THE ANTHROPOCENE AIR CONDITION(ING)
THE ANTHROPOCENE AIR CONDITION(ING)

Summary/Abstract: This paper theorizes “air conditioning” as a dual apparatus: a technological system for atmospheric control and a philosophical metaphor for humanity’s project of environmental domination in the Anthropocene. Analyzing thinkers like Peter Sloterdijk, Bruno Latour, Achille Mbembe, Eva Horn, and Nerea Calvillo, the paper argues that air conditioning generates a fatal paradox, producing localized immunological spheres of comfort while systemically exacerbating global atmospheric entropy – thickening the air with toxicity, social exclusion, and precarity. The crisis is thus not merely environmental but ontological and political, demanding a radical reconceptualization of air as a shared, life-sustaining commons and a move beyond techno-solutionism toward equitable, systemic repair.

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