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Session Submission Summary

Making Latin American Landscapes in the ?-ocene

Thu, April 4, 3:30 to 5:00pm, Westin Denver Downtown, Floor: Lobby Level, Molly Brown

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

A vision increasingly held among environmental humanists contends that the Earth has entered a new geological age, the Anthropocene, in which human societies have become the most powerful force shaping global ecologies. Other scholars have questioned the notion of an Anthropocene, arguing that a certain degree “naturalization” is embedded in the term, and proposing other concepts such as the Capitalocene (Moore), the Cthulucene (Haraway), and the White (M)anthropocene (Chiro). Decentering anthropocentric and specie-centric understanding of the contemporary ecological crisis, these terms account for differences of power within human society and human relationships with other beings in the making of global catastrophes. Scholars are also debating when this new geological age began, whether in the eighteenth century, 1945, 15,000 years ago, or somewhere in between, and how employing ecological frameworks may lead to recasting existing historical periodizations. Addressing these and other questions, the papers on this panel discuss processes of extractions, exploitations, extinctions, and even explosions to examine how humans shaped landscapes and, in doing so, made and remade both human and more-than-human ecological processes over the last several hundred years. As a collective conversation, this panel also brings into sharp relief how the Anthropocene/Capitalocene/Cthulucene/White (M)Anthropocene interrogates conventional historical frameworks in the history of postcolonial regions, demanding a radical rethinking of categories such as colonialism, modernity, and nation-state, among others.

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