Bogdanov, Platonov, Haraway, and Robinson: An unexpected canon for a theory for the Anthropocene

Bogdanov, Platonov, Haraway & Robinson: An unexpected canon for a theory for the Anthropocene

“The Anthropocene runs on carbon. It is a redistribution, not of wealth, or power, or recognition, but of molecules.” In his book Molecular Red. Theory for the Anthropocene (2015), recently released in German, the media theorist McKenzie Wark urges us to consider: “What the Carbon Liberation Front calls us to create in its molecular shadow is not yet another philosophy, but a poetics and technics for the organization of knowledge.” Referring to utopian concepts formulated by thinkers such as Alexander Bogdanov, Andrej Platonov, Donna Haraway, and Kim Stanley Robinson, he suggests an alternative realism capable of rethinking the very role of the working human. In conversation with the science historian Giulia Rispoli he discusses how a relationship between knowledge and labor could be reshaped that does not put the existence of current life on this planet in peril.