Imagining Extinction in the Anthropocene: Planetary Collapse as Negative Anticipation and its Role in the Politics of Global Sustainability.

Abstract

Climate change and other global challenges, defining features of the Anthropocene as a new historical stage of socionatural relations, foster a new sense of urgency associated to the fear of planetary collapse. Theorists and activists alike warn against the danger of human extinction in an uninhabitable planet, a doomsday scenario that is meant to provide extra legitimacy to radical strategies of social change such as degrowth. On the other hand, the distinctive temporalities of the Anthropocene offer a glimpse into a deep past in which a number of extinctions took place, thus suggesting that they may happen again if the global system is not securely stabilized. On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the relative fragility of social systems in the face of global dangers. Yet the rise of this new extinctionism, which so far has not translated into an open support for authoritarian eco-regimes, pose a number of questions regarding the anticipation and imagination of sustainable futures. Is negative anticipation capable of mobilizing political actors and social groups? What kind of futures are elicited by the fear of collapse? Are extinctionism and democracy compatible, or perhaps the latter cannot deliver social change in the absence of a hopeful future? In dealing with these questions, I will argue that extinctionists of all kinds —including collapsitarians who see collapse as inevitable and even desirable as the only pathway towards a rebuilt human social order— play an ambiguous role in the politics of anticipation, as they are always on the verge of instilling despair rather than hope.