From the Anthropocene to the Capitalocene and beyond

Abstract

Ever since its inception, the Anthropocene as a concept has proven divisive among researchers in both the natural sciences and humanities. While some accept its validity, integrating the Anthropocene into a broader postanthropocentric turn alongside related ideas such as posthumanism, others reject the Anthropocene as somehow incriminating a collective ‘humanity’ as a whole. For its critics, the Anthropocene is a mistaken concept, because it is supposedly blind to historical, social and political factors. Jason W. Moore, a Marxist environmental historian, has argued for replacing the Anthropocene altogether, in favor of the ‘Capitalocene’. This would denote the causal effect capital accumulation exerts upon planetary processes. For Clive Hamilton, however, it is the Capitalocene which is too shallow. Similarly, Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that exclusively society- or history-centric ideas are not enough and fail to take account of the ways in which geological deep time radically transcends the bounds of human history. Chakrabarty admits the local relevance of critical theory – as do many Anthropocene researchers. Emphasizing the importance of social critique need not necessarily come at the expense of privileging a human temporal perspective In this article, we argue that the Capitalocene and related concepts fail to take account of how the Anthropocene challenges Western humanist meta-narratives of linear temporality, progress and emancipation.