What do we mean when we say Anthropocene?

Turns out I'm not the only one who wonders what sort of flavors and associations are attached to that unlovely word. I've been getting some help with this issue over the last week.

My hero E.O. Wilson, in his latest book, Half-Earth, startled me with his almost-vitriolic criticism of people he categorizes as having an "extreme Anthropocene worldview." I thought Anthropocene was a fairly neutral term describing the geological era in which the dominant feature of the Earth system was the presence of the World's Most Invasive Primate Species, us.

Turns out there are good, bad, and ugly Anthropocene thinkers, as Simon Dalby describes in detail in the April 2016 issue of the Anthropocene Review.

http://anr.sagepub.com/content/3/1/33.full.pdf+html

In "Framing the Anthropocene," Dalby points out that the word has crossed over into popular usage, so we had better figure out what we mean when we use it -- and not allow it to become a sloppy shorthand for shallow thinking.

"The Anthropocene ...provides a formulation for rethinking _
_many ... things, not least transcending the human/nature dichotomy that bedevils intelligent political discussion of the options in decades ahead and is, as such, a profoundly useful category for both political and academic thinking across the divide between sciences and humanities....But if it is to live up to its political and pedagogic potential care has to be taken that existing conceptual frameworks invoking post-modernity, globalization, the dangers of technology or the nuclear age, or as this paper emphasizes optimism or pessimism about the future, do not simply coopt the language of the Anthropocene without thinking through the transformative potential inherent in the term. If it is simply assumed to be a neologism for environmental degradation, a trendy word for well-understood declensionist phenomena, a euphemism for imminent civilizational demise, or an apology for maintaining the profoundly unjust political economy of the present, then an intellectual and political opportunity will be missed."

It's a good article, and well worth reading in its entirety. I found it particularly useful helping me pin down my inchoate squirmy discomfort with the Ecomodernists and their manifesto. http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto-english/

In a related article from a different angle, Robert Macfarlane writes in The Guardian about how literature, art, and pop culture are absorbing and reacting to the idea of the Anthropocene. It's also well worth a read in its entirety.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/01/generation-anthropocene-altered-planet-for-ever

Coming at the question from a different direction, Macfarlane reaches a similar conclusion, suggesting that, as it is being used in popular discourse, the word points to ideas that are "arrogant, universalist and capitalist-technocratic." And that carries with it some unwanted political baggage.

"[T]the dominant narrative of the Anthropocene has technology as its driver: recent Earth history reduced to a succession of inventions (fire, the combustion engine, the synthesis of plastic, nuclear weaponry). The monolithic concept bulk of this scientific Anthropocene can crush the subtleties out of both past and future, disregarding the roles of ideology, empire and political economy. Such a technocratic narrative will also tend to encourage technocratic solutions: geoengineering as a quick-fix for climate change, say, or the Anthropocene imagined as a pragmatic problem to be managed, such that “Anthropocene science” is translated smoothly into “Anthropocene policy” within existing structures of governance."

In a world where liberal arts colleges teach Timothy Morton in literature classes on Dark Ecology (+Elena M), it's important to define your terms, and to keep neutral descriptive words from attracting political agendas. Like burrs clinging to your socks, ideas might attach to your words and spread in ways you never intended.