How to Write (Hi)stories in the Anthropocene?

by Anna-Lena Eick, Achim Landwehr and Tom Vanassche

This story has some of the classic elements that a good story should generally have: a recognisable hero, a clear location, an identifiable point in time, an unprecedented event and a clear message coupled with a fundamental change in everything that happens afterwards. And even though the story has already been told so many times that one would be reluctant to tell it again, it should not be left out of any introduction on the subject. It is the story of how, in February 2000 (could there be a more symbolic year?), the atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen (a highly decorated, Nobel Prize-winning hero) attended a congress of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and reacted angrily  to repeated references to the Holocene as the current geological epoch (accounts differ as to the exact form of the emotional outburst),  saying that there was no longer a Holocene, but that the human geological epoch had begun:  the Anthropocene. And nothing has been the same since. [1]

In a way, this scene could be scripted as one of the film industry’s clichéd images of the eccentric behaviour of scientists at academic events. In the meantime, however, this scene takes on the function of a mythologem capable of establishing a new myth, just as Paul Crutzen did when he initiated the discussion on the Anthropocene. If historiography can be seen as a form of mythology in a culture that otherwise rejects myth, as Michel de Certeau once observed, [2] then the Anthropocene discourse certainly has mythological qualities. It is, after all, a narrative with a claim to universal explanation that the human species tells itself about itself, and thus this narrative also fulfils the functions of a metanarrative. There is no doubt that the scientific diagnosis of the Anthropocene is essentially about political decisions, endangered animal species, technical solutions, climate catastrophe scenarios, financial resources or the need for fundamentally different ways of living and behaving for the human species. But it is precisely because the concept of the Anthropocene touches on such a wide range of areas that its mythical nature becomes apparent. For like any good myth, the metanarrative of the Anthropocene envelops the whole Earth with all its organic and inorganic components, and is, as Hans Blumenberg said of world narratives, ‘an imaginative excess of anthropomorphic appropriation of the world and the theomorphic enhancement of man.’ [3]

It is not surprising that a supposedly myth-less culture, such as the so-called Western culture based on self-attributed principles such as rationality, Enlightenment or secularity, continues to tell itself myths.  Although the gods, or even the one God, only play a minor role in such constellations, mythological elements have by no means disappeared. They remain alive in the form of substitute gods, in the guise of ideologies, principles, foundations or collective singularities, which usually have no more stable basis than the fact that they are constantly being talked about. Whether it is the classless society, infinite growth or history: such abstractions are used to install new gods with an all-encompassing claim to explanation.

The Anthropocene fits seamlessly into this series of neo-mythological figurations. It can be expected to play this role not only because of the impressive career that this term and its essential contents have already completed in the relatively short time of its existence. [4] It can also be trusted because of its fundamental consequences, once one is prepared to accept the concept. It is not just to say that the human species has become the main force influencing the planet, in the same league as the Earth’s plate tectonics, the impact of asteroids or the emergence or extinction of certain life forms. If we really take the Anthropocene seriously, then this also means that it must necessarily be the last age that the human species will experience. This is because a new geological era can only begin when humanity is no longer a major factor influencing the planet. [5]

Regardless of how the acute and ongoing climate crisis will play out in the future, the adoption of the Anthropocene as a narrative makes it clear that humanity is telling its own end, or even or ‘telling towards’ that end:  a scope with undoubtedly mythological qualities.

But what if the term is unable to assert itself as a collective singular in the long term?  Does the Anthropocene exist at all, or are there not several Anthropocenes? At least three variants can be distinguished. We do not want to deal with the first one here. Suffice it to point out that this is the narrative of self-incurred ignorance or active repression, according to which there is no such thing as human-induced global warming. In this logic, the concept of the Anthropocene is useless because the phenomenon does not exist. Of course, this also requires narratives, and analysing them is undoubtedly of academic importance. However, because the denial strategy clumsily insists on ignoring widely verified and confirmed data, the resulting narratives are not particularly ambitious or imaginative, but are at most impressive for the blatant display of  the narrators’ cognitive dissonance.

