Power in the Anthropocene 1399541897, 9781399541893

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Power in the Anthropocene

Incitements Series editors: Peg Birmingham, DePaul University and Dimitris Vardoulakis, Western Sydney University Editorial Advisory Board Étienne Balibar, Andrew Benjamin, Jay M. Bernstein, Rosi Braidotti, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Timothy Campbell, Adriana Cavarero, Howard Caygill, Rebecca Comay, Joan Copjec, Simon Critchley, Filippo Del Lucchese, Costas Douzinas, Peter Fenves, Christopher Fynsk, Moira Gatens, Gregg Lambert, Leonard Lawlor, Genevieve Lloyd, Catherine Malabou, James Martel, Christoph Menke, Warren Montag, Michael Naas, Antonio Negri, Kelly Oliver, Paul Patton, Anson Rabinbach, Gerhard Richter, Martin Saar, Miguel Vatter, Gianni Vattimo, Santiago Zabala Available Return Statements: The Return of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy Gregg Lambert The Refusal of Politics Laurent Dubreuil, translated by Cory Browning Plastic Sovereignties: Agamben and the Politics of Aesthetics Arne De Boever From Violence to Speaking Out: Apocalypse and Expression in Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze Leonard Lawlor Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black Athena Athanasiou Interpassivity: The Aesthetics of Delegated Enjoyment Robert Pfaller Derrida’s Secret: Perjury, Testimony, Oath Charles Barbour Resistance and Psychoanalysis: Impossible Divisions Simon Morgan Wortham Reclaiming Wonder: After the Sublime Genevieve Lloyd Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics: Towards Democratic Plurality and Reproductive Justice Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek Worldlessness After Heidegger: Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction Roland Végső Homo Natura: Nietzsche, Philosophical Anthropology and Biopolitics Vanessa Lemm Spinoza, The Transindividual Étienne Balibar, translated by Mark G. E. Kelly Uncontainable Legacies: Theses on Intellectual, Cultural, and Political Inheritance Gerhard Richter The Trial of Hatred: An Essay on the Refusal of Violence Marc Crépon, translated by D. J. S Cross and Tyler M. Williams Machiavellian Ontology: Political Conflict and Philosophy Francesco Marchesi, translated by Dave Mesing Post-Exceptionalism: Art After Political Theology Arne De Boever Power in the Anthropocene Lars Tønder Visit the series web page at: edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/incite

Power in the Anthropocene Lars Tønder

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © Lars Tønder, 2025 Cover design: www.richardbudddesign.co.uk Edinburgh University Press Ltd 13 Infirmary Street Edinburgh EH1 1LT Typeset in 11/14pt Bembo by Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 3995 4189 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 3995 4191 6 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 3995 4192 3 (epub) The right of Lars Tønder to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). This book is printed using paper from well-managed forests, recycling and other controlled sources

Contents

List of Figures and Tables vi Prefacevii Acknowledgementsxii 1 2 3 4 5 6

Power in the Anthropocene The Sociality of Power The Materiality of Power The Methods of Power The Organisation of Power Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene

1 35 81 124 162 207

A New Materialist Glossary 228 Bibliography236 Index252

Figures and Tables

Figures 2.1 Concentric circles in traditional debates about power 3.1 The new materialist matrix 5.1 Network and hierarchy

39 107 170

Tables 1.1 Three interpretations of the Anthropocene 2.1 Similarities and differences in the traditional debate on power 2.2 Similarities and differences in recent social science theories of power 3.1 New materialism and the history of ideas 5.1 Hobbes and Spinoza on power and political organisation

vi

16 53 72 97 201

Preface

This book is a revised and much-expanded version of a book that I published, in Danish, in 2020 with the title Om magt i den antropocæne tidsalder: En introduktion. The book was well received, and I am grateful to Edinburgh University Press for giving me the chance to elaborate on the ideas and insights featured in it. Like the previous book, this new book criticises studies of power for their inability to address the climate and biodiversity crises, and it goes on to offer an alternative, new materialist approach inspired by thinkers ranging from Lucretius and Spinoza, through Nietzsche, to Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour and several others. Unlike the previous book, however, in this study I expand the scope of the discussion and place new materialism’s arguments in dialogue with kindred efforts in the social sciences, particularly those associated with environmental political theory, ecofeminism and Indigenous studies. The overlap between new materialism and these schools of thought is significant, methodologically as well as substantially. Hence, my goal is to acknowledge how new materialism resonates with (and draws sustenance from) other ways of addressing the climate and biodiversity crises. Moreover, I hope to show how new materialism, in collaboration with vii

Preface these other schools of thought, can contribute with insight to a series of emerging debates in the social sciences about power, agency, climate change and democratic politics. The impetus for the book is the same as its predecessor’s: a suspicion that existing studies of power are complicit in the climate and biodiversity crises that communities around the globe are facing today. As I noted in the Preface to the Danish book, these studies (many of which I discuss in this book) are not simply wrong in their portrayal of power. Rather, at a more fundamental level they overlook how power works across the human/non-human divide, which has to be the starting point for an up-to-date power analysis, and which almost every day reminds us that nature has become a co-player that reinforces anthropogenic climate change – and often in ways that we have no ability at all to imagine. Indeed, the lack of analytical and political imagination is arguably the biggest problem facing the social sciences, which continue to struggle because they have either outsourced the investigation of the climate and biodiversity crises to the natural sciences or transformed these crises into something that concerns only the human part of society. In both cases, the result is an incomplete analysis that neither captures the actual causes of the climate and biodiversity crises nor gives us the tools needed to counteract them in ways that can ensure a sustainable future for all. Closely linked to this state of affairs is the ongoing debate about the ‘Anthropocene epoch’. As I explain in Chapter 1, the Anthropocene is a geological term for the proposal that the Earth’s more than 4.5 billion year history has entered into a new epoch, one that highlights the impact of anthropogenic climate change and, following from this impact, elevates human agency to a force on a par with nuclear power and electromagnetism. viii

Preface If this proposal turns out to be true, it is not only a significant event in itself but also a challenge to how the social sciences study power within and across different timespans. As anyone who knows just a little about the social sciences will recognise, social scientists are primarily interested in the recent past, which they like to periodise into relatively short segments (e.g. ‘modernity’ and ‘postmodernity’ or the ‘pre-war’ and the ‘post-war’ periods). The transition to the Anthropocene, which would mark the end of the Holocene epoch that has lasted for the past 10,000 years, puts this conception of time and history into a significantly new perspective. The Anthropocene not only reminds us that human history is part of a much longer and more multilayered history; it also encourages us to ask whether the assumptions on which social scientists, for the past hundred years or so, have built the study of power still apply, or whether these assumptions are in need of rethinking. In short: if the world has changed as radically as the transition to a new geological epoch suggests, is this not also time for a new way of conceptualising and analysing what power does and means? None of this is to say that using the Anthropocene as a foil for rethinking the study of power is uncontroversial. Most recently, disagreement has surfaced within the geological community, adding nuance to the picture that I presented in the Danish book, and that I further expand in this book. The disagreement concerns whether it is possible to date the Anthropocene with the kind of precision needed to define it as an epoch in its own right. Although the Anthropocene working group under the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, back in 2023, suggested 1952 as the beginning of the Anthropocene, placing the golden spike at Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada, a 12–4 majority of the subcommission subsequently rejected ix

Preface this proposal due to disagreement about the evidence presented to the commission’s members. The vote itself was contested, with some members arguing that others should not have been allowed to vote due to term limits. Moreover, it remains unclear what the next steps will be. Whereas some geologists consider the case closed, others argue that there is clear evidence for a shift in the Earth’s history, and that they will continue to use the Anthropocene as a term of reference. As Colin Waters, chair of the Anthropocene Working Group, told the Guardian in an interview on 7 March 2024: ‘Irrespective of the vote, the AWG stands fully behind its proposal, which demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the Earth system now clearly lies outside of the relatively stable interglacial conditions of the Holocene [and] that the changes are irreversible.’ In addition to revealing deep disagreements about the meaning and implications of the Anthropocene – a theme I return to in Chapter 1 and throughout this book – these remarks highlight how debates about the Anthropocene are inherently prefigurative. They suggest competing visions of organization and social relations that reflect one’s ideal society. This prefigurative dynamic surfaced during the discussions leading up to the Anthropocene vote, where, according to Nature, some committee members argued for defining the Anthropocene as a temporal ‘event’ rather than as a distinct epoch separate from previous ones. This concept of temporality is not unfamiliar to the social sciences, and it has recently become central to natural science research on how climate tipping points affect global ecosystems. In fact, this convergence of ideas about time and history underscores the importance of studying power as a force that operates across both the human and non-human realms. It also encourages us to dismantle the division of labor between x

Preface the natural and social sciences. Without a clearer understanding of how power functions – both in shaping the conditions for agency and in linking future aspirations to present actions – we, as students of politics and engaged citizens, stand little chance of preventing the looming catastrophe. Whether or not the book succeeds in making this clear is up to you – the reader – to decide. My own ambition has been to write a book based on the assumption that the social sciences should contribute with knowledge that not only interrogates some of the most important aspects of societal history and evolution, but also contributes with proposals and critical perspectives on what is possible and what is not possible. I invite you to join in this endeavour and to use the book as a vehicle for developing your own analyses of power in the Anthropocene. Note: This book concludes with a short glossary providing a concise definition of the most important new materialist terms and concepts. The selected terms and concepts are marked with an asterisk (*) in the main text.

xi

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a long list of friends and colleagues for discussions and support during the writing of this book. In no particular order, they are Bill Connolly, Stephanie Erev, Scott Gilbert, David Schlosberg, Derek Denman, Andrew Poe, Amnon Lev, Jane Bennett, Irina Papazu, Mads Ejsing, Anne-Sofie Dichman, Ingrid Helene Brandt Jensen, Ioannis Rigkos-Zitthen, Jeppe Strandsbjerg, Marie Kongsted Møller, Bjørn Schiermer Andersen, Michele Betsill, Camil Ungurenau, Andrew Schaap, Lasse Thomassen, Bonnie Honig, Sacramento Roselló Martinez, Craig Calhoun, Dilip Gaonkar, Sophia Näsström, Romand Coles, and two anonymous reviewers for Edinburgh University Press. I would also like to thank Nikolaj Neven, Maria Frahm Bjørn, Roman Karmaz Larsen and Jon Jay Neufeld for their help in getting the manuscript into shape. Similar thanks goes to Carol Macdonald, Souhaila Jouhar and the rest of the team at Edinburgh University Press, who have overseen the book’s production with diligence and great ­ professionalism. Finally, my gratitude goes to Dimitris Vardoulakis – and his co-editor, Peg Birmingham – for inviting me to publish the book in the Incitements series, and for facilitating the process in a generous and supportive manner. xii

1

Power in the Anthropocene

A New Epoch On a random Tuesday in August 2018, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation website carried a story from the Danish news agency, Ritzau, accompanied by the headline ‘Domino effect can make the climate go crazy.’1 The news release included mention of how researchers from Denmark and abroad had become concerned about a number of ‘domino effects’* in the Earth’s ecosystems that seemed to be amplifying human-made climate change beyond a global average temperature rise of 2°C or less. To counter this development, the researchers highlighted the need for geo-engineering technologies capable of compensa­ ting for this possibility. One option mentioned was a ‘vacuum cleaner’ that draws CO2 out of the atmosphere and stores it deep underground – also known as ‘carbon capture storage’ (CCS). The Ritzau story quoted then-Minister of Energy and Climate Lars Christian Lilleholt as saying that this kind of technology was already high on the agenda of the Danish government, albeit with the proviso that further knowledge would be necessary to make the right decision. As the minister declared: ‘In order to implement the right measures, we must quickly learn 1

Power in the Anthropocene much more about both the biological mechanisms and technological possibilities for increasing carbon storage and utilisation. Otherwise, we simply won’t reach the finish line.’ The Danish government was and is hardly the only one looking into these issues. Across the globe, there are initiatives attempting something similar, with multinational companies and transnational political institutions promoting the drive towards carbon capture storage and other kinds of geo-engineering. The European Union, for example, recently launched a stra­ tegy that would increase its CCS capacity to 50 million tonnes CO2 in 2030, growing to 400 million tonnes in 2040.2 Similar estimates inform discussions in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where a 2005 special report noted that ‘the potential of CO2 capture and storage is considerable’ and, furthermore, that ‘the costs for mitigating climate change can be decreased compared to strategies where only other climate change mitigation options are considered’.3 The impact of these estimates and interventions has been considerable and seems to be driving several new climate policy initiatives. In Denmark, for example, the energy company Ørsted began building its first CCS facility in December 2023, and according to a 2023 report from the international think tank Global CSS Institute, there are now 30 CCS projects in operation and more than 150 other projects in development.4 Hence, it is likely that in the next five to ten years we will see a number of large-scale installations devoted to carbon capture storage. Ironically, many of these will use existing pipelines and oil installations to reverse the flow of CO2 from the atmosphere and back into the ground from where it originally came.5 What are we to make of these ideas and developments? Most obviously, we might see them as symptomatic of how 2

Power in the Anthropocene humans – not everyone, some more and others less, and always in differentiated ways – have come to define the history of the Earth in more fundamental ways than is normally considered the case. Anthropogenic climate change is indeed characterised by how it destabilises age-old ecosystems, which in turn creates the need for new technology and other human-centred interventions. Seemingly perpetual in nature, this circuit is part of what I, in the Preface, referred to as the Anthropocene – the idea that the planet has entered into a new phase in which many aspects of human activity should be counted as on a par with gravity, electromagnetism and nuclear energy. To capture the full significance of geo-engineering technology, however, we must also include a second element, which concerns how weather patterns and other modes of non-human life have become so unstable that the planet is heading, with greater and greater certainty, towards a sixth mass extinction event, in which life as we know it will be no longer sustainable. The reason why the scientists in the Ritzau report above are so concerned about the emergence of domino effects is precisely their potential for changes in the conditions of life that are both unpredictable and unmanageable. From this perspective, carbon capture storage and other geo-engineering technologies represent a far more ambiguous trend, which, at first sight, seems to justify their use but, ultimately, challenges the basic assumption built into their very existence – that humanity as a whole can control nature like any other machine. Indeed, a more nuanced look at the forces at play in the Anthropocene might well suggest that this assumption is wrongheaded or suicidal – or, perhaps more likely, both. This book is intended to substantiate this intuition, and to show how and why it requires a new approach to climate 3

Power in the Anthropocene politics and the study of society more generally. Part of my inspiration comes from prominent climate philosophers such as Isabelle Stengers and Clive Hamilton, who do not deny the value of new technologies but insist that we place them in the context of a new set of constraints and possibilities – what Bruno Latour, in conversation with Stengers and Hamilton (among others), calls the ‘new climatic regime’.6 The changes concern the basic rules of the game – and thus how we must envision the interplay between human and non-human life, each multiple and internally differentiated. According to Stengers and Hamilton, any discussion of contemporary climate politics must begin with the recognition that the Earth is a ‘ticklish’7 and ‘defiant’8 actor, which does not operate in the background as a stable resource but rather participates actively – and sometimes even aggressively – in the evolution of society. Stengers and Hamilton recognise that this participation might always have been the case, and thus that there is nothing new to note or acknowledge. What is new, however, is that we, as social scientists and engaged citizens, can no longer uphold modernity’s pretence that the Earth and its many ecosystems do not contribute to how society gets organised in this or that way, with this or that concern or objective in mind. If we proceed in this manner, which might indeed have been the main modus operandi for the last 400–500 years, we will endanger the very conditions of life, turning any kind of intervention – be it technological or not – into a cause for unsustainable behaviour in many years to come. The more refined objective of the book is to show how the social sciences – sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not – have contributed to this state of affairs in ways that undermine their ability to deliver relevant and forward-looking answers to 4

Power in the Anthropocene some of the most burning questions of our time. My gateway to this problem is the analysis of power, which cuts across all of the social sciences’ many disciplines and, in that sense, represents the sine qua non of the field as such. As discussed in Chapter 2, I do not deny that significant strides have been made in terms of understanding how power works, especially with regard to political organisation and patterns of social behaviour. Still, problems emerge because social science analyses, for the most part, no longer resonate with the many different realities in which power operates. There is quite simply a basic discrepancy between the challenges that societies around the globe face and the analytical tools available for studying these challenges. With regard to climate politics, this discrepancy is seen in the idea of ​​a green transition meant to ensure a sustainable society but also to support economic growth – which in itself has been (and continues to be) an important cause of the climate crisis. While the turn to carbon capture storage and geo-engineering plays an important role in this self-defeating circuit, the social sciences continue to privilege the human side of the equation, failing to appreciate how the new climate reality is defined by the changed – and often intensified – interplay between human and non-human forces. The upshot is a persistent complicity in the impasse that Stengers and Hamilton identify – that by pretending that the Earth and its many non-human forces do not participate actively in the evolution of society, the social sciences might well contribute to endangering the conditions of life itself. My goal, however, is not just to criticise existing social science efforts; in addition, and I would venture more importantly, the book also works to reorient the analysis of power in order to make it more perceptive to the new climatic reality – and in that 5

Power in the Anthropocene sense to make the social sciences relevant once again for the big issues in society. Now that power obviously does not disappear just because the world has changed, to what must the social sciences pay attention so as to be able to map and analyse the power relations in the new climatic reality? And how might this contribute constructively to the pursuit of a sustainable future for all? The answer presented in the chapters that follow suggests a fundamental reorientation of the social sciences. First, we need to undo the privileging of human activity as something unique and radically different from all other forms of life. Second, we need to expand the analysis of power in breadth as well as in depth, understood here as the number of actors and levels involved in the study of power. The analyses of power that follow from this alternative approach may not always abide by the existing standards of knowledge, but are nonetheless important if we want to secure a sustainable future for a symbiont, more-thanhuman world. To illustrate what I have in mind, let me briefly propose two basic shifts in how we might analyse initiatives such as carbon capture storage and geo-engineering. (A fuller sketch of the analysis follows at the end of this chapter; for now, I merely hope to provide a sense of what is at stake in reorienting the analysis of power.) Instead of assuming that economic interests are always the most important, we must first examine the ‘entanglements’* of human and non-human life more closely, including how displaced species, shifting microbiomes, new cloud patterns and many other non-human actors inform and affect the very notion of ‘interest’. And instead of seeing political institutions as purely human assemblages, we must examine how the many non-human actors are somehow 6

Power in the Anthropocene heard and involved in the decision-making process. Are their interests included? Are they seen as part of the collective? If not, why and with what consequences? Answering these and other questions will have significant effects on the analyses of power. On the one hand, it will situate the discussion of agency and privilege squarely within the context of the new climatic reality. On the other hand, it will allow for a more nuanced and focused account of how human life itself is internally differentiated and, hence, dependent in different ways – and with different consequences – on modes of non-human life that also are internally differentiated. The five main chapters of the book (Chapters 2‒6) elaborate on these interventions in relation to issues that researchers and students are usually expected to be able to master in an analysis of power: clarification of concepts, philosophy of science, use of methods, as well as normative considerations about the role of power in a democratic society. Before we get that far, however, some more detailed reflections are called for on what characterises the new climatic reality and what this means for the rethinking of social science power analyses. The first section of this chapter therefore provides a more complete description of the new context within which such an analysis of power must be placed. The second section sets out three benchmarks against which a rethinking of the analysis of power must be oriented. The third section summarises the benefits of a new power analysis – not only in relation to new knowledge about the structures and organisation of society, but also in relation to concrete political initiatives, such as those highlighted in the Ritzau news release. The fourth section provides a brief summary of the five chapters that follow.

7

Power in the Anthropocene The Anthropocene as Backdrop and Problematique Even though global climate change is itself of enormous importance, it is essential to understand that it is ‘merely’ a symptom of a series of processes, which are far more fundamental and are becoming more prevalent than ever before. As noted earlier, human activities have begun to leave such a massive imprint that the human species, in its entire divergent and internally complex manifold, has become a crucial factor in the Earth’s many ecosystems, with some affecting these ecosystems more and others less. Understanding what this differentiation means is crucial if we are to capture the new conditions for the exercise  – and analysis – of power. As mentioned above and in the Preface, it makes good sense to place the new conditions in conversation with not only human and social science contributions but also natural scienceinflected debates about the possibility (however contested) of a new geological epoch: that which American marine biologist Eugene Stoermer and Dutch Nobel chemistry laureate Paul Crutzen, with reference to the ancient Greek word for human (ánthropos), have proposed we call the ‘Anthropocene’ epoch.9 The motivation for this term, which is far from perfect and always open to contestation (as I discuss below), is that certain domains of human activity in recent decades have become a ‘geological force’ that affects the conditions of evolution and survival of nature itself. This new-found status might be most evident in nuclear physics, where the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons testifies to a radically new ability to manipulate the course of nature. Something similar can be seen in relation to the extraction of fossil fuels, which – as is now firmly established – is increasing the amount of CO2 in 8

Power in the Anthropocene the atmosphere and is already having fatal consequences for temperatures around the world, affecting water levels, land use, biodiversity and much more. These and many other examples illustrate the changing relationship between human activity and nature; that the former, as Crutzen and Stoermer write, has become a ‘geological force’ – and that this is the direct cause of the many climate changes that provoked the researchers in the Ritzau story (and around the world) to sound the alarm. If anything, the phrase ‘human-made climate change’ should be seen as equivalent to ‘the Anthropocene epoch’. Be careful, however. Apart from disagreements about when to date the beginning of the Anthropocene, the connection between anthropogenic climate change and the Anthropocene does not mean that humans – as a general category or as historically situated individuals and/or collectives – have become omnipotent and can therefore rule sovereignly over all nonhuman life. As the consequences of global climate change also remind us – and as Stengers and Hamilton’s descriptions of the Earth’s ‘tickling’ and ‘defiant’ power highlight – the new climatic reality also means that human relations, in different ways and to varying degrees, have become extra-vulnerable to nature and its diverse forces. The reason why climate scientists are warning against ‘domino effects’ is precisely because their analyses show how a relatively small shift in one ecosystem can have great consequences for the rest of the Earth’s ecosystems. This problem is underlined by the dramatically declining biodiversity that many see as the beginning of a new mass extinction event. Such events typically occur more than 100 million years apart and often result in the extinction of up to 80% of the Earth’s ­species.10 The last mass extinction event led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, which subsequently enabled homo sapiens to 9

Power in the Anthropocene evolve into what they are today. At this point, while it is too early to say whether humankind is facing extinction, the possibility of an Anthropocene epoch clearly neither simply nor unequivocally implies a strengthening of human power. At least as important is the strengthening of the power inherent in the Earth and all other forms of non-human life. The very prospect of a new mass extinction event is a potent reminder that this is the case. At this point, it is important to underscore how and why a critical approach to the Anthropocene should problematise any and all uses of the term that invoke humanity as an undifferentiated and/or ahistorical category. (Whether it even makes sense to speak of ‘human’ and, by extension, ‘non-human’ as distinct categories is actually quite unclear; my own sense is that if it does, it is only for analytical purposes, a point to which I return in Chapter 3.) From an ecofeminist perspective, we learn that any invocation of ‘humanity’ as a general category serves to erase significant power differentials within and across historically situated groups, with women and other marginalised collectives bearing the brunt of the negative effects of climate change.11 Similarly, postcolonial studies have long shown how the history of climate change is intimately linked to the manner in which Britain and other colonial powers used what we now call the Global South as a place of exploitation of natural resources, fuelling industrialisation and the associated growth in wealth and power in the Global North.12 Finally, eco-Marxists remind us regularly that the costs of climate change are distributed differently, and that some parts of society, particularly those in possession of the means of production, stand to gain financially as well as politically from both instigating and ­mitigating ­climate change.13 10

Power in the Anthropocene When we talk about the Anthropocene, in other words, it is important to understand it as an intensified but also differentiated entanglement of human and non-human forces. Unlike earlier geological ages, where representations of human life (and the philosophies underpinning those representations) could depict humanity as either subject to forces of nature or able to rise above these forces, the Anthropocene suggests that we now live in a world characterised by an infinitely long series of symbiont entanglements in which human and non-human forms of life intersect in many more ways than one can imagine, let alone compute. As I have already noted, it is an open question exactly how these entanglements are ‘new’. On the one hand, the entanglements have always existed, even if we ‘humans’ have worked hard not to recognise them as such, especially during the course of the last 400–500 years (what we commonly call ‘modernity’). On the other hand, the entanglements have intensified due to climate change. The latter is what has enabled new modes of interaction and mutual interdependency, and what allows us to speak of a new climate reality. This understanding resonates with Donna Haraway’s analysis, which sees the Anthropocene name as valuable but also encourages us to pluralise its meaning and outlook. Haraway’s own favoured term is the ‘Chthulucene’, which resembles H.  P.  Lovecraft’s notion of the Chthulu, developed in his 1926 short story of the same name, but in Haraway’s case more ­accurately derives its name from a spider, Pimoa cthulhu, which in turn is derived from the ancient Greek khthonios, meaning ‘of the earth’.14 Behind this material-semiotic play on words lies an  ambition to highlight the Anthropocene’s connected but also  open-ended character. Another way of saying this is that the Chthulucene name is meant to operate 11

Power in the Anthropocene in both representational and singular ways, signifying a generally shared condition that nonetheless feels unique to each and every agent in the world. To underscore this aspect, Haraway highlights the web produced by the Pimoa cthulhu spider as a matter of complexified entanglements of human and non-human forces. Each string links one node to another and creates and ­empowers new lines of movement and coexistence. The result is a world of internally differentiated but also externally connected entities. Or, as Haraway puts it: ‘The tentacular ones make ­attachments and detachments; they make cuts and knobs … they weave paths and consequences but not determinisms; they are both open and knotted in some ways and not others.’15 Together with the previous observations, this way of conceptualising the entangled nature of human and non-human life forms what we might call the Anthropocene ‘backdrop’, which represents the starting point for this book’s thesis: that the context of power has changed to such a fundamental degree that a rethinking of the analysis of power itself is necessary. The need for such a rethinking arises because it is no longer possible to envision human life without also involving the non-human – not only in relation to well-known socio-economic conditions (e.g., class and culture) but also in relation to microscopic and planetary conditions (and everything in between).16 With the advent of the Anthropocene, we must once and for all abandon the modern notion of the divide between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, even if this distinction has never been quite as rigorous as it is sometimes depicted. Latour opened up the discussion of this insight when he, more or less polemically, insisted that ‘we have never been moderns’.17 More recent debates about the Anthropocene make this insight clearer and more important 12

