Theory for the Anthropocene

Of all the liberation movements of the twentieth century, the one that succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams did not liberate a class or a gender or a race. It liberated an element: carbon. Today, the carbon liberation front threatens to crash the entire climate system. McKenzie Wark looks for a way to understand, and perhaps even combat, this implacable force, and explores the implications of Anthropocene through the story of two empires, the Soviet and the American. The fall of the former prefigures that of the latter.

From the ruins of these mighty histories, Wark salvages ideas to help us picture what kind of worlds collective labour might yet build. He revisits the work of Alexander Bogdanov – Lenin’s rival – and Andrei Platonov, as well Donna Haraway and Kim Stanley Robinson, and proposes an alternative realism, where hope is found in what remains and endures.

In association with Bristol 2015.

Speaker biography:

McKenzie Wark is the author of A Hacker Manifesto, Gamer Theory, 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International, The Beach Beneath the Street and The Spectacle of Disintegration among other books. He teaches at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City.

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