Expecting the Unexpected: Getting Ready for a Wild Anthropocene

Lecture by Christopher Preston at the University of Amsterdam

In 2016 the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy officially found that Earth has entered the Anthropocene. The purpose of this talk is to raise some questions surrounding the naming of this new epoch and to challenge some of the assumptions that have been made about the Anthropocene being a “post-wild” epoch.  In particular, I want to examine some of the technological practices often thought of as paradigmatic Anthropocene behaviors and examine where wildness may – or may not – continue to feature alongside these practices.

Prof. dr. Christopher J. Preston teaches and writes in environmental philosophy at the University of Montana, Missoula. He is author of Saving Creation: Nature and Faith in the Life of Holmes Rolston, III (2009) and Grounding Knowledge: Environmental Philosophy, Epistemology, and Place (2003). He is VU Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Ethics of the Anthropocene: Religion, Ethics, and Global Environmental Change for the academic year 2016-2017.

December 6th, 19:30, Potgieterzaal, Singel 425 Amsterdam
Please register before December 1st with: M.D.Davidson@uva.nl