Power in the Anthropocene than ever before: there is no longer any culture that is not also nature – and vice versa! Clearly, these considerations do not mean that the discussion of the Anthropocene is without internal conflict or that it is impossible to arrive at different understandings of the concept of power, even among those subscribing to the overall thesis regarding the changes in the underlying context. Given the rich discussions about the concept in both the natural sciences and the humanities and social sciences, we may speak of three interpretations, each with its own understanding of the Anthropocene and its significance for power and governance.18 Mapping how each of these interpretations invoke the Anthropocene as a concept and as a diagnosis is an important step in clarifying what it means to rethink the analysis of power. The first is the ‘dystopian’ interpretation, which does not consider it possible to solve the climate crisis, but instead insists that the best that societies across the globe can do is to prepare ethically as well as politically for the impending mass extinction event. The dystopian interpretation is most prevalent within the literary and aesthetics communities, where an interest in doomsday and the apocalypse has provoked a series of artistic interventions addressing a more generalised fear of extinction.19 A particularly significant highpoint in this history is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), which tells the story of a father and his son who travel on foot across the United States some years after an unspecified mass extinction event. More recently, the dystopian outlook informs TV series such as The Rain (2018–20) and films such as Don’t Look Up (2021). Both centre on the life-threatening conditions provoked by anthropogenic climate change and the Anthropocene more generally. And both draw a conclusion that seems inevitable given the magnitude of 13

Power in the Anthropocene climate change: rather than saving human life from itself, it is better to let go, acknowledging that the pretence of being the saviour of the Earth is contrary to what is both possible and desirable. The second interpretation is the ‘eco-modernist’ interpretation (aka the ‘Promethean’ interpretation). This considers humankind as rational and capable of solving the climate crisis by using new technological inventions. The eco-modernist interpretation is strong in the policy world, especially in the Global North, and (among other things) it informs the promotion of carbon capture storage and geo-engineering. Its stated goal, as expressed in the ‘Eco-modernist Manifesto’,20 written and signed by eighteen prominent scientists and policymakers located mainly in the United States, is to advance a new kind of geo-engineering that can secure a complete ‘decoupling’ of human society and the natural environment. Such a decoupling would protect natural resources from further exploitation but would also require new food and energy technologies that still have not been invented. Still, the eco-modernist interpretation has attracted a great deal of attention, especially from some of the staunchest defenders of the Anthropocene thesis, including, most notably, Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer. According to Crutzen, the Anthropocene should lead to ‘vastly improved technology and management, wise use of Earth’s resources, control of human and domestic animal population, and overall careful manipulation and restoration of the natural environment’.21 The result would be what some name the ‘good Anthropocene’.22 Contrasting with these two interpretations is the ‘Gaia’ interpretation, which criticises the current exploitation of nature while emphasising the need to create new life forms across 14

Power in the Anthropocene and beyond existing human/non-human entanglements. The Gaia interpretation draws on the ancient myth of Gaia as the vengeful Mother Earth, who came from chaos, gave birth to life, but later began punishing her children – the Titans – for their misdeeds and shortsightedness. The link between this story and the Anthropocene follows many of the insights highlighted by Stengers and Hamilton – indeed, Stengers is one of the main architects of this link – and it precludes an overly optimistic/ pessimistic account of the Anthropocene. Rather than seeing the new climate reality as tending in one direction only, the Gaia interpretation excavates existing entanglements of human/ non-human life in order not only to counter the ongoing exploitation of the planet’s natural resources, but also to empower ecological coexistence and sustainable living. The latter might include seeing non-human entities as political actors with an equal right to participate in the decision-making process. One of the particularly tricky challenges facing any discussion of the Anthropocene is how to navigate between these interpretations. While all should obviously have their place and time in the analysis – if for no other reason than because they inform and define public debate as well as contemporary scholarship – it is equally clear that their divergent epistemological-ontological outlooks at some point will force us to choose between them. The Anthropocene is in that sense essentially contestable and best understood as delimiting a problematisation – a problematique, to use Foucault’s term23 – rather than providing a strict definition. With that caveat, I still believe there are good reasons for privileging the Gaia* interpretation as the most accurate when it comes to rethinking the analysis of power. My main argument, which I promote and justify throughout this book, is that the Gaia interpretation resonates most effectively with 15

Power in the Anthropocene Table 1.1  Three interpretations of the Anthropocene epoch Dystopia

Prometheus

Gaia

Starting point and worldview

The human and the non-human are entangled forces that affect each other

Only humans can shape their own reality, which is why they are superior to non-humans

The human and the non-human are entangled forces that affect each other

Conception of knowledge

Knowledge emerges at the intersection of human and nonhuman activities

Humanity’s ability to engender knowledge and progress is in principle unlimited

Knowledge emerges at the intersection of human and nonhuman activities

Politicalnormative evaluation of the Anthropocene

Pessimistic; humanity’s belief in itself neglects the non-human, which ultimately leads to the annihilation of humankind as we know it

Optimistic; technological innovations enable human progress and make it possible to control climate change

Mixed; new modes of ecological coexistence are possible but require the right conditions of life to be present

the new climate reality. For that reason, it also resonates with the need for a new kind of social science that goes beyond the idea of ​​humankind as a unique entity that stands above – and is therefore also more powerful than – animals, plants and other forms of non-human life. I recognise that this line of argumentation might seem circular and therefore provoke criticism. The above critique of geo-engineering, for example, is to a large extent driven by the account of the Anthropocene offered by the Gaia interpretation, which, as stated above, does not endorse the view that humans 16

Power in the Anthropocene can master and shape their own future independently of the non-human environment. The circularity involved in this argumentation is obvious. At the same time, however, something similar can also be said about the eco-modernist interpretation whose version of the Anthropocene derives from – and lends support to – interventions associated with geo-engineering. My own sense is therefore that some degree of circularity is an inevitable feature that arises due to the contestable nature of the Anthropocene name itself. In this situation, our first intuition should not be to privilege abstraction in order to avoid controversy; rather, we must dive right into the complicated and contested world of the Anthropocene, seeking to appreciate how it operates within specific contexts – and how it might be developed in new and sometimes unexpected directions. The above discussion has tried to do precisely that.

Three Benchmarks for a New Analysis of Power To further advance this approach in a manner that turns the social sciences’ complicity in the current climate crisis into an occasion for new insight, I propose to situate the need for a new study of power (and social and political conditions more generally) alongside a discussion of new materialist philosophy. While the contributions that arise from this discussion are developed in detail in Chapters 3 and 4, it seems appropriate now to provide an overall presentation of its underlying assumptions, including how it embraces, critically as well as affirmatively, the conditions and challenges associated with the Anthropocene climate reality of our time. In the penultimate section of this chapter, I show how we might deploy these underlying assumptions in relation 17

Power in the Anthropocene to issues such as carbon capture storage and geo-engineering more generally. Overall, new materialism brings us closer to the Anthropocene context of power because it assumes that human and non-human life spring from the same material substance – be it microscopic or planetary in scale.24 New materialism even goes so far as to say that we should place ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ in quotation marks, because the two categories are neither strictly separate nor have they any one particular meaning or essence. We might thus say that from a new materialist perspective, the human is a symbiont phenomenon that is always already non-human (and vice versa). What is more, human and non-human do not simply spring from the same material substance; no, this substance is itself a form of power, which is always in motion, creating new life forms. In the past, leading power theorists such as Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu have tried to capture this by referring to power as an ‘omnipresent’ force25 that stages the ‘social space’26 within which every action and thought takes place. The new materialist philosophy shares this view but seeks to take it a step or two further. According to new materialism, the omnipresence of power applies both to human and non-human forms of life. Whether we are talking about an assemblage of people or something non-human – be it a plant, an animal or an ocean current – there is always something moving – something that, in and through this movement, affects its surroundings and thereby causes a change in one way or another. According to new materialism, it is when we accept this basic condition of human/non-human entanglements that the analysis of power is at eye level with the forces prevailing in the Anthropocene.

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Power in the Anthropocene Clearly, extending the analysis of power in this manner hardly means a farewell to the general expectations pertaining to argumentation and language use, although it might sometimes be necessary to experiment with genre and form of production. On the one hand, it should not come as a surprise if the extension of the analysis of power also leads to new normative preferences, and that terms that we otherwise have only considered as peripherally connected with the analysis of power once again become part of the discussion. This particularly applies to ‘flow’, ‘energy’, ‘movement’ and ‘potentiality’, which have traditionally been reserved for the natural science disciplines, but which also play an important role in the analysis of power in the social sciences, especially when we accept that any sharp or otherwise categorical nature/culture divide no longer applies. On the other hand, this shift in meaning does not mean that there can be no requirements regarding the clarification of concepts, interpretation and use of data, all of which form an important part of a proper and transparent form of argumentation. This also applies to new materialism, which might well criticise many of the existing approaches and methods in the social sciences, but which also insists on being part of a more general conversation about society, broadly understood. One of the places where this approach becomes particularly relevant concerns the finer details in advancing an analysis of power that goes beyond the nature/culture divide – and, by extension, the human/non-human divide. Might not such a move overlook how humans, after all, are more responsive to power than non-humans? Might it not disregard that a human responds differently to power than, say, a polar bear or an ocean current? While current efforts in environmental political theory indicate that this indeed is the case, with prominent scholars 19

Power in the Anthropocene such as Robyn Eckersley and John Dryzek emphasising that humans ‘may well be the only agents capable of activating the cognitive processes necessary for [ecological] reflexivity’,27 new materialism cautions against such a rush to judgement. On the one hand, the emphasis on responsiveness and reflexivity distracts attention away from how humans, too, are sentient beings who, through their entanglements with non-human modes of life, are subject to forces and powers beyond intellectual control. On the other hand, the notion that humans are unique due to their ability to respond flies in the face of evidence suggesting that non-humans – whether animals28 or plants29 – are also responsive to the forces and powers that subsist within their distinct environments. Together, these insights suggest a more nuanced position that acknowledges power differentials – both in relation to distribution and in relation to responsiveness – but also insists on placing this differentiation across the distinction between culture and nature, human and non-human. To clarify the terms for the ensuing conversation, I propose three benchmarks that, together, set the agenda for the issues to be addressed before we can say that a new materialist rethinking of the analysis of power has been achieved. Apart from resonating with debates in environmental political theory, the benchmarks track – and, indeed, are inspired by – debates in ecofeminism and postcolonial theory (as already indicated). Moreover, while it is obviously still too early to say anything about whether this analysis is actually successful, it is in relation to these benchmarks that the new materialist philosophy’s many interventions must be discussed and evaluated. Break the sociocentric bias and make room for the non-human! The first benchmark involves a confrontation with the notion that the analysis of power in the social sciences should only 20

Power in the Anthropocene relate to what happens within the framework of purely human sociopolitical life; that to which I refer in Chapter 2, and as inspired by American political theorist William E. Connolly, as the ‘sociocentric bias’.*30 In addition to the examples already given, the confrontation with the sociocentric bias might be associated with, for example, a bacterial culture that has a contagious effect on a person’s mood and thoughts,31 or a butterfly creating the conditions for a distant tornado that subsequently inflicts catastrophic damage on thousands of people.32 What these and many other examples have in common is that the non-human world operates on multiple levels, and we can only see its significance for societal change more generally when we disregard the assumption that power is reserved for one particular kind of actor. In short, by displacing the human as superior to everything else, we begin to notice how dependent society is on its environment and its multifarious set of actors and forces, however invisible they might seem. While this dimension might seem difficult to embrace analytically speaking, new materialism posits it to be a necessary first step. Without an openness to ‘who’ has power, we risk cutting ourselves off from large parts of what a study of power must be expected to uncover in relation to the climate crisis and the Anthropocene more generally. Power is more than domination! The second benchmark concerns the question of what it means to ‘have’ power. On the one hand, there is the traditional understanding, in which power represents a relationship of domination between two actors – where one enforces their will regardless of the consequences for the other. We can call this ‘power-over’ and at the same time note that this power is probably the most recognisable, especially because it is often associated with state authority and other forms of dominance and repression. But we cannot 21

Power in the Anthropocene stop our analysis there, as there is another kind of power that is at least as important. Throughout this book, I refer to this as ‘power-to’; that is, the power that enables an actor to perform a certain action, whether it is on the individual level, in society, and/or in relation to nature more generally – and which in this manner renders the exercise of power something constructive and dynamic.33 Although power-to might not be as recognisable as power-over, according to new materialism it plays a particularly important role in the Anthropocene, where it is not always clear who dominates whom, and where the human/non-human entanglements always already imply an often explosive process of change. As we have already seen, this applies particularly to global climate change and the related domino effects. Within even the most repressive forms of power rests another kind of power that works with and against the desire for a more sustainable world. To uncover these tensions and possibilities is, ceteris paribus, a crucial dimension of an analysis of power that wants to be relevant for society writ large. Power and criticism are prerequisites for one another! The final benchmark concerns the relationship between power and criticism. Traditionally, this relationship has been viewed as contradictory: while the critic’s focus should be on scrutinizing the exercise of power, they must also appear detached from it.34 Without such separation, the argument goes, it is impossible to create universal and neutral knowledge that can push society in the right direction. The problem with this approach, however, is that it completely overlooks how knowledge about society is created in the interplay between a diverse group of actors, all of whom are helping to shape historical development, and are thus part of what Foucault calls ‘the multiple and mobile field of force relations’.35 This connection does not mean that criticism 22

Power in the Anthropocene is a logical impossibility, but rather that criticism is a form of power unto itself – one that works with and against the power relations at play at any given time. In other words, critics (and the knowledge created through their activities) are also actors who shape their surroundings and who, in this way, are part of the overall exercise of power in a given society. As we shall see in Chapters 5 and 6, a better understanding of this relationship is absolutely essential if we are to assess whether changes in the relationship between humans and non-humans are always ‘bad’ in some way, or whether some (but not others) may in fact be a condition for the progressive and sustainable evolution of society. Together, these three benchmarks form the basis of the new materialist expansion of the analysis of power. Apart from being valuable in its own right, adding insight to kindred efforts in environmental political theory, ecofeminism, postcolonial theory and other related fields, this expansion also aligns with what the literature refers to as an ‘essentially contested concept’.36 Behind this term lies an assumption that political concepts have no fixed definition because they describe an internal, complex practice that can be applied in different ways and which always involves a normative assessment of the conditions in question. This c­haracterisation is rather appropriate for the concept of power and, therefore, it is no coincidence (nor an expression of intellectual laziness!) that it is not possible to provide a simple and uncontroversial definition of power. New materialism’s expansive account of power recognises this, and at the same time it emphasises how the accompanying contestation can be a strength, because it in itself contributes to the continued development of the social sciences. To put it slightly rhetorically: given the absence of a neutral rallying point, is it not obvious 23

Power in the Anthropocene that all analyses always lead to new knowledge about the definition and meaning of the concept of power?

What Difference Does it Make? Regardless of how one might answer this question, I contend that the possibilities for an adequate analysis of power relations in the Anthropocene, with all its multifarious and conflictual dimensions, are far greater if we apply a new materialist approach to the social sciences, broadly understood. I present the theoretical and methodological justifications for this argument in the five main chapters of this book. To set the tone – and to illustrate how new materialism generates new insight – I conclude this introductory chapter by returning to our starting point: the Ritzau news release and the proposal to fund carbon capture storage and geo-engineering more generally. What exactly does a new materialist analysis allow us to see that we cannot see – though we should be able to – if we do not break with the existing social science framework? Obviously, it is not as though existing analyses of power have nothing to say about carbon capture storage and geo-­ engineering; but as we shall see in Chapter 2, the point is that the knowledge that they invite does not place the problems surrounding the proposal in relation to the kind of entangled interaction I outlined earlier in this chapter. To illustrate, consider these three chains of events linked to carbon capture storage and geo-engineering initiatives: 1) an embedded incentive to maintain or increase current levels of economic growth, which drives up the demand for natural resources, creating new disequilibria in other parts of the Earth’s ecosystems; 2) the need 24

Power in the Anthropocene for buildings and infrastructure, which takes up space needed for either sustainable energy facilities or regenerative agriculture, precluding efforts to secure biodiversity while also increasing the levels of natural CO2 absorption; and 3) limited engagement with the broader public, which not only disassociates them from the experience of climate change but also lowers the desire to change behaviour, amplifying the effects of human activity on everything from the Greenland ice cap to bat life in Asia and rising sea levels in the Pacific. These examples are all associated with different forms of human activity, clearly, but their consequences, including droughts, wildfires and flooding, also reveal how the climatic domino effects transcend this activity, creating a complex circuit of entanglements, interdependencies and mutual – but often asymmetrical – influences. The uneven distribution of effects, which, as we know from both feminist theory and postcolonial analyses, results in marginalised groups typically bearing the burdens of climate change, is an important reason for including this expanded complexity as a crucial element in any up-to-date analysis of power. There is quite simply so much more at stake than what the social sciences usually emphasise in their analyses. The new materialist analysis of power addresses this point through a critical engagement with that which I have referred to above as the sociocentric bias of the social sciences, drawing on not only philosophical arguments but also situated knowledges, including ecofeminism, Indigenous scholarship and postcolonial interventions. Generally speaking, it is a matter of avoiding a division of labour between the natural and social sciences (and the humanities, for that matter) in order to show how both embodied experience and the non-human world have significant bearings on the distribution of power in the 25

Power in the Anthropocene Anthropocene. New materialism reveals how this might be the case by working ‘radically empirically’,* meaning that we partly foreground human/non-human entanglements as the basis for our analysis, and partly follow the movement in these entanglements across different spatial and temporal scales (see Chapter 4 for more details). In relation to the Ritzau news release, this approach allows us to expand the analysis of power so that it avoids a narrow focus on a subset of human actors – whether they be researchers contributing new knowledge or ministers and politicians, who react more or less proactively to this knowledge. While the new materialist analysis of power does not underestimate the importance of these actors, it places them in a broader perspective, where there is room for the inclusion of embodied experiences as well as ecological issues related to permafrost, deforestation, ocean currents, species migration and so on. If we approach carbon capture storage and geo-engineering in this manner, four new insights come to the fore. First, the calculations used to justify carbon capture storage and geoengineering are highly uncertain due to the complexity of the ecosystems with which they interact. There is quite simply no way of knowing if the technologies will deliver the promised reductions in CO2 emissions – and how this in turn will affect the surrounding environment. Second, even if carbon capture storage and geo-engineering do deliver on their promise, at least in terms of specific CO2 emission reductions, this will not create the behavioural changes needed to secure a sustainable future for all. As long as the fight against increased CO2 levels focuses on how to circumvent the effects of emissions – but does not target their original point of production – the demand for unsustainable products will most likely persist, adding to 26

Power in the Anthropocene the already existing problems of exploitation, consumption and waste. Third, the technologies’ underlying image of nature as a machine, subject to control and mastery, produces a normative deficit in relation  to both local communities and the morethan-human world. To care for our entanglements with the non-human world, we need to both undo the image of humans as superior and acknowledge the agency and interests embedded in the many other species living in the world. Sadly, carbon capture storage and geo-engineering do none of that! Fourth, the political organisation and governance model required for carbon capture storage and geo-engineering does not acknowledge the need for local empowerment and participation, but instead veers towards placing decision-making power in the hands of a few select technocrats. The result will most likely be a lack of legitimacy and representation of all affected interests. The last point may be worth expanding as it underscores how the new materialist analysis of power entails a fundamental commitment to democracy and democratisation. Instead of controlling or delimiting power, new materialism encourages us to ‘enter into’ power immanently so as to be able to map its potentiality across all levels of society. Hence, the embrace of power-to applies to analyses of historical events, economic structures, atmospheric disturbances, microbiological explosions, ecological mutations and so on. By highlighting the symbiont human/non-human entanglements in these events and phenomena, new materialism displaces the notion that the climate is a machine that can be controlled like any other machine, a claim that not coincidentally is linked to the history of colonialism and its suppression of Indigenous people.37 Alongside a critique of this history, new materialism works to release the generative energies that hide in the very same entanglements 27

Power in the Anthropocene that colonialism and modernity more generally have worked so hard to erase; for example, local species protection practices that have been overlooked or suppressed by national governments; changing forestry conditions that create new communities across national borders; the extended life of things that emerges through new patterns of sustainable economic circulation; or regenerative agricultural practices that open up new forms of biodiversity.38 What these (and many other) examples share is an interest in combining local concerns with global structures through a radical democratisation of all political decision-making processes. New materialism sees the latter as a crucial aspect of the analysis of power, and it thus supports the formation of new political alliances, which not only recognise the importance of the more-than-human for the maintenance of life, but also embrace human/non-human entanglements as part of a normative stance worth protecting and, when relevant, amplifying in this or that direction. Overall, we can thus say that new materialism’s expanded analysis of power is characterised by a number of analytical as well as political advantages, all of which emphasise the need to break with the existing social science framework. How this is carried out more precisely is the subject of the next five chapters. The basic wager, however, should be clear by now: if we, as social scientists and as engaged citizens, fail to expand the analysis of power, we risk being left with a result that is incomplete at best, but which at worst is unable to counteract the many existing problems associated with some of the greatest challenges of our time. The goal is to rescue the social sciences from this impasse – and to do so in the name of a truly sustainable future for all, humans and non-humans alike.

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Power in the Anthropocene The Structure of this Book Chapter 2, ‘The Sociality of Power’, lays the first cornerstone for this project through a mapping of some of the most important approaches to power currently on offer. The chapter begins with the classic division of power analysis into three levels: ‘direct power’, ‘indirect power’ and ‘structural power’. It explains the history behind this threefold division, and at the same time shows how the division is characterised by a sociocentrism that reserves the exercise of power to the human part of the world – and that therefore does not capture all of the levels and aspects that must be included in a comprehensive analysis of the manifold power practices in the Anthropocene. To expand on this problem, the chapter then turns to three recent contributions in contemporary social sciences: ‘discursive power’, ‘noumenal power’ and ‘social capital power’. It uses these contributions to continue the mapping of the analyses of power in the social sciences, and to emphasise the limitations of not extending power analyses to the non-human part of the world. Finally, the chapter discusses the consequences of this argument in order to show how breaking the sociocentric bias not only ensures a contemporary analysis of the power relations of the Anthropocene, but also leads to a new self-understanding among the many disciplines of the social sciences. Chapter 3, ‘The Materiality of Power’, follows in the footsteps of this argument and shows how, drawing on new materialist philosophy, we can expand the analysis of power in both breadth and depth. The chapter starts with the traditional notions of materiality, including René Descartes’ mechanical materialism and Karl Marx’s historical materialism. It emphasises the value of these approaches but juxtaposes them with contributions 29

Power in the Anthropocene from four prominent social theorists, all of whom have helped to develop the new materialist perspective: Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway (the latter features primarily in Chapter 4 but is also important to the argument in Chapter  3). These four theorists are included to provide a more precise explanation of how non-human materiality can be said to have power without setting aside the power associated with the more human part of the world. The chapter addresses both aspects by further developing the central new materialist idea regarding the inherent power of things, which is used to illustrate four modes of power in the Anthropocene. Finally, the chapter sets out three theses, which together constitute the new materialist bid for a contemporary analysis of power, laying the groundwork for the subsequent discussions of the methodological and normative implications of new materialism. Chapter 4, ‘The Methods of Power’, translates the theoretical considerations from Chapter 3 into a more concrete analysis of power in the Anthropocene. The starting point for this experiment is a discussion of the new materialist methodological approach, which might be difficult to formulate but can nevertheless be said to involve five rules of thumb, all of which emphasise the importance of following the movements of the context in order to cultivate diversity and built-in possibilities for change and pluralisation. To illustrate what this means more precisely, the chapter introduces four cases, each of which helps to show what it means to analyse power in a new materialist manner. The four cases are: 1) the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, 2) regenerative agriculture, 3) electricity on Samsø and the US east coast, and 4) the #MeToo movement, which started in 2017 and continues to this day to varying degrees in different contexts. The four cases are selected to show how a new 30

Power in the Anthropocene materialist analysis of power can be designed, and thus help to emphasise the scope of (and possibilities for) making non-human power a fixed part of the social science toolbox. Chapter 5, ‘The Organisation of Power’, elaborates the political consequences of the expanded analysis of power, especially in relation to the opportunity for a continued democratisation of the Anthropocene. This discussion starts with two overlapping (but also very different) analyses of power that Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza contributed in the seventeenth century. While these analyses might seem old-fashioned, they are crucial to the contemporary understanding of power, especially because they help to highlight the connection between the definition of the concept of power and the understanding of the proper organisation of society. Where Hobbes’s definition calls for an authoritarian form of government, Spinoza’s points in the direction of what I, with reference to more recent democracy theory, call the ‘politics of swarming’.* In addition to a justification of this idea, the debate between the two seventeenth-century philosophers also shows how power is characterised by two opposing tendencies: partly a dominant force that binds its subjects to one particular understanding of reality, and partly a liberating force that not only allows criticism but also upheaval of the prevailing power relations in society. The chapter connects this difference with the contemporary debate on the relationship between the human and non-human worlds, thereby contributing to a new understanding of how power works, and how it can and should be analysed in the context of the social sciences. Chapter 6, ‘Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene’, presents the conclusions of the book. In addition to collating key points from the previous five chapters, the chapter focuses on the need for a critical analysis of power that involves the human/ 31

Power in the Anthropocene non-human entanglements. It expands this idea by showing how criticism in the Anthropocene implies a sense of care and stewardship. While this care breaks with the idea of value neutrality, it helps at the same time to bring the social sciences even closer to the processes of change underlying the climate crisis. To elaborate on the importance of this point, I compare new materialism with a competing approach to the study of power: eco-Marxism. The comparison helps to emphasise the forces and analytical relevance of new materialism, which in turn helps to highlight the basic point of this book: that the analysis of power must be expanded in both breadth and depth if we want to contribute with an analysis that counteracts the many challenges with which the climate crisis is confronting us, both as researchers and as politically engaged citizens. Notes   1 Danmarks Radio, ‘Dominoeffekt kan få klimaet til at gå amok.’  2 Simon, ‘EU Sets World’s First Target for Underground CO2 Storage Capacity’.  3 IPCC, IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage; see also IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5°C: IPCC Special Report on Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-Industrial Levels in Context of Strengthening Response to Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty.   4 Global CSS Institute, Global Status of CSS: Scaling Up through 2030.   5 Kelemen et al., ‘An Overview of the Status and Challenges of CO2 Storage in Minerals and Geological Formations’.  6 Latour, Down to Earth.  7 Stengers, In Catastrophic Times, 46.  8 Hamilton, Defiant Earth, vii.   9 Crutzen and Stoermer, ‘The Anthropocene’. See also Cellabos, ‘Biological Annihilation via the Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and Declines’; Hamilton et al., The Anthropocene and

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Power in the Anthropocene the Global Environment Crisis; Raffnsøe, Philosophy of the Anthropocene; Swanson et al., ‘Less Than One, But More than Many’. The context for this designation is the geological timescale, which consists of four gradually more comprehensive levels: epoch, period, era and eon. The Anthropocene is thus part of the Quaternary Period, which is a part of the Phaneroziocum Eon, which in itself consists of two eras: the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Cenozoic. As noted in the Preface, there is a great deal of disagreement in the geoscience community about how and when to date the transition from the previous era (the Holocene) to the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene working group under the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, itself a component body of the International Commission on Stratigraphy, has suggested 1952 as the beginning of the Anthropocene (McCarthy et al., ‘The Varved Succession of Crawford Lake, Milton, Ontario, Canada as a Candidate Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the Anthropocene series’). At a s­ubsequent  – and much contested  – vote, a 12 to 4 majority of the Subcommission rejected this proposal due to disagreement about the evidence collected for the purposes of identifying the beginning of the epoch with such precision (Witze, ‘Geologists Reject the Anthropocene as Earth’s New Epoch’). Still, as noted in the Preface, most geologists and climate scientists agree that the relation between human and non-human activities has changed, and that this change has deep and long-term implications for the future of the planet. Hence, for the purposes of this book’s discussion, I do not see the recent vote as decisive for the thesis that we must rethink the concept (and study) of power, and that the Anthropocene, however contested, can be a helpful point of reference in this endeavour. 10 Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction; Saltre and Bradshaw, ‘What is a “Mass Extinction Event”?’. 11 See Mies and Shiva, Ecofeminism, for a now classic statement of this insight. 12 See, inter alia, Chakrabarty, ‘Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change’. 13 Malm, Fossil Capitalism; Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan. 14 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 31, 134 n. 4. 15 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 31. 16 I elaborate on this account in Chapter 3 with the idea that the Anthropocene entails a ‘plus-minus game’. 17 Latour, We Have Never Been Modern. 18 Tønder, ‘Det antropocæne’; Ejsing, ‘The Arrival of the Anthropocene in Social Theory’; Swanson et al., ‘Less Than One, But More than Many’.

