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Metaphor and the Anthropocene - Presenting Humans as a Geological Force (June 2015) (9 pages)
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Page: of 9
Geographical Research
Metaphor and the Anthropocene: Presenting
Humans as a Geological Force
LAUREN A. RICKARDS
School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University,
GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, Vic. 3001, Australia. Email: lauren.rickards @ rmit.edu.au
Received 5 January 2015; Revised 21 May 2015; Accepted 21 May 2015
Abstract
Intellectually as well as materially, the Anthropocene is a deeply cultural phenomenon. This includes its communicative form, which is a contested trope-rich
narrative, even within the sciences. In this essay I focus on the role of metaphor
in Anthropocene thought and in particular, on the provocative, ambiguous, and
potentially far-reaching idea of humans as a geological force. By considering the
different interpretations and meaning this metaphor encourages — including differences in what is meant by geological and force, both within and beyond
stratigraphy and Earth System Science — we gain a stronger sense of the deeply
allegorical and theological character of the Anthropocene story and the way it
promises to reposition humans in the world.
KEY WORDS Anthropocene; metaphor; culture; humans; geological; force
Introduction
Intellectually as well as _ materially, the
Anthropocene is a deeply cultural phenomenon.
More than a neologism or mere geological label,
the Anthropocene is a grand tale about humanity
and its place in the world told using a repertoire of
tropes. For all its talk of rocks, species and the
deep past, it is as much as about imagination,
futures, and the divine as it is about scientific
knowledge, practices, and institutions. Moreover,
the science and rocks of the Anthropocene are not
free of imagination and spirits. Rather, all aspects
of the Anthropocene, including its underpinning
science, reflect the broader, dynamic cultural
imaginary that it is part of and that it is now
helping to reshape.
But compared with efforts to examine the
material marks and physical origins of the
Anthropocene, work on the Anthropocene
concept’s deeply cultural form and origins has
been cursory, generally limited to mapping a
few linguistically related and short-lived antecedent terms such as _ anthropozoic and
noodsphere (e.g. Zalasiewicz et al., 2010; Steffen
Geographical Research * 2015
doi: 10.1111/1745-5871.12128
et al., 2011a). If we are to begin to understand
the novelty, ambiguities, and potentialities of
the Anthropocene (both positive and negative),
we need a broader sense of what is wrapped up
in the idea. Nowhere is this more apparent than
in the rhetorical tropes and theological themes
frequently used in its scientific description; cultural components that are all the more powerful
for the way their scientific context tends to
obscure them from view.
Rhetoric refers to ‘any of the various “forms”
of expression, deviating from the normal
arrangement or use of words, which are adopted
in order to give beauty, variety, or force to a
composition’ (http://www.oed.com). Reading the
Anthropocene concept as rhetorical suggests,
among other things, that it is intended to be
forceful, to be epochal in society as it is in stratigraphy. Emphasising its rhetorical quality, Noel
Castree (2014) argues that the Anthropocene
concept ‘can be seen as a new, more graphic way
to frame an existing idea, namely that of “global
environmental change” caused by human activities’ (p. 6, italics added). Somewhat in contrast,