The Anthropocene: Thinking in "Deep Geological Time" or Deep Libidinal Time?. Issue 3 (2nd July 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Salleh, Ariel
• Is Part Of: International critical thought. Volume 6:Issue 3(2016)
• Page Start: 422
• Page End: 433
• Publication Date: 2016-07-02
• Subjects: Environmental humanities -- Anthropocene -- Eurocentrism -- Adorno -- embodied materialism -- epistemologies of care; Critical thinking -- Periodicals; Current events -- Periodicals; 153.4205
• DOI: 10.1080/21598282.2016.1197784
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2159-8282

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This essay offers a socialist feminist postcolonial interpretation of the Anthropocene concept as used in recent ecocriticism. In contesting the rigid positioning of Humanity over Nature, the paper draws on the Marxist psychoanalytic theory of non-identity in Theodor Adorno (1973 ) and Julia Kristeva (1973, 1977, 1978 ). Making an ecofeminist contribution to the new field of environmental humanities, it engages critically with the perspective of prominent US scholar Timothy Morton (2012 ). Its embodied materialist argument is that contemporary Eurocentric institutions, science, and philosophies are indeed shaped by affect as Morton believes, but not in the way that he envisages. In addition, it is suggested that the socialist feminist postcolonial politics of ecofeminism is already challenging the inevitable universality of the Anthropocene by building an Earth Democracy with epistemologies of care. It is concluded that understanding the Anthropocene notion, a phenomenon that is profoundly gendered, requires more than thinking in "deep geological time." Ultimately, all ecological awareness will demand a capacity for thinking in "deep libidinal time."