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Power in the Anthropocene In addition to the following three interpretations, there is, strictly speaking, also a fourth – the ‘eco-Marxist’ interpretation – which aims to replace Anthropocene with a narrower focus on capitalism and its significance for the climate crisis. Since this approach speaks to this book’s perspective on the climate crisis, I discuss it in more detail in Chapter 6. 19 But see also Grove, ‘Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Everything’. 20 Asafu-Adjaye et al., ‘An Ecomodernist Manifesto’. 21 Crutzen, ‘The “Anthropocene”’, 17. 22 See, inter alia, Bennett et al., ‘Bright Spots’. 23 Foucault, ‘Polemics, Politics and Problematizations’. 24 The following is based on previous publications; see especially Tønder, Tolerance; Tønder, ‘Five Theses for Political Theory in the Anthropocene’; and Ejsing and Tønder, ‘Enriching Discourse Theory’. 25 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 98. 26 Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, 15. 27 Dryzek and Pickering, The Politics of the Anthropocene, 35; see also Eckersley, ‘Ecological Democracy and the Rise and Decline of Liberal Democracy’, 220. 28 Wall, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? 29 Simard, Finding the Mother Tree. 30 Connolly, Facing the Planetary, 15. 31 Cryan and Dinan, ‘Mind-altering Microorganisms’. 32 Lorenz, ‘Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow’; Kauffman, ‘At Home in the Universe’. 33 The distinction between power-over and power-to corresponds roughly to the Latin distinction between potestas and potentia. I return to this ­distinction in Chapter 2. 34 This view dates back to ancient Greece, where Socrates opposed anyone who claimed a position based on power. This view is also present in the European Enlightenment, where especially Immanuel Kant promoted an understanding of morality based on a detached rather than integral c­ ritique of power. 35 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 102. 36 Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, ch. 3. 37 See, inter alia, McClellan and Regourd, ‘The Colonial Machine’. 38 I return to these examples in Chapters 4 and 5.

34

2

The Sociality of Power

Power and the Social Sciences The purpose of this chapter is to map the assumptions underlying six of the most prominent social science approaches to the study of power. As shorthand, I will refer to the six approaches as ‘direct power’, ‘indirect power’, ‘structural power’, ‘discursive power’, ‘noumenal power’ and ‘social capital power’. Although a mapping such as the one undertaken here might seem like a detour in relation to an engagement with the climate crisis, it serves to reveal how the analyses of power are all characterised by a sociocentric bias that precludes the inclusion of the nonhuman world – and thus occludes or even obstructs an analysis of the many social and political challenges with which the Anthropocene presents us. Sociocentrism is in that sense the issue that needs to be uprooted before the analysis of power can fulfil its purpose of being both critical and forward-looking. Indeed, as we shall see, sociocentrism is so embedded in the social sciences’ self-understanding that it not only applies to the analysis of power in isolation, but also characterises the field as a whole. The work associated with elaborating on a new study of power thus implies a rethinking of the institutions and traditions 35

Power in the Anthropocene on which large parts of our contemporary knowledge of politics and society are based. To appreciate this complex of intersecting issues and challenges, we only need to recall how difficult it is to tell the history of the social sciences without also including the various stages in the evolution of the study of power. Both trajectories can be traced back to ancient Greece, where conflicts between Athens and the other Greek city-states necessitated a new language for how to understand power. This language was often understood in the context of terms such as ‘movement’, ‘energy’ and ‘potentiality’, which indicate an appreciation for how power is part of a larger semantic field in which both humans and nonhumans play an active role.1 This appreciation survived well into the Middle Ages when existing discourses were expanded and supplemented with the Latin distinction between potestas and potentia – or what I referred to in Chapter 1 as, respectively, power-over and power-to. Together, these overlapping terms and distinctions provided a rich field for understanding and analysing power. In some cases, humans would seem to be the most powerful agent, whereas in other cases it would be non-humans that embodied an empowering but also fear-inducing power – as in the case of the sea monster Leviathan that first appeared in the Book of Job and later became central to Thomas Hobbes’s reflections on power and authority.2 All this began to change, however, with the modern breakthrough and its promotion of a division of labour between the sciences, with the natural sciences leading the way. Closely related to the nineteenth-century desire to study society and social dynamics in the same manner as the natural sciences had started to study biology, geometry, mathematics and medicine a few centuries earlier, the study of power became a kind of litmus 36

The Sociality of Power test for the knowledge that could justify the entry of the social sciences into the halls of academia. The rationale was roughly as follows: in order to be recognised as a full member of academia, the social sciences had to identify a number of empirical and conceptual issues and problems that were not already covered by the other sciences, but that could nevertheless be analysed in a manner that would meet the expectations of universal knowledge and value-neutral rationality. For many, the study of power became an effective way to meet those expectations. A good example of this trajectory is found in the definition of power by the German sociologist Max Weber (1864‒1920): ‘the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests’.3 Weber himself was no positivist in the strictly natural scientific sense, but his definition is nevertheless a testament to the desire for a new form of science; that which Weber himself referred to as Verstehen.4 For the purposes of this book’s discussion, it is particularly interesting to note how Weber limits power to the individual level, which subsequently enables him to equate it with a will expressed in and through a domination-based relationship. Notice furthermore how, even though the content of this power-over is relatively open in Weber’s definition, the focus is solely on the social and/or human part of the world. This exclusion means that we should not only highlight Weber as crucial to the emergence of the social sciences. Moreover, we must regard him as an important founder of the sociocentrism that has produced much of what we know today about power, but has also, given current climate change and the associated Anthropocene context, rendered the social sciences outdated. To put it bluntly: by reserving the study of power to the purely 37

Power in the Anthropocene human, Weber helped to set an agenda that must now be matched by a rethinking of not just the analysis of power but also the entire social science tradition. As mentioned above, the purpose of this chapter is to deepen and substantiate this argument through a mapping of the social science research that followed in the wake of Weber’s contribution to the study of power. The first main section reviews differences and similarities among the first three of the above six power analyses: ‘direct power’, ‘indirect power’ and ‘structural power’ (also sometimes called ‘ideological’ or ‘consciousnesscontrolling power’). The second section addresses the other three analyses of power – ‘discursive power’, ‘noumenal power’ and ‘social capital power’ – and it shows how these analyses, while critical of the previous three, maintain that power is for humans alone. The third and final section expands on the critique of this sociocentric bias in order to reiterate the need to rethink power and its underlying assumptions about the social sciences.

The Three Traditional Power Analyses For the past thirty years it has been common to present the debate between the first three analyses of power as a set of concentric circles (or ‘faces’) within which specific analyses of social and political relations can be unfolded. This way of delimiting the discussion stems to a large extent from postWWII debates about economic growth, social mobility and democratic influence, which in the social sciences created significant disagreements about how extensive the analysis of power ought to be, and whether it should focus exclusively on 38

The Sociality of Power Direct power

Indirect power

Ideological-structural power

Figure 2.1  Concentric circles in the traditional debate on power

purely observable conditions or should also include ideologies and other less observable social structures. Mapping the differences prompted by these disagreements is surely a crucial part of understanding how the study of power has morphed into what it is today. Alongside disagreement about the specifics of the study of power, another important debate percolated in the background: the debate about what should count as ‘good’ social science research. Whereas post-WWII proponents of ‘direct power’ tended to promote a value-neutral social science based on the empirical investigation of specific cases, proponents of ‘indirect’ and ‘ideological-structural’ power called for a more socially critical approach, and, as a consequence, they sought to broaden the analysis to capture as many factors as possible (even if this would compromise the precision of the empirical analysis in some cases). These disagreements are at least as 39

Power in the Anthropocene important as the first set of disagreements, and together they provide unique insight into the history behind the sociocentric bias of the social sciences. To capture the full story, the following mapping focuses on the quantitative differences of the three power analyses – that is, how many actors should be included in analysis and how – while also highlighting their underlying assumptions regarding the philosophy of science and normative thinking. Dahl and direct power The first reference point in the twentieth-century history of the study of power’s sociocentric bias is American political scientist Robert A. Dahl’s article ‘The Concept of Power’, published in Behavioral Science in 1957. That the article was published in this journal is in itself a good indication of the assumptions behind Dahl’s contribution, including its implied sociocentrism. When the article was published, Dahl was part of the so-called behavioural wave that washed over the social sciences in the mid-twentieth century.5 The revolution was broadly aimed at creating more objective knowledge through empirical studies of observable behaviour in relation to issues such as voter turnout and membership of political organisations. Dahl uses this starting point to promote a new definition of power. He builds on Weber’s original definition of power-over but adds a greater emphasis on explanation and observable behaviour, particularly among humans. The result is what we now refer to as ‘direct power’, which Dahl defines as follows: ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.’6

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The Sociality of Power Direct power: Robert A. Dahl Definition: An observable form of power in which one actor causes another actor to do something they otherwise would not have done. Robert A. Dahl (1915‒2014) was an American political scientist who contributed to the development of a pluralistic understanding of politics, including the distribution of power in society. His main thesis was that power should be more or less evenly distributed between groups in society, and that this can best be achieved in a liberal representative democracy, which he also called a ‘polyarchy’. He is best known for his books Who Governs? (1961) and Democracy and Its Critics (1989). The human–centred nature of this definition makes its mark, among other places, in relation to Dahl’s critique of sociologist C. Wright Mills, who, in the period before Dahl’s 1957 article, had created a great furore with his thesis that the majority of the American population was subject to a conspiratorial power elite that exercised its influence through ideology and other forms of consciousness-controlling power.7 Although Dahl shares Wright Mills’s concern about this kind of domination, he believes that such a thesis should only be accepted if supported by empirical analysis. To test (and ultimately reject) Wright Mills’s conclusions, Dahl therefore examines the power relations in the city in which he himself lived: New Haven, Connecticut. Notice that even though these relations, in principle, could include humans as well as non-humans, for Dahl it is only the former that rise to the level of explicit attention. More specifically, Dahl analyses 41

Power in the Anthropocene three parts of the city’s political system – nominating candidates for political parties, urban planning, and the public education system – and concludes that even though there is a relatively small group of individuals in the city who have a disproportionate impact on the political decision-making process, it is rarely the same people who decide, and much depends on who has the time and interest to participate in the decision-making process.8 Hence, contrary to Wright Mills’s original claim, but still in accordance with the underlying sociocentrism, there is not one but many power elites, all of whom attempt to assert their influence at different times in relation to different topics and issues. To combine these considerations into a more systematic theory, Dahl develops the idea of a ‘polyarchy’, by which he means a form of government that, like the New Haven city government, is characterised by a number of competing centres of power, which are neither fully open nor totally closed.9 The point of polyarchal democracy is, in the first instance, to present an analysis of the organisation of power that can be used in comparisons with other forms of government, such as dictatorship or aristocracy. Gradually, however, the idea of polyarchal democracy also develops into a normative ideal, which can be used to assess any society on the basis of a number of criteria, including freedom of the press and assembly, as well as fair and equal elections. The better a society scores in relation to these criteria, the more democratic such a society can be said to be. Dahl acknowledges that the polyarchal form of government is not always completely democratic, and that there might therefore be places where it would be necessary to reform this kind of government.10 According to Dahl, however, this should not preclude us from concluding that polyarchy is generally the most realistic and the most desirable form of government in 42

The Sociality of Power a complex world characterised by many actors and competing interests. Whether this is true is unimportant for this chapter’s discussion (I return to the topic in Chapter 5). More interestingly, Dahl’s interest in polyarchal democracy helps to emphasise how analyses of power in general are associated with numerous assumptions about valid knowledge as well as a broader normative analysis of society and its possible forms of government. Broadly speaking: if one accepts behaviourism’s understanding of good social s­cience – and if one therefore highlights an analysis based on direct power – then one will also tend to see society as a differentiated whole, where there are many competing centres of power, each of which consists of more or less resourceful individuals and groupings. As highlighted below, this connection between the descriptive and the normative is repeated in most other analyses of power, indicating that together with assumptions about good social science – be it sociocentric or not – follow some rather specific ideas of how society can and ought to be organised. The implications of this last point should not be underestimated. On the one hand, sociocentrism is a bias in the sense that it drives our analytical focus away from the non-human environment and instead encourages us to focus on that which appears to be exclusively human (even if on closer inspection this turns out not to be case). On the other hand, sociocentrism is also a bias in the sense that, from a normative point of view, it envisions government as something for and by humans alone (regardless of one’s preference for democracy or some other form of government). While it is too early to say with certainty what the upshot of these two conclusions might be, they point to a self-enforcing circularity in which societal challenges are 43

Power in the Anthropocene defined as an exclusively human affair, which in turn makes it imperative, analytically as well as normatively, to delimit solutions and possible interventions according to this definition and the assumptions it entails. Not only does this way of delimiting the debate overlook a host of other relevant factors and agents (as discussed in Chapter 1), it limits the care one can show for whatever lies outside the scope of human exceptionalism. To the extent that this turns out to be case, we might say that studies of power based on sociocentric assumptions are caught in a discrete yet deep-seated complicity in the Anthropocene and its ongoing and ever more problematic climate and biodiversity crises. From direct power to indirect power But I am going too fast! Before a conclusion like this can be established more firmly, we must first dive deeper into the history of the social sciences and their analyses of power. Our next reference point in this regard sets out from a critique of Dahl’s contributions but also helps to confirm what remains unsaid: that power is for humans alone, and that it is therefore not necessary to include (let alone engage with) the many human/non-human entanglements underpinning society. Rather than thematising this exclusion, the critique of Dahl focuses on the question of whether an exercise of power must be directly observable before we can say that it has had an effect – and thus whether power is not only about who is involved but also about what is made the subject of a decision. According to Dahl’s critics, the possibility of manipulating this process in favour of certain individuals or interests points to a different and more hidden power – what we have come to call ‘indirect power’. 44

The Sociality of Power Indirect power: Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz Definition: A discrete or hidden form of power in which an actor manipulates the decision-making process so that it serves the actor’s own interests. Peter Bachrach (1918‒2007) and Morton S. Baratz (1924‒98) were two American political scientists who published a series of articles in the 1960s criticising the pluralistic understanding of power for being excessively narrow and uncritical in relation to the hidden power of society. Their ‘Two Faces of Power’ remains one of the most quoted articles in the social sciences. The culmination of their collaboration was Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice (1970). Central to the development of the indirect analysis of power are the American political scientists Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, who insist on a broader definition that can accommodate what they call the ‘two faces’ of power.11 While the first face can be analysed in the manner Dahl suggests, Bachrach and Baratz believe that the ‘second face’ presupposes an uncovering of hidden processes, to which they refer as ‘indirect power’.12 In contrast to Dahl’s behaviourism, the background to this contribution is a ‘realistic’ understanding of the social sciences, which reaches all the way back to the ancient historian Thucydides (c. 460‒400 BC), for whom political conditions are primarily about the maximisation of personal self-interest. Bachrach and Baratz use this starting point to 1) uphold Dahl’s humancentred perspective but also 2) emphasise the importance of so-called non-decisions, which they define as decisions about 45

Power in the Anthropocene which actors and interests should be involved at the expense of others.13 Bachrach and Baratz particularly highlight two areas in which this type of manipulation might be present: in setting a given agenda and in implementing a given decision. In both cases, power becomes an indirect practice that cannot necessarily be seen with the naked eye, but which nevertheless helps to frame the relationship between two actors (‘A’ and ‘B’ in Dahl’s terminology). As already indicated, Bachrach and Baratz use this understanding of power to criticise Dahl’s characterisation of the United States as a polyarchal democracy marked by a high degree of pluralism.14 They argue that such a characterisation is only true of the first face of power; as soon as the analysis widens its focus, it becomes apparent that only the better-off will have a genuine opportunity to influence decisions. Bachrach and Baratz follow in the footsteps of another American political scientist, Elmer Eric Schattschneider (1892‒1971), who, a few years before they published their own article, criticised Dahl for not acknowledging the role of the upper class: ‘The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the choir sings with a strong upperclass accent.’15 However, this comment is not intended as a return to Wright Mills’s conspiracy theory, implying instead a proposal for a ‘socialisation’ of political conflicts, understood as an attempt to limit indirect power by giving greater opportunity to influence the agenda and its subsequent implementation.16 Proposals such as this support Bachrach and Baratz’s own points, thereby helping to confirm the indirect analysis of power as a contribution that not only expands Weber’s legacy, but also makes it possible to combine the contributions of the behaviourist revolution with some of the more traditional tools from the social sciences. 46

The Sociality of Power Although this expansion of the analysis of power might immediately appear to represent a sensible contribution to analyses of modern democratic society, there is still something that rings false, and that in fact helps to sediment the sociocentric bias already present in Dahl’s direct power analysis. For what does it mean to socialise a political conflict? Who decides whether a topic can become the subject of public debate? And how do you ensure that it is the real conflicts (not just those that seem uncontroversial to those in power) that become the subject of socialisation? For many of those reading Bachrach and Baratz, these questions can only be answered if we address two points that remain unresolved in the indirect analysis of power: the question of latent conflicts and the relationship between objective and subjective interests. Since both points of criticism are important for the next steps in our mapping efforts, I introduce them briefly here before turning to the last of the three traditional power analyses: ideological-structural power. Notice, however, the recurrent sociocentrism in all of this. Indeed, apart from nuancing the conceptualisation of indirect power, the important point of the concerns and criticisms listed below is that none of them takes issue with the notion that power is for humans alone, and that this implies a political organisation in which human needs have priority. The problems already identified remain in that sense present throughout the discussion, adding further weight to the conclusion already suggested – that the history of the social sciences is deeply entrenched in the challenges associated with anthropogenic climate change. As just mentioned, the first critique of the indirect analysis of power relates to latent conflicts that might not be empirically observable – either directly or indirectly – but remain decisive 47

Power in the Anthropocene for the distribution of power in society. An obvious example in this context is classical capitalism, which divides the population into two groups (employers and workers) and then pretends that this division is in fact in everyone’s interest, even if the surplus accrues solely to the employer.17 To avoid this exploitation leading to resistance, classical capitalism presupposes that it is possible to suppress the fundamental conflict of interest between employer and employee. This repression can be difficult to prove but must still be said to be present. Simply put: if rent and other daily expenses are to be paid, the employee must go to work, even if doing so means that they must submit to an exploitative relationship. For critics of Bachrach and Baratz, this is an issue that indirect power analysis cannot capture, as the analysis does not relate to the underlying ideological-structural conditions that simultaneously enable and render invisible the power relationship between worker and employer. As the critics ask, how can a study of power be said to be complete if it does not include this omnipresent aspect? The second point of criticism around which discussions have centred in the aftermath of Bachrach and Baratz’s article concerns the definition of the conditions that must be present before we can talk about a conflict of interest – and thus also a relationship of power. More specifically: must an interest be recognised explicitly for it to be valid? Or is it possible to point to matters that the parties involved cannot themselves acknowledge, but that are nevertheless crucial to their ability to act freely? Here, too, classical capitalism provides an obvious case. A worker’s ‘subjective’ interest might well be the desire to earn enough money to be able to pay the rent and other daily expenses. Opposite this interest, however, is an ‘objective’ interest in restructuring the economy so that it is no longer an 48

The Sociality of Power exploitation-based relationship. This interest in overcoming exploitation can be difficult to observe and to acknowledge, especially for workers who are busy trying to provide food and shelter on a day-to-day basis, unless you subject the basic societal structures to close scrutiny, uncovering how and to what extent they shape the reality of both workers and employers. To make this palpable, the social sciences need a broader, more materialiststructural analysis of power than that which Bachrach and Baratz propose in their contributions to the debate. How and what this entails become clearer if we turn to the third reference point in the evolution of the analysis of power: the work of British social theorist Steven Lukes. Lukes and ideological-structural power It is genuinely difficult to overestimate Lukes’s importance to the debate in the social sciences in the years after Bachrach and Baratz launched their critique of Dahl’s analysis of power. Not only has Lukes been crucial to our understanding of the analytical shortcomings we now associate with direct and indirect power analysis; he has also been instrumental in terms of how we today understand the debate between the various analyses of power as a matter of gradually larger concentric circles. Lukes’s own contribution to this angling of the debate is the development of a third analysis of power, which he calls the ‘third dimension’ of power, and which we might refer to as ‘ideological-structural’ power.18 As we shall see, this analysis of power is a step forward, albeit without dealing in earnest with the sociocentric bias and how it implicates the social sciences in the climate and ­biodiversity crises.19

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Power in the Anthropocene Ideological-structural power: Steven Lukes Definition: A consciousness-controlling form of power that oppresses a particular group and/or social class, thereby preventing them from pursuing their real interests. Steven Lukes (b. 1941) is a British social theorist who has shaped the debate on power over the last forty-odd years. He has been particularly instrumental in further developing Marxist concepts regarding interests and consciousness, but he has also worked extensively on thinkers such as French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858‒1917). His best-known books are Power: A Radical View (1974) and Liberals and Cannibals (2003). He is a member of the British Academy. Lukes’s starting point is the analytical and normative shortcomings that characterise the previous two analyses of power. In a short book published in 1974, Lukes suggests that it is necessary to further expand the analysis of power to capture what the other two concepts could not capture; namely, a situation where ‘A affects B in a manner contrary to B’s interests.’20 What is important here is the emphasis on ‘interests’, which, according to Lukes, not only refers to the individual’s subjective interests (e.g., better pay) but also includes the real (but often repressed) interests that ensure the opportunity to think and act freely. To have an interest is in that sense not simply something one chooses; rather, it is a process that combines individual concerns with collective-structural forces.21 Such a definition naturally presupposes a different philosophy of science starting point than that which characterised the 50

The Sociality of Power previous discussions. Lukes acknowledges this and promotes a modified historical materialism that, in an attempt to continue the legacy of not only Weber but also Marx, emphasises the importance of societal structures and ideological superstructures.22 The result is a new analytical model that addresses the two questions that the previous debate between the direct and indirect concepts of power could not answer: 1) how a given conflict is socialised and 2) how it is possible to fulfil the individual’s real (or ‘objective’) interest in freedom and equality. According to Lukes, both issues require a critical perspective that goes behind observable actions in society. As Lukes puts it in his original contribution to the debate: the structural power analysis ‘maintains that people’s wants may be a product of a system which works against their interests, and, in such cases, relates the latter to what they would want and prefer, were they able to make the choice’.23 In addition to confirming rather than uprooting the sociocentric bias embedded in the previous two approaches, it is difficult to avoid viewing this contribution as an expression of the fact that the power debate has now returned to its original starting point: from Dahl’s behavioural analysis of power and on to Bachrach and Baratz’s discussion of indirect power, it now seems as though we are back to an analysis reminiscent of C. Wright Mills, in that it does not take the purely observable for good, and instead views power from a distinctively critical perspective. Unlike Wright Mills, however, Lukes is concerned with supporting this critical perspective through substantiated, empirically based analyses. More specifically, Lukes envisions an analysis that will initially reveal whether, in a given situation, a conflict of interest and a relationship of power can actually be identified, where one actor (A) dominates another actor (B) 51

Power in the Anthropocene in a way that is not in the interest of the latter.24 According to Lukes, such domination is not always limited to direct coercion or physical pressure, as it can also arise through various forms of manipulation, where an actor is mistakenly led to believe that a given development is in their own (subjective) interest. In all three cases, according to Lukes, there will be a relationship of authority, which must be demonstrated through specific structural analyses combined with a study of behavioural patterns and their underlying ideologies.25 Although the result of such a study will not necessarily be different from Wright Mills’s, it is nevertheless more valid, as it refers to an actual empirical analysis rather than a more personal narrative of social and political conditions in a given society.26 Similarities and differences We have now reached a point in our mapping of the history of the analysis of power where it is appropriate to pause to form a first overview of the debates leading up to the mid1970s. Apart from the internal disagreements listed below (Table 2.1), what are the basic assumptions that unite the three analyses of power and render it reasonable to compare them? The answer to this question takes us back to the sociocentric bias and how it has informed the social sciences ever since (and possibly even before) Weber introduced the idea of reserving power for humans alone. As we have now seen on numerous occasions, all three analyses confirm this delimitation of power, and thus view society as either primarily or exclusively about the human-made part of the world. In the case of Dahl, human exceptionalism appears in terms of who gets to dominate whom. In the case Bachrach and Baratz, the same delimitation 52

The Sociality of Power Table 2.1  Similarities and differences in the traditional debate on power Direct power

Indirect power

Ideologicalstructural power

Definition of power

A has power over B when A can make B do something B otherwise would not have done

A has power over B when A can define and delimit the political process to favour A’s position and interests

A has power over B when A affects B in a manner that is opposed to B’s own interests

Philosophy of science

Behaviouralpositivistic

Behavioural realism

Marxist-analytical

Empirical focal points

Observable behaviour in committees and other decisionmaking forums

Hidden conflicts that define the political agenda as well the implementation of decisions

Repression of latent conflicts, including the pursuit of real interests

Analysis of power in modern societies

Polyarchical; many competing power-elites

Elite-driven; a select group of individuals dominate the agenda as well as the implementation of decisions

Elite-driven; the societal structure represses the majority’s pursuit of its real interests

Normative implications

An equal and fair distribution of power requires open and fair elections

An equal and fair distribution of power requires ‘socialisation’ of political conflicts

An equal and fair distribution of power requires a complete restructuring of society

53

Power in the Anthropocene defines the scope of manipulation and agenda-setting. And in the case of Lukes, it takes the shape of an ideological structure for which humans alone are responsible, even though the material world, in particular as regards economic production, poses a significant limit to how an interest is formed and embodied. The common denominator for all three approaches is the idea that involving the many and diverse forces of nature is not seen as an analytical necessity. And not only that: attempting to include something non-human appears largely irrelevant from a normative perspective, which, on this account, has as its main purpose to secure human well-being through just and equitable institutions. Given this, there is, quite simply, no reason to make nature and everything non-human count in the analysis of power – and society more broadly. The extent to which the sociocentric bias underpins these approaches is undoubtedly a consequence of the perceived need to maintain and expand the role of the social sciences as an equal member of academia, in particular given the privileged position of the natural sciences. But as I elaborate in the remaining part of this chapter, and as I have already noted several times above and in Chapter 1, the sociocentric bias also has negative consequences for the analysis of power. This applies not only in relation to the conspicuous absence of non-humans, but also in relation to drawing up concrete solutions that can counteract the climate crisis and other challenges associated with the Anthropocene. Where the unique characteristics of a distinctively human society were previously the problem, enabled by the problematic but nonetheless effective notion that culture and nature defined two separate realms of existence, it is the relationship between human society and the Earth’s ecosystems more generally that is now at stake. Without a real commitment to this changing 54

The Sociality of Power context, the analysis of power becomes not only incomplete but also politically naive and lacking the ability to meet the many profound challenges with which the Anthropocene, in all its complexity and internal tensions, confronts us. How and why this is the case is an issue to which I return in the last section of this chapter. Before we get to this, however, we should note another aspect that brings together the three traditional analyses of power: the understanding of power as something defined through a relationship of domination – that which I have previously referred to as power-over. Thus, for all three analyses of power, A has power over B, and, in that sense, the two parties stand in a relation of domination. At first, this consensus among the traditional analyses of power might seem unproblematic, especially because it is consistent with a more intuitive understanding of power as something that comes from the outside, and which therefore involves a relationship of domination that calls for critique and reform. The challenge, however, is that an overly narrow focus on power-over can also overshadow an analysis of the many different ways in which power itself enables these kinds of practices; that which I have previously referred to as power-to. How to conceptualise and make this second aspect count in the broader analysis of society is one of the mains point of contention in the more recent contributions to the study of power.

