ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Geology, nation building and beyond: the Anthropocene and Man in the Holocene

• In Event: The Plural Worlds of Earth Science: Visual, Material, and Institutional Transformations Across Disciplines, Scales, and Territories 2

English Abstract

Geology has from its early days been deeply intertwined with nation and empire building; as a science of territory and mapping, it could hardly be otherwise. All the more so given the importance of extractive industries for nation states. However, geology has not only and always been in the service of states. From its early days, there were those who recognized that explanations and observations of Earth’s crust could not be limited or defined in national terms, and that a science of Earth as a whole was not of necessity in the service of imperial ambitions. The Anthropocene, in its specifically geological senses, is a recent instance of tension between geology and national interests. The point of departure for this paper is not the recent decision of the International Stratigraphic Commission to reject the Anthropocene epoch, but Max Frisch’s Man Appears in the Holocene: A Story (1979). Frisch’s novel considers human physical deterioration in a Swiss village at risk of destruction by landslide brought on by heavy rainfall. It does so, in part, through a direct engagement with geohistorical reference works and local natural histories. It grapples with the challenge of understanding the human scale in a remote alpine locale in relation to global and geological scales. The Alps, often taken as symbols of enduring stability, are presented as places particularly susceptible to the mundane process of erosion. Man in the Holocene is useful for thinking about key problems of the Anthropocene in a larger historical framework.

Author

• Ernie Hamm, York University