“Nature is Us:” the Anthropocene and species-being

Abstract

This paper examines the notion of the Anthropocene alongside that of species-being to reflect on the folding of the human into the geological, which has emerged as the unintended consequence of capital’s global expansion. In particular, it explores the tensions and the implications of the two contrasting formulations of the human that respectively inform these two notions: that is, as a particular biological species, with a geological agency now directing planetary life; and as a species-being, with the capacity to consciously direct its own species’ life activity. The context for this discussion is an exchange between Dipesh Chakrabarty and Slavoj Žižek, where Žižek contests the terms in which Chakrabarty constitutes a new universal subject of the epoch of the Anthropocene. Developing a third position, the paper turns to Nick Dyer-Witherford’s formulations on the “factory planet” to consider how the parametric boundaries for species-life open up new domains for the creation of surplus as the earth system itself become financialised and augmented.