More Recent Contributions to the Sociality of Power Let us begin by noticing that debates about power-to arose in close connection with the events of the mid-1970s, when economic crisis replaced economic growth, and when new social 55

Power in the Anthropocene movements such as the LGBT+ movement and the peace and environmental movements began to ask for recognition and a place at the table. Elements of these trends created the basis for a critique of the social sciences’ human-centred perspective.27 For the most part, however, the discussions shied away from this critique and instead focused more narrowly on whether power is always a form of domination or whether it can also be a form of power-to, which challenges repressive structures and thereby creates new opportunities throughout society. As discussed below, the result was a set of new power analyses, which today are associated with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Rainer Forst and Pierre Bourdieu, and which go by names such as ‘discursive power’, ‘noumenal power’ and ‘social capital power’. Each analysis adds insight to the way in which power is more than simply a matter of domination, while acknowledging that this, too, is a significant part of what it means to stand in a relation of power. At the same time, however, the analyses, both individually and collectively, remain tied to a sociocentric outlook that limits their ability to analyse and counter anthropogenic climate change, including how to promote sustainable entanglements of human and non-human life. Or, at least, that is my wager! To support this claim, I begin with a discussion of Foucault’s work, after which I turn to the analyses of power offered by Forst and Bourdieu. Foucault’s discursive power Michel Foucault’s contribution to the discussion of power is undoubtedly one of the most important in the social sciences of late. His work stretches from an ‘archaeological’ method that examines power relations within a given context and/ 56

The Sociality of Power or period of time, to a ‘genealogical’ method that focuses on changes in power relations over time and across contextual relations.28 Particularly relevant is The History of Sexuality (published in French in 1976 and translated into English in 1978), which seeks to examine the meanings and practices of sexuality in the transition from a Victorian ‘repressive’ age to a modern society characterised by sexual ‘liberation’. Apart from its specific insights into this transition, including how the shift from ‘repression’ to ‘liberation’ is far more ambiguous than hitherto portrayed in the literature, Foucault’s analysis is interesting in terms of how it moves away from behavioural as well as Marxist approaches, which, as already mentioned, shaped the power debate until the mid-1970s. According to Foucault, both approaches were (and remain) insufficient because they, by definition, presuppose that power primarily or even exclusively is a matter of domination between two agents who have been constituted prior to their mutual interactions. As Foucault puts it: By power, I do not mean ‘Power’ as a group of institutions and mechanisms that ensure the subservience of the citizens of a given state. By power, I do not mean, either, a mode of subjugation which, in contrast to violence, has the form of the rule […] It seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization…29

Underpinning this formulation is the ‘omnipresence of power’ thesis; that is, that there is no relationship that is not in some way or another constituted in and through power. Foucault emphasises that this thesis must not be understood 57

Power in the Anthropocene as implying that there is a single unit, principle or structure, which brings all power relations in a given society into one single unified unit. In fact, it would be wrong to speak of power in the singular, because, as Foucault writes, power ‘comes from everywhere’.30 Foucault also emphasises how any notion of power as something that limits the possibility of freedom tends to overlook a wide range of ‘permanent, repetitious, inert, and self-reproducing practices, which aim to make the underlying plurality appear as a single whole – without, however, ever succeeding completely’.31 Following this observation, Foucault emphasises that power is not only omnipresent but also dynamic – and, hence, that any analysis of power must span power-to as well as power-over. Talking about power in binary terms – as something you either have or do not have (or, alternatively, as something to which you are subjected or not) – is simply not possible. As already indicated, Foucault unfolds this approach to power in a number of different contexts. Specifically in relation to the development of sexuality, Foucault shows how political and social institutions, including the Christian Church, have been instrumental in defining and determining what counts as the sexual ‘normal’; and therefore also how responsible citizens should relate to issues pertaining to, for example, trans- and homosexuality. At the same time, Foucault shows how these perceptions have changed over time, without us being able to say for that reason that the modern person has become more liberated in relation to earlier understandings of sexuality, at least not in any unambiguously quantifiable way from ‘more’ to ‘less’ power.32 The last point in particular is an important source of inspiration for contemporary feminism, where the question of the social construction of gender (and the importance of power 58

The Sociality of Power in this regard) plays a significant role in the critique of the traditional nuclear family structure. Indeed, Foucault’s work has been an important inspiration for Judith Butler’s analysis of resistance and performativity,33 setting the tone for a whole generation of feminist theorists devoted to queerness and the embodiment thereof.34 Discursive power: Michel Foucault Definition: A language-based form of power that defines the criteria for truth in a given society and thus frames the actors’ understanding of their own reality. Michel Foucault (1926‒84) was a French historian and social theorist who is considered one of the most important public intellectuals of the twentieth century. His authorship covers topics such as the emergence of the humanities, changes in punishment and discipline, and the history of sexuality. Throughout most of his writings, the concept of power plays a crucial role. His most important books include The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Vol.  1, the latter being the first volume in Foucault’s fourvolume work also titled The History of Sexuality. He was a member of the Collège de France from 1970 until his death in 1984. Of the other contexts in which Foucault’s approach to power has been invoked, special mention should be made of his own studies of the modern prison system and how the abolition of torture does not unequivocally lead to less 59

Power in the Anthropocene power.35 A similar analysis applies to Foucault’s general account of modern governance, whose emphasis on democratisation and human rights might lead one to believe that the exercise of power has become milder and/or more humane compared to the past. Foucault disputes this impression with reference to the expectations and requirements that the modern person must meet in order to count as free. The expectations and demands are particularly pressing in relation to what Foucault calls homo oeconomicus, who might seem ‘free’ in a traditional liberal sense, but in reality can only be said to be free as long as they accept (and internalise) the logic of the market, including assumptions about supply and demand and how humans must present themselves as capital that can be sold on equal terms with other goods in the market. According to Foucault, such assumptions require a number of institutional and discursive contexts in which power is not only present, but also helps to define the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way of defining free and equal human beings.36 As political theorist Wendy Brown puts it in her extrapolation of Foucault’s later work, ‘When the construction of human beings and human conduct as homo oeconomicus spreads to every sphere, including that of political life itself, it radically transforms not merely the organization, but the purpose and character of each sphere, as well as relations among them.’37 Common to these analyses is the argument that power has two basic aspects: a submissive and a generative aspect – or what I have suggested we name ‘power-over’ and ‘power-to’, respectively. As already indicated, the combination of these two aspects gives Foucault’s approach a different normative-­political aim than what we know from existing analyses of power, including those of Dahl, Bachrach and Baratz, and Lukes. 60

The Sociality of Power Rather than focusing exclusively on how power can be more evenly distributed through institutional reform, Foucault is equally interested in showing how the plurality and dynamics of power can and should be reconstituted. According to Foucault, the goal is to continue the ‘undefined work of freedom’,38 which in turn puts emphasis on resistance and subversion. That these practices should be particularly important is hardly strange, since resistance and subversion can be said to be where the two basic aspects of power meet. On the one hand, resistance and subversion are conditioned by the fact that a given power structure limits an actor’s room for manoeuvre – and in this way creates a relationship based on domination. The presence of domination provides in that sense an occasion for resistance and subversion. On the other hand, resistance and subversion are also expressions of how domination is not total, but contains the germ of its own upheaval, and thus emphasises the inherent plurality and dynamics of power. Consequently, ‘[w]here there is power, there is resistance’, and ‘this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power’.39 Bringing this to the forefront is, all things considered, a crucial aspect of Foucault’s contribution to the analysis of power. These comments are meant to suggest that of all the contributions to the study of power, Foucault’s is probably the one that comes closest to breaking with the limitations of ­sociocentrism – and thus the legacy of Weber and those who followed (and continue to follow) in his footsteps. In recent Foucault scholarship, there are even signs of a rapprochement between Foucault’s power analysis and new materialist thinking, linking Foucault’s later work on governance to a ‘posthumanist approach’ in which ‘agential power originates in relations between human and nonhuman entities’.40 If I am reluctant to 61

Power in the Anthropocene embrace this rapprochement, it is not because I want to deny that certain aspects of Foucault’s work point to parts of the material world that lie outside the purely human (and thus the purely social). I remain sceptical, however, because Foucault rarely includes conditions that transcend the purely human, including ecological conditions, and because he instead focuses on how the human body was (and is) articulated through discourses created by and for humans themselves.41 The analyses listed above are all examples of this. Even when Foucault does open up to the more-than-human, it is always from the perspective of human society, however contested and historically contingent this perspective might seem. Nowhere in Foucault’s oeuvre do we find an extended discussion of how changes in plant life or animal communication affect conceptions of the human body. Nowhere do we find an engagement with how knowledge about human relations has been informed by encounters across species. What we instead find is an extended elaboration of how humans define themselves through evermore complex narratives and disciplinary techniques, expanding whatever gulf there was between themselves and the world writ large. All this is to say that no matter how advanced it appears in terms of expanding the scope of the social sciences, Foucault’s analysis of power is first and foremost a discursive matter that can best be used in connection with historically conditioned perceptions of what is ‘true’ and ‘right’ – and therefore also ‘normal’. The advantage of this analytical strategy is that it becomes possible to overcome the limitations of traditional power analyses, especially in relation to showing how power-to should also be an important aspect of any modern power analysis. The downside is that it can be difficult (if not impossible) to develop a critical 62

The Sociality of Power approach to the aspect of the material world that transcends the purely human. As we have already seen – and as I shall develop further in the last section of this chapter – it is the latter that hinders a proper account of power in the Anthropocene. Forst and noumenal power Another recent approach, which touches on many of the same concerns as Foucault’s, is that which Rainer Forst, in a 2015 article, names ‘noumenal power’. Formulated in close dialogue with Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory (Habermas was Forst’s PhD supervisor, and Forst is now himself a prominent member of the Frankfurt School), this addition to the analysis of power appears at first sight to be diametrically opposed to Foucault’s. In reality, however, the differences are much subtler. As Forst writes, ‘all of the greatest theoreticians (and practitioners) of power’ know that ‘the real site of power struggles’ is the ‘discursive realm […] where justifications are formed and reformed, questioned, tested, and possibly sealed off’.42 This way of posing the issue is not far from Foucault’s. Still, while noumenal power is also about the generative aspects of power, especially as they appear through discourse, it is also about showing how the effects of power are justified, and how they thereby contribute to creating a particular set of social and political relationships that are more or less just, more or less humane.43 Without an engagement with the latter, Forst argues in attempting to create a certain distance between himself and Foucault’s original approach, the study of power becomes not only analytically deficient but also normatively naive – if not entirely void of content.

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Power in the Anthropocene Noumenal power: Rainer Forst Definition: A reason-based form of power that delimits the space within which moral-political arguments are based and justified. Rainer Forst (b. 1964) is a German political philosopher who, over the past twenty-five years, has contributed to the debate on democracy and community, including the analysis of power. He is considered part of the Frankfurt School, which, since its founding in the interwar period, has played a crucial role in developing a critical social theory combining theoretical knowledge with empirical research. Forst’s most important books to date are Contexts of Justice: Political Philosophy Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism, Toleration in Conflict and Normativity and Power. Forst arrives at this insight by merging Habermas’s discourse theory with Immanuel Kant’s (1724‒1804) original distinction between two fundamental spheres in the world: 1) the ‘phenomenal’ sphere, where concrete experiences are formed in time and space; and 2) the ‘noumenal’ sphere, which cannot be immediately sensed but helps to determine the conditions and categories of the concrete experience and sensing of the world.44 Although Forst is always careful not to accept Kant’s metaphysical justifications for this division, he nevertheless uses the term ‘noumenal’ to highlight how power relates to the very basis of our ability to experience and categorise, and in that sense is a distinctively cognitive phenomenon that both structures and expresses a particular way of thinking and acting. Forst uses this insight to show how power, in addition to delimiting the world 64

The Sociality of Power discursively, creates the space within which moral arguments can be justified; that which Forst refers to as the ‘space of reasons’.45 According to Forst, the importance of this space is that it links the analysis of power to a morally grounded understanding of the social sciences as contributors to public debate.46 The ‘right’ kind of power is thus the power that engenders a just relationship between autonomous individuals and that is based on (allegedly) universal moral demands for reciprocity and generalisability. Conversely, ‘wrong’ power is the power that promotes a society in which domination and asymmetry are the predominant characteristics of the relations between the parties involved. The main contribution of this approach is undoubtedly its ability to show how power as such is not normatively void of content, and that the analysis is therefore no less prescriptive (and thus more realistic) than so many other analyses. This conclusion is particularly relevant in relation to the generative aspect of power. As soon as one has said (as Foucault does) that power is ubiquitous, one must also be prepared to show and justify which characteristics a society must promote in relation to various normative values. These include democracy, freedom and equality. At the same time, however, the disadvantage of Forst’s contribution is that, to a much greater degree than is the case with Foucault, it sees power as a cognitive phenomenon doing its work apart from the many material conditions that, all other things being equal, undergird social and political life. Although Forst himself sees this way of delimiting the analysis as a step in the right direction, in part because it ensures a high degree of universality, it eventually ends up undermining its own normative ambitions.47 First, because it precludes consideration of how non-human life is entangled with the reasons given for this or that relationship. Second, because it overlooks the possibility 65

Power in the Anthropocene that non-humans themselves belong to the space of reasons as active agents demanding the same kind of reciprocity and generality as humans do. The combined effect of these limitations is a series of unanswerable questions. Are humans exceptional in the sense that they demand extra care and attention compared to the rest of the world? If not, how and for what reasons should a morally just society distribute its resources? In short, how might we envision justice ecologically and as a matter of multispecies relations? Bourdieu, social capital and elite network The difficulties that Forst and others – Foucault included – have in answering, let alone addressing, these questions is a sign of the persistent presence of sociocentrism in the social sciences. My own suspicion is that something like a radical break is necessary to overcome the limitations associated therewith. Before I elaboration on this suspicion, it might be worthwhile to explore whether other, more incremental shifts in the analytical set-up can do the job. Consider in this context the work of Pierre Bourdieu. According to Bourdieu, power’s limiting as well as generative aspects must both be present in any comprehensive analysis of society. At the same time, Bourdieu also tries to thematise the theoretical tensions in the philosophy of science that have long characterised the discussion of power, and that we find more or less unresolved in thinkers such as Foucault and Forst. The starting point is thus an argument against classical dichotomies and an ambition to direct our attention towards the many ways in which the material-objective and the psychological-subjective always already emerge in conjunction with each another. This starting point leads Bourdieu to a ‘relational’ 66

The Sociality of Power analysis of power, where the central question not only relates to who possesses power (and how much they possess), but also focuses on how power helps to constitute the relationship between the material-objective and the psychological-subjective within a given context.48 Social capital and symbolic power: Pierre Bourdieu SOCIAL CAPITAL: a relational power that positions the actors in relation to each other based on their access to specific types of capital (social, economic and/or cultural). SYMBOLIC POWER: a meaning-based power that constitutes the given and which thus helps to give the world meaning and significance. Pierre Bourdieu (1930‒2002) was a French sociologist and social theorist whose breakthrough came in 1979 with Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, in which he showed how taste and aesthetics depend on one’s social position in society. Bourdieu went on to publish a vast body of analyses of class and power, including The Logic of Practice and Science of Science and Reflexivity. In 1981 he became a member of the Collège de France. Famously, Bourdieu uses the notion of ‘social capital’ to uncover the work that power does at the intersection of the material-objective and the psychological-subjective. Social capital is tied to the distribution of capital in a given society, but ‘capital’ must not only be understood as ‘economic’, but also relates to matters that have ‘cultural’ and/or ‘social’ significance.49 Since 67

Power in the Anthropocene capital in this sense is a generalised expression of the accumulation of resources that enables a person or group to think and act in a certain way and to acquire – and thus accumulate – ever more (or fewer) resources moving forward, the very distribution of capital can and should be seen as an expression of the relative position one occupies within a given context. Bourdieu calls this the ‘social space’,50 which, unlike Forst’s ‘space of reasons’, is not limited to discursive justification but includes upbringing, family history, religion, level of education, political commitment and much more. The importance of these categories necessitates a break with traditional Marxist class analysis, where the basic economic structure of society takes priority. To overcome such reductionism, Bourdieu analyses social groups as heterogeneous phenomena irreducible to a single common denominator. The latter is crucial, as our attention is directed towards the distribution of power across different sectors of society. Power in one sector does not (necessarily) mean power in another. Consequently, an empirical assessment must always be made of what counts as power in a given situation – and how different forms of power appear both together and separately. According to Bourdieu, the link as well as the differentiation of these forms of power is particularly clear when we turn to the second register to which an adequate analysis of power should relate; that which Bourdieu calls ‘symbolic power’.51 Bourdieu sees symbolic power as different from social capital in that it operates within the relations that give meaning to the world, and in this way helps to shape a given society’s understanding of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. These meaning-relations do not arise independently of the social capital that structures the classifications through which meaning emerges. Nevertheless, symbolic power cannot be reduced to social capital, as a degree of openness 68

The Sociality of Power remains present in the very formation of meaning. An artist who is able to present a precise portrayal of the world – through a popular novel or a beautiful painting – can thus be said to have great symbolic power, even if they have no great income and therefore do not possess any economic capital of significance. This possibility arises because the habitus into which meaning is embedded is in itself a factor of power. As Bourdieu writes in Language and Symbolic Power: Symbolic power – as a power of constituting the given through utterances, of making people see and believe, of confirming or transforming the vision of the world and, thereby, action on the world and thus the world itself, an almost magical power which enables one to obtain the equivalent of what is obtained through force (whether physical or economic), by virtue of the specific effect of mobilization.52

For our purposes, this formulation is interesting because it brings together a wide range of factors that the other approaches to power have highlighted and that have played a crucial role in the struggle of the social sciences for recognition from the other sciences. Similar to what we saw in Foucault and Forst, Bourdieu’s errand is to highlight how power is not only a form of manipulation or limitation, but also has a discourse-creating effect. As Bourdieu states in the quote above, symbolic power helps to ‘constitute the given’ and enables us to ‘see and believe’. This characterisation must be read as highlighting the ability of power to create a world within which thought and action are possible. At the same time, however, Bourdieu also emphasises how power not only has a constitutive effect but also a ‘mobilizing effect’ insofar as it makes an individual or a group do what they otherwise would not have done. This is not unlike the 69

Power in the Anthropocene previous arguments about the need to supplement direct power with analyses of indirect and/or structural power. Moreover, with Bourdieu, we can say that power is both objective and subjective, material and discursive. Power acts both as a constitution of social life and as that which gives social life a point of reference in relation to which it can measure and weigh itself. Without power, there would be no sociality at all. There is something eerily paradoxical about this way of delineating the analysis of power. At the same time as Bourdieu seeks to overcome traditional dualistic thinking, his approach appears to invoke its own kind of dualism. Why? Because to say that power is a precondition of sociality is also to say that power is of the social without being reducible to the social. While this is certainly a promising way into a non-dualistic conception of power, it requires a sustained engagement with the ways in which power operates on the other side of whatever ‘the social’ might be. It requires an account of how the analysis might come to notice the non-social dimension of power, and it requires a way of making this dimension count in relation to the relations we normally would associate with sociability and the social world more generally. As in the case of Foucault’s analysis of power, an engagement with these aspects does not figure prominently in Bourdieu’s account of how social capital is distributed, and how this distribution interacts with issues of symbolic power.

Power Analysis and the Sociocentric Bias of the Social Sciences I readily admit that a conclusion like this might give the impression that the circle has once again closed, and that this chapter’s 70

The Sociality of Power mapping of power analyses in the social sciences has returned to its original starting point for the second time in a row. Apart from Bourdieu’s own sociocentrism, confirming the humancentred perspective that Foucault and Forst also represent, even as Bourdieu himself claims to have overcome age-old dualisms, there is also a parallel between his relational analysis of power and the interest in the importance of elites that spurred Wright Mills’s work. At the same time, however, it is also clear that Bourdieu’s inquiry into social capital and societal elites represents a subtle but significant shift in how to study power as such. Where the analysis of power was previously a question of individuals and their more or less recognised interests, it is now a matter of understanding how power sets the scene for society, helping to promote certain groups at the expense of others. In this endeavour, Bourdieu works in close alliance with Foucault and Forst, as well as with many other contemporary schools of thought, including postcolonialism and feminist theory. One way of illustrating the difference is to say that where the traditional analyses of power moved in a one-dimensional space given by one centre and surrounded by ever-larger circles, the debate today takes place in a multidimensional space with an array of different axes. To the existing direct/indirect and actor/ structural axes, we can thus add new axes, such as limiting/­ generative, static/dynamic, discursive/material, social/symbolic and descriptive/prescriptive. These new axes make it difficult – if not impossible – to present the more recent analyses of power as a set of concentric circles, where the starting point is common and where the question is solely about how much to include in the analysis before one can say that it is adequate. Instead, we must now say that the ubiquitous nature of power requires a more refined and reflective analytical apparatus that operates 71

Power in the Anthropocene Table 2.2  Similarities and differences in recent social science theories of power Discursive power

Noumenal power

Social capital power

Definition of power

Power describes the multiplicity of force-relations embedded in social relations, institutions, discourses and/or identities

Power concerns justifications of actions, and in that sense it can be more or less justified

Power expresses the degree of social capital that an agent has access to and can use relative to other agents

Philosophy of science

Genealogical, post-structural

Transcendental, neo-Kantian

Praxiological

Empirical focal points

Historical processes that lead to institutionalised and/or sedimented conceptions of truth, normality and identity

Normative justifications of principles, laws and policies

Distribution of social capital in broad-based, societal networks

Analysis of power in modern societies

Power is omnipresent and characterised by a more diffuse but also intensified application than before

Power is subject to democratic control but challenged by economic inequality and global injustice

Distributed across different kinds of social capital; still possible to identify one power-elite that connects multiple local networks

Normative implications

Power need not be equally distributed but must ensure freedom and resistance against dominant institutions and discourses

Social relations based on dominance must be overturned with reference to principles of reciprocity and generality

Although power can rarely be distributed evenly, it is important to resist concentration of social capital within one network alone

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The Sociality of Power within multiple dimensions at the same time. Another way of saying this is that it has become ever more essential to disclose and justify which part(s) of the diverse world of power one wants to study – and for what purpose. For example, if one wants to explain the power of the artist, it does not suffice to examine their financial circumstances, as this does not tell us everything about their ways of providing access to the production of meaning and signification. And if one wants to understand the power of the state, it is not enough to look at its material possessions, as one must also consider its ability to discursively construct the norms of appropriate behaviour and to justify these norms to its citizens. In both cases, power is understood to be ubiquitous in the radical sense of that word – as something that permeates each and every relation situated within and across societies in this or that historical epoch. Notice, however, that at least one aspect links the contributions of Foucault, Forst and Bourdieu with the traditional analyses of power: All of them work from within a sociocentric perspective, where power is the marker that separates humans from everything non-human – regardless of whether power is limited to a relation of domination or whether it also includes a generative aspect. As already emphasised, this sociocentrism is understandable insofar as it delimits the social sciences as an independent discipline on an equal footing with the other sciences (but probably especially the natural sciences). Still, sociocentrism poses a significant challenge to the ambition of ensuring that the analysis of power continues to be relevant and forward-looking vis-à-vis the many challenges associated with the Anthropocene, and its way of blurring the distinction between human and non-human modes of life. By way of concluding this chapter, allow me to summarise the arguments for why this is the case. 73

Power in the Anthropocene As already presented in Chapter 1, the first reason to do away with the dogma of sociocentrism is that it is simply no longer possible to understand the conditions of human action without also involving nature and everything non-human. Whether we are talking about the domino effects about which climate scientists around the world have expressed increasing concern, or whether we are looking more narrowly at phenomena such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, climate changes might indeed be anthropogenically caused but cannot be changed or subverted through human power alone. The changed circumstances underlying this apparently new human/non-human interplay are in themselves an important reason to abandon the sociocentric bias in social science power analysis. Even if one is solely interested in human social life, it has become imperative to include non-human factors in the analysis of power. Without an engagement with these factors, the social sciences cannot map, let alone identify and empower, pathways to redistribute and reform relations of power in the Anthropocene. This applies whether we are talking about coastal protection in lowlands around the world, the fight against famine in sub-Saharan African countries, and/or climate migration due to rising water levels in the Pacific Ocean. The need to go beyond the strictly human is further supported by another argument, which has a more philosophicalontological cut than the first. The reason why a confrontation with the sociocentric bias is necessary is not only that it will result in better analyses, but also because sociocentrism itself represents an understanding of the world that is at odds with what we know about human/non-human relations, even if this knowledge has supported the social sciences and their knowledge production for the last 400–500 years. Consider 74

The Sociality of Power in this context how concerns about a more or less categorical distinction between human and non-human, culture and nature, can be traced all the way back to ancient Greece, where thinkers such as Lucretius laid the foundations for the philosophical considerations that we also find in modern thinkers such as Spinoza and Nietzsche.53 Marginalised in their own time, Lucretius, Spinoza and Nietzsche anticipated what we now know about the human/non-human relationship, including affective experience across species and the importance of neural networks and bacterial cultures for our ability to think rationally, just to mention a few.54 Along these lines, Lucretius, Spinoza and Nietzsche emphasise how and why the ability to be active-creative extends well beyond the human part of the world. The material element, of which both the human and non-human are part, can itself be said to be a form of infinite potentiality, meaning that the ability to be active-creative subsists and acts in all parts of the world, including those parts that modern philosophy from Descartes onwards has relegated to the unexamined background. Another way of saying this is that power exists in both the human and non-human (and everything in between). This has probably always been the case, but has become more apparent than ever with the advent of the Anthropocene – no matter how multifarious, contested and internally complex we take this phase of the Earth’s history to be. The final reason to reject the sociocentric bias concerns the normative consequences of reserving power for humans alone. If one refuses to attribute an active-creating force to non-humans, as is the case with sociocentrism, then one has also rendered it impossible to attribute any independent normative value to this part of the world. At best, the non-human will be something 75

Power in the Anthropocene one values because it serves a human purpose. And in the worst case, it will be reduced to a passive resource, which can be exploited (and thrown away) as needed. Both possibilities contain a notion of human exceptionalism, which leads to ethical narcissism – and possibly also climate change denial. Even if the latter does not materialise directly, it should be clear that we, for normative reasons, should be careful not to reserve power for humans alone. As long as the non-human is not attributed any active-creative power, it will simply not be possible to make an effective normative argument that the consideration of animals, forests, bacteria, water and much more should weigh equally (if not more) than the consideration of human welfare. And if that does not happen, any political debate on the climate crisis risks not being ready for the task. Together, these three arguments – 1) the pragmatic argument for involving the non-human world in order to better analyse the power relations of the Anthropocene; 2) the ontological argument for avoiding a categorical human/non-human distinction; and 3) the normative argument for sustainability and better climate care – constitute the reasoning presented in this book to override the sociocentric bias and make room for a radical rethinking of the very study of power. As I have already indicated, this rethinking requires numerous new assumptions about the power of the material world, together with new methods for studying this power. As I suggested in Chapter 1, the social sciences must simply reset their sights. Importantly, this means that it no longer makes sense to distinguish between power and all its many synonyms: movement, energy, potentiality and so forth. Rather than viewing them as separate phenomena, we must regard them as a single, common whole that must be analysed and understood in close dialogue with each other. 76

The Sociality of Power By extension, let me briefly outline what the rejection of the sociocentric bias implies for the role and self-understanding of the social sciences. Since the social sciences, over the last few centuries, have been born out of greater and greater confidence in the value of sociocentrism, it is perfectly natural to be concerned that the rejection of this trademark also implies a rejection of the social sciences, as such. To put it bluntly: what is left of the social sciences if one takes the social – and thus the uniquely human – out of them? My sense is that the answer to this question is not as self-defeating as one might initially think. Although the rejection of sociocentrism means that the social sciences can no longer point to humans and their social-political life as a uniquely defined domain of inquiry – and even though this means that the social sciences must open up to other parts of the academic community – the consequence is actually a strengthening of the position and role of the social sciences. As concerns about the Anthropocene become more pronounced, and as the climate and biodiversity crises place greater demands on both individual and collective behaviour, the social sciences should become the site where the different forms of knowledge can meet and fertilise each other in an attempt to create a more holistic understanding of our shared world – whether ‘we’ are humans, plants or something completely different. The social sciences, in other words, should come to work as a laboratory for what is studied separately in the other sciences, but should be understood in a larger context for the betterment of the world. The demands that this endeavour puts on knowledge production and the norms for ‘good’ social science are surely significant. Still, it is difficult to imagine a more important and noble mission statement!

