How acknowledging and engaging with complex temporal clashes can generate coherent responses to the seemingly totalizing notion of the Anthropocene.

Clashing Temporalities seminar reflection

In this reflection upon the Clashing Temporalities seminar that took place as part of the Anthropocene River Campus, Thomas Turnbull considers the non-fixedness of the concepts of time and place that represented its core concerns. From a fishing township in the Atchafalaya basin that has seen the ecosystems it has relied upon for generations change at an alarming pace, to the mis-memorialization of history and omission of the stories of those who were enslaved at a former plantation, to a scientific model of the river that both chronicled a past and focused upon a future narrative centered around human control, the seminar evidenced the troubling myriad of temporal clashes at play in the region. But acknowledgment of and engagement with these complex clashes, the author writes, offers opportunities for generating coherent responses to the seemingly totalizing notion of the Anthropocene.