The Anthropocene: Thinking in “Deep Geological Time” or Deep Libidinal Time?

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.”

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental humanities
• Anthropocene
• Eurocentrism
• Adorno
• embodied materialism
• epistemologies of care

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ariel Salleh is a Research Associate in Political Economy, University of Sydney; Visiting Professor in Culture, Philosophy & Environment, Nelson Mandela University; and 2013 Senior Fellow in Post-Growth Societies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Her publications include Ecofeminism as Politics (1997), Eco-Sufficiency & Global Justice (2009), many edited journals and ecopolitical articles (www.arielsalleh.info). An earlier version of this paper was delivered as a keynote at the conference: Affective Habitus: New Environmental Histories, Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, June 2014.

Notes

1 This stands in marked contrast with classical Chinese science: see Joseph Needham (1956), see also Ariel Salleh (2008).