(4) Chthulucene PDF

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Lecture 4 notes: Chthulucene...

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(4) Chthulucene (pronounced thulucene) Analyses the anthropos of the Anthropocene

 hakrabarty identifies a series of rifts, including: In The Climate of History (2009), C ● Globalisation/human history vs geological force ● Global species history vs history of capital ● Species being vs politically differentiated beings Chak says that if we hold on to this larger timescale that encompassses the Anthropocene, then we do need to consider humans as a species and their biological progression “Reducing the problem of climate change to that of capitalism (folded into the histories of modern Europe expansion and empires) only b  linds us to the nature of our present, a present defined by the c  oming together of the relatively s  hort-term processes of human history and other much  longer-term processes that belong to earth-systems history and the history of life on the planet” - He wants to analyse income inequality alongside the history of geology and also life on our planet - difficult to do The what-now-o-cene? Donna Haraway and figuration ● Chthulucene - word hails from writing of horror/sf writer H.P. Lovecraft ● Power of figuration and story - we need a different figure, not the ‘Anthropos’ ● Haraway takes this name and twists this to her own purposes: ● Premises of individualism / human exceptionalism no longer productive; “The relation is the smallest unit of analysis” (Haraway 2003) ● Multispecies science (not only philosophy!): “to be one is to be one with many” ● Haraway is interested in the idea of a ‘figure’ - an idea wherein something might fit ● Uses mythological creatures to represent different socio-political topics ● She describes the Anthropos of the anthropocene as evoking a rational enlightenment subject reaching the destiny of control over the planet ● She doesn’t like the figure of the ‘Anthropos’ From lecture: ● Chthulucene is labelling the epic processes occurring past, present and future ○ We need the Anthropocene concept to bring people together ○ We need the capitalocene to highlight inequalities and responsibilities ○ She is adding something else, that the other ‘cenes’ don’t do ○ It is not a replacement ● It is no longer possible to do compelling work about the work within the premises of individualism - it is no longer possible to identify exclusively human traits ● She indicates that when we say that the world is not composed of individuals but webs of networks and relations, it is not a metaphor: creatures come to be and perform in the world through relations with other creatures

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There is relationality all the way back, and all the way in. Highlights an extraordinary contradiction of naming the Anthropocene - with the idea of a unitary, rational human figure at the centre of it

Multispecies life ● C20th biological synthesis – competing individuals ● Work on lichen, corals and other symbiotic creatures for a long time marginal ● ‘New’ biology – symbiotic relationships the norm not the exception (a wide range from beneficial to parasitic) ● ‘New’ new biology argues for ‘symbiogenesis’ – creatures implicated in mutual becoming (genomic and phenotypic) “all the way back, all the way in” ● Not just saying “everything is connected to everything else” - far more complicated than that (see lecture for more details about squids) ● “We are all lichens now” - not individual.

“My ‘own’ body is material, and yet this vital materiality is not fully or exclusively human. My flesh is populated and constituted by different swarms of foreigners. The crook of my elbow, for example, “is a special ecosystem, a bountiful home to no fewer than six tribes of bacteria… They are helping to moisturize the skin by processing the raw fats it produces…” The ‘its’ outnumber the ‘mes’ ... W  e are an array of bodies, different kinds of them in a nested set of microbiomes … T  he human is not exclusively human .” - Jane Bennet 2010, p112 ● How can we talk about anthropos when we are in an era whereby individualism doesn’t make sense, both philosophically and biologically.

“I love the fact that h  uman genomes can be found in only about 10 percent of all the cells that occupy the mundane space I call my body; the other 90 percent of the cells are filled with the genomes of bacteria, fungi, protists … I love that when “I” die, all these benign and dangerous symbionts will take over and use whatever is left of “my” body, if only for a while, since “ we” are necessary to one another in real time .” Donna Haraway 2008, p3-4 “Awareness that one is the effect of i rrepressible flows of encounters, interactions, affectivity and desire , which o  ne is not in charge of.”  Rosi Braidotti 2013, p100 ●

Haraway likes to point to artistic practices that are helpful to think with

Donna Haraway: Chthulucene (do reading) ● Not a replacement for the other cenes ● Figurative and evocative not literal and straightforward (i.e. you probably won’t ‘get it’!) - unlike the anthop. ● It matters what stories, story, stories. :) ● All life is multiple and relational (“to be one is to be one with many”) ● “Cthonic, abysall, unknown powers” pass through ‘human’ life, make it, make us

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‘Cene’ from Greek kainos – time of now, becoming, freshness – not linear historical time Not laissez-faire: Loss of symbiotes is also a loss of self, and for possibilities of becoming Not about living in ‘harmony’; about working through /speculating on the implications of this particular (not general) multispecies relationality No salvation or redemption from the ‘sky gods’ of the Anthropocene – only getting on together, a little better? - anti geoengineering and ‘good anthrops’

Does she also reject the other cenes, i.e. pleistocene, as it is too individualistic (geologically speaking??) Would she be anti extinction rebellion/radical climate change activists? Implications The ‘anthropos’ of the Anthropocene a narrow figure: ● Biologically relational life all the way down ● Multispecies world = co-produced Anthropocene ● Geological subjectivities too ● Cthtulucene evokes unnamed powers of connection and life/non-life ● Begin from differentiated human experience, not species being Politics: ● Systems of survival/recuperation NOT salvation/redemption ● Diversity and dynamism in ecologies and economies ● Ethical responsibility across space and time, between places and in the future ● Inhabit the ‘thick now’ not historical linear time From wiki However, the Lovecraft character is much closer to her coined term than the Greek root, and her description of its meaning coincides with Lovecraft's idea of the apocalyptic scale of the threat of Cthulhu, with his horrifying tentacles, to collapse civilization into an endless dark horror: “Chthulucene does not close in on itself; it does not round off; its contact zones are ubiquitous and continuously spin out loopy tendrils." Answer is: there is an implication that there are unfriendly dark forces transcending through the earth, need to hold onto this as well as the concept of relationality She may consider the other historical ‘cenes’ as a way of reducing/materialising a wider set of processes and changes. Her aim is to possibly collect academics within different fields to consider this possibility of the chthulucene

Does Harroway’s theories consider non-life? ● Distinction between life and non-life is not as clear cut as one may think ● She is interested in the relationship - a wash in urine - non-living material emerges into the biological industries and circulates bodies ● Humans as ‘mineral stratifications’ - body stones What ethics flow from our relationality? ● If we look at our positions within the web of relationality, it becomes clearer what our responsibilities are etc. Make kin not babies - slogan for chthulucene ● This is her being typically controversial ● Taps into femininist takes on global population issues Geological subjectivity ● Haraway draws away from idea of “geological force” (which defines a cene) ● Can we supplement Haraway’s biological relationality of the Chthulucene with geological relationality? How does the human become with forces and processes of biology. ● Humans as beings-of-fire ● Humans as ‘mineral stratifications’ ● Anthropocene era: humans as made through carbon (materially not just economically)

Key readings: (tough) Yusoff, K. 2013. Geologic life: prehistory, climate, futures in the Anthropocene. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 31 (5):779-795. Clark, N. 2012. Rock, Life, Fire: Speculative Geophysics and the Anthropocene. Oxford Literary Review. [on Blackboard]...