A Constitution for the Anthropocene Body Politic Environment, Culture, and the Humanities in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

The following article is a slightly revised version of Serenella Iovino’s Keynote Address at the 2021 European Conference for the Humanities, jointly organised in Lisbon (5-7 May) by the UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Programme, the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH), and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). The theme of the Conference Section inaugurated by this lecture was “The Humanities in the Twenty-First Century”. By acknowledging the official approval of the BRIDGES Project on education for sustainability as a partner of the UNESCO Management of Social Transformation Program, Iovino evaluated the role of the Environmental Humanities in the agenda of the so-called ‘New Humanities’, paying special attention to their relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this framework, Venice emerged both as a symbol and as a very concrete object of care, proving to be “a thinking machine” for contemporary natural-cultural dynamics, as Salvatore Settis has defined it. The lecture ended with the invitation to turn the current crisis into a constitutive moment for the ‘Anthropocene body politic’, namely, the earthly collective of agents and of processes, both human and nonhuman, natural and technological.