Quelle(s) histoire(s) au regard de l'Anthropocène ?

Abstract

The Anthropocene is a multi-faceted concept, which integrates a temporal perspective, highlighting socionatural relationships of the present through the prism of geological time. In so doing, it makes it possible to review the classic perspective of an existential separation between nature and culture. This viewpoint is specific to modern Western societies, and with it the sharing and production of knowledge according to whether it relates to nature (natural sciences) or culture (human and social sciences). By intersecting human and geological time, the Anthropocene brings into play the concept of time taken in a broad sense, where two historical sciences, that of historians and of geologists, come together. The idea of creating a world by distinguishing between time period counted in generations must be reconsidered because geological time includes phenomena whose duration is measured on extremely variable scales and which are always active. Geological time can no longer be simply relegated to a deep time that constitutes a «bedrock» world conceived of as permanent. Rather, it should be considered as consubstantial with a systemic vision, where interrelationships are deployed not only in space – as it is in its common representation – but also in time, in a perpetual contingent movement in which human activities are now inscribed.