The Anthropocenes Project: Critique of the Climatological Conception of History

• In Event: Adorno, Benjamin, and Querying the Unreason in Contemporary Politics

Abstract

This paper leverages Walter Benjamin's thoughts on the philosophy of history as well as Theodor W. Adorno's analysis of natural history to reappraise and critique the globalist technocratic experience, image and understanding of the twenty-first century environmental history. Its catastrophic climatological chronicles of artificial disruptions in Earth's deep time by Humanity's shallow space arguably are mystifying other suppressed streams of “true history” that are captured, concealed or contained in new inventories, imaginaries, and ideologies for human beings intent upon steering politics and society toward or away from future earths. In the bustle and clutter of these various "Anthropocenes," how are models and narratives reconfiguring the qualities of historical time and natural space around the distractions and displays of terrestrial boundaries, telluric thermostats and territorial securities? In the final analysis, then, this paper asks how Adorno and Benjamin might help us reinterpret massive anthropogenic change in terms of who wins and loses as well as what large-scale anthropogenic change does, has done or might do to human life, nonhuman life, and the planet itself.

Author

• Timothy W. Luke, Virginia Tech