ANTHROPOCENE OR PLASTICENE? MATERIAL AGENTS OF A PLASTICIZED PLANET
ANTHROPOCENE OR PLASTICENE? MATERIAL AGENTS OF A PLASTICIZED PLANET

Summary/Abstract: The paper explores the possibility of shifting from the notion of the Anthropocene to that of the Plasticene. The latter does not aspire to substitute the former by replicating its universalist pretensions; on the contrary, the Plasticene presents itself as a ‘(x)cene’, that is, as one of the many Anthropocene alternatives that are overtly partial, minor, perspectival, and composable. The Plasticene hypothesis rests on the observation that plastics can become embedded in the soil, thereby constituting a potential marker horizon. The paper develops this hypothesis into a philosophical theory characterized by the epistemologically complex expression of a nonhuman and material perspective, and by a chronopolitical attempt to open the future in non-linear ways. Methodologically, it adopts a bottom-up approach: by closely considering a Plasticenic figure – the plastic rock, framed as an onto-political geobody with a non-human subjectivity – it progressively enlarges its view and derives concepts and categories of the Plasticene as a comprehensive framework. Such categories encompass those of material agency, material plasticity, and anachronistic futurity.

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