Against the Anthropocene. A Neo-Materialist Perspective

Abstract

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 cultures have been created by and with a powerful material environment. The technologies of the thermo-industrial revolution are framed not so much as evidence of human power, but as evidence that the material world has a much greater power to shape human minds, cultures, and technologies than has heretofore been recognized by most scholars. From a neo-materialist perspective, the new geological epoch might be better termed the Carbocene: an age of powerful carbon-based fuels that have helped to create ways of thinking and acting that humans now find exceedingly difficult to escape. Might a more humble and cautious view of a creative and potentially dangerous planet offer a more effective

Climate change? Archaeology and Anthropocene

“…Steffen et al . 2011; LeCain 2015, 5; Dalby 2016), the current notion of the Anthropocene was first introduced by chemist Paul J. Crutzen and ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer in the early 2000s. Their intent was to conceptualize the current global condition by introducing the Anthropocene as the next in a line of geological epochs or ages, succeeding or supplementing the Holocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Crutzen 2002).…”

“…2011; Gibbard and Walker 2013; Rull 2013; Edgeworth et al . 2015; LeCain 2015; Braje 2016), the concept's wide circulation and accumulated political significance imply that it is already here to stay – whether as an official age, epoch or neither. The Anthropocene, as stated by Simon Dalby (2016, 33), ‘has become a key theme in contemporary speculations about the meaning of the present and the possibilities for the future’.…”

El Antropoceno, ¿un concepto geológico o cultural, o ambos?

“…Algunos críticos dudan acerca de si, como una manera de definir la relación entre naturaleza y cultura, y medio ambiente y sociedad, ofrece algo que las categorías analíticas ya establecidas no pueden. Otros tienen preocupaciones más profundas: temen que el nombramiento de una nueva época geológica que hace referencia a los seres humanos proporcione un estímulo masivo para el ya rampante antropocentrismo y cause que el respeto humano por el valor moral intrínseco de la naturaleza disminuya aún más (LeCain, 2015). 4 Por otra parte, -mo una entidad cultural, se sienten incómodos con el término.…”

Ethics in the Anthropocene: A research agenda

“…Further, it has prompted consideration of how many species collectively shape the planet in ways well beyond human control (LeCain, 2015). Placing humans as one geological agent among many has challenged human exceptionalism-the claim that humans alone are subjects, and the rest of nature merely objects (see Latour 2014).…”