User:Nalyd24/Anthropocene

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Controversy

Although the validity of "Anthropocene" as a scientific term remains disputed, its underlying premise, i.e., that humans have become a geological force, or rather, the dominant force shaping the Earth's climate, has found traction among academics and the public. The University of Cambridge, for example, offers a degree in Anthropocene Studies. In the public sphere, the term "Anthropocene" has become increasingly ubiquitous in activist, pundit, and political discourses. Some who are critical of the term "Anthropocene" nevertheless concede that "For all its problems, [it] carries power." The popularity and currency of the word has led scholars to label the term a "charismatic meta-category" or "charismatic mega-concept." The term, regardless, has been subject to a variety of criticisms from social scientists, philosophers, Indigenous scholars, and others.

The anthropologist John Hartigan has argued that due its status as a charismatic meta-category, the term "Anthropocene" marginalizes competing, but less visible, concepts such as that of "multispecies." The more salient charge is that the ready acceptance of "Anthropocene" is due to its conceptual proximity to the status quo — that is, to notions of human individuality and centrality. Whereas the concept of "multispecies" decenters these notions by viewing the "human" as a species "entangled in copious folds of nonhumans, without which we would not exist" — e.g., bacteria, viruses, and fungi — the conceptual framework embedded in the term "Anthropocene," according to Hartigan, does not challenge anthropocentric humanism nor species individualism, ideologies which he takes to have enabled the climate crisis in the first place. The scholar Mark Bould has similarly criticized "Anthropocene" as a concept. The enormous temporal scale of the Anthropocene, Bould argues, potentially yields politically detrimental outcomes. More specifically, if the climate crisis is figured into the timeframe of a geological epoch, as opposed to decades, it might impede the sense of urgency needed to build the political will to act on the climate crisis. As Bould writes: "talking about a geological epoch invites awestruck recoil at sublime magnitudes, which is not necessarily a bad thing, since hubris should be clobbered once in a while, but also risks evasion and complacency."

Other scholars appreciate the way in which the term "Anthropocene" recognizes humanity as a geological force, but take issue with the indiscriminate way in which it does. Not all humans are equally responsible for the climate crisis. To that end, scholars such as the feminist theorist Donna Haraway, have suggested naming the Epoch instead as the "Capitalocene." Such implies capitalism as the fundamental reason for the climate crisis, rather than just humans in general. Hartigan, Bould, and Haraway all critique what "Anthropocene" does as a term; however, Hartigan and Bould differ from Haraway in that they criticize the utility or validity of a geological framing of the climate crisis, whereas Haraway embraces it. Terms like the "Capitalocene" and other variants, e.g., "Necrocene," "Anglocene," "Oliganthropocene," etc., still maintain a geological spirit.

Other critiques of "Anthropocene" have focused on the genealogy of the concept. A phenomenological account, which draws on the work of the philosopher Sara Ahmed, is given by the Indigenous scholar Zoe Todd from Amiskwaciwâskahikan in the Treaty Six Area of Alberta, Canada, writing: "When discourses and responses to the Anthropocene are being generated within institutions and disciplines which are embedded in broader systems that act as de facto 'white public space,' the academy and its power dynamics must be challenged." Other aspects which constitute current understandings of the concept of the "Anthropocene" such as the ontological split between nature and society, the assumption of the centrality and individuality of the human, and the framing of environmental discourse in largely scientific terms have been criticized by scholars as concepts rooted in colonialism and which reinforce systems of postcolonial domination. To that end, Todd makes the case that the concept of "Anthropocene" must be indigenized and decolonized if it is to become a vehicle of justice as opposed to white thought and domination.

The scholar Daniel Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, for example, has emphasized spiritual connection to the land as a crucial tenet for any ecological movement. Similarly, in her study of the Ladakhi people in northern India, the anthropologist Karine Gagné, detailed their understanding of the relation between nonhuman and human agency as one that is deeply intimate and mutual. For the Ladakhi, the nonhuman alters the epistemic, ethical, and affective development of humans — it provides a way of "being in the world." The Ladakhi, who live in the Himalayas, for example, have seen the retreat of the glaciers not just as a physical loss, but also as the loss of entities which generate knowledge, compel ethical reflections, and foster intimacy. Other scholars have similarly emphasized the need to return to notions of relatedness and interdependence with nature. The writer Jenny Odell has written about what she calls "species loneliness," the loneliness which occurs from the separation of the human and the nonhuman, and the anthropologist Radhika Govindrajan has theorized on the ethics of care, or relatedness, which govern relations between humans and animals. Scholars are divided on whether to do away with the term "Anthropocene" or co-opt it.