Re: <nettime> deep humanities initiative

[mp <mp@aktivix.org>]

On 25/04/2021 20:07, Brian Holmes wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 10:53 AM Keith Sanborn <mrzero@panix.com> wrote:
> 
>> Interesting that at a time when planetary survival is in jeopardy,
>> analysts shd return to a geological metaphor. Does history then equal
>> stratigraphy?
>>
> 
> That is exactly the claim. The geologists of the Anthropocene Working Group
> identify the stratum marking the end of the Holocene in radioactive
> isotopes left by nuclear fallout in the period of above-ground testing
> (1952-63). These can be identified in fine layers deposited in undisturbed
> lake beds around the world, and most precisely, in ice cores from
> Antarctica. Of course, geological markers based on the activity of living
> creatures are nothing new. What's new is that the creatures are humans, and
> the rate of change, particularly in CO2 concentration, is faster than
> anything previously recorded, by orders of magnitude.
> 
> The dating of the new geological epoch is hotly contested, and in my view,
> the other proposed dates (Industrial revolution, colonization of the New
> World) are full of significance.

Setting the date for a decisive human impact on the planet so late could
appear like a defense of all the extractive civilisations that in the
last 6000 years - again and again - separated culture from nature,
relied on irrigation, slavery, tax and debt, and expanded unsustainably
until the point of collapse.

As Scott writes:

"...While there is no doubt about the decisive contemporary impact of
human activity on the ecosphere, the question of when it became decisive
is in dispute. Some propose dating it from the first nuclear tests,
which deposited a permanent and detectable layer of radioactivity
worldwide. Others propose starting the Anthropocene clock with the
Industrial Revolu­tion and the massive use of fossil fuels. A case could
also be made for starting the clock when industrial society acquired the
tools- for example, dynamite, bulldozers, reinforced con­crete
(especially for dams) - to radically alter the landscape.
Of these three candidates, the Industrial Revolution is a mere two
centuries old and the other two are still virtually within living
memory. Measured by the roughly 200,000-year span of our species, then,
the Anthropocene began only a few min­utes ago.

....I propose an alternative point of departure that is far deeper
historically. Accepting the premise of an Anthropo­cene as a qualitative
and quantitative leap in our environmen­tal impact, I suggest that we
begin with the use of fire, the first great hominid tool for landscaping
- or, rather, niche con­struction. Evidence for the use of fire is dated
at least 400,000 years ago and perhaps much earlier still, long
predating the appearance of Homo sapiens. Permanent settlement,
agri­culture, and pastoralism, appearing about 12,000 years ago, mark a
further leap in our transformation of the landscape.
If our concern is with the historical footprint of hominids, one might
well identify a "thin" Anthropocene long before the more explosive and
recent "thick" Anthropocene; "thin"
largely because there were so very few hominids to wield these
landscaping tools. Our numbers circa 10,000 BCE were a puny two million
to four million worldwide, far less than a thousandth of our population
today. The other decisive pre-modern invention was institutional: the
state. The first states in the Mesopotamian alluvium pop up no earlier
than about 6,ooo years ago, several millennia after the first evidence
of agriculture and sedentism in the region. No institution has done more
to mobilize the technologies of landscape modifi­cation in its interest
than the state..." (in Against the Grain, 2017: 2-3)

The institutional arrangements have changed little in this period -
especially when contrasted with non-extractive civilisations such as
those found in the Amazon, which expanded while enriching their habitat
- and the continued ploughing, or scarring of the earth, until the soil
is entirely depleted, combined with cutting down trees incessantly,
until the rivers run dry, is arguably the crux of human destruction.

Remove fossil fuels, capitalism and all the rest of the modern package
and you would still be stuck with those self-destructive patterns of
behavior that profoundly alter the landscape and cause climate chaos.







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