Anthropocene

Chelsea Russell is a PhD student at York University in the Communications and Culture Program. Her dissertation research analyzes female robots in videogames by focusing on feminist and affectual practices and questions of the posthuman. Currently, she is a SSHRC-funded research assistant on young people, digital capitalism, and the videogame platform Roblox.

(The) Anthropocene: Gaîa’s Epoch

The painting below illustrates a significant connection between the technological and the environmental. It shows the figure of Gaia (Mother Nature) stripped down to reveal an (almost) infectious technology within. The physical world of technology is depicted as solidly within Gaia. Notably, the figuration of Gaia is as a white woman, which follows from much of the discourse around the Anthropocene that portrays it as “undeniably white” (Todd 2015, p. 246). This image therefore encapsulates that whiteness in order to highlight the political approach to understanding crises evoked within the Anthropocene.

Another aspect of the painting is the technological intervention within her body. Gaia is subjected to the whims of technology, while also being modeled after the goddess of love, Venus, in Sandro Botticelli’s famous painting, The Birth of Venus. The contrast between Gaia-as-Venus and 21st-century technology dramatizes the relationship humans have with both the past and the future. In bringing attention to both Whiteness and the technology within Gaia, this image is intended to evoke a sense of relationship to Earth but also to humanity’s own conceptions of Earth. The anxiety of the Anthropocene is what is on display here. To understand the Anthropocene fully, however, it is important to consider the history of thinking that has led to its current conception and to the future of the ways we can understand it.

What is the Anthropocene?

The word Anthropocene can be broken down into its etymological parts: anthropo, which refers to “human,” and -cene, which relates to “epoch” or “geological time” (Ellis, 2013). The term thus invokes a moment in time in which human invention, enhancements, and actions have resulted in a massive shift in earth’s ecology. Human intervention has affected the fundamental processes of nature and the natural order—especially those of non-humans. Despite the “abundance of evidence” that the Anthropocene has been established as an epoch, the concept continues to be rejected and considered controversial among politicians, scientists, and climatologists (Ellis, 2018, p. 25). This debate is largely couched in whether Earth has left the prior epoch—the Holocene. Nevertheless, human-based alterations to the Earth’s ecology, biology, and climate are undeniable.

How did the Anthropocene begin?

Ecologist Eugene Stoermer and chemist Paul Crutzen neologized (created) the term Anthropocene in the 1980s. It was originally used to describe large-scale human activities that dominate earth’s climate and biodiversity (Grusin, 2017, p. vii-viii). Although the term was coined only a few decades ago, it characterizes intense human impact upon ecological, geological, and biochemical processes. The history of conceptual Anthropocentrism emerged alongside the processes of capitalism, industrialisation, and the proliferation of nuclear power (Grusin, 2017, p .1), bringing unprecedented climate change, ecological disruption, economic growth, and technological booms. These shifts in human activity imposed disproportionate human pressures on the Earth that would not have happened otherwise.

What is the impact of the Anthropocene?

The Anthropocene has found its way into popular discourse and culture. Public response to increasing ecosystem instabilitycan be seen through the #FridaysforFuture hashtag, the Green New Deal, and, in 2021, an update to the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity. Through these examples and others, we are coming to understand that negative environmental change affect both non-human and human beings.

The industrialization and technologizing of humanity can be understood as “a dominant factor shaping the Earth and its associated life-supporting systems” (Steffen, Crutzen & McNeill, 2007, p. 614). In other words, the impacts of the Anthropocene on both society and the Earth, are interrelated. Moreover, as the digital and industrial economies surge, the need for technological parts increases, and with it comes an increase in demand for efficiency. This cycle is contingent on the raw materials needed for such practices, further accelerating the impact on Gaia as we continuously attempt to produce greater economic value.

Why the Anthropocene?

Human/non-human relationships have long been made into binaries: us versus them, self versus other. We see non-humans as being unlike us, and our approach to them is often in line with ideas of separation and difference. To understand the whys of the Anthropocene, we must grapple with new ways of thinking about old things. This includes concepts like Cartesianism, corporeality, complexity, positivism, and epistemology. Broadly, decoloniality encourages us to be aware of the hierarchical thinking that affects wider structures of culture, politics, and the environment.

By opening up our perspectives to modes of deconstructing power, we can share in responding to the ethical challenges threatening Earth. To move forward consciously, reshaping our understandings of power, capital, technology, and colonization are essential. The concept of the Anthropocene might seem bleak; however, forging paths forward with the Earth in mind can help cultivate new understandings and responsibilities of humans.