{"id":8848,"date":"2016-06-29T12:10:16","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T17:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8848"},"modified":"2021-06-10T08:55:02","modified_gmt":"2021-06-10T13:55:02","slug":"toward-telling-an-adequate-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/06\/29\/toward-telling-an-adequate-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Toward telling an adequate story"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post builds\u00a0on the previous\u00a0one on the state of the eco-humanities<\/a>.\u00a0Here I focus on the substantive elements for narratives adequate to the Anthropocene.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"ss9-1-300x300\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the challenges of our time is to learn to\u00a0tell an adequate story of\u00a0humanity’s current predicament.<\/p>\n

Next spring’s Stories for the Anthropocene Festival<\/a>\u00a0in Stockholm aims to deal with this challenge. Numerous books and statements, from Bill McKibben’s Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet<\/a> to Roy Scranton’s Learning to Die in the Anthropocene<\/a>\u00a0to Ian Angus’s about-to-be-released Facing the Anthropocene<\/a> to the Breakthrough Institute’s Ecomodernist Manifesto<\/a> (and its\u00a0critiques<\/a>), vie for the right mix of pessimism and optimism, technical realism and motivating vision. These latter-day efforts\u00a0add to existing “big story” narratives, like David Christian’s<\/a>\u00a0“Big History”<\/a>\u00a0and Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme’s “universe story<\/a>”\u00a0(see here<\/a> for a discussion of their limitations), injecting\u00a0urgency from recent\u00a0science into the mix.<\/p>\n

My own sense is that there are at least three key elements\u00a0that should be part of any such narrative:<\/p>\n

1. An account of how (and why) the global climate system has varied\u00a0over long periods, and how humans have responded to its variations in the time we’ve been around.<\/em><\/p>\n

For instance, knowing about the alternation between “icehouse” and “greenhouse” states<\/a>, and between glacial and interglacial periods (and the difference between the two!), can help us understand the dynamic planet that gave birth to us. And understanding how micro-changes in those systems have affected human developments,\u00a0from\u00a0the spread of agriculture to the decline of civilizations, can help us understand our own dependency on those\u00a0larger processes.<\/p>\n

All of that will help us from over<\/em>crediting human agency on the planet. Humanity is, in this perspective, neither an aberration — some evil intruder into an otherwise harmonious world — nor the overarching telos of planetary history. It’s just a species that’s done some unique and marvelous things over a short period of time, a period that may now be ending.<\/p>\n

2. An understanding of how fossil-fueled\u00a0capitalism is\u00a0distinctive in its scale and its impacts, and especially of how the rate by which the industrial burning of fossil fuels has released certain compounds (carbon and methane) into the atmosphere\u00a0is comparable to the rapidity of previous\u00a0“shocks” to the system — such as the asteroid hit that ended the Mesozoic<\/a>\u00a0era.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The conjoined term “fossil-fueled capitalism,” or something like it, is important here in that it links a technological development (the burning of fossil fuels) with a set of politico-economic determinants (capitalism) that have conditioned the ways in which those technologies have been deployed\u00a0for rearranging human life and ecological relations on\u00a0the planet.<\/p>\n

This keeps us from under<\/em>crediting human agency with respect to\u00a0the planet. We live in a time marked by a new geological force, and we need to understand what that force is. It is neither humanity as a whole, nor some random accident (i.e., the discovery of the energy that can be released when coal is burned). It is a\u00a0sociopolitical-techno-economic system, one that we need to come to grips with.<\/p>\n

3. An understanding of the highly differentiated internal dynamics of human society — including political and economic relations, cultural institutions, behavioral propensities (including the cognitive and affective dimensions of “human nature”), and all of these as they have coevolved and interacted over time — that both\u00a0constrain and enable our capacities to respond to the predicament.<\/em><\/p>\n

Things get messily complicated here, and understanding them\u00a0will require not only all the resources of the social sciences and humanities, but also the perspectives of those who have been marginalized within the knowledge industries, from indigenous and traditional\/colonized societies to today’s growing\u00a0global precariat<\/a>. After all, knowledge is not really knowledge if it’s blinkered by a lack of understanding of how it got to be “knowledge” in the first place, and who gets to call it that.\u00a0Histories of colonialism and genocide, gender discrimination, and much else, play into that.<\/p>\n

In particular, however, it’s essential to understand how currently evident\u00a0levels of inequality<\/em>\u00a0between\u00a0human groups — including locally as well as globally differentiated socio-economic classes — make it impossible to effectively address the predicament. When some people profit immensely from current relations, at great expense to others<\/a>, there is little\u00a0reason to believe that the privileged class will relinquish\u00a0its\u00a0privileges.<\/p>\n

Understanding these intra-human dynamics will keep\u00a0us from overestimating the unity<\/em> in the category of the “human,” and therefore help us to adequately comprehend\u00a0what “human agency” means today. It’s not about humanity as a singular force that can redirect itself to new goals; we have never been such a unified force. It’s about forging a new humanity altogether, one that has never existed — a “common world” brought together by the current predicament as much as by anything that came before it. That will take a lot of work.<\/p>\n

