Beyond the Anthropocene

Navigating the complexities of human impact on the Earth requires more than just a name—it demands a shift in perspective. In this essay, Prateek and Irina critique the term "Anthropocene" for its human-centric focus and delve into the complexities of naming our current geological epoch, arguing that the words we choose shape our collective consciousness and influence our actions. Drawing on the histories of colonialism and the interconnectedness of today's world, they introduce Polycene as a term that encapsulates a vision for a more ethical, plural, and balanced coexistence with the more-than-human world.

Future Fossils

From dust, to dust, such is the claim; that a living breathing human comes into this world like a sculpture made in clay, only to return to the earth as earth, in their decaying exit from the land of the living. It sounds so simple, as if the human ability to imprint the Earth ends at the edges of our physical bodies, as if our final passing would erase all record of our ever being here.

In truth, the archive of human existence is far more complicated. Take for instance this 2012 discovery on Hawai’i’s Kamilo Beach. At the suggestion of a friend, Geologist Patricia Corcoran and sculptor Kelly Jazvac went searching for a fusion of plastic, sand, and volcanic rock, a substance they aptly named plastiglomerate on discovery.^{Figure 1} This molten plastic—a remnant of some fleeting human interest—had infiltrated the very pores of the volcanic rock and in turn become part of the land itself. Now it was a sculpture in its own right, a testament to the ways in which human action can alter the geological landscape, leaving behind traces that may one day become part of the Earth’s enduring record.

So let’s revise the old adage, for the human legacy is more complex, more pernicious, more telling of our time on this Earth. From dust, to dust, to debris.

Whose lighter was it? A smoker in Los Angeles? Possibly in Tokyo? Maybe in Ojai? Or perhaps someone rivers and canyons away. Upstream in a thousand human settlements where a lighter can be bought and thrown away. Perhaps on the western coast of North America. Perhaps on the eastern coast of Asia. The lighter ends up in the gutter. It waits for a storm. The water takes it. It ends up in the sewage. In the sliver of water. In the river. In the bay. In the ocean. In the Kuroshio Current. In the great churning mass of the Pacific from where somehow, in a storm, in the winds, it ends up on Kamilo Beach in Hawai’i.¹

The plastiglomerate of Kamilo Beach is a potent illustration of the indelible anthropic footprint on the Earth, but it’s far from an isolated incident. Across the globe, human activities are leaving their mark in ways both conspicuous and subtle. From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic debris trapped by ocean currents, to the chemical signatures of industrial pollutants embedded in polar ice, our influence is pervasive. Even our cities, with their concrete jungles and sprawling infrastructure, are geological phenomena in their own right (concrete, in many ways, is the plastic of the architectural world). The list goes on and on. Contradicting Alex Steffen’s aspiration for our species,² humankind has become an irrefutably bad ancestor to the future of this planet. How do we change that?

Behind the -cenes

One possible way is to understand and articulate the epoch we are living in, to give it a name that encapsulates the essence of our time. As we grapple with the troubling effects of our existence on Earth, scientists and philosophers have made several attempts to to do just that. Most prominently, the term Anthropocene has become a focal point in environmental discourse, signifying a new geological epoch characterized by human influence on the Earth’s climate and environment. It reflects an understanding that our species has fundamentally altered the physical, chemical, and biological systems of the planet.

Environmental conditions marked by the Anthropocene are bad enough, but Eileen Crist is also troubled by the word itself. In The Poverty of Our Nomenclature, she suggests that christening this geological era as “Age of Man” essentially paints a “Promethean self-portrait: a genius if unruly species, distinguishing itself from the background of merely-living life, rising so as to earn itself a separate name.”³ The name reflects a misguided discourse surrounding potential solutions in which the human species would (continue to) intervene in order to secure the future of its own dominion. Echoing Crist, feminist scholar and philosopher Donna Haraway had this to say in a 2017 interview with Sarah Franklin:

The term [Anthropocene] bothers me on several levels, not least the sense that the anthropos is the centre of attention, yet again, and that the trajectory of destruction that ends in apocalypse, really, is, again, a story of the anthropos, […] a story of man and mankind, that offers a fundamentally humanist way of naming the trouble we’re in. It does, of course, correctly name the way that human beings are key agents—keystone agents, one might say—in the destructive processes entrained among us. But it does also and unhelpfully tend to universalize us as a species, and not situate us as human beings—or as a species.⁴

