Thursday, September 29, 3:30 in Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Scientists tell us the Earth has entered a new epoch: the
Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental
crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two
centuries, our planet has tipped into a state unknown for millions
of years. Human history and Earth history are now commensurable
and entangled. Beyond environmental history, what does this
geological turn do to historical research? After decade of a
"social-only" paradigm in the social sciences and humanities, how
can we explore and tell the joint history of human societies and
of the Earth system?
Stories matter for the Earth. The stories that the elites of
industrial modernity have told themselves have been cultural
drivers of the new geological regime we now live in. Similarly the
kinds of stories we today tell ourselves about the Anthropocene
can shape the kind of geo-historical future we will inhabit. The
talk will cross-examine some key grand narratives of the
Anthropocene (a mainstream naturalist narrative, a post-nature
narrative, an eco-catastrophist narrative, and an eco-Marxist
narrative) and reflect upon how history (and history of science)
can be written and told in a new epoch.
Christophe Bonneuil is a Senior researcher in history of
science, science studies and environmental history at the Centre
Alexandre Koyré (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
and teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales,
Paris. His research explores the co-evolution of ways of knowing
and ways of governing nature and the Earth. He has recently
published a global environmental history of the Anthropocene (The
shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, history and us, Verso, 2016,
with J-B. Fressoz) and edited The Anthropocene and the Global
Environmental Crisis : Rethinking Modernity in a new Epoch,
(Routledge, 2015, with C. Hamilton and F. Gemenne).
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