The Party of the Anthropocene: Post-humanism, Environmentalism and the Post-anthropocentric Paradigm Shift

Abstract

This article accounts for an environmental standpoint to be part of the post-human approach by accessing the post-human as a post-humanism, a post-anthropocentrism and a post-dualism. The main goal of this paper is to call for a post-anthropocentric turn by emphasizing the fact that the Anthropocene and the actual ecological collapse are only the symptoms; it is time to address the causes, which have been detected in the anthropocentric worldview based on an autonomous conception of the human as a self-defying agent. An urgent answer to this scenario lays in philosophy, and specifically, in a theoretical and pragmatical post-anthropocentric shift in the current perception of the human. This article reflects on the ideal, but also uneasy, practices of letting go of anthropocentric privileges. Such changes can only result by fully acknowledging the human species in relation to the environment. The Anthropocene shall thus be addressed, together with sustainable forms of producing (less), recycling and co-existing with other species, with a socio-political and cultural shift: a passage from humanism to post-humanism, here underlined in its specific meaning of post-anthropocentrism. The methodology of this article develops as an assemblage of theoretical thinking, creative writing and artistic image analysis.