environmental perspectives in terrestrial worlds, we suggest that Anthropocenic theorizations can productively incorporate inclusive ways of thinking about environments that matter. We argue for keeping “Anthropocene” connected to its spatial absences and physical others, including those that are non-anthropos in the extreme.
International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity
The dawning realization that the planet may have entered a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene could prove transformative. However, over the course of its brief history, the Anthropocene concept has often been framed in ways that reinforce, rather than challenge, the conventional modernist belief in a clear dividing line between human culture and a largely passive natural world, sharply limiting the concept’s potential utility. Reflecting the overestimation of human agency and power inevitably implied by a term that is often popularly translated as the ‘Age of Humans’, some have already begun to argue that powerful humans can be trusted to create a so-called ‘Good Anthropocene’ through massive geo-engineering projects. No deeper re-examination of the human relationship to the planet is thus necessary or desired. By contrast, this article draws on emerging neo-materialist theory to suggest a radically different approach that emphasizes the ways in which humans and their cult...
TERRA INCOGNITA CRITICAL NOTES ON THE ANTHROPOCENE
Síntesis. Revista de Filosofía, 2023
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.
The Ideology of the Anthropocene
Final version available in Environmental Values 24 (2015): 9–29. 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.
L. Valera and J. C. Castilla (eds.), Global Changes, Ethics of Science and Technology, 2020
The Anthropocene-term proposed by the scientific community for the current geological epoch to signal humans as a leading geological force in earth history-has open intense debates across the sciences and humanities, in that the traditional gap between natural and social phenomena, occurring respectively at slow and fast temporal rates, have been questioned. Despite the enthusiasm, an irre-solvable conceptual limitation marks the term. Irrespective of the very heterogene-ity-human and other-than-human-that is currently at risk in this new epoch, the term often refers to a universal male human, sitting above nature. Humans are to be found simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, which risks diluting environmental responsiveness. This global dilemma resonates with the epistemic distance on which knowledge of the Anthropocene is constituted, which requires achieving a cosmic view on earth at the expense of ecological intimacy. Such cosmic view resonates, in turn, with the place the built environment affords humans, as ex-habitants of the earth. Yet, life-human or any other-is not lived on the exterior of a globe but in the Earth, nurtured by sensory attunements to the material transformations of an environment in constant becoming. Acknowledging the immanence of life, this chapter argues, requires a redefinition of what it means to be human. It is through this immanence that environmental responsiveness remains possible in a world in crisis. The chapter concludes by distinguishing responsibility from responsivity, two contrasting modes of engaging with environmental change, defined respectively as a retrospective act resulting from the achievement of epistemic distance and a forward-looking capacity related to knowing intimately the ongoing transformations of the environment.