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Power in the Anthropocene Notes   1 We find a similar distinction in French, where people talk about power as being able to do something (pouvoir) and as being ‘potent’ in their relationship with the world more generally (puissance). For a further description of the etymology of the concept of power, see Loriaux, Europe Anti-Power, especially chs. 2 and 7.   2 I return to the legacy of Hobbes’s Leviathan in Chapter 5.  3 Weber, Economy and Society, 53.   4 See also Martin, Verstehen.   5 Sanders, ‘Behavouralism’.   6 Dahl, ‘The Concept of Power’, 203; Dahl, Who Governs?.  7 C. Wright Mills introduced his own study of power in The Sociological Imagination, published in 1959, arguing for a social critique based on a translation of personal experiences into general societal problems.  8 Dahl, Who Governs?, 152.  9 Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory, ch. 3; Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, ch. 16. 10 Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, ch. 22. 11 Bachrach and Baratz, ‘Two Faces of Power’. 12 Bachrach and Baratz, ‘Two Faces of Power’, 951. 13 Bachrach and Baratz, ‘Decisions and Nondecisions’. 14 Bachrach and Baratz, ‘Two Faces of Power’, 950. 15 Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People, 35. 16 Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People, 180. 17 By ‘classical capitalism’, I mean the form of capitalism practised from the mid-nineteenth century until the period around 1980. 18 See also Lukes, Power, 29. 19 While Lukes does not mean to repeat the limitations of Marxist analysis, it is clear that his insights centre on similar issues, especially as they appear in the works of Althusser and others. For this reason, it does not seem unfair to align his ‘third dimension of power’ with ideology and structure. 20 Lukes, Power, 30. 21 Since the publication of his book in 1974, Lukes has modified parts of his own contribution to the concept of power, especially in relation to 1) whether power is a practice or a capacity, and 2) whether political actors are defined by one specific interest or whether they are in fact characterised by multiple interests that are not always in line with each other (see Lukes, Power, 12–13). For the sake of clarity, and because it still contains the main

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The Sociality of Power elements of the discussion of the third dimension of power, the following focuses on Lukes’s original contribution from 1974. 22 Lukes, Power, 14. 23 Lukes, Power, 38. 24 Lukes, Power, 36. 25 See also Dowding, ‘Three-Dimensional Power’. 26 From a normative perspective, this also means that Lukes emphasises a democratisation of society, which not only restructures the political system narrowly understood (parliament, parties, administration), but also involves the workplace and the array of social and cultural movements that together constitute civil society (see, e.g., Duncan and Lukes, ‘The New Democracy’). According to Lukes, such democratisation is necessary if we are to avoid an economic structure that pretends to serve the interests of all without being able to live up to this in any way. 27 See, inter alia, Eckersley, ‘Ecological Democracy and the Rise and Decline of Liberal Democracy’. 28 See also Visker, Michael Foucault. 29 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 92. 30 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 93. 31 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 93. 32 Foucault. The History of Sexuality, 9–11. 33 See, inter alia, Butler, Gender Trouble; Butler, The Psychic Life of Power. 34 For a critical overview, see McNay, Foucault and Feminism. I return to questions pertaining to feminism, gender and sexuality in Chapter 4. Moreover, as noted in Chapter 1 (and as elaborated in Chapter 3), there are a number of important links between feminist theory and new materialism, with ecofeminism offering the most obvious point of contact. 35 Foucault, Discipline and Punish. 36 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, ch. 11. 37 Brown, Undoing the Demos, 34–5. 38 Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’, 46. 39 Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 95. 40 Lemke, ‘New Materialisms’, 6, 10. 41 Another way of saying this is that, even though we might read Foucault as a new materialist, this has not seeped into Foucault scholarship, which remains sociocentric in its outlook. How to overcome this legacy without dismissing the many important insights in Foucault’s work is an issue to which I return in Chapter 3. 42 Forst, ‘Noumenal Power’, 122.

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Power in the Anthropocene 43 This approach also has several overlaps with French pragmatism, where the issue of ‘regimes of justification’ is central; see in particular Boltanski and Thévenot, On Justification. 44 See Caygill, A Kant Dictionary, 301–3 and 317–18 for an overview of the two spheres. 45 Forst, ‘Noumenal Power’, 112. 46 Forst, ‘Noumenal Power’, 113. 47 The concerns raised here resonate in important ways with debates about the Frankfurt School and postcolonialism. See, inter alia, Allen, The End of Progress; and Ibsen, A Critical Theory of Global Justice. 48 Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, 18. 49 Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’, 241. 50 Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, 20. 51 Bourdieu, ‘Social Space and Symbolic Power’, 23. 52 Bourdieu, Language and Sympolic Power, 170. 53 I return to parts of this story in Chapter 5, where I discuss Spinoza’s contribution to the analysis of power. 54 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza; Pedersen, Magtfulde mikrober.

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3

The Materiality of Power

Zoe and the ‘Plus-Minus Game’ of the Anthropocene The purpose of this chapter is to present the basic building blocks for a new analysis of power that cuts both more broadly and more deeply than do the existing studies. To better clarify the starting point for this new analysis, it might be useful to first return to the relationship between the climate crisis and what I, in Chapter 1, referred to as ‘the Anthropocene backdrop’. Does such a designation imply a basic condition that, on the one hand, highlights the entanglements of human and non-human forms of life but, on the other hand, does nothing but set the stage for the exercise of power? The answer to this question is no. The Anthropocene is far from a stable framework, because not only is the term itself contested, but also ‘nature’ no longer means and works in the same ways as it did to conventional (Holocene) science and philosophy. Rather than being a passive substance open for exploitation – or, alternatively, a primordial power from which everything authentic and meaningful flows – anthropogenic climate change requires us to consider nature as a multifarious and dynamic participant that, to use Spinozist language, both affects and is affected by its many, and 81

Power in the Anthropocene often different, parts, including what is commonly called ‘culture’. To some, the result of this shift in meaning is the end of nature altogether;1 to others, especially within ecofeminism and Indigenous scholarship, it is a reason for calling forth forgotten histories and traditions according to which nature is anything but meaningless and insignificant.2 Regardless of which of these two pathways we decide to pursue, the crux of the matter is that nature once again has become a problem for which alternative conceptions of actor, history, relationality and, ultimately, power are needed. To advance the discussion of this issue, we need to extend the discussion of human/non-human entanglements even further. What, more precisely, characterises these entanglements? And how is this different from earlier ages, where human and non-human life obviously also existed and interacted in multiple ways? As we shall see, the answers to these questions constitute the ultimate starting point for an analytical framework in line with that which I introduced in Chapter 1; that is, one that breaks with the sociocentric bias, thereby opening a new and more productive study of power. The first thing that should be clear is that although the Anthropocene, understood more as an event or phase than as an epoch, means that human activity must now be understood as a natural force of its own, it does not follow that this has rendered humans, however defined, autonomous and self-ruling. Quite the contrary! When prominent climate philosophers such as Clive Hamilton and Isabelle Stengers say that the Earth has become ‘angry’, and that we feel its ‘intrusion’, it is precisely to emphasise that we now find ourselves in a situation where the Earth’s ecosystems have become entangled with human-centred activities, small and large, in ways far more intense and prevalent 82

The Materiality of Power than they were just two centuries ago.3 As a sign of this, we only have to recall the domino effects highlighted in the Ritzau news release referred to in Chapter 1. These effects have mostly arisen in the wake of the ‘great acceleration’,* which denotes the period since 1950 when an explosive increase in, among other things, travel and fertilisers triggered an equally significant explosion in CO2 emissions and related changes, such as ocean acidification, deforestation and loss of biodiversity.4 The circularity involved in these processes makes it difficult to distinguish the involved agents from each other, and, instead, it encourages us to begin with the entanglements themselves, giving way to an account of the ‘agent’ – human or non-human (or both, as on the symbiont, new materialist view) – as a matter of composition and empirical analysis. Another way of saying this is that the relationship between the great acceleration and the domino effects points to a series of entangled and self-reinforcing processes that concern the very conditions of possibility for life itself. Ultimately, it is these processes that will determine the emergence of one or more ‘tipping points’,* after which it will not be possible to secure the kind of stable climate that has characterised the Earth’s ecosystems for the last many millennia. The significance of this development for the analysis of power becomes even clearer when we delve deeper into the diversity that characterises the Anthropocene entanglements.5 Take, for example, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. It is now widely accepted that this massive melting activity has been provoked by human activity in all its entangled and variegated dimensions.6 The extraction of fossil fuels has undoubtedly played an important role in this regard. Prompted by changes in the means of production, including the invention of new technologies such as the combustion engine, the demand for 83

Power in the Anthropocene fossil fuels has grown more or less exponentially since the early twentieth century, leading to ever-higher CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Alongside this development, new patterns in consumption and behaviour have also emerged, which in turn have affected everything from land use over reconfigurations of the human microbiome to the spread of new deadly diseases, including, most recently, COVID-19. Many of these developments cut across the traditional human/non-human divide and contribute, each in their own way, to the warming of the planet and, thus, to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. The entanglements are prevalent at virtually all levels of analysis imaginable. Less noted – but just as interesting and important – is how the melting of the ice sheet itself has contributed to the exposure of new soil surfaces that have made it possible for new plants to grow. There is even evidence to suggest that the warming of the waters around Greenland, together with the emergence of new plants, has had a positive effect on the level of biodiversity in the Arctic region.7 At first sight, one might be tempted to believe that such a change constitutes a positive contribution to the development of society in Greenland, not only because it strengthens Greenland’s chances in the world economy, but also because it can produce a higher living standard that, eventually, will lead to real independence from the Kingdom of Denmark – a burning issue in Greenlandic politics and public debate. In reality, however, the change in biodiversity is an expression of something far more ambiguous. The growth of the new plants is darkening the surface of Greenland, which in turn reduces the reflection of the sun’s rays compared to when ice and snow covered more of the region. The new flora itself thus becomes an active player in a self-reinforcing process that is slowly undermining the positive effects that changing biodiversity otherwise 84

The Materiality of Power might have created. In fact, it is most likely that Greenland’s new biodiversity will maintain or even accelerate the higher average temperature, contributing to the ice sheet melting even faster than is already the case. Once again, it seems obvious that entanglements of human and non-human life are crucial to any understanding of power in the Anthropocene, including how Greenland might finally severe the ties to its colonial past.8 To underscore the complexity involved in all of this, we might learn from another example that also emphasises the entangled messiness of the Anthropocene phase: the story of the matsutake mushroom, which American anthropologist Anna Tsing tells in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World.9 Matsutake is a particularly valuable mushroom and the main ingredient in a variety of Asian dishes, including a traditional Japanese autumn soup. The starting point for Tsing’s story is how the mushroom has become even harder to find (and therefore more expensive) after radioactive fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl accident eradicated it from the forests around Finland, Sweden and Norway. The result was a significant blow to Asian food culture, connecting fatal events in northern Ukraine with commercial and culinary practices close to 10,000 kilometres away in Tokyo and its surrounding communities. Counteracting this development, however, are new deforestation practices in North America, particularly around Oregon, which occurred because of an increase in the global demand for red pine, but which also changed the flora underneath the trees, giving a boost to the Oregon forests’ fungi cultures, including the matsutake which until then had grown rather sparsely there. Modern deforestation practices have thus enabled a series of new mushroom-collecting bases in Oregon, which in turn have contributed to a reconfiguration of the culture and society around the matsutake itself, 85

Power in the Anthropocene including migration patterns, respect for Indigenous knowledge, and the politics of capitalism. The spillover effects of this process are too complex to summarise here. What stands out, however, are the complex entanglements of human and non-human life that drive multispecies coexistence into new and often ambiguous and unanticipated directions. Put otherwise: the Chernobyl accident enabled a lengthy series of self-enforcing human/ non-human entanglements, which in some areas must be regarded as a clear setback, but which also appear in other areas as a step towards something new and more positive. Making space for this ambiguity is key to any social science analysis in the Anthropocene. As Tsing suggests with the subtitle of her book, the Anthropocene, given its contested nature and internal differentiations, is an invitation to consider ‘the possibility of life in capitalist ruins’. Taken together, these stories and considerations point to the importance of not defining the Anthropocene backdrop as a static zero-sum game in which increasing human power is tantamount to a corresponding waning of the power of nature (and the non-human). Such a presentation would not only render the analysis of power reductionist, but would also be politically problematic in relation to empowering genuine care for the importance of the non-human world for society as a whole. To avoid this impasse – and to acknowledge the intensified entanglements of what the social sciences (and most other disciplines) habitually call ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ life – we must instead reflect on a far more complex situation, where both sides of the relationship develop in interaction with one another, and where the result is more than merely the sum of the individual parts. Calling them ‘parts’ might even be misleading given how much they overlap; eventually, we will have to change the vocabulary 86

The Materiality of Power altogether in favour of a language organised around modes, intensities, processes and actants. For now, however – and for the purposes of analytical clarity – I suggest that we call this changed milieu for the Anthropocene a ‘plus-minus game’; that is, a game where humans and non-humans alike develop in mutual but also unpredictable interactions with one another. Thus, growth in human-centred power can sometimes provide the occasion for a reorganisation of non-human power, which subsequently has implications for the ability of humans to pursue their desires and needs, however complex and differentiated they might be. At other times, the arrow is pointing in the opposite direction, leading to new challenges and opportunities. Regardless, it is the interactions – and their embedded entanglements – that are front and centre. What happens on one side of the contingently defined human/non-human relationship has real, material consequences for what happens on the other side. All of this is something that a new analysis of power should be able to accommodate, meaning that it must cut both wider and deeper (understood to mean the number of actors and levels in the analysis). Together with Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, we can go a step further and say that a new analysis of power must take a ‘zoecentric’* starting point, by which we must understand a shift from a purely human-social perspective (‘sociocentrism’) to a more expansive analytical framework that makes planetary life its primary object of inquiry.10 The point of such a shift is precisely to involve as many levels and dimensions of interaction as possible – including those that concern the non-human part of the world – without having to decide in advance which actors are most important and/or have the greatest power. As we saw in Chapter 1 – and as emphasised above in the discussion of the Anthropocene plus-minus game – such 87

Power in the Anthropocene radical openness is necessary to be able to analyse the many forms of power expressed in a world where human/non-human entanglements evolve on multiple levels and in many different directions simultaneously. This openness is radical in the sense that the analysis will start from within the entanglements themselves, tracing the processes that give rise to what we, in ordinary parlance, might call human or non-human (or both). It is, as it were, only a posteriori that we can make any judgement about which is which, and, even then, only with explicit acknowledgement that our judgement is open to reinterpretation, since the phenomenon or process in question cannot but exceed attempts at definitive categorisation. It is in this context that the new materialist philosophy introduced in Chapter 1 has its justification. Resonating with efforts in ecofeminism, postcolonial theory, Indigenous scholarship and the environmental humanities, the starting point for new materialism is a dissolution of the divide between culture and nature – between human and non-human – in favour of an immanent substance, which infuses the human and non-human alike as parts of the world with varying degrees of power – both in terms of power as domination (power-over) and power as opportunity-creation (power-to).11 The aim of this chapter is to convert this starting point into an analysis of power that corresponds to – and resonates with – the challenges we have come to associate with the climate crisis and the Anthropocene more generally. As we shall see, this ambition implies that we understand power as a potentiality, understood as a force or energy inherent in the human as well as the non-human. It also means that we orient ourselves towards specific ‘assemblages’* of things or actants, which bring together the human and non-human and recognise their common role in how society develops. The 88

The Materiality of Power latter helps to emphasise the importance of power for the creation of life broadly understood. Without power, there would simply be no life, which is why the new materialist philosophy – in contrast to the analyses of power reviewed in Chapter 2 – does not want to reserve the study of power to purely human ­conditions. The following four main sections of this chapter expand this line of thought by diving deeper into the assumptions and arguments associated with new materialist philosophy. The first section shows how new materialism accounts for its zoecentric perspective through a critique of other (and perhaps better known) forms of modern materialist philosophy. The second section goes on to explicate the main idea of new m ­ aterialism – ‘the immanent power of things’* – which in the third section is used to illustrate four specific modes of power in the Anthropocene. The fourth and final section sets out three theses that together constitute the new materialist bid for a contemporary analysis of power. The three theses set up the ensuing discussion in Chapter 4 on the method and applicability of new materialism in different social science contexts.

New Materialism and the History of Ideas Let us start by going back in the history of ideas to examine how new materialism differs from other types of materialist philosophy, and how, through its more or less internal critique of the conventional view of the material world, particularly as it is portrayed in Global North academia, it connects and resonates with other, lesser accepted ways of envisioning the human/ non-human world. In short: in what sense is new materialism 89

Power in the Anthropocene ‘new’? What follows from using this label? How is it not merely a repetition of other discussions of the entanglements that subsist within and across human and non-human modes of life? I will be the first to admit that these questions might seem slightly scholastic in the sense that they propose a series of seemingly unnecessary adjudications related to the history of modern Western (or Global North) philosophy. Still, the questions are worth raising, as our answers to them can provide a better sense of the basic assumptions that new materialism mobilises on its way towards a more comprehensive analysis of power. This possibility becomes particularly clear if we read new materialism as a child of modern materialism, which begins with the considerations of René Descartes (1596‒1650) regarding the mind and the body, and which later proves decisive for the social sciences via Karl Marx’s (1818‒83) analyses of capitalism and capitalist society. Around these thinkers emerge a number of other critical engagements, including – and, for new materialism, particularly importantly – affect theory, process and/or field philosophy, new neuroscience, postcolonial theory, Indigenous scholarship and ecofeminism, all of which intersect with new materialism and provide important impetuses for the latter’s contributions and interventions.12 This main section is an attempt to present this story in a succinct and schematic manner (see Table 3.1 below for an overview). As just mentioned, the first pivotal contribution to modern materialism is Descartes’ considerations regarding the mind and the body, which themselves represent a response to the Reformation and subsequent scepticism regarding the possibility of having true and certain knowledge. In an attempt to avoid sceptical conclusions about the very possibility of truth and certainty, Descartes develops a philosophy of science that 90

The Materiality of Power he formalises with the now famous expression cogito ergo sum (‘I think, therefore I am’). Behind this statement hides a ‘dualistic ontology’* that divides the world into two parts, the material and the immaterial, and which makes it possible to emphasise the free will of consciousness as a force or power that acts without regard for anything other than itself.13 The abstract individualisation of the will entailed by this move is itself problematic, as evidenced by the critique of much of the liberal tradition and its reliance on various kinds of contract theory to resolve problems of social coordination and political cooperation.14 Moreover, while power, on Descartes’ model, is located in the immaterial world, the material world has the appearance of a passive substance that can do nothing by itself, but instead depends on a collection of predetermined, mechanical laws. The result is a representation similar to the one we find in a number of other modern thinkers, including, most notably, Immanuel Kant, and which continues to shape our contemporary discussions about power and politics: materiality as an untapped resource available for the human free will and the desires and needs that it ­(allegedly) controls. Clearly, this contribution stands in stark contrast not only to pre-modern notions of the material world, but also to the possibility of creating a sustainable relationship with nature. New materialist thinking intersects here with developments in feminist theory, in particular the ecofeminism associated with the work of Val Plumwood and later Astrida Neimanis, Cecilia Åsberg and others.15 According to Plumwood, the Cartesian philosophy and worldview provides a particularly problematic view of nature that aligns it with other dualisms and dichotomies in Western philosophy such as rational/irrational and male/female. Plumwood names this ‘hyper-separatism’, by 91

Power in the Anthropocene which she means ‘defining the dominant identity emphatically against or in opposition to the subordinated identity, by exclusion of their real or supposed qualities’.16 As one might gauge from this way of phrasing the problem, Plumwood is particularly concerned with the structures of domination and exploitation that emerge from defining nature as a passive substance without any agency or value of its own.17 The Cartesiananthropomorphic perspective, Plumwood argues, ‘associates with nature inferiorized social groups’ and enables ‘dominant groups [to] associate themselves with the overcoming or mastery of nature’.18 The upshot is not far from the situation we face today and which defines the challenges associated with the Anthropocene broadly understood. While it cannot be said that a philosophy such as that of Descartes is directly responsible for extractivism and anthropogenically caused climate change, Plumwood nevertheless sees a strong ideational influence that has allowed modern industrialised societies to develop in the way they have. New materialism shares this reading of the modern Global North philosophy but tries to extend it in several ways. Quite simply, the concern is that while Plumwood’s ecofeminism helps to undo the Cartesian view of matter as passive, it does not do enough to internally differentiate what matter is and does. To avoid this conclusion, new materialism adds a strong interest in excavating an alternative trajectory within modern philosophy that runs parallel to Cartesian thinking but also mobilises a significantly different conception of materialism and the material world. (I return to this dimension of the discussion in Chapter 5, where I discuss Spinoza’s contributions to the new materialist outlook.) Apart from the value of showing how modern Global North philosophy is more complex and variegated than 92

The Materiality of Power we might think, new materialism pursues this line of attack in order to create an internally located standpoint from which to both criticise existing structures of domination and inspire new modes of coexistence beyond the extractivism and exploitation that a view of nature as passive enables. On the one hand, new materialism shows how the material world (or ‘substance’, to use Spinoza’s language) is internally differentiated and, therefore, open to continuous resistance and reconfiguration. On the other hand, new materialism links this possibility to an interest in how bodily affects, both sad and joyous, cross the traditional human/ non-human divide, creating a kind of symbiotic entanglement that makes any kind of separatism impossible for reasons other than analytic parsimony.19 Both contributions resonate with ecofeminism’s insights – and, in that sense, they can be seen as complementary to the latter’s goals and strategies as well as expanding our appreciation of the very complexity of the material world. To develop this insight in more depth, we might turn to another pivotal moment in the history of modern materialism: Karl Marx and his historical materialism. For our purposes, historical materialism is interesting because it emphasises the importance of the material world for social and political relations, and because, in contrast to Descartes’ philosophy, it includes the material world as an independent and agentive part of the analysis of power. As is well known, Marx (often in collaboration with Friedrich Engels) expands this argument by focusing on the interplay between the ‘productive forces’ (machines, knowledge and labour) and the ‘relations of production’ (the social conditions under which life is created). Particularly relevant to Marx is the interplay between these two dimensions, which together causes changes in society’s ‘mode of production’, including the 93

Power in the Anthropocene transition from feudalism to capitalism and on to socialism and communism. For Marx, this history underlies the distribution of power in a given society. As he writes: ‘Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries … find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.’20 Although new materialist philosophy does not necessarily disagree with this argument, it nevertheless wishes, in line with the above discussion of ecofeminism and the associated critique of Cartesian thinking, to expand the analysis beyond political economy. Specifically, with regard to Marx, new materialism zeroes in on his lack of conceptualisation of the agency that springs from the multiple dimensions and scales of the material world. This lack of conceptualisation arises because Marx gives priority to economic conditions, understood as the determining forces of social and political history, and because he (and subsequent Marxism in particular) ends up repeating Descartes’ dualistic thought, admittedly ‘turned on its head’, but still without actually confronting the assumptions behind it. Informed by affect theory and the new neurosciences, both of which highlight how human bodies can act independently of input from free will or other forms of consciousness21 – something that in itself brings us closer to animals and other non-human modes of life – new materialism considers the absence of such a confrontation as a stumbling block to the understanding of the power of the material world.22 Without an acknowledgement of how this power is not necessarily human-made, and without an analytical sense of how it can act outside purely economic conditions, the analysis of power, according to new materialist philosophy, will remain exclusively sociocentric. In short: the consequence of Marx’s historical materialism is possibly a step forward in relation to the weighting of the material world, but 94

