Genocides, epistemicides, ecocides and modern thought

reflections based on Solar by McEwan

Abstract

This essay is a speculative exercise based on the following assumption: modernity’s epistemological foundation enabled the advent of the Anthropocene. Although the term may be found neutral, having been first coined in the realm of science to name the beginning of a new geological epoch; the concept hides the chain of relationships that it embodies. After all, who are the humans who propelled the Anthropocene? What’s more, being a side effect or not of the global modernization process, it is part of a wider homogenization phenomenon of patterns and cultures. The establishment of a sole pattern – white western man – is behind the genocide, epistemicide and ecocide that characterize modernity. We aim, therefore, at analyzing how these phenomena (epistemicide, genocide and ecocide) become entangled and amplified with the advent of the Anthropocene. To do so, a dialogue will be established among different fields of knowledge in order to achieve the speculative imagination necessary to envision perspectives that go beyond the mainstream. Thus, the novel Solar by Ian McEwan will be brought to the discussion, since it not only brings the effects of human action on the planet as a backdrop, but also has a scientist as its protagonist. The perspective of the white, heterosexual, European man of science will be our starting point. After all, can science remain neutral in times of planetary catastrophes? This essay, therefore, is part of the interweaving, junctures, entanglements so dear to contemporary thought concerned with less anthropocentric ways of being in the world.