Politics of Time and Mourning in the Anthropocene

Rosine Kelz,Henrike Knappe

doi:10.3390/socsci10100368

Rosine Kelz, Henrike Knappe

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10100368

Copy DOI

Abstract

The Anthropocene thesis makes it necessary for the social sciences to engage with temporality in novel ways. The Anthropocene highlights interconnections between ‘natural’ and ‘social’ non-linear temporal processes. However, accounts of humanity’s Anthropocene history often reproduce linear, progressive narratives of human development. This forecloses the possibilities that thinking with non-linear temporalities would offer to the political sciences. Engaging with the temporal complexity of the Anthropocene as a moment of rupture that highlights non-linearity allows to acknowledge more fully the affective impact of living on a disrupted planet. As a discourse about temporal rupture, the Anthropocene is a stocktaking of the already vast insecurities and losses brought about by exploitative relationships with earth and its inhabitants. In this form, the Anthropocene thesis highlights how material and social legacies of inequality and exploitation shape our present and delimit our imaginaries of the future. By including a reckoning of violent pasts into future practices, a productive politics of mourning could take shape.

Highlights

The notion of the Anthropocene has recently become an important topic for political scientists and political theorists (Arias-Maldonado 2019; Hickmann et al 2020), who are joining a larger conversation that spans the natural sciences and the humanities
Addressing the Anthropocene, we argue, challenges us to engage with concepts of temporality and history in political theory and practice in novel ways
The analytical and political relevance of embedding the current Anthropocene discourse within a more detailed historical analysis has been shown by writers such as Bonneuil and Fressoz (2017), Jason Moore (2017) and Alf Hornborg (2019), whose works highlight the political and economic processes that have brought about the current planetary environmental crises and engrained socio-economic injustices on a global scale

Summary

Introduction

The notion of the Anthropocene has recently become an important topic for political scientists and political theorists (Arias-Maldonado 2019; Hickmann et al 2020), who are joining a larger conversation that spans the natural sciences and the humanities. In Western social and political thought, notions of nonlinear temporalities have often developed through critical engagements with bounded and homogenous notions of linear time These critiques suggest a diversity of alternatives, mainly referring to discontinuities and cyclical temporalities The analytical and political relevance of embedding the current Anthropocene discourse within a more detailed historical analysis has been shown by writers such as Bonneuil and Fressoz (2017), Jason Moore (2017) and Alf Hornborg (2019), whose works highlight the political and economic processes that have brought about the current planetary environmental crises and engrained socio-economic injustices on a global scale These historical perspectives enable Anthropocene narratives which integrate different viewpoints on the history of the past three hundred years, and which are critical of the teleological developmental narrative. The Anthropocene, poses the question whether a politics of mourning is possible, and how acknowledging loss could enable us to take a different stance to the Anthropocene future, and to its past

The Anthropocene as a Rethinking of ‘Natural’ Time

An Apolitical History of the Anthropocene?

The Trauma of the Anthropocene—A Politics for Times of Mourning?

Findings

Conclusions