Deep Time at the Dawn of the Anthropocene

Bibliographic Data

ID4959322
AuthorsNoah Heringman
Year2015
Volume129
Issue1
Pages56-85
Publication date2015-02-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueRepresentations (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0734-6018 • E-ISSN: 1533-855X
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/rep.2015.129.1.56
OpenAlexW2312611888
LanguageEN
Citations received13

This essay argues that the concept of deep time is essential to the intellectual history of the Anthropocene-the name widely (though not yet formally) used for our current geological epoch. Buffon's Epochs of Nature, one of the earliest secular models of geological time in Enlightenment natural history, uses inscription as a metaphor to mark the advent of biological species, including humans, in the course of earth history. The Anthropocene extends this project of writing ourselves into the rock record. Buffon makes a productive interlocutor for the Anthropocene because he is one of the first to examine climate change and related constraints on human agency in the context of deep time. The essay examines Buffon's natural history and associated Enlightenment discourses of primitive art and culture to gain a purchase on the challenges of scale posed by the Anthropocene

Agency (philosophy · Anthropocene · Archaeology · Biology · Context (archaeology · Deep time · Enlightenment · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Epoch (astronomy · Metaphor · Natural (archaeology · Natural history · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Ecology · Geology · History · Paleontology · Philosophy

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