The Anthropocene as a consequence of modernity: rethinking sustainability

Lecture followed by a workshop for early career academics (Research Master, PhD students and Postdocs)

Lecture: The Anthropocene is not a new geoplanetary era but the consequence and the final stage of modernity

The Anthropocene is a completely unprecedented period in the history of humanity: the global disruption of the climate and biodiversity does not have a natural cause as has been the case since the birth of planet Earth, but is caused by unsustainable and yet exponential anthropogenic pressure. In this sense, the Anthropocene marks a break with modern thought: whereas modernity saw itself as an emancipation of humanity from its original vulnerability in its relationship to disease, food and the climate, the Anthropocene is, on the contrary, a “return of force” of nature and the exposure of humanity to an even greater global and growing vulnerability. Since the Anthropocene is thus defined as the consequence of modernity rather than the entry into a new geoplanetary era, the question arises as to whether humans have the capacity to deviate from this unsustainable trajectory, which is thus threatened with collapse.

Workshop: Understanding how the Anthropocene is disrupting our modern categories of perception of reality

This interdisciplinary workshop based on an exercise in historical anthropology aims to better understand the cognitive dimension, in cultural representations as well as in scientific practices, of two historical bifurcations of our relationship to reality: firstly, “what modernity does” to pre-modern representations and categories, and secondly, “what the Anthropocene does” to modern representations and categories (of which we are the heirs). 

Professor Eric Macé, UMR Centre Emile-Durkheim, Université de Bordeaux