Search

Stories about the end of the world continue to pile up daily. There isn't any sense of respite from the litany of horrors we are presented with. The eerie atmosphere of ecological catastrophe colonises our political imaginations. Understanding how we collectively imagine the end of the world, and thus how we understand what is happening, why and how, as well as what we must and can do, is politically crucial. The vast tapestry of environmental crises makes the role of the imagination central; not only in terms of being able to know the crises, but in setting out what is concretely possible and what is cruel fantasy. This paper sets out to map the imaginary of ecological catastrophe as drawn from the body of non-fiction literature that fuels much contemporary environmental activism in the Global North. Taking up the work of a series of environmental writer-activists in order to outline the various refrains that comprise the core of the eco-catastrophic imaginary, I aim to sketch how the slow violence of the present is being narrated as a political event, and what possibilities for averting disaster appear possible. It is the argument of this paper that how we collectively imagine the cacophony of environmental disasters presently unfolding shapes the field of political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The only existing plans to arrest dangerous climate change depend on either yet to be invented technologies to keep us below 2°C or on crashing the world economy for decades to come. The political choice appears to be between doing what is scientifically necessary or what is politically realistic; between shifting to an entirely different kind of global socio-economic system or suffering catastrophe. We are thus in a moment of governmental impasse, caught between old and still-emerging political rationalities. Working through the liminal governmental role of environmental non-governmental organisations, this paper explores the shift from governmental regimes centred on biopower to ones that work through the register of geopower, from governing life to governing the conditions of life. Confronted with climate change as an irresolvable problem, what we find emerging are techniques that aim to contain the worst effects of climate change without fundamentally transforming the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been made of the claim that humanity has ascended to the status of a terrestrial force and inaugurated a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. While attention has been paid to the contestable nature of the epoch and its disputed histories, insufficient attention has been paid to the significance of the Anthropocene for political praxis. Contrary to much Anthropocenic discourse that articulates a renewed sense of mastery over nature through assertions of humanity’s complete subsumption of the environment, recent work in both science and technology studies and human geography suggests an alternate reading of the Anthropocene as an epoch without mastery, one where humanity exists in a permanent state of vulnerability. The political significance of this state of vulnerability is explored through a reading of popular TV showThe Walking Dead, a post-collapse narrative of a world in ruins and overrun by zombies. On a ruined earth, political praxis is orientated not towards a return of the earth to its previous productive state, but rather as an unending labour of survival and salvage. Survival is not a life reduced to bare life, but rather a state of tension between a life reduced to necessity, and the refusal to separate the question of how to live from the work of securing life itself. Left unresolved, this tension animates the politics of the Anthropocene, suggesting that in place of the teleology of progress social life is organised within it through unceasing care and repair time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on Anthropocene climate changes and call for action and urgent response on massive scale. Topics include need for silencing of radical politics in the Anthropocene, commoning as operative concept of cognitive capitalism and views of Paulo Virno and Franco Berardi on mental and social effects of labor processes.­