Thinking the New Earth: Cosmoecology and New Alliances in the Anthropocene
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Abstract
The term “Anthropocene” was coined two decades ago to “emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology.” Since then, its meanings, assumptions, and consequences have been subject to continuous debate across academic disciplines and in popular culture.
For some the Anthropocene names a universal planetary condition, which others view as blind to the co-existence of incongruent ontologies and more-than-human worlds. Some argue that the Anthropocene papers over colonialism and the violence of capitalist extraction, while others think it intensifies politics by rendering it ontological. To some the term is testimony to human hubris and arrogance. Yet to others, it operates as a profoundly anti-anthropocentric concept, which depicts an unprecedented situation of human vulnerability and diminished agency. Finally, as noted above, some use it as a clarion call for a true integration of knowledges, while it speaks to others of the need for sophisticated conjunctions of knowledge across a heterogeneous ecology of practices.
In each case, my perspective aligns with the second alternative. I am convinced that most modern conventions and dualisms leave us helpless to address Anthropocene challenges. A profound transformation of our ecologies of knowledge and practice are required to nourish cosmo-ecological alliances capable of thinking the new earth. In light of the increasingly manifest inadequacy of existing theories, tools, methods, and concepts, collective speculation and experimentation across significant difference—from indigenous collectives to urban design, and geology to fiction—is urgently needed to stave off catastrophe and do better in the relatively near future.
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