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Showing posts with the label anthropocene
A book review A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things (The book is currently half price on Verso website and even cheaper as an e-book)
" Zambia’s tourism minister Jean Kapata had a point when she suggested the reaction to Cecil’s slaying showed westerners care more about African animals than African humans." Since "Westerners" have the means (technology, economy, power, etc) to selectively save themselves, some people other and some animals why should they care about Africans? But that's not Morton's central theme in Humankind
"Other critics, especially on the left, complain that Morton’s conception of the Anthropocene glosses over issues of race, class, gender and colonialism by blaming the entire species for the damage inflicted by a privileged minority. The focus on the human enshrined in the term Anthropocene is a particular target for critics. By referring to humans as a unified whole, they argue that Morton effaces distinctions between the affluent west and the other members of humanity, many of whom were living in a state of ecological catastrophe long before the notion of the Anthropocene became trendy on campuses in Europe and North America. Others say that Morton’s notion of politics is too woolly, or that the last thing we need when facing ecological challenges are abstract musings about the nature of objects."