T. J. Demos

A critique of the discourse on the Anthropocene and the creative alternatives to it to be found through the arts, sciences, and humanities. Addressing the current upswing of attention in the sciences, arts, and humanities to the new proposal that we are in a human-driven epoch called the Anthropocene, this book critically surveys that thesis and points to its limitations. It analyzes contemporary visual culture--popular science websites, remote sensing and SatNav imagery, eco-activist mobilizations, and experimental artistic projects--to consider how the term proposes more than merely a description of objective geological periodization. This book argues that the Anthropocene terminology works ideologically in support of a neoliberal financialization of nature, anthropocentric political economy, and endorsement of geoengineering as the preferred--but likely disastrous--method of approaching climate change. To democratize decisions about the world's near future, we urgently need to subject the Anthropocene thesis to critical scrutiny and develop creative alternatives in the present.

Visual Culture and Environment Today

Against the Anthropocene

Laurence Favre

Mainstream media images, in this regard, often contribute not so much to the responsible use of technology, but to an ideological mechanism of reassurance, framed within debates that appear to give balanced perspective to all sides but of course they do not. Ultimately, they form part of the very technological apparatus of advanced capitalism that has created the environmental problems in the first place, including a carefully edited selection of visuality that reinforces the premises of the Anthropocene. 

Exploiting further its universalizing logic, the Anthropocene concept makes it easy to justify further technological interventions in the earth's systems via geoengineering, as if the causes of climate disruption can be its solutions. In such narratives as these, anthropos serves to distract attention from the economic class that has long benefitted from the financial system responsible for catastrophic environmental change. 

Against the Anthropocene quotes

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