November 28, 2016 - 21:36
Three main points of "Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene:"
1) "There is no distant place anymore;" we need to stop looking at the Earth as something so disconnected from us and start taking ownership of and action against the damage we have done (2). We cannot look at the state of the Earth objectively, because of humans' presence in climate change. We are directly connected to, and depend on, this planet, and it is connected to and depends on us, and we have to recognize this and start acting like it. The Earth has become an unstable, "active, local, limited, sensitive, fragile, quaking" being because of us (3).
2) Making agreements, contracts, pacts, and other pacific projects in attempt to reconcile things won't solve everything. Recently, things have become "so urgent and violent" that, seemingly, the best option appears to be taking direct action and taking faster measures to instigate change (5). Human action has led to all of these wrongs, and only human action - direct human action - can at least make an attempt at undoing it.
3) It is important to shift our attention from seeing society and nature as two separate entities, and instead focusing on a "metamorphic zone" that combines the two and both animates the Earth and de-thrones the human race, creating a common composition of all that is living and interdependent. The "various threads of geostory" should be allied in order to mend this long-thought of distinction between those domains (15).
Question:
Why did the author of this piece feel the need to include a passage from War and Peace? What purpose does this quotation serve in the discussion of climate change and human reparations for this phenomenon? I would like to look at this excerpt, which I found kind of out of place and hard to follow in the flow of the essay, and try to see how it connects to the bigger picture.
ALSO, what is the first step to instigating change? The author says that violence in inevitable, but what concrete step, following Latour's points, can we take towards making things right? What would he think we should do? Is this the right way to go? Is a peaceful method of change more possible than he makes it seem, based on our previous readings?