Climate Change threatens life as we know it. Scientists are speaking about a climate emergency but so far, humans have proven to only care about some humans. What about those left apart, and what about other species? Will the planet miss us when we are gone? Furthermore, is a world where we don't need our flesh and human bodies for human consciousnesses to survive, possible? In this article, I take a look into Dipesh Chakrabarty's work on postcolonial theory and subaltern studies in the era of the Anthropocene with antispecist lenses.
Politics of the Earth and Antispecism in the Anthropocene
Since 2020 some geologists talk about a new geological time, beyond the known Holocene: the Anthropocene. An epoch where human activity has gained the power to change the planet’s climate and ecosystems. Anthropocene requires understanding humanity as a geological force, as a specie that (un)precedently modified the Planet’s conditions (such as temperature, climate, sea levels and water acidity, and so on). The concept of Anthropocene is based on scientific evidence about the overheating of the planet as a man-made phenomenon with irreversible consequences that will change life as we know it. Even an apocalyptic and accurate term to describe climate emergency, geologists are still debating whether to adopt it. It introduces a huge challenge in all science fields, because in doing so –as the Dipesh Chakrabarty defends in his article The Climate of History: Four Theses, it pops the need of studying humanity in another way and from another perspective, where natural history is considered human history. Others argue whether the term is enough, given the threat that supposes human-driven extinction of other species for the planet as we know it.
As Chakrabarty suggests, the interdependence of the human species with nature is, and has historically been, so deep-rooted, that human history became climate history. When he condemns humanist thinkers for separating the human from the natural world in their studies and argues that they were just missing one part of the picture, he suggests to re-think universal history with a wider lens. Made me wonder, why has culture always been understood as standing in opposition to nature when we are natural culture? He illustrates his argument with climate conditions leading to the beginning of agriculture, and humans beginning to exploit the land. But the Earth is not only political because we use it. As human species, we have dominated and “escalated through the top of the food chain” –as Chakrabarty points out–, in such record time. Now, if we study humans as a non-human geological force in the Anthropocene, then the natural history narrative requires human history and viceversa. In that, we agree.
Chakrabarty’s definition of humanity as a specie raises my concern, as well as the attention of other authors in Whose Anthropocene? Revisiting Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “Four Thesis”, about the Anthropocene erasing relevant differences in human experience that are expressed in, and through, environmental knowledge and power. Humanity as a geological force in the Anthropocene is described as a non-human homogenous force that alters the planet. Yet the only way we can think about that force is through our experience of it –through language and reason–, and not through dissociation, which is an impossible task to do as we can only be human –and we can’t perceive ourselves as a specie.
Some anti-speciesist thinkers would reject Anthropocene’s definition per se, since anti-speciesism rejects any form of anthropocentrism and denounces the hierarchy that puts humans on top over all other species. In other words: anti-speciesism points out the specie- based discrimination since they treat all species as equally sentient beings. That means they position themselves against eating animals or using them for experiences in laboratories or for entertainment. As the platform for future thinking Baltan Laboratories in the Netherlands proposes in their collaborative research called Co-Emerging Economies: Exploring Radical Perspectives on Post-Antrhopocentric Economies, “Humans are the only species that own land and most of nature. Humans extract, accumulate, and own resources. Humans own livestock and wild species, and some humans even own other humans. In short, the capitalist culture pursues quantitative wealth resulting in quantitative power”. So hereby I ask: what would happen to our political and economical systems if we all became anti-speciesists? Should we re-think, besides humanism, our relationship with other species, not just the human specie?
Social Justice: Should We Re-Think humanism?
If natural history is human history, and history is white-man-made and interpreted; we need to ask too: who writes history, and with what intentions? As Chakrabarty adds to Benedetto Croce’s argument in the Uses of Historicism: “the concepts of the natural sciences are human constructs elaborated for human purposes”. In a capitalistic, specist, sexist and racist world, the narratives about the Anthropocene are going to be blinded by hatred. There’s no doubt that capitalism and globalization are in part, the major causes of global warming, and so the quest for social justice can’t be left out of the picture. Climate change won’t only exacerbate the existing inequalities, as postcolonialist studies anticipated. Overheating is caused mainly, by the rich minority of people; and suffered the most by the poor majority. However, climate change is a problem of such dimensions that its causes can’t be reduced to only industrialization. Climate Change transcends capitalism because its consequences upset capitalist calculations, so it’s a paradox. Solution thinking needs to come from outside capitalist thinking. Chakrabarty makes his point from a decolonial perspective, calling to acknowledge inequalities through a transversal and intersectional lens.
