Times of the Anthropocene – reflections on limits, intensity and duration

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on some current theoretical challenges that characterize the historical and geological temporalization of the notion of the Anthropocene. The advent of such a notion reveals the intersection of human and non-human temporalities, which, in turn, imposes a series of questions on the task, carried out by both stratigraphic science and the historical discipline of analyzing, measuring and temporally arranging events and human and environmental processes. Therefore, the article first analyzes the scientific disputes to define the temporal extension of the Anthropocene. In the second part, it deals with the foundations that support the mid-20th century as the beginning of the geological epoch of humans as proposed by the scientific institution in charge of formalizing the Anthropocene. Finally, it analyzes the theoretical dilemmas regarding the relationships between causality and historical temporality implicit in the recognition that the Earth System is distancing itself from Holocene conditions due to human agency. The discussions that follow are based on a body of documents constructed by reports and scientific articles on the topic, in addition to contributions from authors who have reflected on the dissolution of the boundaries between human and geological time, such as Tamm and Simon (2020), Turin (2022) and Chakrabarty (2021). In this article, the very gesture of periodizing is the object of analysis, since interpretations and periodizations are part of the dilemmas and complex situations that present themselves to those who live in a certain historical context.