Context of Practice: The Anthropocene: Wider Contextual Research

The Anthropocene; critisms

Alternate Proposed Epochs to the Anthropocene

The Gynecene:

T.J Demos notes; the Gynecene thesis, implying a gender-equalised, feminist-led, anti-anthropos environmentalism, with locates human-caused geological violence as coextensive with patriarchal domination, linking ecocide and gynecide.

2015 'Manifesto for the Gynecene - Sketch for a New Geological Era.'
authored by artists Alenandra Pirici and Raluca Voinea

Contesting the ravages of anthropos, and equally the inequalities of capitalist rule, the Gynecene manifesto calls for new models of eco-feminist stewardship, resonating in part with Indigenous postcolonial reverence for Mother Earth or Pachamama, as set within the multifaceted rights-of-nature mobilisations in South America.

The Chthulucene: Making Kin

'we must address intense, systemic urgencies...we are living in times of 'The Dithering'..."a state of indecisive agitation."

Instead of making babies we can make 'kin' with one another, reducing population size and building stronger more empathetic relations..."maybe the human people of this planer an again be numbered two or three billion, while all along the way being part of increasing well being for diverse human beings and other critters as means and not just ends".

When Haraway writes 'all earthlings are kin in the deepest sense' she calls for the human realisation that we are all from one, and that this basis can change our perspective on life and thus actions towards each other and the planet we all inhabit.

T.J Demos notes:

‘a proposal that draws on the resources of science fiction as much as science fact, speculative feminism as much as speculative fabulation, in naming our present age of multi-species intra-actions, non-patriarchal becomings, and generative collaborations’

Haraway’s neologism is proposed rather as a name of names with a thick and global mythological genealogy…referencing the “diverse earth-wide tentacular powers and forces and collected things with names like Naga, Gaia, Tangaroa…Spider Woman…Raven…and any many more.”

As such, the Chthulucene suggests “myriad temporalities and spatialities and myriad intra-active entities-in-assemblages, including the more-than-human, other-than-human, inhuman, and human-as-human.”

Such is the post-anthropocentric, non-human-exceptionalist