Chapter 4 - Posthuman Sublime

Summary

The word “Anthropocene” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the era of geological time during which human activity is considered to be the dominant influence on the environment, climate and ecology of the earth.” Nobody can deny the extent to which humans have transformed the planetary habitat from the time we put in place private and increasingly secure domiciles: our steps toward agriculture and civilization. The particles and chemicals humans have emitted into the atmosphere are a consequence of our technologies and a shift from arboreal sources of renewable energy to the mining of coal and oil. So are the rock formations that now include “squashed up toys and nappies and all the other stuff that ends up in landfill.” And so too are the mass “exterminations, extinctions, genocides and prospects of futurelessness” that humans have imposed on our “many critters across taxa.”