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authorJoe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>2026-07-30 17:13:53 +0100
committerJoe Carstairs <me@joeac.net>2026-07-30 17:13:53 +0100
commit7f8fc7711acbc8a3ccef5043f151893279e2d2e3 (patch)
treeb7adcb5ebb07a78a79898ce4309e1001db03faf6
parent74e6c6a70d9cff4d593e32ec832a6e6d221b598a (diff)
chp2: death of politics
-rw-r--r--bibliography.bib11
-rw-r--r--chapter2.md27
2 files changed, 36 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/bibliography.bib b/bibliography.bib
index fc10000..a14db4e 100644
--- a/bibliography.bib
+++ b/bibliography.bib
@@ -1,3 +1,14 @@
+@article{malm-hornborg-2014,
+ title={The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative},
+ author={Malm, Andreas and Hornborg, Alf},
+ journal={The Anthropocene Review},
+ date={2014},
+ number={1},
+ volume={1},
+ pages={62--69},
+ doi={10.1177/2053019613516291},
+}
+
@book{ajl-gnd,
author={Ajl, Max},
title={A People's Green New Deal},
diff --git a/chapter2.md b/chapter2.md
index 9a0ffcd..ce8a4ff 100644
--- a/chapter2.md
+++ b/chapter2.md
@@ -250,7 +250,31 @@ criticism of green catastrophism is that since green catastrophism reverberates
strongly with 'Anthropocene' discourses, such rhetoric flattens out power
relationships. This, say the critics, is the death of all genuine politics.
-\[EXAMPLES\]
+Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg, to take one typical example, argue that the
+Anthropocene discourse of climate catastrophe emphasises the 'anthropos', the
+universal human subject, implying that social relations within the human species
+are relatively unimportant, and what matters is some universal, natural trait of
+the biological species, such as greed or the ability to make fire.
+
+> Climate change is _denaturalised_ in one moment – relocated from the sphere of
+> natural causes to that of human activities – only to be _renaturalised_ in the
+> next, when derived from an innate human trait, such as the ability to control
+> fire. Not nature, but human nature – this is the Anthropocene displacement. It
+> backs away from the vertiginous depth of what is perhaps the most
+> ground-breaking scientific discovery of our time, which tells us that human
+> beings have caused global warming over the course of their _history_.
+> [@malm-hornborg-2014, pp. 65-66]
+
+Such thinking is dominant in popular thinking about climate change. Climate
+change is conceived as a product of human beings greedily over-exploiting
+natural resources, and in particular, burning fossil fuels. Anthropocene
+discourse is also almost always catastrophic: the arrival of the Anthropocene is
+equivalent to the end of the Holocene, defined as the time when the climate was
+hospitable to the growth of human civilization, but human beings were balanced
+against the powers of other species. Human domination has upset this imbalance,
+and the Anthropocene is thus inherently perceived as a threat to human survival.
+Most mainstream catastrophist narratives about climate change adopt this
+Anthropocene framing.
In sum, green catastrophism is accused of encouraging a fatalist outlook,
disarming radical discourses in favour of business as usual, and deeping harmful
@@ -262,4 +286,3 @@ desired outcomes.
## TODO
- Find quotes & page numbers in @{cry-of-the-wild}
-- Explore and evidence: death of politics idea