RELATED TERMS; Anthropocene - Capitalocene - Chthulucene; Postanthropocentrism; Posthuman; Posthumanism; Cultural geography, Human geography, Social geography
One strand of narrative environments may be defined as Anthropo-Scenes: they concern what the world is like both now, what it might be like in times to come and what life, including human life, in those present and future worlds is like and might be like. This is to acknowledge the importance of narrative in understanding and communicating issues related to the notion of an ‘anthropocene’, a concept which begins its life in the discourse of Earth System Science but which has given rise to a wider intellectual event-space termed the Anthropo-Scene, a term denoting “a flurry of activity with far-reaching ontological, epistemic, political and aesthetic consequences” (Lorimer, 2016).
Castree (2015) argues that,
“The current Anthroposcene is far too science led. It is dominated by those who regard planetary change, and human responses to it, as amenable to analysis and influence absent any deep engagement with other forms of knowing and acting. While we should thank geoscientists for sounding the environmental alarm, other epistemic communities beyond a few social science fields (notably environmental economics) need to shape the discourse before it solidifies. The stakes are much too high for people not yet part of ‘global change science’ (GCS) to watch from the sidelines.”
In the context of the design of narrative environments, Anthropo-Scenes bring together design and science to characterise the historicity of the ’present moment’, historicity here including futurity. In other words, the historicity or historical being of ‘anthropocene’ acknowledges the entangling of its distinct temporalities, such as the cultural, economic, ecological and geological, in narrativity. [Historicity as the narrativisation of temporality, to create factual historiographies and fictional stories].
References
Castree N (2015) Changing the Anthropo(s)cene: Geographers, global environmental change and the politics of knowledge. Dialogues in Human Geography 5(3): 301–316.
Lorimer, J. (2017). The Anthropo-scene: A guide for the perplexed. Social Studies of Science, 47 (1), 117–142. Available from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306312716671039 [Accessed 22 August 2019].
Other sources
Anthropo-scene: art and nature in a manufactured era [Art exhibition website] http://Anthroposcene.weebly.com/
Climaginaries [Website] https://www.climaginaries.org
Narrating Climate Futures [Website] https://www.climatefutures.lu.se/climate-fiction/anthropo-scenes
Technology is our next nature: Anthropo-Scene: https://www.nextnature.net/search/Anthropo-scene/
The Anthropo.scene [Blog] http://jeremyjschmidt.com/