The Transvaluation of Critique in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This article considers the transvaluation of critique through the lens of the new affirmative critical approaches of the Anthropocene. The first section introduces the problematic of the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch and also as symptomatic of the end of modernist ontological and epistemological assumptions of the divide between culture and nature. The second section then highlights how the Anthropocene thesis poses a problem for critique through fundamentally decentring the human as subject and challenging the temporal claims of Enlightenment progress. The third section analyses the implications of this closure for critical approaches and the shift towards a more positive view of the present: no longer seeking to imagine alternative futures but rather drawing out alternative possibilities that already exist. Critique thus becomes additive, affirmative and constructive. The final section expands on this point and concludes with a consideration of how contemporary theoretical approaches articulate the transvaluation of critique.

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