There are at least two other, and far more interesting, versions of the Anthropocene in circulation. [6] One is the geological one – and as these lines are being written, it is developing into a drama of almost theatrical proportions, the final act of which is yet to be written. To summarise the content, which can also serve as a mythologem, as succinctly as possible: Since 2009, the Anthropocene Working Group, under the decisive leadership of Jan Zalasiewicz, a British palaeobiologist, has been working on the question of whether human influence on the planet can also be determined according to geological criteria, i.e. whether a primary marker including geochronological time can be identified that is detectable across the globe. In the summer of 2023, plutonium was identified as this marker, the year 1950 was defined as the epochal break, and Lake Crawford in Canada was cited as the key witness to the existence of the Anthropocene, that should therefore serve as a benchmark for other determinations of the new geological age elsewhere. According to the procedure for defining geological epochs, the Working Group’s proposal must be accepted by higher-level bodies but was rejected in March 2024 by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) and then also by the highest body, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). These bodies did not attempt to negate the human influence on the planet, but cited methodological arguments related to the defining marker and the appropriate point in time.

Since the geological narrative is currently somewhat confused, at least for non-geologists, what remains for the time being is the much more publicly powerful story: that which can be defined as a political-ecological narrative or as a form of cultural self-interpretation. It has long since been established, independently of specific geological discussions and without having to offer concrete yet subtle marks or dates, that humanity has become a planetary factor. This discourse on the Anthropocene offers a plausible way of describing the current state, the historical development and the future prospects of the human species – another criterion that can be expected of meaningful metanarratives.

But is it really a plausible narrative? There are more than a few doubters in the public debate about the Anthropocene. In addition to climate-denying conspiracy theories, there are also those for whom the Anthropocene narrative is not sufficiently differentiated. Is it even possible to talk about humanity when it comes to the Anthropocene? Who is the anthropos of the Anthropocene, as Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz have asked? [7] Aren’t the Anthropocene and humanity simply bringing more god-like collective singularities into the world? Shouldn’t we be asking much more precisely who is responsible for climate change, species extinction and environmental pollution, so that a term like Capitalocene would actually be more appropriate? [8] Or is the talk of the Anthropocene not once again far too anthropocentric, because it once again tailors the entire narrative to the human species? Shouldn’t we take into account the numerous narrative possibilities, especially those of non-human actors, and instead speak of the Chthulucene, as Donna Haraway has suggested? [9]

Here, too, the confusion is great and the alternatives manifold. Despite all the legitimate concerns that can be raised about the ecological claims of the Anthropocene, one or two sceptical doubts must remain about the formal design of this concept, both from a narratological and a historical-theoretical perspective. Isn’t it strange that previous geological epochs such as the Holocene, the Archaic or the Proterozoic cover hundreds of millions, or even billions of years, and that the transitions between these epochs themselves span very long periods of time – but now the Anthropocene is to be dated to the exact year, few decades after its beginning? And is it not surprising that the Anthropocene brings back the same mechanisms that have always characterised a Western European epochal model, and which – as with the colonial spread of these models of time and history – once again claim global validity?  [10]

It is therefore not necessary to deny the ecological, political and economic realities of the Anthropocene in order to find the formal-aesthetic and narrative modes of telling this Anthropocene problematic and inadequate. Rather, it is more a matter of a warning: namely, not to repeat in the narrative of the Anthropocene the very modern patterns that the Anthropocene concept is supposed to critique.  These include not least the Western, unilinear modelling of time, the overly rapid universalisation of provincial knowledge, the continued glorification of human action even though this species itself represents the pinnacle of evolutionary possibilities in terms of planetary destruction), or the perpetuation of narratives of growth and progress, even when these are given a negative connotation.