The Materiality of Power at the same time is also one or two steps backward in relation to an actual conceptualisation of the power existing in this world, and to which a contemporary analysis of power must necessarily relate. It is important to underscore that this critique of Marx and Marxist thinking does not mean that new materialism rejects or otherwise ignores the importance of economic factors in the analysis of how power is distributed and used in contemporary societies. Economic factors clearly matter, and like other heirs of Marx’s contributions to social and political theory, including contemporary versions of historical materialism, new materialism also seeks to interrupt the injustices and repressive structures invoked by especially capitalistic modes of production. Unlike other contributions, however, new materialism insists on not reducing the analysis of power to economic factors alone. As the examples with which I started this chapter show, the challenges we face today, especially around anthropogenic climate change, involve a much more complex set of factors than the economy alone. Economic factors, that is, might contribute to extractivism and demand for fossil fuels, but this alone does not explain how and why climate change develops the way it does. To capture a fuller picture, we therefore need a more multifaceted framework that acknowledges the entanglement of human and non-human forces, placing them together within a series of open-ended, self-enforcing processes.23 An obvious collaborator in this regard is Indigenous scholarship by thinkers and activists such as Kyle Whyte. According to Whyte, climate change is a direct continuation of colonialism and the impact it had on Indigenous communities and their access to natural resources. Indigenous communities, Whyte points out, are affected earlier and more severely than most 95

Power in the Anthropocene other populations.24 At the same time, however, Whyte insists that the response to this asymmetrical situation is not to focus on economic factors alone but also, and perhaps more importantly, requires an appreciation for other ways of sensing and engaging with the world writ large. Anticipating new materialism’s own interest in affective resonances and cross-species communication, Whyte points to ‘indigenous knowledges’, by which he means ‘systems of monitoring, recording, communicating, and learning about the relationships among humans, non-human plants and animals, and ecosystems that are required for any society to survive and flourish in particular ecosystems which are subject to perturbations of various kinds’.25 Whyte goes on to note that these kinds of Indigenous knowledges are crucial for ‘renewing’ human/non-human relationships and, through this renewing, for creating a stronger basis from which to act against the negative effects of climate change. As we shall see in Chapter 5, this way of combining political activism with sensorial experience is an equally important part of new materialism and its attempt to overcome a dualistic account of the world, separated into more or less contingent distinctions between culture and nature, human and non-human. In sum, then, the new materialist path to an analytical framework appropriate for the Anthropocene runs through an understanding of the material world that is significantly different from both Descartes’ mechanical materialism and Marx’s historical materialism. According to new materialism, we must avoid any form of dualism by starting out from a more entangledsymbiotic outlook – that which is referred to in the literature as ‘ontological monism’,* and which I previously described as a zoecentric starting point for the study of power. Both ontological monism and zoecentrism are to be understood here as 96

The Materiality of Power attempts to begin any analysis of power with that which binds all living beings together: the common material substance that makes life possible. Such a starting point does not necessarily mean that the world is always in equilibrium or that it cannot be divided in different ways, as emphasised in our previous discussions of the Greenland ice sheet, the matsutake mushroom, and the role of domino effects and tipping points in the Anthropocene in general. The new materialist understanding of the material world fully recognises this diversity while at the same time emphasising that if one seeks to divide the world, it can only be for analytical reasons, and always with the proviso that the different parts are inevitably strung together, each playing a part in a number of mutually constitutive contexts and processes. It is therefore impossible to comprehend one part of the world without also relating it to the other parts. As already indicated, this openness and this starting point are not necessarily easy to implement in practice; yet it is the task that new materialism is trying to tackle, invoking, as already noted, a conversation with several other traditions of knowledge, including affect theory, new neuroscience, postcolonial theory, Indigenous scholarship and ecofeminism. Table 3.1  New materialism and the history of ideas Descartes’ mechanical materialism

Marx’s historical materialism

New materialism

Definition of the material world

Inert

Productive

Vital

Ontological outlook

Dualistic

Dualistic

Monistic

Conception of material development

Mechanical and deterministic

Antagonistic and Dynamic and deterministic radically open

97

Power in the Anthropocene A Power Immanent to Life Itself In order to understand how new materialism meets this demand, let us scrutinise what the argument really relies on: the assumption that immanent to the material world – itself analogous to what I earlier referred to as ‘substance’ or ‘life’ – there is a power that infuses every mode of existence with the ability to act in their own unique ways. This power is best understood as coextensive with life itself and, thus, as that which circumscribes the very transition from non-life to life (and back again). As we shall see, new materialism elaborates on this assumption partly by emphasising the ‘vitality’* of anything material, and partly by associating this vitality with a conception of ‘distributed agency’,* which explains how and why concrete modes of existence simultaneously affect and are affected by the environment in which they operate. Both aspects lay the foundation for a more appropriate analysis of power in the Anthropocene. With regard to the first of these two aspects – the vitality of the material world – the basic idea is to begin from within the entanglements of human and non-human modes of life. To help this approach get under way, the American new materialist Jane Bennett introduces what she calls ‘thing-power’, which she goes on to define as a ‘moment of independence […] a moment that must be there, since things do in fact affect other bodies, enhancing or weakening their power’.26 At first glance, this definition might seem banal, especially because we can probably be made to understand that even what seems stagnant is in fact also in motion and is, therefore, imbued with some form of agency. In a way, we only have to observe a given ‘thing’ long enough to see that, say, a house or piece of plastic 98

The Materiality of Power changes over time. Certain aspects of these changes are no doubt due to more or less context-specific degrees of external influence, as when rain and wind break down a house’s brick structure, or when plastic gets used repeatedly over time. Still, as Bennett notes, there is also something internal to the ‘thing’ that makes it move over time and that exceeds simple external influence. This internal force makes new materialism’s conception of power radically different from anything else we have encountered so far in our discussions. How, then, should we understand such a power shared across human and non-human modes of life? One way to grapple with this question is to note how the material world down to its smallest parts consists of several elements that, although they might be seen and understood as distinct from each other, belong to an underlying force that both links them together and infuses them with their own unique characters and functions. This goes even (or especially) for atomic structure, where negatively charged electrons move around a nucleus made up of neutrons and positively charged protons. The interplay between these parts helps to explain how ‘things’, to use Bennett’s vocabulary, change due not only to external but also internal influence. Moreover, because this built-in movement has its own creative impulses – a point to which I return below – we must say that the material world has a vitality on a par with how the traditional concepts of power claim that an individual or group can act and influence its surroundings. Furthermore, we must also say that power is no longer something that comes from the outside but, rather, appears as an integral part of the material substance that enacts itself and that, through this enactment, creates movement and change. This goes for both human and non-human modes of life. The result, then, is a new and 99

Power in the Anthropocene marked expansion of the analysis of power, which now deals with all forms of life; even those that we cannot immediately see with the naked eye. Jane Bennett Jane Bennett (b. 1960) is an American political theorist who has played a prominent role in the development of the new materialist approach to the social sciences. Her book Vibrant Matter (2010) is an important contribution to the debate, as evidenced by the interest the book has stimulated among architects, designers, literary scholars, cultural theorists, political activists and art historians. Her book Influx and Efflux was published in 2020. Bennett uncovers this discrete but also vital and self-enacting creative force by noting the many dimensions of life that seem surprising or otherwise enchanting to our usual (all too human!) way of perceiving the world in which we live. The examples she uses stretch from litter in the street to strange literary non-human creatures to both philosophical and scientific discoveries about the material world. Moreover, the assumption that vital forces subsist within the material world becomes even more palpable if we turn to how materiality itself mutates as it affects and is affected by the environment, broadly understood. Indeed, matter and materiality might be even more plural and vibrant and dynamic than we have originally perceived it to be. According to another prominent new materialist theorist, Karen Barad, this approach is valuable because it alerts us to 100

The Materiality of Power a fundamental uncertainty in the material world – and, with it, in life as we know it. This uncertainty undoes any notion of a fixed or predetermined substance and, instead, underscores how substance itself is always already in the process of becoming otherwise. This uncertainty applies even to nuclear physicists who must recognise that the same thing can be both a particle and a wave at the same time.27 Barad expands this insight with reference to the work of Niels Bohr (1885‒1962) and others who study quantum leaps. According to Barad, these studies are interesting because they highlight a mode of becoming created by the material world itself, but which is so pervasive that the states before and after the shift often seem like two radically different worlds. While both aspects undoubtedly interfere with more traditional scientific desires for objectivity and stability, they are important to include, as they substantiate the vital force that Jane Bennett highlights in her discussion, and which, according to Barad, enables the material substance to ‘materialise’ itself in infinite ways. According to Barad, quantum leaps ‘are […] strange, because […] the fundamental notions of trajectory, movement, space, time, and causality are called into question’.28 Barad even goes so far as to suggest that quantum leaps offer proof of how the material world is always in the process of ‘materialising’ within constantly changing configurations of space and time – what she calls ‘spacetimemattering’. The material world is in this sense both one and many at one and the same time. As Barad puts it: ‘And the here and there and now and then are not separate coordinates, but entangled reconfigurings of spacetimemattering.’29 Notwithstanding their shared commitment to entanglement and more-than-human agency, new materialists do not always agree on how to interpret this materialising power that is 101

Power in the Anthropocene Karen Barad Karen Barad (b. 1956) is another significant new materialist theorist. Unlike most other theorists, her starting point is quantum physics, which she uses to explain how basic categories such as space and time are created through a process she calls ‘materialization’. Her most read book, Meeting the Universe Halfway (2007), represents an attempt to bridge the gap between theoretical quantum physics and discussions in the social and human sciences. immanent to life itself. One approach, typically associated with Science and Technology Studies (STS), insists that there needs to be some kind of designation of a thing or an event as ‘material’ before it can have any kind of power capable of effecting an ever-more expansive process of materialisation.30 Another approach, which is closer to Bennett and Barad – and, thus, to the one I pursue here – disagrees. The reason is quite simply that the material world, understood as coextensive with life itself, always already exists independently of how and when we designate it, encapsulating a series of materialisation processes that often only become visible or otherwise known as ‘material’ after the fact. The current effects of climate change exemplify this better than most other examples. Initiated in the past but only fully tangible in the near and/or distant future, the effects of climate change need not be designated in any discursive manner before they can be said to have an effect on how the world appears in the present.31 Note that this does not mean that the material world is given once and for all, and that it, in that sense, is merely waiting to be expressed in this or that way. 102

The Materiality of Power As both Bennett and Barad stress, it is rather the other way around: the material world is constantly transitioning from one state of being to another, which is also how it folds concrete modes of existence into divergent processes of entangled materialisation. For this reason, we might associate the material world (including cognate terms such as ‘substance’ and ‘life’) with an inexhaustible and self-generating power that exceeds any attempt at discursive designation and/or human mastery. As noted in Chapter 1, this account of the material world makes it difficult to insist on a sharp distinction between the allegedly different ways in which humans and non-humans not only invoke but also respond to power. At one level, it might seem uncontroversial to assume that when humans, be it individually or collectively, encounter the workings of power, they respond with a higher degree of reflexivity than when an animal or a plant does the same. After all, is this ability to reflect with a higher degree of complexity not what characterises human civilisation and its responsibility for the climate and biodiversity crises? The answer seems rather obviously to be yes. At another level, however, the new materialist engagement with the material world adds important nuance to this conclusion by pointing out 1) that ‘the human’ is too simple an account of the many forces that empower its ability to think and to act, and 2) that the very same forces that empower humans also belong to what we normally would call ‘non-human’. The combination of these insights suggests that, while on the surface humans might be  more reflective – and, hence, more responsive to power – there is good reason to think that this account of what it means to be human is greatly exaggerated – or, at least, that humans are not as unique and special as many tend to think. Reflexivity is not a uniquely human quality, even if important differences 103

Power in the Anthropocene do persist. As I noted in Chapter 1, we therefore need a more nuanced position that acknowledges power differentials – both in relation to distribution and in relation to responsiveness – but also allows us to situate this differentiation across our usual distinctions between culture and nature, human and non-human. In addition to the purely philosophical-theoretical arguments, there are two reasons for accepting such a conceptualisation of power as immanent to the material world itself. The first is that it makes it easier analytically to acknowledge the many processes prevailing in the Anthropocene. We already saw in Chapter 1 why this is important, but we can now go a step further. Take, for example, the tipping points arising in connection with the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. As emphasised above, this melting means that new vegetation can grow, which initially appears to be a positive contribution, but which also means that the total surface of the Earth is that much darker, turning the new vegetation into yet another entangled actor that maintains or even accelerates the rise in average global temperatures. For our purposes, it is particularly interesting that this self-­reinforcing process seems to preclude the notion that there has been a change from something ‘material’ to ­ something ‘immaterial’ (and/or vice versa). Instead, we must say that the material world has mutated in a manner that involves a materialisation of the material; that is, a process of becoming, which gradually and/ or partly proceeds on materiality’s own terms. In this process, the inherent power of the material world emerges as an internal, complex set of energies that continually create new human/ non-human entanglements. Without acknowledging this process explicitly, our analysis of power will remain o ­ blivious to some of the most important – but also most c­ hallenging – issues of our time. 104

The Materiality of Power The second reason for accepting the new materialist assumption about the material world is that it enables us to bypass some of the mistakes that characterise the traditional approaches to the concept of power, particularly in relation to the assumption of free will; that is, the idea that A can only be said to exercise power when they have an explicit intention to get B to do something that B otherwise would not have done. According to critics such as Foucault and Bourdieu, this assumption overlooks how intentions themselves are products of structural-discursive conditions, which not only work at different timescales but also often remain oblique to the actors involved. Both aspects imply that power is something other and more than a question of what A and B intend and believe to be the case. From a new materialist perspective, however, the problem cuts even deeper, as already stated latently in the critique of Descartes’ mechanistic materialism. Indeed, the very assumption of a free will invites some rather unrealistic expectations regarding how decisions come into being, which it turn encourages people to imagine that they, as civilised and reflective beings, can and should control the evolution of society. As the climate crisis of our time clearly demonstrates, such a presentation is not only wrong on a philosophical-theoretical level; it also has negative political implications for our ability to act responsibly and with respect for the needs and interests of future generations. Analysing power as immanent to the material world is an important remedy in this regard.

The New Materialist Matrix Let us now turn to the second aspect emphasised at the outset of the previous section: the link between power as immanent to 105

Power in the Anthropocene the material world and the notion of agency as distributed across human and non-human modes of life. The link itself hinges on an elaboration of how power is configured and expressed across the entanglements of human and non-human modes of life, and as such it opens up a more extended discussion of how specific constellations of power are differentiated and distributed across time and space. Is there a difference in power across human/ non-human entanglements? How can we qualify the notion that some entanglements possess ‘some’ power, while others have ‘more’ or even ‘much more’ power? According to most new materialists, these questions take us right back to the discussion of power as potentia and what I, in the previous two chapters, have referred to as ‘power-to’. To begin with, we should be careful not to define this power as an undifferentiated mass, but instead highlight how it materialises and is expressed in different ways across time and space, which themselves are forms of materialisation (as pointed out by Barad). New materialists are not always careful to note this differentiation in their analyses of political and social life, even though they typically acknowledge the need for it. To overcome this limitation, I propose that we approach the immanent power of the material world (i.e., power-to’s generative potential) as a matter of degrees and, furthermore, that we explicate these degrees along two dimensions, each constituting its own continuum: ‘intensity’* and ‘duration’.* Thus, with regard to intensity, power-to can be a potentiality that expresses itself in a strong and condensed manner or – at the other end of the continuum – it can emerge in a weaker and more open-ended fashion. Something similar applies to duration, which is an attempt to highlight the temporality associated with the processes through which the material materialises. While the potentiality associated with this material 106

The Materiality of Power

Explosive

Virtuel

Blunt

Gradual

Figure 3.1  The new materialist matrix

power-to is sometimes expressed in a short span of time, it can also extend over a longer period of time. The combination of these two dimensions leads us to four modes of generative potentiality (i.e., power-to), which are shown in Figure 3.1. As with so many other schematic representations, it is important to emphasise that none of these modes exists in its pure form, and that the same phenomenon will often morph from one mode to another. That said, the two most intuitive modes are probably those I have described here as ‘explosive’ and ‘gradual’. By the former, I mean an exercise of power-to that has a particularly high intensity, and that is therefore often quite short-lived. An example of this could be a glacier that suddenly calves, a machine that accelerates violently, or a social movement that abruptly changes its course of action. Common to all three examples is that they emphasise the radical potential for change, 107

Power in the Anthropocene which often enchants our narratives of power because it implies a change so manifest that the difference between ‘before’ and ‘after’ is like a revolutionary break. The world is quite simply not the same once an explosive power-to has left its mark on the affected parties. Still, it is clear that this kind of intensity is not the only game in town. At the other end of the matrix we find a more ‘gradual potentiality’, which engenders a change that is neither as radical nor explosive but enacts its effects over a longer period of time. The most succinct definition of this kind of power-to is that it develops at a low intensity and, for that reason, is often longer lasting. Examples include moraine deposits that shape the landscape for many thousands of years after a glacier has retreated, or a modern bureaucracy that, through rules and procedures, reduces the possibility of radical change and, instead, supports a slower decision-making process in which as many considerations as possible are included in the final decision on a given topic or issue. These examples might not be as dramatic as the ones associated with an explosive power-to, and yet they might be more indicative of power in all its many shapes and forms. Before I go on to elaborate on this insight, it is important to emphasise, as I have sought to do in the above, that both ‘explosive’ and ‘gradual’ power-to can be used to describe and analyse human as well as non-human modes of life. It is also important to note that the two modes are subject to divergent levels of perceptibility, making it an especially important task to develop alternative research methods to scrutinise the exercise of power in the Anthropocene (a topic to which I return in Chapter 4). Even the most ‘explosive’ cases of power-to might not be readily visible to the human eye – or, indeed, might not be intelligible according to conventional scientific and/or cultural narratives – as they occur at scales and levels that either 108

The Materiality of Power escape perception altogether or only later evolve into something we might call perceptible. The same goes for cases of ‘gradual’ power-to, which, due to their extended temporality, might seem even less distinct or identifiable. Add to this that even in those cases when ‘explosive’ and/or ‘gradual’ power-to is subject to perception, there might be disagreement about how to characterise them. What some agents see as ‘gradual’, other agents will as ‘explosive’, either because they, for historical and cultural reasons, do not share the same field of perception or because their definitions of the terms diverge due to different positions within a shared but also ambiguous world of materialised experience and meaning. Either way, the result is a set of competing descriptions that require close attention to the specific ways in which power-to is expressed and utilised in this or that context. The same kind of considerations apply to the other two modes included above: ‘blunt’ and ‘virtual’. The first of these refers to an exercise of power-to that has both a low intensity and a short duration. While this combination might not be as intuitive as the first two, it is nevertheless important because it can help us to capture some of the less desirable processes that undergird political and social life in the Anthropocene. This could be, for example, a failed revolution in which not enough forces gather to create viable change for society as a whole; or it might be blossoming new plant life that is abruptly interrupted due to sudden changes in the supply of oxygen and nutrients. The latter in particular suggests that ‘blunt’ power-to can be seen as indicative of a mode of potentiality that either is or has become unsustainable and therefore requires new practices of care. The ability to identify this need makes blunt potentiality an especially important element in the analysis of politics and sociality in the Anthropocene. 109

Power in the Anthropocene The fourth and final mode included in the matrix is ‘virtual potentiality’, by which I mean an exercise of power-to that is long-lasting and characterised by the highest degree of intensity.32 It is rare, if at all, that this power-to gets expressed in any visible way. The closest we get might be the feeling of rush that comes with being overtaken by something much larger than oneself – a sensation of sadness and joy – horror and bliss – that breaks the existing categories of perception and judgement, and for that reason is often liked to an experience of sublimity. Unlike other schools of thought, new materialists do not reserve this experience for humans alone. Instead, they portray it as the underlying power that human and non-human modes of life have in common; a power that might not materialise in any visible way, but that must nevertheless be assumed to exist as a condition of possibility for all other forms of potentiality – and for that reason must be assumed to be long-lasting in nature. Indeed, tagging on to Barad’s discussion of ‘spacetimemattering’, it is best understood as a generative potentiality, which is processual in nature and, in that sense, is immanent to the very materialisation of the material world. It is, if you will, power-to in its purest and most unlimited form: a mode of power-to in its own right, while it at the same time undergirds all the other modes, enabling them to appear within more or less recognisable coordinates of time and space. Together, these four modes represent an attempt to differentiate between degrees of a generative power-to immanent to the material world. Each of the four modes does so without assuming any categorical distinction between human and non-human modes of life. To ensure this approach in practice, new materialism insists that any analysis of power must begin in medias res, with the very combination of the human and the non-human; that which Barad calls ‘entanglements’ and which 110

The Materiality of Power Bennett, inspired by Latour, further develops with the concept of ‘assemblage’.33 An assemblage designates here a delimited – but not hermetically sealed off – multiplicity of modes of power linked to different forms of materiality. The upshot is that what we normally call ‘human’ is better understood as a heterogeneous assemblage of human and non-human materialities, which also means that what we usually call ‘decision’ or ‘rationality’ arises in interaction with the impact of the non-human, including bacteria, minerals, electricity, climate, light, heat and so forth. Something similar applies to the ‘non-human’, which also shares many of the features we normally associate with the human, including language, sociality and intentional actions.34 In both cases, the challenge is to recognise the basic entanglements of the world without underestimating the possibility that these entanglements can assume different forms, depending on specific historical circumstances. Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (1947–2023) was a French philosopher and sociologist who contributed to the understanding of the consequences of the climate crisis for the social sciences. He is best known for his ‘actor‒network theory’* (ANT), but he also contributed to the new materialist understanding of the agency of the material world, particularly through the introduction of the Gaia figure and the concept of assemblage. His books include Facing Gaia (published in English in 2017) and Down to Earth (published in English in 2018). Both books explore the conditions of – and possibilities for – a new and more radical climate policy. 111

Power in the Anthropocene It is in this context that the notion of ‘distributed agency’ makes particularly good sense – as a way of acknowledging the differentiated nature of the power immanent to the material world while also pinpointing how the ability to effect change (i.e., agency) is distributed across actors, each defined by its unique set of experiences and potential for action. As we learn from new materialists such as Bennett and Latour, distributed agency is a way of saying 1) that agency is located within an assemblage of human and non-human agents – or ‘actants’, to use Latour’s expression – and 2) that each agent/actant obtains its specific level of agency through an ever-moving and entangled interplay with all the other agents/actants embedded in the assemblage.35 To be sure, the assemblage itself is never completely delimited, and, thus, it is always possible for new agents/actants to change the assemblage’s composition, which in turn will lead to a new distribution of agency. These interruptions are to be expected, and they help to explain how and why change is possible in the first place. They also underscore what has been the message throughout this section: that the analysis of power must begin from within an assemblage of human and non-human modes of life, which gives each agent/actant its unique level of agency and thus helps to organise their potentiality so that it can be materialised in a context-dependent but nonetheless unique way – whether characterised as ‘explosive’, ‘blunt’, ‘gradual’ or ‘virtual’. An important advantage of approaching the issue in this manner is that it offers us an opportunity not only to analyse power-to in its own right but also to place it in relation to how the frameworks reviewed in Chapter 2 deal with the other aspect of power – what I have referred to as power-over. While power-to might be ontologically more basic than power-over, 112

The Materiality of Power at least from a new materialist perspective, there is still a way of acknowledging the latter by saying that it arises when different modes of power-to are assembled in such a way that the distribution of agency allows certain actors to take control and dominate more than others. There is a certain circularity involved in this way of understanding the issue that we do well to notice. On the one hand, we might say that power-over emerges out of the power-to. On the one hand, we might also say that any expression of power-over hinges on the power-to and, in that sense, is subject to change and subversion. Latour comes close to making this point when, in Reassembling the Social, he notes that it is ‘precisely because it’s so difficult to maintain asymmetries, to durably entrench power relations, to enforce inequalities, that so much work is being constantly devoted in shifting the weak and fast-decaying ties to other types of links’.36 Another way of saying this is that the circularity involved in the relationship between power-to and power-over resembles the insights offered by Foucault regarding power as resistance (as reviewed in Chapter 2). Unlike in the case of Foucault, however, this element of resistance is now located squarely in the material world, allowing our analysis of power to address the many Anthropocene issues and challenges that Foucault, due to his preference for discursive phenomena, left untouched.

