BEYOND THE ANTHROPOCENE: TOWARD A SYMBIOTIC FUTURE IN THE AGE OF COLLAPSE
BEYOND THE ANTHROPOCENE: TOWARD A SYMBIOTIC FUTURE IN THE AGE OF COLLAPSE

Summary/Abstract: This article proposes a rethinking of the Anthropocene through the Extractocene, an age defined by the expansion of extraction into data, attention, and affect. It argues that contemporary capitalism extends extractive logics beyond the material realm, transforming not only natural resources but also human and nonhuman energies into sites of appropriation. While the Anthropocene has exposed a planetary crisis, its dominant responses, technological adaptation and market-based mitigation, remain entangled with the very paradigms of extraction they seek to overcome. In contrast, the article turns to Glenn Albrecht’s (2016) vision of the Symbiocene, an epoch grounded in reciprocity, mutual flourishing, and the ethics of coexistence. Yet it contends that the Symbiocene cannot function as a universal utopia, but must instead emerge from situated histories of environmental justice, decolonial struggle, and repair in the Global South. The paper concludes that moving beyond the Anthropocene/Extractocene demands not technocratic optimism but an affective and institutional reorientation toward care, interdependence, and more-than-human coexistence.

• Details
• Contents