Questioning the Anthropocene: A Critical Assessment of the Age of Humankind

The Anthropocene denotes the Earth’s entry into the age of humankind. A growing chorus of expert opinion now claims the fate of “the Earth system” lies squarely in human hands. Acknowledging the scale of human agency and its impact upon environmental processes, this article questions the largely unthought assumptions that facilitate the view that our species constitutes the determining factor regarding the planet’s fate. The central premise examined here underpins the technological worldview, the perception of reality that fuels the project of mastering nature. This reading of reality posits that nature is conquerable. Its guiding assumption is that the judicious application of increasingly sophisticated forms of technological know-how can yield a world reworked in ways that have reality conform fully to our designs for it. Using Jean Baudrillard’s thoughts on technology as inspiration and guide, the technological imaginary—inspired by dreams of an “integral reality”—is exposed as founded on a profound misreading of the nature of the real. An alternative reading of reality is proffered that holds that the world is not constituted in a way that permits its perfectibility. This counterinterpretation suggests that we ought to reinterpret humanism in a way that acknowledges the limits of the enterprise to remake reality in humanity’s own image. Relinquishing the self-imposed demand to realize the future we wish for, it is concluded, is the surest way to regain the equilibrium we have lost with our entry into the Anthropocene.