Demons of the Anthropocene. Facing Bruno Latour’s Gaia

Abstract

As proposed in 2012 by the 3th International Geological Congress, the Anthropocene is the geological epoch of the Quaternary Period following the Holocene, the age that accounts for the transformation of humans into a force shaping the Earth, and of human actions into a geological phenomenon. Current debates on the Anthropocene are introducing new figures of impersonality, modes of political agency that are shaking the certainties of modern political philosophy. A key protagonist of this epistemic turn is Gaia, the Earth, the Greek Mother of most western gods.