Aaron Vansintjan: ‘The limits of the term ‘Anthropocene’ highlight the danger of using one framework (geology and climatology) to make universal claims about the world—it helps make only one world possible….Perhaps it’s time that academics go beyond congratulating themselves for rediscovering “materiality”, “nature-culture”, and “the non-human.” Not intrinsically political, these terms shuffle neatly behind universalizing, apolitical concepts like the Anthropocene—and end up being used to serve colonialist imaginaries like those of the eco-modernists. Putting it simply, it’s just not enough to say: “Look! material things are important too.”

The continuing relevance of the “ecological turn” within the humanities signals that more difficult work lies ahead: as Todd and many others have argued, it requires acknowledging—and, more importantly, supporting—those who have never turned their back in the first place.’