Unknotting the Anthropocene through Philosophical ‘Braiding’

• In Event: Politics beyond the Human

Abstract

Humanity has entered an era of perennial wildfires, expanding floodplains, population displacement, and broken supply chains, giving rise to an urgent need to prepare current and future generations for radical contingencies. In this paper, we argue that the end of the Holocene represents more than just another ‘problem’ to be addressed by the latest fashions of philosophical critique. Firstly, because the Anthropocene itself can be seen as the culmination of Euro-modernity (Davis and Todd, 2017), which puts all precipitative sociocultural practices into question. Secondly, because many of the prevailing political and philosophical responses appear trapped within intractable oppositions (e.g. between eco-modernist solutions to climate change versus strategies of ‘degrowth’; or between utopian and nihilistic visions of our current civilisational trajectory). We argue that looking beyond one’s own philosophical tradition is a key step in addressing such obstacles and intractably ‘knotted’ dilemmas. We suggest that the Anthropocene throws into relief the need for the inheritors of Euro-modernity to find new ways of engaging perspectives and lifeways that have been coercively displaced by the very modernising forces that now imperil the viability of all human societies—not least of all because this fosters epistemic humility in thinking otherwise and learning from other sources. We elaborate one such model of cross-cultural engagement as a ‘braided’ philosophical encounter between Western critical social theory and North American Indigenous theory.
‘Braiding discourse’ denotes a model of cross-cultural debate which my writing partner Yann Allard-Tremblay (Huron-Wendat First Nation) defines as a “non-reductivist method of engagement…that reveals overlaps and disagreements without merging discourses, while acknowledging the possibility of irresolvable contradictions” (Allard-Tremblay, 2022). Such an approach chimes with what James Tully (Kirloskar-Steinbach et al, 2024) describes as the needful ‘de-parochialisation’ of Western political theory, and what Amy Allen (2016) identifies as the goal of unlearning taken-for-granted socio-cultural ideals and practices. Our key methodological proviso is to avoid decontextualising readings of one another’s theoretical traditions. Too often, despite stated intentions to engage with other traditions on their own terms, Western theorists proceed to ‘absorb’ and ‘blend’ opposing viewpoints into newly fashioned universals, assimilating what they regard as ‘good’ and rejecting what they regard as ‘bad’—thereby reinforcing the unacknowledged assumption that theory ‘progresses’ by synthesising an ever-widening array of perspectives. We suggest that ‘braiding’ not only helps avoid this appropriative tendency, but that it is capable of developing novel insights and formulations that would not otherwise arise. What distinguishes braided philosophical engagement is the way participants position themselves as creative collaborators and ‘guests’ of the tradition(s) under discussion. Rather than seeking to translate, sublate, clarify, or correct conflicting viewpoints, the goal is to facilitate new self-understandings and unexpected constellations of ideas from within one’s own philosophical perspective—asking why ‘we’ persist in conducting our research or teaching in the manner that ‘we’ do. The products of such engagements aim not at consensus or resolution, but towards revitalising creativity in the face of conflict and uncertainty (e.g. generating a new materialist framework for ‘Earthbound’ normativity, or a new model of human agency for contending with the uncertainties of accelerated climate change). Through critical, creative engagements across traditions (which remain separate and distinct), philosophical braiding does not seek to discover one ‘true’ ground for normativity, but rather to understand, and potentially transform, the grounds of ‘our’ normativity. In place of universal truths, it fosters creative partnerships that can be sustained beyond the immediate context of debate.

Authors

• John McGuire, University College Dublin

• Yann Allard-Tremblay, McGill University