The notion of the Anthropocene has become an instrumental backdrop against which post-foundational social theory and political research frame political action in a way that defies modern certainty and, somewhat paradoxically, anthropocentrism, under conditions of drastic ecological changes. But what exactly is the theoretical promise of the Anthropocene? This paper seeks to explore what the concept can offer to critical social science and, conversely, how these critical approaches define and locate the analytical and the political purchase of the Anthropocene, through the critical lens of Indigenous scholarship. The paper genealogically retraces the transition from a science-led, discontinuous-descriptive to a continuous-ontological conceptualization of the Anthropocene. It then unpacks how the notions of ecological relationality and non-human agency deployed in the latter closely parallel certain lines of argumentation in Indigenous thought and politics. Drawing on critical Indigenous studies, the paper formulates a critique of how relational perspectives enfold alternative ontologies and politics within an overarching Anthropocene ontology that is not only problematically universalizing, but also replaces the genuine engagement with differences and resistance.

Deficiencies in the sterile processing of medical instruments contribute to poor outcomes for patients, such as surgical site infections, longer hospital stays, and deaths. In low resources settings, such as some rural and semi-rural areas and secondary and tertiary cities of developing countries, deficiencies in sterile processing are accentuated due to the lack of access to sterilization equipment, improperly maintained and malfunctioning equipment, lack of power to operate equipment, poor protocols, and inadequate quality control over inventory. Inspired by our sterile processing fieldwork at a district hospital in Sierra Leone in 2013, we built an autonomous, shipping-container-based sterile processing unit to address these deficiencies. The sterile processing unit, dubbed “the sterile box,” is a full suite capable of handling instruments from the moment they leave the operating room to the point they are sterile and ready to be reused for the next surgery. The sterile processing unit is self-sufficient in power and water and features an intake for contaminated instruments, decontamination, sterilization via non-electric steam sterilizers, and secure inventory storage. To validate efficacy, we ran tests of decontamination and sterilization performance. Results of 61 trials validate convincingly that our sterile processing unit achieves satisfactory outcomes for decontamination and sterilization and as such holds promise to support healthcare facilities in low resources settings.

Introduction: Roberto Esposito's Incomplete Deconstruction of the Constitutive Other The concept of the 'constitutive outside' was introduced to political theory by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe 1. Drawing on Henry Staten's reading of iterative meaning formation in Derrida 2 , Laclau and Mouffe argue that in the absence of ontological grounding, identity constitution must take place against a "radical outside, without a common measure with the inside" (Laclau, 1990: 18). The 'constitutive outside' has since not only been widely adopted within Continental Political Theory (Oswell, 2006; Hall, 2000). But it also increasingly informs more general social theory and empirical social research in a way which is largely dissociated from the concept's theoretical underpinnings, which thus remain unchallenged (Hawkesworth, 2010; Mara, 2003; Diez, 2004). This article unfolds its argumentation from the insight that this unquestioned theoretical adoption of Laclau and Mouffe's 'constitutive outside' is highly problematic because of the political consequences they infer from its epistemic necessity (Laclau 1990; Mouffe 2000). Intertwined with Carl Schmitt's (1996: 19-27) assumption of a general political antagonism between friend and foe, the fluid, iterative outside of meaning constitution 3 is turned into a solidified other when applied to the political

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