Three Theses on Power in the Anthropocene Based on these considerations, it is now possible to set up three theses, which constitute new materialism’s proposal for an analytical framework that breaks with the sociocentric bias and thereby contributes to a study of power that cuts both more 113

Power in the Anthropocene deeply and more broadly than is otherwise customary in social science inquiries.37 In alignment with kindred efforts in ecofeminism, postcolonial theory, Indigenous scholarship, and environmental humanities, the three theses emerge from a shift in the philosophy of science implied by rethinking the Anthropocene as a complex interplay between human and non-human forces, distinguishing new materialism from other materialist philosophies. This includes arguments about ontological monism, the turn to zoecentrism, the material world (itself understood as coextensive with life as such), symbiotic entanglements, and the accompanying interpretation of power-to as internally differentiated along four overlapping modes of potentiality. Each of these arguments contributes to a set of general themes, which should be included in any analysis and conceptualisation of power: ‘the nature of power’, ‘assemblage of power’ and ‘direction of power’. Thesis 1: the nature of power Thesis: Power implies a generative potential inherent in the material world and, thus, in all human as well as non-human modes of life. The material potential – and the power inherent in it – is expressed through two dimensions: intensity and duration. These two dimensions give rise to four modes of power, which will often appear in and through an infinite number of combinations. Some of these combinations can evolve into specific relations of domination, albeit relations that are never so encompassing so as to exclude the possibility of resistance and new forms of materialisation. For that reason, we might say that power-to and power-over always emerge through a circular process that makes them seem as though they belong to a mutually constitutive relationship. 114

The Materiality of Power Example: As already mentioned, the Greenland ice sheet offers a good example of this understanding of the nature of power. To begin with, we might note how the ice sheet is the place where a glacier suddenly calves, thereby expressing a particularly intense and short-lived form of power. This kind of explosiveness can accelerate further through various forms of human activity (e.g., oil extraction) that help to strengthen a particular agenda and/or constellation of power and privilege. Moreover, some of the explosive accelerations may, temporally speaking, appear out of joint, because they, as noted earlier in this chapter, take place long before they become visible to everyone else participating in the process. This includes the glacier’s sudden movement that begins long before huge chunks of ice fall into the sea. Combined with human activities such as oil extraction, the result is a series of self-enforcing processes that bring us closer and closer to the tipping points that climate scientists highlight in their analyses of anthropogenic climate change. At the same time, we should note how the ice sheet not only calves but also contributes to the many moraine deposits that occur when glacial structures slowly retreat. Apart from leaving a lasting imprint on the landscape, this also imposes certain material constraints on human activity. In some cases, these constraints relate to loss of hunting animals, which in turn can make it harder to survive and flourish as a community. In other cases, the constraints might open up new avenues for interaction, as new shipping routes north of Greenland open up, which in turn might augment or otherwise contribute to the accelerations noted above. The possibility that the same ‘thing’ can express two such different forms of power is itself an important aspect of the new materialist analysis of power and a testament to the 115

Power in the Anthropocene fact that power is a diverse phenomenon that cannot (and should not) be reduced to one mode alone. Thesis 2: the assemblage of power Thesis: The degrees of intensity and duration are organised through specific assemblages of human and non-human materiality. The assemblage is thus the most important unit of analysis, both because it gives the material world its specific expression, including its context-dependent entanglements, and because it enables a differentiation of the various elements of this world. The latter includes those to whom/which we refer as ‘human’ and ‘non-human’. Consequently, we must always understand agency as distributed across multiple dimensions. We must also recognise that the omnipresence of power is far more radical – far more persistent – than hitherto assumed. Both of these aspects are emphasised by the many synonyms of power: movement, energy, force, potentiality, etc. For all of these, power is never an ‘either/or’ but always a ‘both/and’. Example: The matsutake mushroom – and the culture of human and non-human life surrounding it – is a good example of this second thesis. This is particularly the case once we zero in on its movements from Japan via northern Scandinavia and on from there to the Oregonian forests – and back again to Japan. At each step of the way, a contingent set of forces defines what is possible and what is not. In northern Scandinavia, it is the interaction between radioactive fallout and weather patterns that makes the difference. In Oregon, it is human-enduring deforestation practices, which enable new fungi cultures to emerge on the heels of fundamental changes in the underlying 116

The Materiality of Power ecosystems. And in Japan, it is the continuous demand for a particular kind of gastronomy, defined by a specific set of markers of cultural distinction and communal tradition, that puts pressure on the quest for one type of mushroom rather than another. The entanglements of these seemingly discrete contexts point to a combination of human and non-human forces that individually and collectively generate movements of sociability and feelings of belonging across nations and peoples, as well as across the many other species that make up any given society. In these processes and interactions, it is not possible to point to one specific actor that sets the direction for all the others; instead, it is the total collection of human and non-human agents, and their embedded – and always already entangled – materiality, that drives the historical arrow in this or that direction. Or, to put it differently: the combination of anthropogenic climate change and the self-organising processes of the many ecosystems form a single unified whole – what new materialism calls an ‘assemblage’ – that is both internally differentiated and historically contingent. These mutual influences subsisting within the assemblage underscore the need to see power as a phenomenon that criss-crosses the human and non-human. Thus, the new materialist interest in the concept of assemblage is also a contribution to what, earlier in this chapter, I called the plus-minus game of the Anthropocene. Thesis 3: the direction of power Thesis: The emphasis on potentiality and assemblage points to the third and final thesis, which is that power-to and powerover evolve relationally and dynamically. Another way of saying 117

Power in the Anthropocene this is that, since power is always present in the world without necessarily being strictly rational and/or deliberative, it is not possible to predict the consequences of a given power relationship. Instead, we must realise that power always works with and against itself, and that for this very reason it will always produce its own set of traces and remainders that escape the possibility of control – not to mention intelligibility and justification. Both aspects are particularly prominent in a time of anthropogenic climate change, where human/non-human entanglements are more complex and diverse than ever before. Example: To exemplify this thesis, we might turn to the very idea of an Anthropocene epoch. On the one hand, this idea seems to highlight the power of humankind – all other things being equal, this must be why humankind has named an entire age after itself. By extension, it is no coincidence that the Anthropocene is especially associated with new technological initiatives, which attempt to control the climate, and which thereby appear to represent attempts to make humankind master of the material world. The initiatives in question include everything from carbon capture storage technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere to the invention of synthetic meat and new fodder that can manipulate the microorganisms in cows’ stomachs and thus reduce their methane production. At each step of the way, these initiatives seem to emphasise an unfettered belief in human superiority. Rather than emphasising the entanglements of human and non-human life, the movement seems to suggest an ever-starker separation, enabled by the very power of humankind itself. On the other hand, the consequences of such measures are obviously incalculable. This is not only due to the lack of the 118

The Materiality of Power knowledge necessary to develop accurate mathematical models, but also to the ability of ecosystems to mutate in ways no one can predict. With regard to the former, the complexity involved in existing ecosystems far exceeds our current levels of computational skills, making it nearly impossible to predict how new (and, for the most part, yet-to-be-invented) technologies will affect the climate once implemented. This uncertainty applies also to the most advanced IPCC computations, which neither cover the interactions between all the Earth’s ecosystems nor pretend to provide a completely certain prediction about the future.38 There is, it would seem, always something that escapes computation. With regard to the latter – the ecosystems’ ability to mutate – it is equally clear that changes in one assemblage (or sub-assemblage) might affect all the other assemblages as well. This happens, for example, when climate change in one geographical setting affects the level of biodiversity in another, or when the introduction of a new species to an existing ecosystem forces all the other species to mutate in order to survive.39 Both examples help to underscore how and why the exercise of power can neither be controlled nor fully explained. Any analysis of power that does not acknowledge this might, paradoxically, end up undermining its own legitimacy and, in that sense, be less ‘powerful’ than it otherwise would present itself. Whether these three theses are, in fact, sufficient to meet the analytical and normative-political challenges that the Anthropocene poses to the analysis of power is a question on which the final three chapters shed further light. What we can already say, however, is that the theses at a theoretical level steer us around the sociocentrism highlighted in the previous chapter as the main limitation of contemporary social science 119

Power in the Anthropocene inquiries. This applies both in relation to the need to include non-human factors in the analysis of power, and in relation to the question of how our contemporary society can and must respond to the rapidly emerging climate crisis. For both aspects, new materialism begins with the symbiotically inflected material substance that binds humans and non-humans together, which ultimately leads to an obligation to care for life as such. As we shall see in Chapters 5 and 6, such care implies partly a desire to create the best opportunities for the flourishing of life, and partly an interest in achieving this through a thorough democratisation of Anthropocene governance structures. In other words, for the new materialist analysis of power, the goal is to promote social and political relations based on a ‘gradual’ and ‘virtual’ form of power, rather than one that is ‘blunt’ and/ or ‘explosive’. Behind this argument we find the zoecentric perspective of new materialism, which not only brings together under one umbrella the three theses presented above, but also brings us back to the discussion of the many interpretations of the Anthropocene (see Table 1.1 in Chapter 1 for an overview). More precisely, we can say that the new materialist interest in sustaining and expanding life helps to support a ‘Gaia’ interpretation of the Anthropocene, which, in contrast to the ‘eco-modernist’ and ‘dystopian’ interpretations, seeks neither to liberate humans from nature, nor to reduce our collective behaviour to an expression of hubris and self-destruction. From a new materialist perspective, both interpretations simplify the new climate reality, which cannot be boiled down to one particular tendency, as it involves a series of mutually reinforcing tendencies that both slow down and promote the possibilities of life. This complexity is also what the Gaian interpretation 120

The Materiality of Power highlights through the myth of Gaia – the divine and almighty Mother Earth – who gives life to the peoples of the planet while punishing those who try to deceive her. The goal of letting life flourish without cheating is also an important guiding star of new materialism, especially because it emphasises how power and life are always already two sides of the same coin. To create new and sustainable life, the diverse potential of power must flourish through gradual and virtual forms. This could easily be the slogan of the new materialist power analysis!

Notes  1 Morton, Ecology without Nature; Purdy, After Nature.  2 See, inter alia, Plumwood, Environmental Culture; Whyte, ‘Indigenous Climate Change Studies’.  3 Hamilton, in Defiant Earth, writes that ‘[h]umans are more powerful; nature is more powerful’ (45).  4 McNeill and Engelke, The Great Acceleration; see also Lenton et al., ‘Climate Tipping Points’; and Steffen et al., ‘Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene’.   5 See also Latour and Weibel, Critical Zones.   6 See also IPCC, IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.   7 Government of Greenland, The Fifth National Report Greenland.   8 I return to the Greenland case later in this chapter and again in Chapter 4.  9 Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World. The following draws on insights from this book. 10 Chakrabarty, ‘The Human Condition in the Anthropocene’, 147. Zoe is the ancient Greek word for life, used by Chakrabarty to denote a philosophical tradition that can be traced back to thinkers such as Lucretius, and which includes thinkers such as Spinoza and Nietzsche. 11 By ‘substance’, I mean the same as Spinoza did in his reworking of Aristotelian philosophy: a reservoir of vital material potentiality that encapsulates both human and non-human life, allowing ‘nature’ as such to be simultaneously dynamic and stable, liberating and dominating. For more on this, see the discussion in Chapter 5.

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Power in the Anthropocene 12 The many sources of inspiration make it difficult to speak of new materialism in the singular, and the following should therefore be read as an attempt to draw out the most important elements in order to create the basis for the ensuing discussion on how to establish a new materialist analysis of power. On the many new materialisms, see Gamble, Hanan and Nail, ‘What is New Materialism’; and Hazard, ‘Two Ways of Thinking about New Materialism’. 13 This is particularly evident in Descartes’ treatise on man (in French: La traité de l’homme, published posthumously in 1662), in which the body is produced as a machine that can be controlled through the free will belonging to the intangible world. Here is how Descartes puts it in Treatise of Man: ‘[w]hen there shall be a rational soul in this machine, it will have its chief seat in the brain and will there reside like the turncock who must be in the main to which all the tubes of these machines repair when he wishes to excite, prevent, or in some manner alter their movements’ (Treatise of Man, 22). 14 See Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, for a ­classic statement of this critique. 15 See Dichman, ‘Sweaty Commons’, for an extend discussion of these ­connections. 16 Plumwood, ‘Nature as Agency’, 12. 17 Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. 18 Plumwood, ‘Nature as Agency’, 13. 19 Gilbert, ‘Metaphors for a New Body Politic’. 20 Marx, ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, 145 (emphasis in original). 21 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza; and LeDoux, The Emotional Brain. 22 Coole and Frost, New Materialism; and Andersen, ‘Nymaterialisme’. 23 I return to this issue in Chapter 6, where I discuss new materialism in relation to contemporary eco-Marxism. 24 Whyte, ‘Indigenous Climate Change Studies’, 154. 25 Whyte, ‘Indigenous Climate Change Studies’, 157. 26 Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 3. 27 Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 104. 28 Barad, ‘Nature’s Queer Performativity’, 19. 29 Barad, ‘Nature’s Queer Performativity’, 19. See also Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, ch. 3. 30 Marres, Material Participation. 31 Erev, ‘Feeling the Vibrations’. 32 See Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, for a further elaboration of virtual potentiality. Power as virtual potential is also important for Spinoza’s ­concept of nature, which I discuss in Chapter 5.

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The Materiality of Power 33 Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 247; Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 23. 34 See also Massumi, What Animals Teach Us About Politics. 35 Bennett, ‘In Parliament with Things’, 452; see also Latour, ‘An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto”’. 36 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 66. 37 See Tønder, ‘Det antropocæne’, for an earlier formulation. 38 O’Lear et al., ‘Environmental Geopolitics of Climate Engineering Proposals in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report’. 39 Kolbert, Under a White Skye, ch. 1.

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4

The Methods of Power

Five Guidelines for a New Materialist Analysis of Power The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how the insights developed in Chapter 3 can inform concrete studies of political and social life in the Anthropocene in all its contested and internally differentiated manifolds. From the outset, we should note that this is no easy task, both because new materialism is a relatively untested addition to the social science toolbox, and because interest in the Anthropocene complicates a narrowing of the analysis to something recognisable, such as a political institution, a social community, an economic structure or a wilful individual. Given how political and social life in the Anthropocene is implicated in human/non-human relations, it is rarely possible to pinpoint a discrete entity that amounts to something like an independent variable free from entanglement with everything around it; in fact, the opposite seems much closer to the truth. As we have seen repeatedly in the last three chapters, the Anthropocene phase implies a series of historically situated assemblages that emerge in conjunction with multiple modes of agency, defining a symbiont environment that is simultaneously 124

The Methods of Power human and non-human, cultural and natural (to the extent that these categories even make sense any more). From this general insight, it follows that everything, including the many forces and energies that flow into the exercise of power, should be subject to scrutiny. Without a world with fixed reference points, the analysis of power becomes all-encompassing; and therefore much more difficult to organise and execute in a limited, internally coherent manner. To recognise this starting point, in this chapter I take a more illustrative approach. While the previous two chapters primarily operated on the conceptual-theoretical level, this chapter dives deeper into four cases, which show how new materialism engages with – and learns from – topics relevant to the study of power in the Anthropocene. My hope is that the insights that emerge from this encounter will also speak to more general social science discussions about knowledge production and the norms and expectations associated therewith. The first case takes us back to our discussion of the Greenland ice sheet and summarises many of the points made in our previous discussions. The second focuses on agriculture, with special attention to how more-than-human forces enhance our ability to envision new kinds of food production. The third expands the perspective with a discussion of the production and distribution of electricity and renewable energy in both the United States and countries such as Denmark. The fourth and final case uses the #MeToo movement to show how new materialism can also contribute new knowledge on a topic that has been traditionally considered human-centred: gender equality. In all four cases, the new materialist analysis of power begins somewhere other than where traditional analyses begin. Rather than starting with one particular actor (whether an individual, group or social class), 125

Power in the Anthropocene the new materialist analysis begins in the middle of it all  – in medias res – where the human and non-human constitute a single assemblage with its own unique set of entanglements and symbiotic relations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how this approach involves a new understanding of knowledge and case selection, building on the considerations in Chapters 2 and 3 regarding the constitution of society and the need for a new self-understanding in the social sciences. Before turning to these cases and considerations, however, it is important to emphasise that the chapter’s illustrative approach does not imply a methodology where ‘anything goes’. This holds true even though the new materialist tradition emphasises a high degree of method pluralism, which makes it difficult to see initially what brings the analyses together under one shared umbrella. For some, new materialism is closely linked to ‘the ethnographic method’,*1 whereas others see a greater potential in a further development of either Barad’s use of quantum physics2 or Latour’s ‘actor‒network theory’ (ANT).3 Common to most new materialist contributions, however, is an understanding of scientific work as something that goes beyond the demands of mainstream science, including parsimony, efficient causality, distinct variables and ahistorical concepts. From a new materialist perspective, the desire to fulfil these demands is not only wrongheaded because they ignore the world’s multifaceted character – what we, in line with our previous discussions of Gaia, could call the ‘pluriverse’4 – but also because they, in their move to reduce the world to only a few causal relations, inhibit any attempt to make a real difference in this or that context. Indeed, while reducing the complexity of the world might create the pretence of easy solutions, it rarely pans out that way, as anyone dealing with climate change will know. 126

The Methods of Power To ensure their continued relevance, the social sciences instead must pay homage to that which is difficult and complex, taking in the world in as many registers and dimensions as possible. This holds true even though such an approach can make it difficult to produce knowledge that is easily understood, and that other researchers with an interest in the social sciences can verify with more or less certainty. This shift in relation to what counts as ‘good’ science is a direct consequence of the new materialist interest in the inherent power of the material world and the desire to pluralise the already existing entanglements of human and non-human life.5 Moreover, inspired by thinkers such as Donna Haraway, whose own contributions to ecology, standpoint feminism and situated knowledge continue to inform new materialism, including how to pluralise the Anthropocene debate, the new materialist intervention points to a significantly different epistemologicalethical inflection than the one we normally encounter in the social sciences. Key to this shift is the depiction of what might seem ‘troublesome’ and ‘unmanageable’ – that is, the remainders and surprises that do not fit neatly into a causal explanation or interpretative story but nonetheless seem crucial to the historical moment or political struggle at hand. Whereas many social science approaches depict these interruptions as historically contingent, perhaps even as some kind of ‘necessary evil’ that must tolerated in the name of some higher goal, new materialism insists on perceiving them as positive aspects that sustain and inspire the underlying knowledge-production process. Why? Because they interrupt the drive to homogenisation, and because they instead direct our attention to the particularities of the world and their contingent but nonetheless legitimate demand for care. The goal is to acknowledge and to highlight 127

Power in the Anthropocene this kind of care as an indispensable part of the insights we produce as knowledge-creators. Or, as Haraway puts it, ‘In the face of unrelenting historically specific surplus of suffering in companion species knottings, I am not interested in reconciliation or restoration, but I am deeply committed to the more modest possibilities of partial recuperation and getting on together. Call that staying with the trouble.’6 Donna Haraway Donna Haraway (b. 1945) is an American feminist and philosopher of science who, throughout her body of writing, has challenged the traditional human/non-human distinction. Her breakthrough came with ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ (1985), an essay describing how gender and sexuality are closely linked to technological development. Her later writing has particularly focused on the relationship between humans and animals, including When Species Meet (2007) and Staying with the Trouble (2016). Building on these remarks, we might see the diverse methodological interventions highlighted before (e.g., ethnography, ANT and so on) as pointing us in the same direction: to ‘stay with the trouble’ in order not only to map but also affect change within historically specific assemblages of human and non-human modes of life. Haraway herself contributes to this project by emphasising what she calls ‘tentacular thinking’, by which she means a mode of thinking that looks for connections across differences and tries to expand them in ways both critical and affirmative.7 To make this approach more tangible – and, thus, to associate new materialism more explicitly 128

The Methods of Power with concerns in the social sciences – I propose five simple methodological guidelines that serve to advance an alternative knowledge production appropriate for the analysis of power in the Anthropocene. Five guidelines for a new materialist analysis of power 1. Listen to the context 2. Follow the movement 3. Combine multiple scales 4. Cultivate the diversity of things 5. Highlight possibilities for change and pluralisation Guideline #1 highlights something that might seem obvious but often escapes real attention: the importance of listening to the context, in the sense of letting it speak on its own terms – and through its own languages (some familiar, some not so much) – before making any hard judgements about the significance of this or that utterance or event or movement. Although it is impossible to free oneself completely from one’s preconceived notions of how reality fits together, new materialism posits that it is nevertheless crucial that we avoid deciding in advance which conditions and phenomena should take precedence in the analysis. The most important information sometimes comes from a historical document; in other cases, the key to an issue hides deep inside a stone or a set of bacteria. Since we cannot decide in advance which agent is the most important, the analysis of power must orient itself to the context itself to decide where the investigation should begin.8 It is actually quite simple: Stay curious about the world! This also implies a recognition that the context is not merely a passive constant, but instead factors in as 129

Power in the Anthropocene an active player, which contributes to the assembling of society on an equal footing with other, more recognisable actors. It is in this sense that we must ‘listen’ to the context, as something or someone who also expresses itself through sounds, movements and other forms of expression.9 The meaning of these expressions is rarely uniform and one-directional. Still, as entangled researchers, and, hence, as people who are always already part of the issue at hand, our task is to make this complexity come alive in ways that give priority to what the context, however defined, is communicating. Guidelines #2 and #3 expand on this insight. Guideline #2 emphasises the importance of not seeing the context as stable but instead as a dynamic set of movements that push its constituent entities and participants in multiple directions at the same time. Following our discussion in Chapter 3, we might say that the movements themselves are expressions of some kind of power characterised by being more or less intense, more or less durable. Moreover, if our goal is to show what power makes possible over time – that is, how it works and what it effects – we should not focus exclusively on how it has been locked in at a given point, but rather on how it develops over time (and the consequences thereof). Guideline #2 encourages us to do precisely this, even if, from time to time, it means allowing the analysis to move into uncharted territory. Guideline #3 also supports this task by emphasising the importance of working across different ‘space and time scales’,* including those relating to anthropological as well as geological, biological and cosmological conditions. This is necessary to highlight the many human/non-human entanglements that define the Anthropocene, and, in that sense, we might see Guideline #3 as the most visible way to break with the sociocentrism that limits 130

The Methods of Power existing power analyses.10 To appreciate how power works in the Anthropocene, the social sciences need to expand their analysis both in depth and scope. Guideline #3 plays a crucial part in this project. Finally, Guidelines #4 and #5 help to emphasise the diversity that arises because the assemblages defining the Anthropocene are composite phenomena, which in themselves contain the germ of new forms of life and coexistence. Guideline #4 augments this insight by offering an analytical intervention with ethical and political implications. To cultivate the diversity of things is, to begin with, an analytical demand that follows from the starting point of the new materialist framework, that is, to ‘stay with the trouble’ (to use Haraway’s language). Another way of saying this is that new materialism resists the temptation to provide smooth and total explanations, and instead favours an approach that enables the world to stand forth in all its multilayered complexity. Such an approach is not only analytically motivated but represents an important precursor for the ethical and political goal of new materialism, which, as we shall see in Chapter 5, implies an intensified democratisation at all levels of society. Guideline #4 provides the analytical groundwork for this democratisation, which then is further elaborated by Guideline #5, encouraging anyone working in the social sciences to highlight the possibilities for change and pluralisation wherever and whenever possible. As already mentioned above, an analysis of power that overlooks these possibilities will be analytically uninteresting and also diminish the societal relevance of the social sciences, which is not only to analyse but also provide an effective response to the greatest challenge of our time: the climate and biodiversity crises and the Anthropocene epoch more generally. 131

Power in the Anthropocene Together, these five guidelines form the methodological starting point that renders it possible to mobilise the new materialist analysis of power in social science discussions of any given issue. As will be unfolded in the following five main sections, the result is both more multifaceted and more in-depth than that which prevails in the existing sociocentric approaches to the study of power. The main message of this chapter – as in the previous three chapters – is that such a reshuffling is preferable if we are to avoid the limitations that characterise the existing analyses of power in the social sciences. As Foucault reminded us in his own studies of power, knowledge production is anything but innocent. Knowledge is made for ‘cutting’, as he so eloquently (but also provocatively) puts it, emphasising how knowledge delimits the world and points to problems in need of solutions.11 Given this, our task, as social scientists and as entangled-engaged citizens, is to approach any issue with care and attention.

The Ice is Melting! The first case is the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. I have already referred to this case several times because it illustrates how human and non-human forces together create an unpredictable process of change – or tipping points – that eludes control by humans alone. As we have already seen, the melting of the ice sheet is due to a significant increase in the global average temperature, which in Greenland has contributed to the exposure of new soil surfaces and subsequently enabled the unexpected growth of new plant life. To some, this change in ecosystems has a positive effect because it contributes to the development of new industries and economic growth – and because it thereby 132

The Methods of Power supports Greenland’s desire for greater independence and national self-determination. At the same time, the emergence of new plant life also has a significant negative effect, as it contributes to a self-reinforcing spiral, in which increased biodiversity in the longer term makes a net ‘positive’ contribution to the increase in the global average temperature. The melting of the ice sheet is, thus, not only an archetypal case of the climatic challenges of the Anthropocene and its many internal differentiations; it offers a prime example of how the distribution of power on one side of the human/non-human relationship affects the distribution of power on the other (and vice versa). The result is what I, in Chapter 3, called the ‘Anthropocene plus-minus game’, highlighting the mutual entanglements of the divergent forces on both sides of the relationship. The mutually reinforcing human/non-human relationship raises two questions that must interest any ecologically minded social science analyst. The first relates to the causes of the melting of the ice sheet, while the second addresses the political and social consequences following from these causes. In short: which actors contribute to the melting of the ice sheet, and how might we either augment or counteract their entangled interplay? These questions are not foreign to traditional power analyses, which nonetheless are unlikely to answer them adequately. An important reason for this is their lack of attention to the many domino effects and feedback mechanisms that amplify anthropogenic climate change, but that alone cannot be attributed to something purely human – because either the changes are conditioned by the altered biodiversity, or they are otherwise part of the broader ecosystems that define ice sheet conditions. Without an analysis of these processes, the result is an incomplete 133

Power in the Anthropocene mapping, which will ultimately render any response to the climate crisis in Greenland deficient – if not directly ineffective. First, an analysis such as this misrepresents the multiple forces at play in contemporary climate change processes. Second, it reinforces the fantasy of human power as sovereign and almighty. Third, it precludes societal solutions where non-human actors are included on a par with human interests and needs (despite these being never fully or purely ‘human’). To avoid these blind spots, a new materialist analysis of power begins in medias res with a more open assumption about where power is located, and how it evolves over time. This starting point tracks Guideline #1 mentioned above: ‘Listen to the context’. Here, listening to the context means placing oneself – be it physically or in a more figurative-imaginative sense – where the ice sheet actually melts – inside the melting channels or off the coast where the ice calves, and from there tracing the network of connections and amplifications that entail an influence of one kind or another. In our case, this starting point entails a proliferation of the number of relevant actors, encouraging us to include human-centred assemblages while also providing space for water temperatures, sea currents, migration patterns, microbial shifts, plant growth, ice cap weight and much more. Together, these various actors (and probably many more) constitute the overarching assemblage of human and non-human life which, from the perspective of new materialism, constitutes the relevant unit of analysis. This unit is both wider and has many more layers than the traditional units of analysis. As such, it seeks to ensure the desired understanding of the power relations on and surrounding the Greenland ice sheet, even if this means failing to provide a smooth explanation with a clear and cogent solution to the challenges at hand. 134

The Methods of Power Still, as we have already seen several times, it is not sufficient to map out the relevant actors; we must also adhere to Guideline #2 – ‘Follow the movement’ – and examine how the actors identified through the initial mapping exercise come into being, and how they interact with each other. To ensure this part of the analysis, we must trace the connections and sedimentations that the identified actors produce, and which make them co-players and opponents in the very melting of the ice sheet. One movement would be, for example, the water that seeps from the ice sheet and into the fjords, affecting salt levels, sea currents, bird migration patterns and much more. Another movement would be changes in local plant life, which simultaneously counter and interact with the increased CO2 emissions, which follow from new industries and changing transport patterns, including new military operations and the deployment of large container ships that move more freely due to less sea ice. A third movement would the continued extraction of fossil fuels across the globe, connecting events in the Middle East and elsewhere with Indigenous communities in the fjords of Greenland. And a fourth movement would be the population migration from the remote settlements of Greenland to larger cities such as Nuuk, where new forms of knowledge and coexistence are created, which also – for better or worse – contribute to the challenges of Greenlandic society. As we saw in the last chapter, each of these movements contains a degree of generative power, which helps to crystallise the relevant actors. At the same time, it also helps to put these actors in touch with each other across the traditional human/non-human divide. Ceteris paribus, an analysis of this movement is crucial for a correct understanding of the distribution of power in a case such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Without adequate understanding of 135

Power in the Anthropocene this diverse set of movements, we simply will not understand how power works and with what consequences, both locally and globally. The combination of the first two analytical shifts simultaneously points to a third issue, which is also contained in Guideline #3: ‘Combine multiple scales’. One of the characteristic features of power in the Anthropocene – of which the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a particularly good example – is that power no longer only concerns one specific space and timescale; rather, it involves many different kinds, all of which cross one another in multiple ways. To make this more tangible, consider the experience of time associated with what we might call ‘human’ life, especially as it is understood in a Global North and, hence, more or less colonialised context.12 Apart from imagined flashbacks and sudden monumental shifts, this experience appears both finite and continuous, and it typically represents a chronological understanding based on the division of time into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries and so on. This kind of clock time is deeply entrenched in modern life, including the division of labour and capitalist flows of money and resources, and it helps to sustain the notion of economic growth and societal progress.13 Now, contrast this understanding with the experience of time that occurs in other contexts both outside and inside socalled human life: on the one hand, commonly non-humandefined phenomena such as the microbiota that the human body shares with other organisms,14 or geological deposits that have formed over thousands of years and help to shape the landscape within which more concrete modes of power are exercised;15 on the other hand, the sense of time and history that scholars such 136

The Methods of Power as Kyle Whyte associate with how Indigenous communities relate to the non-human world, and how this relation implies a different account of how climate change affects conditions of community and belonging, beginning with the realisation that climate change is nothing new, leading to an experience of time and history that Whyte calls ‘back to the future’.16 Without equating one with the other, these encounters share how they break with the conception of time as chronological – they often entail or imply self-enforcing feedback loops – which in turn implies that they operate on significantly different timescales than what conventional social science research typically associates with human life.17 Still, because the Anthropocene entanglements are so pervasive that it is not possible to relate to one scale of time without also relating to the other, the analysis of power must include both to obtain an overall sense of a given distribution of power. Embracing this as part of the new materialist analytical framework enables us – in a manner that existing analyses in the social sciences do not – to appreciate the very emergence and creation of the divergent power relations that make up the climate and biodiversity crises, and to which any response to these crises must relate. Such a contribution is surely advantageous for anyone interested in the social sciences, if for no other reason than we simply become wiser about the complex and multilayered dimensions of the world of which we are all a part. It is, as it were, an indispensable part of ‘staying with the trouble’. Moreover, in relation to the terminology introduced in the previous chapter, we can now say that the melting of the ice sheet illustrates at least three forms of power (see also Chapter 3, Figure 3.2). First, the ‘explosive’ mode characterised by the short-term but high-intensity exercise of power (here, 137

Power in the Anthropocene think especially about the calving ice that leads to flooding both locally and in more remote areas, changing people’s life conditions overnight). Second, the ‘gradual’ mode characterised by a prolonged but low-intensity exercise of power (think especially of moraine deposits and changing ocean channels that enable new forms of communication and transport, benefiting some more than others). Third, the ‘blunt’ mode of power, which is also characterised by the low-intensity exercise of power but which at the same time is short-lived (think especially of new plant growth, which immediately helps to improve the conditions for human life, but which is unsustainable in the longer term because it absorbs heat and contributes to increasing ­temperatures). Together, these three modes constitute a far more holistic analysis of the workings of power; something that in itself makes it more likely that society can act effectively in response to the political challenges resulting from the climate and biodiversity crises. More specifically, we can say that the new materialist analysis of the ice sheet helps to engender a greater respect for the forces of nature, which in turn helps to justify an interest in caring for the conditions of life, including an interest in sustainability that does not deplete and damage the Earth’s many ecosystems. By expanding the analysis of power, allowing heretofore overlooked actors and communities to enter into the equation, it thus becomes more likely that answers to the climate and biodiversity crises will be based on an account of the relevant actors and their internal relations. How these analytical-normative considerations might more concretely ­ influence political organisation in the Anthropocene is the ­subject of the next two chapters.

