Knowing the Anthropocene

Abstract

How to best approach the Anthropocene in terms of knowledge is an open question. In this paper we outline and discuss how the Anthropocene is imagined as an ongoing project attempting to develop systems of knowledge. Referring to Paul J. Crutzen, Reinhold Leinfelder, and Jan Zalaciewicz, we show how a tradition is forming around the notion of diverse Anthropocene knowledges as unified but split into two, more particularly, into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and social sciences and humanities (SSH). After a reading of two representative takes on the Anthropocene and knowledge by Carolyn Merchant and Timothy Morton and Dominic Boyer respectively, we conclude that, despite attempts at interdisciplinarity and knowledge integration, the current ways of approaching the Anthropocene as a field of knowledge involve an uneasy mix of unification and stratification. We end by suggesting ways of overcoming this situation.