Surviving in Hell: Writing History in the Global Eco-crisis

Abstract

The current energy crisis and the sustainability debate are better understood as part of the broader environmental collapse of which they are part. The contemporary eco-crisis is at the center of a number of debates in the public sphere and in the political agenda of governments around the world. Historians have participated in these debates in different ways, debates that are frequently based on simplistic – when not anti-historical – models of historical analysis. However, historians also frequently use categories that were created by the history of capital in unthinking ways, categories that naturalize ways of seeing and experiencing the world and that are at the basis of the current ecological collapse. The present essay offers reflections on these problems and explores the possibilities of historical analysis in the context of the environmental crisis