why is decolonizing the anthropocene important?
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From what I understand…
The anthropocene essentially defines the era where human interference is an extremely dominant global force effecting the planet and its systems, and relates heavily to our current ecological disasters, crisis(es), and what we should do about it or how we should think about our future. However, colonialism and Eurocentrism is still extremely dominant and focused on, despite it being a completely *global* issue, and there is a long history of the many other groups and viewpoints being overruled, silenced, or ignored while also being both exploited and effected (often negatively) over history. So most of it all is still viewed in a lens of the colonizing nations.
“Contemporary scholars are attempting to find creative ways out of the blind spot by theorizing an ethos of life in the anticipated ruins of capitalism and by engaging a planetary scale for thinking about presents and futures that is more attuned to the materiality of life, including ecological and non-human demands (Haraway 2016; Tsing 2015; Tsing et al. 2017). However, the Eurocentrism of the Anthropocene remains a significant occlusion in current thinking and consequently, following the pattern of earlier forms of creative thinking on the brink of catastrophe, threatens to limit creativity by falling prey to visions of domination, ever more meticulous human-ecology interventions and even authoritarianism.” (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-53014-3_5)
Basically, in a global-effecting issue, with significant problems to address, it’s still a powerful minority with exploitative and Eurocentric roots looking at what to do about it.
The big debate about the presence of Anthropocene in the geologic record is that you have to see a tangible difference in the soil. Anthropocene is kind of viewed similarly to climate change
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