Abstract

Using the resources of genealogy and historical modes of thought in contemporary Continental philosophy, and engaging with the fields of postcolonial theory, black studies, and gender theory, this paper considers the periodization of a new geological timescale, the Anthropocene or “age of man,” and offers a counterhistory of what it is has meant to be a “human being.” Choosing to inherit the name “Anthropocene,” but recognizing the shadow archive of the “inhuman” in the geological strata of the Earth, this genealogy proposes a counternarrative for the supposed grand narrative of our time.