Rethinking time in response to the Anthropocene: From timescales to timescapes

Abstract

Since the coinage of the term Anthropocene, scholarly debates have been dominated by critics of the reference to anthropos, the abstract undifferentiated global subject of the new geological epoch. Many humanities scholars objected that this aggregated whole obfuscates inequalities and responsibilities. While the prefix ‘Anthropos’ has been the target of sharp criticisms, the suffix ‘cene’ remained unchallenged. This paper questions the relevance of the chronological timeline divided up into a sequence of epochs differentiated in terms of scales. I argue that the discourse about the ‘great acceleration’ pointing to a clash of tempos relies on the chronological framework. The single uniform timeline covering all events from the origin of the universe to the birth of individual people tends to conceal the variety of timelines whose interplay determines the climate. I suggest that the current ecological crisis calls for a radical revision of our notion of time which is based on the western metaphysics where human subjects reign supreme over nature and the earth. This crisis invites us to adopt a polychronic view, assuming a variety of heterogeneous temporal trajectories. The first section presents the thesis of ‘the great acceleration’ as a grand narrative based on on the western modern framework. The second section disentangles the prerequisites of the construction of this universal timeline: the assumption of a view from nowhere that makes all times commensurable. In the third section I venture the metaphor of timescape as an alternative to the usual timescales of the universal chronology. This notion seems more appropriate to understand the ecological crisis as resulting from conflicting temporalities. The final section tests the timescaping approach on the cases of two technologies that are considered as candidate markers of the onset of the Anthropocene: nuclear technology and plastics.