Against the Anthropocene. A Neo-Materialist Perspective

Timothy James Lecain

doi:10.18352/hcm.474

Abstract

The dawning realization that the planet may have entered a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene could prove transformative. However, over the course of its brief history, the Anthropocene concept has often been framed in ways that reinforce, rather than challenge, the conventional modernist belief in a clear dividing line between human culture and a largely passive natural world, sharply limiting the concept’s potential utility. Reflecting the overestimation of human agency and power inevitably implied by a term that is often popularly translated as the ‘Age of Humans’, some have already begun to argue that powerful humans can be trusted to create a so-called ‘Good Anthropocene’ through massive geo-engineering projects. No deeper re-examination of the human relationship to the planet is thus necessary or desired. By contrast, this article draws on emerging neo-materialist theory to suggest a radically different approach that emphasizes the ways in which humans and their cultures have been created by and with a powerful material environment. The technologies of the thermo-industrial revolution are framed not so much as evidence of human power, but as evidence that the material world has a much greater power to shape human minds, cultures, and technologies than has heretofore been recognized by most scholars. From a neo-materialist perspective, the new geological epoch might be better termed the Carbocene: an age of powerful carbon-based fuels that have helped to create ways of thinking and acting that humans now find exceedingly difficult to escape. Might a more humble and cautious view of a creative and potentially dangerous planet offer a more effective means of spurring progress in combating global climate change than the misleading anthropocentrism inherent in a term like the Anthropocene?

Highlights

Essays that start off with a pop-culture reference do not often end well, but bear with me
Reflecting the overestimation of human agency and power inevitably implied by a term that is often popularly translated as the ‘Age of Humans’, some have already begun to argue that powerful humans can be trusted to create a so-called ‘Good Anthropocene’ through massive geo-engineering projects
This article draws on emerging neo-materialist theory to suggest a radically different approach that emphasizes the ways in which humans and their cultures have been created by and with a powerful material environment

Summary

Introduction

Essays that start off with a pop-culture reference do not often end well, but bear with me. Neomaterialism challenges the still dominant modernist belief that human culture is distinctly separate from the material world, suggesting that matter helps to create human intelligence, creativity, and culture, but may often be best understood as constituting these things At its heart, this emerging neo-materialist theory challenges the modernist faith that the human intellect and culture have taken us out of nature, suggesting that humanists can build a powerful new methodological approach by adopting the contrary position: human culture must be understood and analyzed as a part and product of the material world, not its antithesis. Alarmed by the breathtaking hubris inherent in such proposals, critics have countered that these optimistic plans to re-engineer the planet are a perverse misreading of the Anthropocene idea While this is clearly true at some level, the eco-pragmatist arguments for a ‘Good Anthropocene’ can be understood as a logical extension of the essential anthropocentrism of the concept itself. The hard part is to figure out how to keep these powerful partners from enslaving and destroying them

A Good Anthropocene?

Conclusion