The Anthropocene and Its Discontents: A Rectification of Names
At times, I style references to the debate around our current temporospatial location on the geologic time scale like this: Anthropocene.
At other times I’ll use “post-Holocene” or one of the many other ‘cenes that have surfaced in the past couple of decades as we have sought a way to name the massive degree of radical change that humankind has visited upon the Earth in our very short time on the planet.
I do this to try to register the controversies involving the term, its intended referent, and the swarm of connotations and associations that pour forth from an attempt to name the end of the world as we know it.
Here’s a working breakdown of what I hope the struck-through Anthropocene might do….