This internally riven\u00a0humanity can hardly be understood apart from the capitalism that conditions its emergence today (#2 above). Nor can it be understood apart from the divergent relations humans have had, and continue to have, with nonhuman entities, organisms, processes, and systems\u00a0(i.e., #1, though in a much more local and fine-tuned understanding).<\/p>\n

But in terms of the substance<\/em> of the story, I think these three are worth distinguishing as crucial pieces that are relatively autonomous from each other.\u00a0We might call the first of these elements “the dynamics of the planet,” or the “deep time” piece; the second one — “the dynamics of capitalism,” or the\u00a0“now time” piece; and the third — “the internal dynamics of human agency,” or the “becoming-humanity” piece.<\/p>\n

There are of course many other things that an “adequate story of our predicament” needs. Most important may be the aesthetic and communicative criteria — which I have not considered here at all.<\/p>\n

The triad, like all my triads<\/a>, loosely follows a Peircian<\/a>\u00a0thread. (#1 is what’s given, #2 is the encounter between\u00a0it and\u00a0carbon capitalism, and #3 is the realization of meanings that allow for a new mediation to develop.) But I find it useful to think with.<\/p>\n

Thoughts welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post builds\u00a0on the previous\u00a0one on the state of the eco-humanities.\u00a0Here I focus on the substantive elements for narratives adequate to the Anthropocene. One of the challenges of our time is to learn to\u00a0tell an adequate story of\u00a0humanity’s current predicament. Next spring’s Stories for the Anthropocene Festival\u00a0in Stockholm aims to deal with this challenge. Numerous […]<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615,520594],"tags":[123667,350277,383,350227,350278,25057,350281,350282,350280,350276,11,350279,284],"class_list":["post-8848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","category-climate-politics","tag-anthropocene","tag-big-history","tag-bill-mckibben","tag-climate-science","tag-ecomodernism","tag-environmental-humanities","tag-greenhouse","tag-humanity","tag-icehouse","tag-metanarrative","tag-narrative","tag-roy-scranton","tag-thomas-berry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2iI","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7577,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/06\/10\/nyc-arts-humanities-on-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":8848,"position":0},"title":"NYC: Arts & Humanities on the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This week's AESS conference\u00a0\"Welcome to the Anthropocene\" features a breakfast roundtable called \"The Arts and Humanities Respond to the Anthropocene.\" See the session description below. Unfortunately the panelists have been dropping like flies: it looks like neither dancer and performance artist Jennifer Monson,\u00a0eco-artist Jackie Brookner, nor performer and comedian Jennifer\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":12241,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/11\/02\/navigating-climate-trauma\/","url_meta":{"origin":8848,"position":1},"title":"Navigating climate trauma","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 2, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm happy to share my talk from the recent Vermont Humanities conference. It captures the essence of things I've been writing and thinking about over the last while. And rather incredibly for a humanities conference, it was 100% glitch-free (despite the talk's audio-visual intricacies; well, the image fades aren\u2019t perfectly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/FrIQ3WRF4NA\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7208,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/01\/20\/anthropocene-readings\/","url_meta":{"origin":8848,"position":2},"title":"Anthropocene readings","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 I'm thinking of making my Spring semester graduate class, \"Environment, Science, and Society in the Anthropocene,\" into a semi-public seminar series, with a blog where we will share links to readings and videos as well as discussions. (Actual meetings will not be online, but will be open to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Clark","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/01\/Clark-183x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11559,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/01\/29\/eco-humanities-seminar\/","url_meta":{"origin":8848,"position":3},"title":"Eco-humanities seminar","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 29, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I will be making parts of my \"Advanced Environmental Humanities\" course open to the EcoCultureLab community and a limited broader public. Technical details remain to be worked out, but I'd like to make our readings and discussions open, so as to include interested participants from outside the university community. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/02\/Juxtapoz_Marzorati1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/02\/Juxtapoz_Marzorati1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/02\/Juxtapoz_Marzorati1.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/02\/Juxtapoz_Marzorati1.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7645,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/06\/12\/on-naming-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":8848,"position":4},"title":"On naming the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The following are the comments I prepared for the roundtable \"The Arts and Humanities Respond to the Anthropocene.\" They follow in the line of critical thinking on the Anthropocene initiated by\u00a0gatherings like the Anthropocene Project (see here, here, and here, and some of the posts\u00a0at A(S)CENE) and journals like Environmental\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/06\/HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682-275x183.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8908,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/07\/30\/anthropocenic-sublime\/","url_meta":{"origin":8848,"position":5},"title":"Anthropocenic sublime","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 30, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I'll be giving the following talk at the \"Popular Culture, Religion, and the Anthropocene\" workshop\u00a0at the National University of Singapore this coming week. Navigating the Zone of Alienation: Chernobyl and the Anthropocenic Sublime Abstract: This two-part talk will interpret the Chernobyl nuclear accident and its \u201cZone of Alienation\u201d (Zona vidchuzhennia)\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\/8848","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=8848"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8864,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8848\/revisions\/8864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}