Assembling the Anthropocene

Keynote by Dipesh Chakrabarty (13.01.2013) in Haus der Kulturen der Welt. http://www.hkw.de/anthropocene Dipesh Chakrabarty (Chicago)is professor in the Department of History and the Department of South Asian languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies and a founding editor of the journal Postcolonial Studies. His current projects are on the implications of the science of climate change for historical and political thinking, democracy and political thought in South Asia, and a cultural history of Muslim-Bengali nationalism. Dialogues, Keynotes, Island, Roundtables, Lecture Performances, Artistic Interventions, Research Forum The Anthropocene Project. An Opening 10.01.2013 - 13.01.2013 'Nature as we know it is a concept that belongs to the past. No longer a force separate from and ambivalent to human activity, nature is neither an obstacle nor a harmonious other. Humanity forms nature. Humanity finds itself embedded within the recent geological record.' This is the core premise of the Anthropocene thesis, announcing a paradigm shift in the natural sciences as well as providing new models for culture, politics, and everyday life. Over the next two years, the HKW -- in cooperation with the Max-Planck-Society, Deutsches Museum, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam -- will facilitate an exploration of this hypothesis' manifold implications for research, science, and art..