The Shock of the Anthropocene

At a time when the word 'Anthropocene' is becoming so fashionable, this well-documented and well-argued book will help readers sort out the various meanings of this most unstable label. The authors show the bewildering varieties of historical actors at work in what is called the 'environmental crisis'. -- Bruno Latour A very important book. In this historically rich and meticulously detailed work, Bonneuil and Fressoz show us how to keep our head without losing our heart to technocracy. -- Timothy Morton, author of Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World Cleverly argued and extremely compelling, this book offers a remarkably timely analysis and critique of the very notion of the Anthropocene. It's widely held that modern industrial societies innocently and ignorantly generated the forces that have wrought such dramatic ecological effects on their world. It's also believed that only very recently, because of the heroic work of a few visionaries, has this ignorance been overcome and the truth of the Anthropocene at last revealed. Using an astonishing range of sources from climate sciences and economics, history and technology, Bonneuil and Fressoz brilliantly show the utter falsity of this story, and why it matters so much. -- Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge This revelatory, lucid and daring book rejects the delusions of control implicit in conventional environmentalism, and outlines the enormity of the changes necessary for us to continue to live in the Anthropocene. -- David Edgerton, Kings College London A timely book which firmly grounds history in the stuff that the sciences now tell us about what commodified life does to the planet. This is an essential volume for the project of historical thought and action. -- McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene In questioning the idea of an apolitical Anthropocene and raising the spectre of a new self-selecting scientific geocracy, their book should begin a vital discussion. We do need a new politics of the Anthropocene. -- Fred Pearce * New Scientist * A wide-ranging essay that combines elements of environmental history, history of science and technology, and economic and intellectual history, while covering an extensive geographic base including British, American, French, and German cases. * Public Books * This bold, brilliantly argued history of the Anthropocene epoch is a corrective to cosy thinking about humanity's grave disruptions to Earth systems. Bonneuil and Fressoz call for a "new environmental humanities", and a shift away from market-based approaches that feed the beast. -- Barbara Kiser * Nature * This is the first book to seriously come to terms-philosophically and psychologically as well as scientifically-with the overwhelming planetary transformation implied by the word 'Anthropocene.' Bonneuil and Fressoz have done humanity a great service by thinking through the startling issues raised by the fact that our species has launched the entire ecosphere onto a new and frightening trajectory. -- Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute The Shock of the Anthropocene is a detailed, data-driven, and well-argued critique of conventional thought on enormity of the challenges and changes that lay ahead for humanity on an Earth that is irreparably damaged by our actions. It should be a central addition to readers' climate change libraries. * New York Journal of Books * The book is very well written and highly readable. I recommend the book highly. It is currently the most lucid and comprehensive introduction to 'Anthropocene discourse'. -- Noel Castree * Antipode * These two historians have undertaken to explain the entry into this new epoch and reveal its major determinants. * Le Monde * Challenges the certainties of our modernity, our mode of development and our view of the world. * Libration * This book attacks such widespread i

Christophe Bonneuil is a historian at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and edits the Anthropocne series for Editions du Seuil. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, formerly a lecturer at Imperial College, London, is now a historian at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

PART ONE WHAT'S IN A WORD? Chapter 1. Welcome to the Anthropocene Chapter 2. Th inking with Gaia: Towards Environmental Humanities PART TWO SPEAKING FOR THE EARTH, GUIDING HUMANITY: Deconstructing the Geocratic Grand Narrative of the Anthropocene Chapter 3. Clio, the Earth and the Anthropocenologists Chapter 4. Who Is the Anthropos? PART THREE WHAT HISTORIES FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE? Chapter 5. Th ermocene: A Political History of CO2 Chapter 6. Thanatocene: Power and Ecocide Chapter 7. Phagocene: Consuming the Planet Chapter 8. Phronocene: Grammars of Environmental Reflexivity Chapter 9. Agnotocene: Externalizing Nature, Economizing the World Chapter 10 . Capitalocene: A Combined History of Earth System and World-Systems Chapter 11 . Polemocene: Resisting the Deterioration of the Earth since 1750 Conclusion: Surviving and Living the Anthropocene