Governing the End Times? Planet Politics and the Secular Eschatology of the Anthropocene

Abstract

This article furthers the debate on the political implications of the Anthropocene – the most recent geological epoch marked by catastrophic environmental change – by engaging it through the lens of political theology. The article starts from the observation that discourses on the Anthropocene and related political projects are deeply influenced by a linear temporality and a common orientation towards the threat of the end of time. It distinguishes three competing discourses of the Anthropocene, eco-catastrophism, eco-modernism and planetary realism. The article analyses how these discourses invoke and update key symbols, images, and storylines of Christian political theology. Furthermore, it studies how each discourse mobilises these secularised Christian motifs to promote competing planet political projects. Each of these projects develops a different position towards the unfolding planetary crisis and the related threat of the end of time. Eco-catastrophism calls for a planetary emergency management, eco-modernism promotes ongoing experimentation with the planet, whereas planetary realism translates into what could be called a ‘realpolitik of resilience’. Revealing the Western theological roots of the Anthropocene and planet politics is essential if the emerging literature on the Anthropocene wants to live up to its promise of pluralising and decolonising IR.

Introduction: International Relations in the Anthropocene

“…Rather than there being a shift to the global-understood in liberal, modernist, universalist terms-we would suggest that the shift can be better grasped as one from a state-centred or 'classical' approach to International Relations to a 'planetary' one (Burke et al 2016;Conway 2020;Rothe 2020;Müller 2019;Latour 2016). We want to suggest that a planetary approach differs in very important ways from the disciplinary assumptions of liberal modernist political theory that has informed International Relations up until now.…”

“…There are many ways of engaging with the Anthropocene as a materialisation of human impacts on the environment and as a causal factor in rising sea levels, ocean acidification, extreme weather events and mass species extinction. These tend to range from humancentred approaches of the 'good Anthropocene' (Asafu-Adjaye et al 2015) with geoengineering on a planetary scale to more human-humbling approaches which focus on adaptation and mitigation, often in terms of mobilising the widely distributed agency of resilient communities and societies (Chandler et al 2020;Neyrat 2019;Rothe 2020). Yet, we are 'outsiders' when it comes to reflecting upon what Dipesh Chakrabarty (2009) argues are the 'species' effects of human activity on a planetary scale.…”

Practices of sustainability and the enactment of their natures/cultures: Ecosystem services, rights of nature, and geoengineering

“…In these computer laboratories, experiments can be conducted with different futures of the earth system (cf. Rothe, 2020: 150ff.). Knowledge of nature here is synonymous with nature experiments and laboratory knowledge.…”

Disrupting Anthropocentrism Through Relationality

“…The first is that the basic anthropocentric, separation-based worldconfiguration we have described above is retained. If the idea of the "Anthropocene" suggests a universal, exceptional human subject (Rothe 2020), in addressing its challenges humans remain the privileged species that must grasp the logical/causal blueprint of the world in order to manage, intervene in, and reorder it in significant ways. For moderns, we noted above, nature as a whole has predominantly figured as something mute, available for use, but intrinsically meaningless and incapable of telling us how to live (Mathews 2005, 9).…”