Rewriting the “origin stories” of the Anthropocene No geology is neutral, writes Kathryn Yusoff. Tracing the color line of the Anthropocene, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None examines how the grammar of geology is foundational to establishing the extractive economies of subjective life and the earth under colonialism and slavery. Yusoff initiates a transdisciplinary conversation between feminist black theory, geography, and the earth sciences, addressing the politics of the Anthropocene within the context of race, materiality, deep time, and the afterlives of geology. Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.
How May the ‘Anthropocene’ Enable and Constrain Cybersystemic Governance? The ‘Anthropocene Problematique’
A growing awareness of the need for cybernetics and systems thinking (cybersystemic) in praxes of governance to improve human-biosphere relationships in the Anthropocene has become apparent. Nonetheless, mainstream governance informed by linear-causality seems to perpetuate an increasingly inadequate paradigm of dominant first-order/systematic thinking in governing complex interactions between humans and their natural environments. This conundrum is explored through the second-order lens of a systemic inquiry, using an integrative literature review. We discuss limitations of the Anthropocene metaphor and make the case for a reframing of our situation (humans’ co-evolutionary dynamic with the biosphere) as the ‘Anthropocene problematique’. This reframing as a systemic-duality offers more conducive affordances for trajectory-shifting cybersystemic governance to emerge. Aligning with a body of literature evidencing the influence of language on human cognition, we argue that by joining up the strengths of both ideas, ‘Anthropocene problematique’ may form a conceptual device amenable to changing worldviews and guiding practical action in governing human-biosphere relationships. We suggest a conceptual framework for practitioners to design and enact purposeful systems of cybersystemic governance with potential to improve situated Anthropocene problematiques. This framing and theoretical proposal are motivated by a need for shifts towards a social purpose of healing human-biosphere relationships in current governance systems in the Anthropocene-world.
The shock of the anthropocene: the earth, history and us
Dissecting the new theoretical buzzword of the "Anthrop…
Anthropocene Epistemology: Political, Ecological, and Economic Entanglements
This essay critically explores the connection between epistemology, political ecology, economy, and technological developments in the Anthropocene, understood a
Beyond technofix: Thinking with Epimetheus in the anthropocene
The Prometheus myth has long now provided inspiration for those who envision solutions to environmental issues. Prometheus is the figure par excellence of human forethought and progress in the anthropocene. In this article, we introduce the concept of ambient Prometheanism to describe the way of thinking that foregrounds foresight and anticipation and advances technological solutions developed by capital and energy-intensive projects. We question this stance, arguing that ambient Prometheanism, with its emphasis on technofix, leads to the economisation and depoliticisation of planetary environmental issues. Following Bernard Stiegler, we recover from the myth the figure of Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, as well as his associated faculty, epimetheia to theorise what we call an ‘Epimethean politics’. Thinking the anthropocene from the perspective of ambient Prometheanism and Epimetheanism means to consider the role of technology in climate politics, and in particular to make the case for the importance of afterthought in face of unintended consequences and accumulated errors. To substantiate our argument, we outline the challenge posed by emerging solutions focussed on technological intensification (geoengineering) and socio-economic acceleration (green growth and accelerationism). An Epimethean politics of the climate requires to use reflexivity as a capacity to anticipate, but also to mobilise epimetheia to account for accidents and past mistakes. Such a politics builds from an alternative conception of technology, one that radically differs from ambient Prometheanism. Finally we read as actualisations of Epimethean politics contemporary eco-political struggles and their imperatives for multispecies living and convivial livelihoods.
L’anthropocène, un objet frontière qui signifie plus qu’une tranche de temps géologique
Même si le groupe de travail officiel a refusé la proposition de créer une nouvelle époque géologique nommée anthropocène, le débat n’est pas clos pour autant.
Good, Standard Work: Creating the Commons
A defence of digital stewardship, IndieWeb principles, Blackfoot models of collective flourishing, and what it means to plant seeds in a garden you'll neve…
A Black Feminist Apocalypse/Dystopian Survival Resource Compilation
A Black Feminist Apocalypse/Dystopian Survival Resource Compilation With the awful realization that we are indeed in a fight for our very survival coming over me for the past few years, I’ve asked myself this question: what can I do right now, today? With my resources limited or tapped out, I’ve...
