(Neg)Anthropocene and the Noetic Character of Life

Bernard Stiegler’s Critique of The Anthropocene

Abstract

The Anthropocene, referring to the period after the Industrial Revolution, represents the epoch, in which the effects of human that became a substantial (f)actor through the evolution of the biosphere, and having the characteristic of toxic. The Anthropocene originates from the worldwide hegemony of the modern technology actualizing by means of industrialization and it prevents questioning of its own expansion by way of producing an entropy at ecological, psychic, social, economic and especially noetic levels. All forms of knowlegde are almost tested in the Anthropocene. This is a proletarianization, emerging along with an intensive increase of entropy. Loss begins with knowledge and spreads over desire, singularity and protention, since lives are built solely upon survival. According to Bernard Stiegler, human, as a noetic being, is individuated by exteriorizing the protentions that include retentions. The Anthropocene exploits this crisis which desire falls under. Protentions being full of nihil in the structure of desire liquidation of life amounts also to the loss of individuation. Escaping the Anthropocene, that is full of negations and crises, requires going beyond the Anthropocene itself, thinking within the limits.