Sustainability and Translation

Description

In Other Wor(l)ds: the conundrum of anthropocentrism in the Anthropocene

Babette Tischleder (2019) contrasts two accounts of the Mississippi river: the first, by Bruno Latour, foregrounds various human and non-human agencies which shape the Mississippi basin; the second, by William Faulkner (as read by Tischleder), describes the river as an “Old Man”. The “New Materialisms” which seek to place the human — including human meaning-making — within more complex material networks fail at their task, contends Tischleder, if they do not engage the human imagination.

Tischleder's argument foregrounds a profound translation conundrum for the Anthropocene. Does this new geological epoch necessitate a direct challenge to anthropocentrism (as expressed by Latour in a rejection of anthropomorphism), or does it by contrast require acknowledgement of the world-making power of the Anthropos in order to face up to, rather than disavow, our species' all-dominating force?

This paper re-reads Tischleder's account of the Mississippi with Kathryn Yusoff (2018), problematising the construction of the human in the Anthropocene and following the possibilities of an “inhuman geography”. I argue that the distributed networks of agency as outlined by Latour (understood in terms of “force”, following Michel Serres) provide a way to re-frame the Anthropocene as a geologic time of "many worlds” in which translation as a material practice is a central activity. This translation takes place within a “metamorphic zone” (Latour, 2017) in which meaning takes shape in space and time.

Translating the worlds of the Anthropocene — following networks of force “in other wor(l)ds” — suggests a way to address the conundrum of anthropocentrism in world-making and an alternative conception of translation as material-linguistic praxis.

Period	13 Oct 2021 → 15 Oct 2021
Event type	Conference
Location	Vienna, AustriaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International