Réécrire l’histoire depuis l’anthropocène

Abstract

In this interview Dipesh Chakrabarty reflects with remarkable lucidity on his personal and intellectual trajectory. Faced with the global environmental crises we are currently experiencing, in particular that of global warming, the \guillemotleft post-colonial \guillemotright perspective he had himself defended, along with other intellectuals, and which was aimed at \guillemotleft provincializing Europe \guillemotright, must, he explains here, be enlarged. A further decentering is henceforth required. From now on, it is to a range of multiple histories, through which the whole of humanity and nature are interconnected, that we must refer. These histories require that we reason in terms of time-scales (a geological time-span) and problems (the demographic growth of the human species) which critical theory, and Marxism to begin with, had for long ignored, due to an exorbitant fascination for the \guillemotleft short \guillemotright time-scale of the development of western capitalism.