{"id":10194,"date":"2019-08-22T07:47:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T12:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=10194"},"modified":"2019-08-22T08:24:15","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T13:24:15","slug":"sobering-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/08\/22\/sobering-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Sobering up…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Peter Brannen’s Atlantic<\/em> article “The Anthropocene is a Joke<\/a>” provides a helpful cold shower for those who’ve gotten a little too drunk on the concept of the Anthropocene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entire article is worth reading. Here are a few snippets:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

“What humans are doing on the planet, then, unless we endure for millions to tens of millions of years, is extremely transient. In fact, there exists a better word in geology than\u00a0epoch<\/em>\u00a0to describe our moment in the sun thus far:\u00a0event<\/em>. Indeed, there have been many similarly disruptive, rapid, and unusual episodes scattered throughout Earth history\u2014wild climate fluctuations, dramatic sea-level rises and falls, global ocean-chemistry disasters, and biodiversity catastrophes. They appear as strange lines in the rock, but no one calls them epochs. [. . .]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

“These are transformative, planet-changing paroxysms that last on the order of hundreds of thousands of years, reroute the trajectory of life, and leave little more than strange black lines in the rocks, buried within giant stacks of rocks that make up the broader epochs. But none of them constitute epochs in and of themselves. All were\u00a0events<\/em>, and all\u2014at only a few tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands of years\u2014were blisteringly\u00a0short<\/em>. [. . .]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

“Until we prove ourselves capable of an Anthropocene worthy of the name, perhaps we should more humbly refer to this provisional moment of Earth history that we\u2019re living through as we do the many other disruptive spasms in Earth history. [. . .] You wouldn\u2019t stand next to a\u00a0T. rex<\/em>\u00a0being vaporized 66 million years ago and be tempted to announce to the dawning of the hour-long Asteroidocene. You would at least wait for the dust to settle before declaring the dawn of the age of mammals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The final paragraph sums up his argument, even as it ends with a ray of hope:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The idea of the Anthropocene inflates our own importance by promising eternal geological life to our creations. It is of a thread with our species\u2019 peculiar, self-styled exceptionalism\u2014from the animal kingdom, from nature, from the systems that govern it, and from time itself. This illusion may, in the long run, get us all killed. We haven\u2019t earned an Anthropocene epoch yet. If someday in the distant future we\u00a0have<\/em>, it will be an astounding testament to a species that, after a colicky, globe-threatening infancy, learned that it was not separate from Earth history, but a contiguous part of the systems that have kept this miraculous marble world habitable for billions of years.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As with most such writing (my own often included<\/a>), the prospect of leaving humans wrapped up in a deep-time geological pessimism — we will be gone from the scene, end of story — feels a little too unpalatable. This is the paradox of the environmental soothsayer: breaking the eco-realist<\/a> news is heavy-duty medicine, so we need to sugar it up with something<\/em>… In my case, it’s with the love of the long-term, deep-time<\/a> view. Which I take to be something like love itself<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Brannen’s Atlantic article “The Anthropocene is a Joke” provides a helpful cold shower for those who’ve gotten a little too drunk on the concept of the Anthropocene. The entire article is worth reading. Here are a few snippets:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615,688977,4422],"tags":[123667,16877,4417,520620,455146,142742,520676,455162,4433],"class_list":["post-10194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","category-geo_philosophy","category-process-relational-thought","tag-anthropocene","tag-anthropocentrism","tag-buddhism","tag-c-s-peirce","tag-ecozoic","tag-love","tag-neocene","tag-shadowing-the-anthropocene","tag-sustainability"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2Eq","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8747,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/05\/07\/wark-on-the-geopolitics-of-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":10194,"position":0},"title":"Wark on the geopolitics of the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"McKenzie Wark has written a very provocative piece on the geopolitics of the Anthropocene, or what he calls \"The Geopolitics of Hibernation.\" A quote:\u00a0 \"Resource wars are no new thing. They are a defining feature of the history of geopolitics. But perhaps the resource wars of the Anthropocene have some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8265,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/21\/bandwagocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":10194,"position":1},"title":"Bandwagocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"These days, it takes a course release for an academic to keep up with the avalanche of books\u00a0being published with titles that feature the word \"Anthropocene.\" To read them would take a sabbatical. Doing anything approximating a \"slow read\" would require, well, retirement. But that's no reason not to try.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10577,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/29\/image-ecologies-spiritual-polytropy-and-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":10194,"position":2},"title":"Image ecologies, spiritual polytropy, and the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 29, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"An article of mine by that title has appeared in a special issue of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture on \"Popular Culture, Religion, and the Anthropocene.\" The article contains the theoretical core of the book I'm currently writing on image regimes. It builds on my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12326,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/01\/17\/the-anthropocene-unconscious\/","url_meta":{"origin":10194,"position":3},"title":"The Anthropocene Unconscious","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 17, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Mark Bould's new book The Anthropocene Unconscious makes more or less the same argument as I made in my 2008 New Formations article \"Stirring the Geopolitical Unconscious: Toward a Jamesonian Ecocriticism,\" later expanded in the \"Terra and Trauma\" chapter of Ecologies of the Moving Image, but he applies it to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ride or Die? Mark Bould and the Fast-and-Furiocene","src":"https:\/\/external-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net\/safe_image.php?d=AQFF5hGJTSdb8ECm&w=416&h=645&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdev.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F01%2FThe-Anthropocene-Unconscious-Climate-Catastrophe-Culture.jpeg&cfs=1&ext=jpg&_nc_oe=6f696&_nc_sid=06c271&ccb=3-5>=1&_nc_hash=AQGDfgJaJugH5_2v","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7686,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/07\/07\/against-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":10194,"position":4},"title":"Against the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is a guest post by Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the nonprofit\u00a0Center for Biological Diversity. It follows the discussion begun\u00a0here\u00a0and in some\u00a0AESS conference sessions, including Andy Revkin's keynote talk\u00a0(viewable here)\u00a0and responses to it (such as\u00a0Clive Hamilton's).\u00a0 I In considering why the name \u201cAnthropocene\u201d has been proposed, why it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"setting-sun-smokestacks","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/07\/setting-sun-smokestacks-275x179.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8271,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/06\/01\/anthropocene-equity\/","url_meta":{"origin":10194,"position":5},"title":"Anthropocene & equity","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 1, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I've reported previously\u00a0on how\u00a0critics see the \"Anthropocene\" concept as overgeneralizing from the causal nuances of actual\u00a0responsibility for climate (and global system) change. In an excellent summary of recent writing on the topic, ecosocialist climate observer\u00a0Ian Angus answers the question \"Does Anthropocene science blame all humanity?\" with a definitive \"no.\" That\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10194"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10200,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10194\/revisions\/10200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}