Arendtian Lessons for Affects of the Anthropocene

• In Event: Tragedies of Politics in the Anthropocene: War, Violence, and Species Extinction

Abstract

Homesickness and homelessness are key terms in Hannah Arendt's consideration of politics, citizenship and exile. Yet, they may be significant more as affects than political-ontological concepts. In this regard, they can be considered alongside other relevant affects from a cohort of continental philosophers and international political theorists who experienced political tumult and its disorientations and non-belongings. In particular, this paper attends to the ways in which a sense of loss of home and longing for home invoke temporal notions of decay (of politics and action) and nostalgia, but also spatial notions of dislocation, in-between, and ghostly wanderings. Then, I turn to one tumult of our time - the Anthropocene - to consider its temporal and spatial affects in the face of the death and decay of a sixth species extinction event.

Author

• Jack L. Amoureux, Wake Forest University