Anthropocene is happening in a time where social justice activists call for freedom, in all its expressions and for all species; at the same time governments and businesses are turning green. Chakrabarty takes a look into what freedom became in the Anthropocene –since it’s the Anthropocene is a relatively new term according to him–and suggests that today’s level of freedom is measured by the accessibility to burning fossil fuels. As LeCain argues, “the first source of this human geophysical power: not their social and cultural inventiveness, nor their various political economies, but rather their relations with the material power of the coal and oil that helped to create them all”. In other words, Chakrabarty questions whether the Anthropocene is the consequence we are paying for what we call freedom. What is, being free then, if not taking a plane to whatever destination and whenever you want for pleasure? Freedom, as described by Chakrabarty, is only human to enjoy. But can't cows or chickens be freed from humans too? And so, could the Planet?
Even though the quest of whether the Anthropocene is a good or a bad thing may belong to the ethics more than to the science field, it is interesting to note the “Good Anthropocene” that Timothy J. LeCain proposes in his critique of Chakrabarty’s argument. But beyond any futuristic experiment about a possible sustainable or post-biological humankind, perhaps there’s a need to overcome today’s ontological perspective of humans in a globalized world, to a more epistemological one. In Levinas's pre-ontological orientation of ethics, humans are conceived as beings for others rather than just with them. This way, face-to-face proximity, the face of the other, awaken a sense of responsibility to them. It’s when humanity becomes a geological force altering the planet, that human history becomes natural history.
The Postcolonial View
In his other article, Postcolonial Studies And The Challenge of Climate Change, Chakrabarty criticizes politics as being static in a circulatory world. On that point, Chakrabarty describes how borders became frontiers again, in an invisible war with bureaucracy, colonialism, and racism as the main weapons from humanity against humanity. As he writes, “modernity created this new “savage” condition of many human beings, the condition of being declared stateless if they could not be identified with a nation-state, forcing them to fall back on the politics of survival”. Yet these circulatory movements aren’t solely attributed to capitalism and globalization, it comes from political, economical, social, and climate circumstances too.
As Chakrabarty asks rhetorically in the Postcolonial Studies And The Challenge of Climate Change article, “When will the illegal Bangladeshi and Borth-African workers one encounters on the streets of Athens, Florence, Vienna, Paris, London (...) become fully citizens?” The answer –at least part of it–, may pass through production too. Not a Marxist myself, let me explain. It comes from today’s capitalistic mindset, where whilst turning into sustainable industries, the goal is to keep the rhythm of growth while attending to the social demand. And perhaps this is what Chakrabarty suggested when he described today’s idea of freedom as the availability of fossil fuels. The more we produce, mostly dependently on fossil fuels, the freer we are.
In any case, abstract concepts lead to abstract solution thinking, and the problems for humankind that come along with climate change are real. As John M. Meyer cautions us in his article Politics in –but not of– the Anthropocene: “(...) we must ask whether, and in what contexts, stories about the Anthropocene are likely to facilitate awareness about climate change, or action (...)” rather than more confusion. I believe crucial to question: how do the relationships we develop affect the way we deem nature, other species, technology, and even our own bodies?
Max Weber defined power as the possibility to impose one’s will over the behavior of others. When climate change becomes an immediate problem –a crisis– and people gain awareness, sustainability becomes a convenient business opportunity for those in power. Now imagine the result if the term Anthropocene gets democratized. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the beginning of this month: “We are on a fast track to climate disaster”. But how is power reacting to that? In Chakrabarty’s definition of the role of politics in the Anthropocene, I missed the consideration of power roles in societies, as they come within the globalized and capitalistic context.
Power only reacts when it is in its self-interest, so it’s crucial to question, too, which narratives are we spreading about the Anthropocene. For instance, when considering the human species as a non-human geological force, climate change passes from being a threat to our existence to just another geological era for the Planet. Will the Earth miss us when we are gone? What would it be of the Planet without the human specie? Some post-biological thinkers are imagining a future where post-human intelligence detaches from nature and the need for biological systems. In Chakrabarty’s words: “We have now ourselves become a geological agent disturbing … parametric conditions needed for our own existence”. But human existence as we know it, and as we have historically described. Is it possible, then, to think of human consciousness living, for instance, in a computing cloud?
Perhaps I’m too idealistic when I agree with Chakrabarty’s point about climate change as a complex family of interconnected problems, all adding to the larger issue of a growing human footprint. This means there is not a single way through it, and so the solution passes through a multiple-approach way of thinking. But, are we ready for this? As Laura A Watt defends in her article Politics of the Anthropocene Consumption: Dipesh Chakrabarty and Three College Courses, “The challenge of giving up a measure of comfort and privilege may be the greatest hurdle for any political movement addressing climate change to overcome”. The problem is, as Chakrabarty warns us, we won’t be able to ‘solve’ climate change once and for all, yet we can study it and spread awareness about it. Some argue that the solution resides in de-growing, or changing to renewables. But the truth is that no matter how many green proposals we come up with, willingly overcoming Climate Change will require radical social, political, economical, and environmental changes. And perhaps it will require an antispecist view too.
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