Deprovincializing Climate Exterminism: History, Agency, and Universal Appeal in the Anthropocene

Abstract

ABSTRACT Catastrophic imagery is pervasive today in part as a reaction to increasingly dire predictions of global environmental crises. Some have suggested that the novelty of anthropogenic change signals entrance into a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene. In a parallel global debate over nuclear weapons, EP Thompson argued that the logic of deterrence represented the final stage of civilization, or “exterminism.” This effort explores key issues that this new geologic history presents, in particular the loss of historical sensibility, through the lens of Thompson’s concept of nuclear exterminism. Introducing the critical response of Mike Davis, I explore how post-colonial history, and in particular, Dipesh Chakrabarty’s concept of simultaneity can encourage a more productive and historical engagement with the Anthropocene. This is to avoid the pitfalls of a cognate “climate exterminism,” which cedes agency to natural disasters and flattens the uneven responsibilities for Earth System change into a homogenizing category of “the species.”