What are the challenges of presenting Anthropocene histories to public audiences?
The Anthropocene warns of the advent of a new geological epoch as a moment of rupture and
the moment of truth. From its inception in the clustering of Earth system science, to its
subsequent exploration in a range of academic disciplines, breaching the contested concept of
the Anthropocene beyond the research community is critical in realising its political and ethical
dimensions as a radical call to arms. However, the concept offers little guidance on how to
transform discourse into transformative action and, despite the emergence of the cultural
Anthropocene, it has had a limited effect on the various public audiences that it needs to reach.
This essay argues that the challenges of presenting Anthropocene histories to public audiences
are the challenges of the Anthropocene itself, but, also, opportunities for actualising plausible
and desirable futures. It will argue this by considering the following three challenges. First, the
challenges of presenting the scale and plurality of possible Anthropocene histories to public
audiences. Second, the challenge of the Anthropocene to the notion of simply ‘presenting’ these
histories and to the existence of traditional ‘public audiences’ in the Technocene. Third and
finally, the fundamental challenge of Anthropocene histories to exploitative philosophical
frameworks of belief that Western public audiences have been reluctant to question and revise.
Although the enormous temporal and spatial scale of human and non-human interactions
requires a multiplicity of approaches, the plurality of possible Anthropocene histories presents
a challenge to the understanding of public audiences as different start-points, processes,
culprits, and practices are emphasised, overshadowed, and re-signified. In response to the
criticised homogenising and anthropocentric Anthropocene, a wide range of additional
nomenclature has been proposed, such as the elite-orientated Oglianthropocene, the plastic-
modelled Plasticene, the self-loathing Misanthropocene, the testosterone-fuelled
Manthropocene, and even the Obscene. However, in trying to capture the immense scale of the
Anthropocene in which humans are a dominant geophysical force, all these histories operate
on a planetary level that can never be directly experienced by the individuals that constitute
public audiences. In addition to the challenges of communicating the magnitude of the concept,
differences between public audiences, such as nationality and proximity to concerns, has
resulted in Anthropocene histories being interpreted in a range of ways. For example,
economist Joachim Spangenberg explored how China in the Anthropocene is understood by
different public audiences as simultaneously the main contemporary culprit of global emissions
of carbon dioxide, and as a victim to environmental change (an insight that is growing rapidly
in China itself), and, also, as ‘the last best hope for a global ecological civilisation.’ All these
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