For these reasons, multiple alternatives have been offered, each name emphasizing different aspects of the current ecological zeitgeist. Capitalocene highlights the role of capitalism in shaping the environment, arguing that the exploitation of natural resources is driven by profit motives and market forces.⁵ This perspective shifts the focus from humanity as a whole to the specific economic structures that have accelerated environmental degradation. The Chthulucene, a term coined by Donna Haraway herself, challenges the anthropocentric view and invites us to consider our place within a broader ecological community. It calls for a more holistic understanding of the Earth's systems, recognizing that our actions—good, bad, or ugly—are part of a complex web of relationships that includes animals, plants, and even microorganisms.⁶ Alternatively, the Technocene emphasizes the technological advancements (encroachments?) that have marked this era, while the Plantationocene focuses on the ways in which European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade transformed the environment and created new forms of inequality. These alternative names, including others like the Homogenocene and Anthrobscene, reflect diverse perspectives on the human-environment relationship, each offering their own view on our impact on the planet.⁷

What’s in a Name?

But does a name offer any genuine value? In some ways, this exercise in nomenclature may appear moot. Then why spend so much time figuring out words and language? Are we confronting the complexity of this moment or just making excuses to delay the inevitable?

Language is a lens, an autopoietic system through which we understand and interpret the world around us. The words we choose carry weight, shaping our collective consciousness and influencing our actions. Naming an epoch, therefore, is not a trivial task; it’s an exercise in defining the narrative that will guide our approach to the challenges we face. It sets the stage for how we understand our role in the unfolding story of the Earth and its future.

Now, it is inarguably important to plant the seeds of alternative discourses before a toxic one monopolizes and takes root too deeply within the cultural psyche. That said, it might be hasty to demonize the relatively small percentage of humans concerned with the geological turn at all. Crist takes them to task somewhat for “[perpetuating] the concealment that the human takeover is an unexamined choice, one which human beings have it within both our power and our nature to rescind if only we focused our creative, critical gaze upon it.” At this point in time, the decision to focus any creative, critical gaze seems rather necessary in order to pivot from an undesirable trajectory. Crist doesn’t mean to imply that the only alternative is passive acceptance of the current status quo, but drawing a direct correlation between creative intent and anthropocentrism is misrepresentative and even self-defeating. For example, she suggests that human integration be the alternative to imposing technological or managerial strategies, and this would require “pulling back and scaling down… welcoming limitations of our numbers, economies, and habits.” But the task of ethically reducing the human population will absolutely involve ingraining new narratives through creative communication and psychological cartwheels; any appropriate healthcare measures (from contraceptive to end-of-life care) will be possible thanks to technological assistance and managerial structures.

So the real rebranding project lies within this paradox and what Michel Serres identifies in The Natural Contract when he asks: “Why must we now seek to master our mastery? Because, unregulated, exceeding its purpose, counterproductive, pure mastery is turning back on itself.”⁸ In order to master mastery, the problem doesn’t begin or end at the Anthropocene nomenclature. It is born out of a false equivalence between creative intent and anthropocentrism, innovation and imposition, stewardship and dominion, improvement and progression. Any effective reframing must begin uncoupling the associations between these words and their implications. For instance, if stewardship is supervising or maintaining the healthy state of something, can we separate the concept from human dominion by talking about natural equilibria (e.g. thermodynamics) as nature’s self-stewardship? Do we dare begin to understand human fatality caused by natural “disaster” as a variable in the overall equation for planetary equilibrium, as nature’s stewardship over the current imbalance? Could stewardship look like Serres’ proposed new global equilibrium, the integrated matrix of natural systems in balance with social systems like law, politics, and religion? If stewardship can be a two-way maintenance and accountability between coexisting spheres of equilibria, then dominion has no place in the equation.⁹

Ultimately, as performative as it sometimes feels, this act of naming is a critical reflection of our values, priorities, and vision for the future of our planet; after all, names shape our understanding of what they represent; they’re what separates the novelty of a lighter embedded in rock from the reality of what that fusion represents. Put simply, to name this moment is to name the problem. It may just be the first step outside a state of collective denial, a beginning to the slow work of building a shared understanding of the crises we face, so that the next time you confront a piece of plastiglomerate—and I bet you will—you’ll think back to this discussion and remember the task that lies ahead of us.

Naming Our Aspirations — The Polycene