‘The Shape of Things to Come’: Seven Theses on the Anthropocene and Attachment

Anthropocene: Victims, Narrators, and Revolutionaries

“…While the geological strata will tell us whether -or even when -the Anthropocene began, planetary boundaries instead reveal whether -or even when -the Anthropocene will end, crashing against the biophysical limits of the planet. As Ben Dibley (2012) has argued, the geologic Anthropocene and planetary boundaries are part of the same global narrative; in both cases scientists have taken the lead in proposing an all-inclusive explanation of the present crisis and even of its possible outcomes.…”

Rivers of the Anthropocene

“…As with "the Scientific Revolution, " a term first used in the early twentieth century, "the Anthropocene" is a neologism, used widely only since the early twenty-first century (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000;Meybeck 2001;Steffen et al 2004;Syvitski et al 2005;Costanza, Graumlich, and Steffen 2007;Robin and Steffen 2007;Zalasiewicz et al 2008;Chakrabarty 2009;Rockström et al 2009;Armesto et al 2010;Davis 2011;Steffen, Persson, et al 2011;Dibley 2012;Crutzen and Steffen 2016). The origins of both concepts can be traced back two hundred years before their wide use-to the Enlightenment in the case of the Scientific Revolution and to the middle of the nineteenth century in the case of the Anthropocene.…”

“…It is a story in which humans have exploited the environment at unprecedented and ever-expanding rates, soon finding that their local actions have consequences on global scales (Kelly 2014). The Anthropocene becomes a category for critiquea way to define excess, limits, thresholds, and boundaries (Meadows et al 1972;Chakrabarty 2009;Rockström et al 2009;Dibley 2012). In effect, it becomes a standard by which to measure human action and hold societies accountable for their actions-an ethical framework.…”

Anthropocene and Transdisciplinarity

“…In part, the category of the anthropocene is a discursive critique of modernity's excesses (Chakrabarty 2009;Dibley 2012). It imposes on modernity the notion of limits, thresholds, and boundaries-an approach sparked by the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth" report in 1972(Meadows et al 1972Rockström et al 2009).…”