Anthropocene Ecologies : Biogeotechnical Relationalities in Late Capitalism

This position paper outlines a multidirectional approach to what we call Anthropocene ecologies, its diverse genealogies, and methodological and conceptual foci. Under the heading of Anthropocene ecologies we seek to fertilize the sciences of ecology with approaches of queer and feminist new materialisms, and engage in multiple collaborations across the humanities, sciences, and everyday ecological practices. Specifically we draw on ecology as the object of analysis and the methodology, building on concepts and approaches from the sciences, material feminisms, science and technology studies, human/animal studies and material ecocriticism. Five modes of attention become particularly salient for our analysis of the Anthropocene ecologies of solar energy, humananimal relations, organic food production, wetlands, and human-robot relations. First we attend to how these ecologies are generated within and affect the webs of multispecies ecologies in late capitalism. Second we suggest the concept of biogeotechno-power to capture the entanglements of the biological, the geologic and the technological in new formations of power that invest, regulate, enhance, and dispose of (more-than-)human bodies in particular ecological relationalities. Third we examine the multiplicities of ecological temporalities, including the deep time of mineralisation, fossilisation and past and future species survival. Fourth we attend to affect as an entangling force in ecological relations. And fifth we investigate an affirmative posthuman ethics of concern and response-ability in relations with living and nonliving materialities that might not be close by (spatially and/or temporally). Anthropocene ecologies thereby include the technical, informational, temporal, affective, and ethical as integral parts of ecological intra-actions, and remain attuned to the differential, paradoxical and unexpected.Position paper in ISCH COST Action IS1307: New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on 'How Matter Comes to Matter".