The Anthropocene is formally diagnosed through physical markers of human transformations of the earth. This materiality asks ‘when’ before ‘how’ and ‘why’. Yet ‘Anthropocene’ values were central to ancient and medieval states, and thus foundational for modern states. Across the globe, early expansionist polities envisaged ‘civilization’ as the successful exploitation by elites of landscapes, ecologies, and human and non-human life. Ceasing to dominate the earth was an illegitimate choice. Our present is best understood as a terrible acceleration of established practices through colonial theft, slavery, harnessing of fossil fuel energy, and the remorseless eradication of alternatives and those who lived them. A better understanding of this history enables us to chart new directions.
Amanda Power is Sullivan Clarendon Associate Professor in History at the University of Oxford. She is currently working on a monograph, Medieval Histories of the Anthropocene. She co-convenes the Climate Crisis Thinking in the Humanities and Social Sciences network and the IHR’s Anthropocene Histories seminar.
This lecture will take place as a hybrid event at the German Historical Institute London (GHIL) and online via Zoom. In order to register for this event, please follow this link to Eventbrite.
5.30 pm