Planetary Sapience & Planetary Stupidity: a Bildungsroman for the Baby Noosphere | Antikythera
That is, the faculty of recollection and foresight? Until recently, I would argue, our planet was amnesiac. That is, no part of it was reflectively aware of the place of the present relative to the established past nor the expected future. But then peculiar animals emerged, capable—no matter how imperfectly—of cooperation, abstraction and invention. In the last blink of geologic time, through the collaboration of these animals with their increasingly cunning artifacts, this state of planetary amnesia has faltering begun being cured. That is, through our artifacts, our planet is becoming aware of its own unfolding biography. In our fallible attempts to model our world—alongside our growing legion of sensors—The Earth system has developed a way of recollecting its deepest past and tracking the changing complexities of its present so as to forecast its furthest future.
Black Futures
Check out Black Futures - <b><b>“A literary experience unlike any I’ve had in recent memory . . . a blueprint for this moment and the next, for where Black folks have been and where they might be going.”—<i>The New York Times Book Review</i> (Editors’ Choice)</b><br><br></b><i><b>What does it mean to be Black and alive right now?</b></i><br><br>Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics.<br><br> In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, <i>Black Futures</i> opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every reader. by Jenna Wortham and Kimberly Drew on Bookshop.org UK!
The Climate of History in a Planetary Age
For the past decade, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has been one of the most influential scholars addressing the meaning of climate change. Climate change, he argues, upends long-standing ideas of history, modernity, and globalization. The burden of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is to grapple with what this means and to confront humanities scholars with ideas they have been reluctant to reconsider—from the changed nature of human agency to a new acceptance of universals. Chakrabarty argues that we must see ourselves from two perspectives at once: the planetary and the global. This distinction is central to Chakrabarty’s work—the globe is a human-centric construction, while a planetary perspective intentionally decenters the human. Featuring wide-ranging excursions into historical and philosophical literatures, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age boldly considers how to frame the human condition in troubled times. As we open ourselves to the implications of the Anthropocene, few writers are as likely as Chakrabarty to shape our understanding of the best way forward.
Effective Altruism: doing transhumanism better
Effective Altruism (EA) is a Trojan horse for transhumanism, through which EA movement leaders and funders aim to naturalize transhumanism as the logical extension of the existing global aid and development sector. This paper traces transhumanism's mainstreaming, first via its rebranding as a humanitarian effort to save lives, protect vulnerable populations, and ensure global flourishing (what I term transhumanitarianism), and later by embedding transhumanitarianism in EA (now under the rubric of longtermism). A key component of this strategy was inverting transhumanism's techno-optimism to instead focus on safety and preventing existential risks ( x-risk ) from emerging technologies like AI and biotechnology, while simultaneously advocating for the creation of these same technologies. The paper focuses on some components of this strategy: the use of inoculation, speculative ethics, anticipatory governance, and the mobilization of apocalyptic discourse as means for producing material outcomes in the form of policy and research agendas.
Anthropocène? Capitalocène? Quels enjeux? - les économistes atterrés
Si l’anthropocène est aujourd’hui d’usage courant pour désigner la période présente marquée par les transformations qui affectent de plus en plus notre planète, une autre tendance se fait jour chez […]
Sapiens [Tenth Anniversary Edition]: A Brief History of Humankind
New York Times Readers’ Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st CenturyThe tenth anniversary edition of the internationally bestselling phenomenon that cemented Yuval Noah Harari as one of the most prominent historians of our time—featuring a new afterword from the author.One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?In Sapiens, Professor Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical—and sometimes devastating—breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology, and economics, and incorporating full-color illustrations throughout the text, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Can we ever free our behavior from the legacy of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?Bold, wide-ranging, and provocative, Sapiens integrates history and science to challenge everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our heritage...and our future.
YOU NAME IT
Check out YOU NAME IT - This comprehensive publication focuses on the artwork and activism of Sasha Huber. A Helsinki-based visual artist and researcher of Swiss and Haitian heritage, Huber’s creative practice encompasses performance, photography, film, mixed media, reparative interventions, and collaborations to investigate colonial residues left in the environment. Her projects conceive of natural spaces—mountains, lakes, glaciers, forests, and craters—as contested territories, highlighting the ways in which history is imprinted onto the landscape through acts of remembrance, including memorialization through naming and the erection of monuments. For over a decade, Huber has produced work in relation to the cultural and political Demounting Louis Agassiz campaign, which seeks to redress the racist legacy of the Swiss-born naturalist and glaciologist. With her artworks, Huber challenges the terms by which we remember, asking not only who and what we memorialize, but also, and more importantly, how we do so. by Huber, Sasha on Bookshop.org UK!
La Nature au cœur du raisonnement économique : l’émergence d’une nouvelle macroéconomie. - Chroniques de l'Anthropocène
Quand le FMI révolutionne la macroéconomie en présentant un cadre conceptuel original dans lequel la Nature se trouve au cœur du système économique.
