Political Critiques of the Anthropocene

Edited by Timothy W. Luke

This issue of Telos brings together a diverse group scholars to critically reconsider the current mobilization of the Anthropocene idea as a decisive development for human civilization in contemporary economic, ethical, historical, and political debates. As the papers presented here reveal, many cultural contradictions and political pressures play out in today’s rapidly proliferating Anthropocene discourses. How does the attribution of global environmental changes to “humanity” rather than a narrower subset of individual players obfuscate the political economy of energy use? In what way does the Anthropocene concept obscure the actual practices of greenhouse gassing in the mesological mechanics of those cities, regions, and nations that are rich and powerful enough to construct the technical assemblanges that are powered by coal, gas, and oil? What are the consequences of the Anthropocene’s projection of an entirely teleological vision of human history that foresees an unsustainable greenhouse-gassed world to come? These are tough political challenges, and the essays in this issue provide some hard-hitting critical responses to them.

Introduction: Political Critiques of the Anthropocene
Timothy W. Luke

The Good Life in the Greenhouse? Autonomy, Democracy, and Citizenship in the Anthropocene
Andrew Biro

The Anthropocene, Ethics, and the Nature of Nature
Zev Trachtenberg

Faulty Presuppositions and False Dichotomies: The Problematic Nature of "the Anthropocene"
Christopher R. Cox

Spelling the End of Nature? Making Sense of the Anthropocene
Manuel Arias-Maldonado

There Is No Anthropocene: Climate Change, Species-Talk, and Political Economy
Matthew Lepori

Gaia and the Anthropocene; or, The Return of Teleology
Damiano Bondi

On the Politics of the Anthropocene
Timothy W. Luke

Is History as a Science Possible? Historical Durée and the Critique of Positivism
Rafael Winkler

Reviews

Ernst Jünger's Resistance to Modernity
Mario Bosincu