The Anthropocene is not simply an epoch. It comes with an attendant awareness of our environment, of the environment we are for other creatures, that pervades through our activities and thoughts. Humans of the Anthropocene have left an indelible mark on the natural world around them (mostly of carbon) even as they – as we – have embedded within ourselves the product of decades of technological innovation, even as we upload our memories into the cloud. Simultaneously, we’re also becoming more aware of the ‘things’ we’re made of: of gut bacteria that supposedly affect our moods and of what our genes tell us about ourselves. It’s an epoch whose centre of attention de facto is the human even as the attention makes us more conscious of the other multitudes with which we share this universe.
Lingua franca
Featured image credit: allypark/Flickr, CC BY 2.0 Guilt can be just as disabling as arrogance, however. The political good which Spivak has done far outweighs the fact that she leads a well-heeled life in the States. If complicity means living in capitalist society, then just about everyone but Fidel Castro stands accused of it; if … Read more