Anthropocene Adjustments: Discarding the Technosphere

By Jesse Peterson and Alex Zahara

The labeling of the ‘Anthropocene’ as a geological epoch—or possibly an extinction event—refers to the current era where human-made processes have changed planetary cycles for climate, ocean currents, and mineral circulation, among others. For many researchers, it is an effort to acknowledge the link between global capitalism, colonialism, and the various structural injustices that have proliferated in the 21st century, such as global climate change, mass poverty, social inequity and so on.

As a term, the Anthropocene has become such a hallmark descriptor that on April 14th of this year, the second “Anthropocene Campus: The Technosphere Issue” was held. The campus is a 10 day intensive series of plenaries, seminars, and workshops put on by Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Max Planck Institute for History of Science. The campus brought together over three hundred academics, artists, and activists from…