Underskog

Contested the Anthropocene: Geo-Social Futures, Eco-Modernism & Left Optimism
A talk by Rory Rowan

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Sometimes it’s a matter of alliances, and having hands-on complexities, but each time it’s a mutual process. Technological devices influence us no less, as we act with and upon material and culture/nature-hybrids. Acknowledging the entanglement of the social and ecological as well as the structural of our contemporary condition, is the basis for any community well-being and the arts : Production of space, the commons and change. Thus for the 2nd event of the Heresies series we invite Rory Rowan, who will lead us to imagine how “extinction as usual”, might be a geo-social future within the Anthropocene and political optimism.

The Anthropocene – the so-called ‘Geological age of man’ – has emerged as a key terms in contemporary social theory. This talk will examine the concept and the various ways it has been taken up in the humanities, social sciences and the arts.

Much of the critical debate has highlighted how appeals to a supposedly universal ‘Anthropos’ conceal the historically specific forms of social power that have produced planetary change, with various narratives of the Anthropocene’s origins being mapped against European colonialism, global capitalism and nuclear militarism rather than the actions of a putative ‘humanity’. Less remarked upon has been how these contested accounts of the Anthropocene’s origins bear on what forms of geo-social futures may be considered possible and desirable.

This talk turns to the question of geo-social futures, critically examining those envisioned by so-called ‘eco-modernism’ and exploring the relationship between ‘post-natural’ ecologies and politics that they involve. However, it also argues that Left eco-critics risk ceding optimism as an affective orientation to reactionary forms of thought such as eco-modernism by default, blocking the way for more socially just and ecological sustainable visions of geo-social futures to gain affective traction on political processes.
It concludes by arguing that in order to avoid melancholic paralysis in the face of massive social and environmental devastation it is crucial for Left environmentalism to develop affective sensibilities and conceptual orientations towards geo-social futures that refuse the necessity of pessimism.

Heresies aims to strengthen critical practice outside any institution, and to raise awareness of the interconnectedness of material, practice and structures of agency. Planned for the extended Podium community, Heresies takes the form of a lecture/seminar/intervention series programmed by Susanne M. Winterling through Spring 2016.

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Rory Rowan is a postdoctoral researcher in the Political Geography Research Unit at the University of Zurich, where his research focuses on the political and philosophical dimensions of the Anthropocene and earth systems management. He is co-author with Claudio Minca of On Schmitt and Space, has written on art, politics and philosophy for a number of publications including e-Flux, Society and Space, Progress in Human Geography, Mute and Spike Art and contributed writing to a number of exhibitions in Europe, the United States and Brazil.