Various fictional genres, be they literary or cinematic forms, graphic novels or computer games, sometimes repeat the problems of the Anthropocene narrative – but in successful cases they can also always show how the causes and effects of a human-influenced planet can be told in a more complex and profitable way. Precisely because the uncertainty is great and the irritations are noticeable everywhere, it seems necessary not to narrow the field too early, not only with regard to concrete ecological options for action, but also with regard to narrative offers of meaning.  On the contrary: the epistemological-subversive potential of narrative in the broadest sense must be taken seriously and at the same time its relationship to the metanarrative of the Anthropocene must be explored. For if the concept of the Anthropocene – problematic though it may be – already contains the general statement that things can no longer go on as they have in the so-called European-Western modernity, then the narrative modes cannot remain unaffected by this. After all, they are hardly less important than reducing CO2 emissions or preserving biodiversity. And here we actually find both possibilities and peculiarities of the human species: not only to have narrative possibilities of various kinds, but actually to be dependent on them, because they generate this precious resource called ‘meaning’.

Whatever you want to call what is currently being observed, whether you want to call it, the Anthropocene or something else, at least one thing is clear: it needs to be told. And it needs be told in a way that can be connected and understood, without reproducing familiar patterns that have contributed significantly to the mess that the Anthropocene diagnosis seeks to analyse and heal.

In the Anthropocene discourse, therefore, narrative modes are therefore important on different levels: in the sense of a calendrically identifiable emergence of this mythologem; in the modelling of the Anthropocene as a (geo)historical epoch – however accepted or rejected; in the search for possible alternative narrative and explanatory models for the Anthropocene; in the integration of Anthropocene phenomena into more general cultural narrative traditions – across media boundaries; and finally, with the most far-reaching consequences, in the attempt to remodel and effectively provincialize those Western modern narrative modes that have contributed significantly to the constellation of problems that is referred to as the Anthropocene and that continue to be embedded in this very Anthropocene concept.

It is therefore no trivial matter to ask what stories can be told about the Anthropocene – and whether we should be telling them at all. Especially when it comes to finding our way in a fundamentally changed planetary situation and offering meaningful and plausible narratives, [11] factual and fictional narratives could have a lot to say to each other.

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[1] Not this scene, but relevant texts can be found in Paul J. Crutzen: Das Anthropozän. Schlüsseltexte des Nobelpreisträgers für das neue Erdzeitalter, München 2019.

[2] Michel de Certeau: Theoretische Fiktionen. Geschichte und Psychoanalyse, ed. Luce Giard, 2. Aufl. Wien 2006, 57f.

[3] Hans Blumenberg: Ästhetische und metaphorologische Schriften, Frankfurt a.M. 2001, 331.

[4] It has already been established that Paul Crutzen was not the first to use this term. But he established it – quite ambiguously – in the long term. For earlier uses of the Anthropocene, cf. Ariane Tanner: Anthropozän, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte (03.05.2022) https://docupedia.de/zg/Tanner_anthropozaen_v1_de_2022; Hanno Bergthaller/Eva Horn: Anthropozän zur Einführung, Hamburg 2019.

[5] Eduardo Viveiros de Castro/Deborah Danowski: In welcher Welt leben? Ein Versuch über die Angst vor dem Ende, Berlin 2019, 11.

[6] For further details: Gabriele Dürbeck: Narrative des Anthropozän – Systematisierung eines interdisziplinären Diskurses. In: Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift 3 (2018) 1-20.

[7] Christophe Bonneuil/Jean-Baptiste Fressoz: The Shock of the Anthropocene. The earth, history, and us, London/New York 2016.

[8] Jason W. Moore (ed.): Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism, Oakland 2016.

[9] Donna Haraway: Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthuluzän, Durham and London 2016.

[10] Achim Landwehr: Epochalismus. Zu Symptomatik und Therapie einer Berufskrankheit, in: Andreas Mahler/Cornel Zwierlein (eds.): Zeiten bezeichnen. Frühneuzeitliche Epochenbegriffe: europäische Geschichte und globale Gegenwart, Wolfenbüttel 2023, 91-104.

[11] On the helpful but clearly under-theorised concept of plausibility, see Thomas G. Kirsch/Christina Wald (eds.): Vorläufige Gewissheiten. Plausibilität als soziokulturelle Praxis, Bielefeld 2024.

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