Species at War? The Animal and the Anthropocene

Abstract

Environmental politics has become inextricably entwined with planetary deep time. This article calls for a reconceptualization of the relation between humans and nonhuman nature. It rejects the ontological singularity of the human, either as a biological species (Homo) or as a planetary super-agent (Anthropos) and argues for a perspective centred on companionship and shared vulnerability. Animal philosophy serves here to counter a growing tendency to generalize and address the human species at large, in the singular. The cultural force of the animal, it is suggested, stems from a productive tension between the abstract singular (‘the Animal’) and the unique specificity of each particular nonhuman other. In the context of Anthropocene Studies, references to Anthropos follow a similar logic. The planetary future of humans cannot be deduced from any specific geopolitical context or expressed through universalizing categories. It must be understood, against the vertiginous backdrop of geological time, as a process of becoming: a complex set of material and semiotic practices shaping open-ended, transformative trajectories

Passages

“…See also Thomas et al (2020); McNeill and Engelke (2016). 13 For further discussion, see Mussgnug (2019). 14 Both texts are quoted in Dening (2004).…”