Seeing Through the Fumes: Technology and Asymmetry in the Anthropocene

This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger’s thought on technology with Georges Bataille’s consideration of technological existence as economic and averted existence, we will criticize Heidegger’s account by arguing that notwithstanding its inescapable inclusion in cybernetics, technology in the Anthropocene itself fosters an experience of what remains excluded. We conclude by indicating how such an experience is relevant for contemporary philosophical investigation of technology.</p

Earth BecomesWorld? Scientific Objects, Nonmodern Worlds, and the Metaphysics of the Anthropocene

In coming to grips with the advent of the Anthropocene, contemporary philosophers have recently pushed beyond its many physical implications (e.g., global warming, reduced biodiversity) and social significance (e.g., climate justice, economics, migration) to interpret the Anthropocene metaphysically. According to such interpretations, the Anthropocene imposes nothing less than a wholly new understanding of the world. This raises the question regarding the character of such an imposition. To develop this question, this article discusses three metaphysical interpretations of the Anthropocene: Clive Hamilton's, Timothy Morton's, and Bruno Latour's. Among many voices today, these authors are specifically relevant because they predominantly correlate the imposition of a new, nonmodern world with the scientific object "Earth"as it is developed in Earth system science. The purpose here is to elucidate the ways in which this correlation is made, and to inquire after the role of science-a modern activity par excellence-in the advent of the world of the Anthropocene. The critical question is how this role could be legitimated in the proclaimed absence of a modern framework ensuring science's status as a beacon of certainty and truth