Science, Politics, and Culture in the Anthropocene

Science, Politics, and Culture in the Anthropocene
Fred Murphy and Steve Knight
A Reading Group, September 25 through November 20
9 sessions remain

“Thinking the Anthropocene,” say Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, authors of Shock of the Anthropocene, “means taking the measure of industrialization and commodification, which have derailed the Earth beyond the stable parameters of the Holocene, and of the need to give our freedom different material foundations; it means mobilizing new environmental humanities and new political radicalisms (movements for common goods, transition, degrowth, eco-socialism and many more) in order to escape the blind alleys of industrial modernity.” This study group will take up three recent works on the scientific, political, and cultural implications of global warming and the crisis of the Earth system: Birth of the Anthropocene, by Jeremy Davies; Shock of the Anthropocene; and Richard Smith’s Green Capitalism: The God That Failed.

Fred Murphy has co-led several MEP study groups on Marxism, science, nature, and ecosocialism. He studied and taught historical sociology at the New School for Social Research.
Steve Knight has participated in and co-led MEP study groups on ecosocialism since 2015. His review of Shock of the Anthropocene is forthcoming in the journal Marx & Philosophy.