Gender studies

Anthropocene

Sociology

Social science

Commodification

Biology

Aesthetics

Epistemology

Philosophy

Political science

Economics

Ecology

Ethos

Thriving

Posthuman

Feminism

Humanity

Posthumanism

Technoscience

Sustainability

Anthropocentrism

Market economy

Environmental ethics

Theory Culture & Society

Confronted with an unprecedented scale of human-induced environmental crisis, there is a need for new modes of theorizing that would abandon human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism and instead focus on developing environmentally ethical projects suitable for our times. In this paper, we offer an anti-anthropocentric project of an ethos for living in the Anthropocene. We develop it through revisiting the notion of sustainability in order to problematize the linear vision of human-centric futurity and the uniform ‘we’ of humanity upon which it relies. We ground our analyses in posthumanism and material feminism, using works by posthumanist and material feminist thinkers such as Stacy Alaimo, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Jane Bennett, among others. In dialogue with them, we offer the concept of posthuman sustainability that decenters the human, re-positions it in its ecosystem and, while remaining attentive to difference, fosters the thriving of all instances of life.

Posthuman Sustainability: An Ethos for our Anthropocenic Future