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Accepted Contribution:
Anthropocene history: politicizing the new geological epoch
Adam Wickberg
(KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
This contribution argues for the need for historians to move beyond the important and longstanding critique of the concept of the Anthropocene into a politicization of its content as a historical-geological epoch. Historians will need to create a critical understanding of this unprecedented time.
Contribution long abstract:
This contribution argues for the need for historians to move beyond the important and longstanding critique of the concept of the Anthropocene into a politicization of its content as a historical-geological epoch. While important, these critiques have tended become internal affairs within the humanities, and as the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene moves rapidly towards formalization, there is an urgent need for a critical understanding of its meaning among the public as well as a reformed historical consciousness. I argue that rather than turning our back on the Anthropocene for its fraught relation to global power structures, we need to seize the opportunity to define its meaning in historical terms. This includes the economic and ideological structures and notions that have underlined the Great acceleration as a signature of the Anthropocene, as well as a critical understanding of the means of knowing and changing the environment at scale during this period.