The Anthropocene: Architecture, Cities, Politics, Law, as Geological Agents
FABE / SSH Panel Discussion
Fyvie Hall, Regent Street
25 November 2014, 17.00 – 19.00
The Anthropocene has been posited as a new geologic epoch, defined by unprecedented human disturbance of the earth’s ecosystems. Buildings and cities, politics and law come into view as geological agents mobilising earth materials, minerals and energies, with unintended consequences. Recent philosophical tendencies, including new materialism, realist ontologies, object orientated ontologies and post-humanist theories try to come to terms with the new reality: they argue that geology, anthropology, nature and culture, animate and inanimate earth systems can no longer be seen as categorically distinct. For some, this signals the final enclosure of politics and culture within ecology; for others it calls for more planning and management; for others, the unitary human of the anthropocene hides political difference and elevates a particular kind of consumer into a motor of history.