138

The Methods of Power Regenerative Agriculture We can expand the contributions offered by a new materialist analysis of power by turning to another important topic in the Anthropocene: changes in modern agriculture and related food-production processes. The gradual shifts in these areas have undoubtedly contributed to the challenges associated with the climate and biodiversity crises and the Anthropocene more generally. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the Anthropocene has come into being, among other reasons, thanks to an explosive increase in the use of fertilisers, itself part of the ‘Great Acceleration’ which has made agriculture so efficient that countries such as the USA and Denmark have almost 80% fewer farms today than was the case immediately after the Second World War.18 At the same time, the accompanying depletion of arable land has meant that there is no longer the same biomass as previously, which is why agriculture is making a disproportionate contribution to the increase in global average temperature. For traditionally small farm nations such as Denmark, estimates suggest that agriculture in 2030 will account for approximately 25% of the country’s total CO2 emissions.19 In the United States and several other industrialised countries, the situation is either similar or worse.20 Similar to the melting Greenland ice sheet, these challenges are not foreign to existing approaches to the study of power. In addition to analyses that are related to agricultural lobbying and EU agricultural policy,21 important contributions focus on nature as ‘cheap labor’22 and the consequences this has not only for agriculture but also food production more broadly understood.23 These analyses, however, are limited insofar as they focus solely or primarily on the human aspect of the problem 139

Power in the Anthropocene without also acknowledging the agency that can and should be attributed to the soil, plants and other elements of the symbiont ­environment.24 The result is a narrow zero-sum game, where the question of power, in a rather reductive manner, becomes a choice between ‘more or less’ nature, which is often also associated with the choice between ‘more or less’ growth and/ or ‘more or less’ land or territory. As already discussed, these forms of zero-sum play are limiting, as they neither relate to the Anthropocene dissolution of the culture/nature divide nor assume an independent position on the significance of the concept of growth for future generations. Rather than envisioning how human growth can also be a matter of human flourishing – or how multiple species can (and indeed already do) inhabit and benefit from the same plot of land – the discussions tend towards a question of sacrificing one for the benefit of the other. To avoid these limitations, the new materialist analysis of power continues the work introduced in the previous section: listening to the context (Guideline #1) in order to follow the movements that the non-human part of the world empowers through a variegated range of agentic capacities (Guideline #2). Both types of analytical work, pluralistic as they are, require that we focus on how plants, soil and other forms of organic material affect the environment – and how they thus contribute to a diverse and multifaceted exercise of power. In a way, the complexity embedded in agricultural practices is probably easier to accept than is the case with the ice sheet – after all, it is easier to see how a plant or a plot of land changes over time than how a mountain or moraine deposit evolves in agentic ways. The advantage of this visibility is also that it shows how closely intertwined the human and non-human parts of the world really are. This is not merely a question of how humans depend on 140

The Methods of Power other species for nutrition, but also one of understanding how both hinge on a relationship of mutual influence. In many cases, plants thus move in step with the human activity around them,25 while in other cases they can also become the starting point for new political communities.26 The entanglement is indeed so strong and intense that we often learn more about the world by looking at plant life rather than human activity. As the Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia argues in The Life of Plants: ‘To interrogate plants means to understand what it means to be in the world.’27 Two additional advantages follow from analysing power in this manner. The first has a primarily normative aim and helps to justify and mobilise the transition of modern agriculture to a more sustainable cultivation of land. By highlighting the nonhuman aspect of the agency of the world, it becomes clearer that nature is a resource to which society writ large owes a high degree of responsibility, not only because it serves the human ability to survive, but also because it has a value and meaning in itself. This underlines the importance of what I previously referred to as Guideline #5, that is, ‘Highlight the possibilities for change and pluralisation’. Add to this that the visibility of plants and other earthbound agents can also help to highlight the symbiotic diversity of which any human/non-human entanglement is an expression, which in itself makes it possible to create new forms of life (Guideline #4). In relation to agricultural practices, the new materialist power analysis can thus help to point out that plants and the soil – through ordinary photosynthesis – c­ onstitute an important but often overlooked possibility for storing CO2. Such ‘nature-based solutions’ are not only more sustainable than the CCS technology proposals that normally dominate the debate (including the CO2 vacuum 141

Power in the Anthropocene cleaner mentioned in Chapter 1), but at the same time can also, assuming they are developed and implemented according to the right standards, contribute to a genuine improvement of the climate and biodiversity across the globe. Is the solution to become ‘terrestrials’, as Bruno Latour and others have suggested?28 Would this not require us to seek new affiliations with Earth’s many ecosystems, rather than trying to get further away from them, pretending to create a parallel universe without any connection to the planet as we know it? To gather these considerations under a single umbrella, we can say that the new materialist analysis of power points to alternative agriculture practices commonly referred to as ‘regenerative agriculture’.29 The objective of this kind of agriculture is to avoid the classic human/non-human antagonism, including the idea that we must choose between more or less growth. Rather than accepting this zero-sum game as a fait accompli, regenerative agriculture seeks to create a symbiosis in which the two sides of the relationship reinforce each other positively through various forms of mutual influence. According to the principles of regenerative agriculture, this entails new cultivation methods, in which priority is given to perennials (e.g., spinach or turmeric), which are particularly good at absorbing carbon from the air, and which improve biodiversity because they allow a mix of forest and arable land. It also entails attending to the soil as an agent in itself, filled with bacteria and humus that absorbs and releases energy for everyone around it to enjoy, engendering a productive interplay between reducing CO2 emissions and improving biodiversity. Moreover, as we shall see in more detail in Chapter 5, initiatives such as regenerative agriculture often involve an ongoing democratisation of the Anthropocene, which helps to support sustainable development, where growth 142

The Methods of Power is not necessarily taboo, but where it instead takes on new significance for how society is organised. From being a source of a ‘blunt’ mode of power, regenerative agriculture growth thus becomes an expression of a ‘gradual’, almost ‘virtual’ organisation of power.

Electrical Connections on Samsø and the American East Coast Before coming to this alternative organisation of power, however, we need to get an even better grasp of how to mobilise new materialism in relation to issues that are relevant for the social sciences, broadly understood. A good case for this is the production of electricity, which, from a new materialist perspective, is exciting, because it works on both sides of the human/ non-human divide, and because the harnessing of electricity has become an important part of green transition policies and, hence, ways of engaging with politics in the Anthropocene. The combination of these two aspects makes electricity something like a perfect storm for the new materialist analysis. Not only can new materialism use the production of electricity to show how the non-human can be a force in itself; the case of electricity also shows how non-human forces affect and influence the conditions for political organisation in an increasingly complex and connected world. As we shall see, new materialism cultivates these insights in a number of ways, using Guideline #2 (‘Follow the movement’) and Guidelines #4 and #5 (‘Cultivate the diversity of things’ and ‘Highlight the possibilities for change and pluralisation’) to examine how power can alternate between ‘explosive’ and ‘gradual’ modes. 143

Power in the Anthropocene Allow me to begin closest to my own context – Denmark – where the identification of Samsø as ‘Denmark’s Renewable Energy Island’ has attracted attention beyond the local context. The history behind its identification as a renewable energy island dates back to 1997, when the Danish Ministry of Energy wanted to promote the use of renewable energy through various pilot projects. One of the projects resulted in the ambition of Samsø Municipality – located on the island of Samsø in the southern part of Kattegat (a sea in the middle of Denmark connecting the North Sea with the Baltic) – to become self-sufficient in renewable energy. Initially, the ambition led to the construction of ten offshore wind turbines in the waters south of Samsø. Later, this work expanded with the establishment of the Energy Academy (Energiakademiet), which to this day is working to strengthen green transition policies in the energy sector. Particularly important today is the stated goal to make Samsø a fossil-fuel-free zone by 2030. Work on this and other initiatives has resonated throughout Europe and has been recognised with numerous awards – including (perhaps most notably) the 2002 European Solar Prize. Clues as to how a new materialist analysis of power might engage with such a success story come from the Danish social scientist Irina Papazu, who has worked tirelessly to uncover the dynamics of the Samsø case. Inspired by Latour’s version of new materialist philosophy, Papazu shows how the Samsø case links businesses, tourist offices, grassroots movements, city council politicians and other human actors to a much larger assemblage, which also consists of the undulating landscape, the Kattegat winds, high-tech energy transformers, large offshore wind turbines and much more. As Papazu’s studies show, none of these actors exists and has meaning and value without the others. 144

The Methods of Power Without the wind blowing off the Kattegat, it would not be possible to create a green transition from fossil fuels to wind energy; and without a strong alliance between politicians and the business community, this opportunity and transition would have remained untapped.30 Even the Kattegat wind, you might say, has changed its status from an outside force to an active player in the growth and structure of the community. At the same time, however, Papazu’s studies also remind us how the distribution of power is rarely evenly balanced across human/non-human entanglements. Consider, for example, the ‘story’ of Samsø as Denmark’s Renewable Energy Island. Through ethnographic observations and direct participation in the Samsø assemblage, Papazu shows how this story has turned into a simplistic narrative that centrally placed actors have used to convince climate sceptics on Samsø (and elsewhere) about the need for investment in offshore wind turbines. According to Papazu, the Samsø story has even taken on a life of its own as a self-fulfilling prophecy that not only seems alienating to those who originally formulated it, but also helps to counteract alternative narratives that see a greater potential for green transformation in other forms of cooperation and engagement. The main story about Samsø as Denmark’s Renewable Energy Island thereby ‘overlooks’ important ‘manoeuvres’ among the other participants in the assemblage, even though this is where, according to Papazu, we find ‘[the] learning potential for Samsø’s experience’.31 In other words, it is not enough to consider one side of the human/non-human relationship or the other; we must also scrutinise the interplay between each side to comprehend how power works in a case such as this. From a more methodological perspective, Papazu’s studies are also interesting because they show how we, by following 145

Power in the Anthropocene the movement in context (Guideline #2), can uncover the shifting modalities that characterise the exercise of power in the Anthropocene. Simply put, we can say that the ‘explosive’ potentiality that defined the first attempts to make Samsø ‘Denmark’s Renewable Energy Island’ over time became a form of ‘gradual’ potentiality, which has subsequently opened up new forms of potentiality. Some of these new potentialities initially seem to represent a repetition of the explosiveness that characterised the early climate work, while others seem to be evolving in a ‘blunter’ direction. Whichever of these two possibilities ultimately ends up being decisive in the situation on Samsø, they both help to emphasise how the new materialist analysis of power promotes a more diverse understanding of political change (Guideline #5). Rather than seeing political change as something linear and one-dimensional, new materialism shows how a wide range of forces and feedback loops create a situation that is at the same time forward-looking and circular. All other things being equal, the ability to maintain this complexity is a crucial requirement for an analysis of power that wants to be both nuanced and action-oriented. Another – even more radical – analysis of the relationship between electricity and political organisation is Jane Bennett’s discussion of the North American power outage that took place on 14 August 2003, and led to mega-cities such as New York, Cleveland and Toronto being without power for more than two days. Like Papazu, Bennett also takes a broader social science perspective, rejecting any categorical distinction between the human and the non-human, culture and nature. Unlike Papazu, however, Bennett goes a step further and makes room for an actual analysis of the power inherent in electricity as well as in the political and social institutions surrounding it. 146

The Methods of Power The result speaks directly to how the new materialist analysis of power aims to mobilise Guideline #4: ‘Cultivate the diversity of things’.32 According to Bennett, the power outage was initially due to a computer failure on the part of an independent electricity operator which for some time had struggled with poor maintenance and other human-caused problems.33 Bennett, however, argues that these problems alone cannot explain the total cascade of events that followed. Why? Because the electricity, which ended up being cut off, did some of the work itself, amplifying the initial error due to interaction between ‘active’ and ‘reactive’ forms of charging. According to Bennett, this interaction was the real culprit, because it reversed the direction of the electrical current and, thus, created an overload that no human intervention could match, at least not in the short to intermediate term. This entanglement of human and non-human forces might seem rare – and, hence, insignificant for a more general analysis of society – if it was not for the fact that electricity in even a well-functioning system moves due to the abovementioned interaction between ‘active’ and ‘reactive’ forms of charging. Thus, a more complete analysis could not have foreseen (and thus avoided) much of what happened in the days after 14 August 2003. Or, perhaps more pertinently, such an electrical overload happens all the time, leaving human life susceptible to small changes in the environment. As Bennett points out: ‘Electricity is a flow of electrons, and because its essence is this mobility, it always is going somewhere. But where this will be is not entirely predictable.’34 As with Papazu’s study of Samsø, these observations illustrate the benefits of using the new materialist power analysis in social science studies of the climate crisis and the Anthropocene. 147

Power in the Anthropocene The most obvious thing in this context is probably how Bennett’s new materialist approach (like Papazu’s) emphasises why it is so important to include the non-human aspects of the world in the study of power. At the same time, Bennett also shows how the new materialist approach not only expands the analysis of power in breadth, but also digs deeper than is usually the case in sociocentric analyses of power. By treating electricity as an independent actor, Bennett shows how the materiality of power unfolds at a micro level, which in isolation might seem insignificant, but is nevertheless crucial to the understanding and analysis of power relations in the Anthropocene. Specifically, the approach and insights suggested to us by Bennett help to emphasise the possibilities that the variegated modes of power can sustain and/or divert over time; and how this often, if not always, takes place in a manner that cannot be predicted in any straightforward or otherwise transparent manner. Recognising that this is the case is not merely a matter of prudence; also, and I would argue more importantly, it is a matter of embracing the world in a thoroughly zoecentric manner, accepting that human will power is just one among many other forces driving the world in this or that direction.

#MeToo and the Feminist Challenge As a last step in this chapter’s exploration of how to translate new materialism into concrete social science power analyses, I now turn to a case that does not directly relate to the climate and biodiversity crises, but which is nevertheless relevant to the study of political and social relations in the Anthropocene: the #MeToo movement. The case is relevant because it shows 148

The Methods of Power how it is possible to analyse power relations through a strategy sometimes called ‘renaturalisation’,35 which intersects with several of the methodological guidelines that I introduced at the outset of this chapter. The idea behind the renaturalisation strategy is partly to highlight the many material aspects of power; partly to show how issues such as gender and sexuality are reconfigured as the non-human aspects of the world become visible and increasingly more important. The latter also is where the interest in the Anthropocene returns to the fore. The struggle for equality in the Anthropocene is not only about emancipation from domination – even though this goal certainly remains an important element in the feminist struggle – but also about how gender and sexuality go from being perceived in binary terms to something much more fluid and diverse. As we shall see, the new materialist analysis of these shifts makes an important contribution to the goal of feminism to achieve equality through political and social mobilisation, such as #MeToo.36 Let us start with a brief overview of the #MeToo movement itself.37 The movement began in October 2017, when American actress Alyssa Milano used the #MeToo hashtag to raise awareness of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the American film industry. Specifically, Milano tweeted about the many cases in the film industry and the need to share one’s own experiences of sexual harassment and sexual assault in order to break the silence about (and acceptance of) persistent discrimination against women. The result was a worldwide discussion regarding gender equality in the film industry as well as many other sectors of society. For some women, #MeToo presented an opportunity to raise cases of harassment and abuse that had hitherto gone unnoticed, but which could still be asserted in a 149

Power in the Anthropocene civil and/or criminal lawsuit.38 In other cases, it became a more general debate about equal pay, consent, parental leave, political inclusion and sexism in the workplace. The first step in our discussion of the new materialist analysis of this debate must be to reassert how new materialism itself is indebted to the feminist tradition, where the issue of power has always been an important topic. Apart from the ecofeminist insights reviewed in Chapter 3, the connection is particularly evident in the work of Judith Butler, who has often used Foucault’s analysis of power to show how historically conditioned discourses regarding the human body – and thus also gender and sexuality – have contributed to a particularly maledominated society driven by what Butler calls the ‘heterosexual matrix’.39 The urgency of this insight has not diminished since the #MeToo movement started, as also noted by Butler. In one of many interviews from April 2018, Butler highlights how the #MeToo movement contributes to a heightened public awareness of the asymmetric distribution of power that has for many decades guided the media portrayal of the ‘woman’ and that has ultimately enabled (and in some cases even justified) sexual harassment and sexual assault. As Butler writes, the #MeToo movement enables the ‘larger public … to grasp the systemic and pervasive existence of coercive sexual conduct against women’, and they continue by stressing how important it is that ‘textured realities can appear within our modes of representation, and these will make our political analysis more vibrant and compelling. Some call this intersectional.’40 According to Butler, in other words, #MeToo is a direct continuation of the project started in the 1990s when debates about representations of gender and sex began challenging the notion of a strict dichotomy between men and women. 150

The Methods of Power Although new materialism in no way disagrees with this conclusion, it nevertheless wishes to go a step further. Overall, the question is whether we should focus exclusively on the discursive aspects of phenomena such as the #MeToo movement or whether it is also necessary to investigate how these aspects intersect with the non-human parts of the world, thereby creating a window into the many other forces circulating in and around the Anthropocene. Recent conversations engaging with Butler’s work, as well as the feminist tradition more generally, push in the direction of the latter. According to British-Australian feminist Sara Ahmed, the more or less exclusive emphasis on discursive representation is problematic because it does not analyse how not only ‘social’ but also ‘biological’ sex is dynamic and changeable.41 For Donna Haraway, new forms of biotechnology, including artificial insemination and gender reassignment surgery, have transformed gender and sexuality into a ‘cyborg’, for whom there is no difference between human materiality and the materiality we usually associate with machines and other non-human modes of life.42 Finally, for Swedish-Australian new materialist Astrida Neimanis, the Anthropocene dissolution of the culture/nature dualism is so pronounced that it makes no sense to talk about gender in the singular; that is, as ‘woman’ or ‘man’.43 Rather, with the dissolution of the culture/nature dualism, it becomes clear that gender, as such, does not exist, and that it must instead be understood as a diverse stream that flows through all bodies without any strict male/female distinction. According to Neimanis, this is true whether we are talking about human or non-human bodies.44 Taken together, these contributions to feminist theory add a crucial element to the understanding of political and social relations in the Anthropocene: that gender is not only more 151

Power in the Anthropocene than one thing, but that it also crosses the divide between the social and the biological – and, hence, the divide between the human and the non-human parts of the world. While Butler’s contributions to the understanding of the former cannot be overestimated, they struggle with the latter, pointing to the need for ecological awareness without making it a starting point for theorising gender relations, something that otherwise could be the basis for what I above referred to as a ‘renaturalisation’ of feminist struggles.45 But why such a renaturalisation? First, because it serves to emphasise how the fight for equality is not merely a matter of culture, but also of more material issues, including everything from equal pay and parental leave to public health, reproductive technologies and new encounters with sex and sexuality. Second, because a focus on the material (and, thus, the non-human aspects of the world) can help to identify some of the blind spots that haunt current feminist struggles, including not only the importance of ethnicity and race, but also relations with animals, plants and other parts of the Earth’s many ecosystems. The need for both interventions can be traced back to the Anthropocene and provides us with an occasion to acknowledge how symbiotic entanglements associated with human/non-human relations permeate all aspects of society – even those we typically think of as purely ‘human’. If we turn more specifically to the #MeToo movement, these considerations allow us to go a step further than Butler originally envisioned in their analysis of the case. To begin with, the new materialist additions point to the distinctively technological aspects of the movement, including the reliance on Twitter (now known as X) as a means of communication and mobilisation. Clearly, developments in discourses on sexual harassment and sexual assault play an important role in this context, especially 152

The Methods of Power after Donald Trump’s 2016 election as US president revitalised the feminist movement in the United States and elsewhere. But at least as important is the technological infrastructure surrounding Twitter, which was an important factor in the spread of Trump’s political influence until his 2021 deplatforming, and which the #MeToo movement replicated but with opposite objectives in mind. In the first 24 hours after Alyssa Milano’s Twitter post, the #MeToo hashtag was used no less than 12 ­million times in more than 85 different countries.46 The numbers only grew in the days and months that followed, testifying to a new form of exercise of power where the formation of new political communities not only depends on social discourse but also builds on available technological means.47 Particularly relevant in this connection is how social media adapt a political message to a specific format (the Twitter limit of 280 characters per post being a good example), and how social media offer a dynamic network, where new connections can be established across existing contradictions and differences. Both aspects are crucial to the relationships and structures formed in the wake of Milano’s tweet: while the former structures the message, the latter enables the network, creating the connections necessary for something to go ‘viral’.48 Along another dimension, new materialism also helps to highlight how movements such as #MeToo intersect with other movements, and how these movements, in turn, inform the struggle for gender equality. (Exploring these intersections is to follow Guidelines #4 and #5 introduced at the outset of this chapter: ‘Cultivate the diversity of things’ and ‘Highlight the possibilities for change and pluralisation’.) An obvious case in this regard is the Standing Rock movement, which gathered around the same time as the #MeToo movement, but which 153

Power in the Anthropocene focused on the exploitation of Indigenous land by multinational corporations rather than gender equality per se (see also the discussion in Chapter 5). From a new materialist perspective, it is particularly telling how the two movements amplify each other’s emphasis on care and the struggle against domination, as when the actress Rosanna Lisa Arquette, in an interview with activist Jay Ponti, used the struggles that she and Ponti encountered at Standing Rock to make a larger point about the possibility for social and political mobilisation: ‘Mother Earth is being raped. She’s trying to survive this trauma. And I feel like that’s what happens in terms of people who have been sexually assaulted, the trauma that comes along with it, and the choices they make through the years.’49 While a strictly discursive analysis might see the equation of these distinct experiences as either irrelevant or as an expression of human language seeking to anthropomorphise ecological challenges, from a new materialist perspective this engenders a series of subtle resonances where attachments to land and equality flow into each other, and where the usual distinction between humans and non-humans begins to falter. Highlighting these, bringing them into conversation with each other, constitutes a significant part of how to engender a more equitable and ecologically sound approach to political and social relationships in the Anthropocene. Together, these observations constitute a bid for a new materialist power analysis of the #MeToo movement, which, as noted here, incorporates the significance of the Anthropocene – and thus also the various non-human aspects of the world. More specifically, we can say that the new materialist analysis of power in the #MeToo movement points in the direction of what I have called an ‘explosive’ potentiality, where the exercise of power is marked by high intensity but also a relatively short 154

The Methods of Power time horizon. Although it is still too early to determine whether this potential can evolve into a long-term, sustainable exercise of power – one that also addresses ecological concerns – this is precisely the question that a new materialist analysis of power seeks to explore.

What is Good Social Science from a New Materialist Perspective? The purpose of reviewing these four cases has been to show how new materialism can contribute to an analysis of power that avoids the traditional sociocentric bias and instead contributes with knowledge that is both relevant and action-oriented in relation to the climate and biodiversity crises, as well as the array of other political and social challenges that the Anthropocene poses in conjunction with these crises. The starting point for this contribution is an analytical strategy that is both broader and deeper than the approaches to the study of power usually pursued in the social sciences. As we have seen, this reorientation entails a recalibration of the rules for scientific inquiry so that we do not start with one specific actor, but rather begin in medias res; that is, where the human/non-human entanglements are most evident, and where it is not given in advance which part of the relationship is strongest or otherwise more significant than any other. The five methodological guidelines presented at the beginning of this chapter are all contributions to this general approach to social science research. While the findings of these contributions may seem plausible individually, and there is nothing necessarily surprising or incorrect in the analyses presented over the last four sections, 155

Power in the Anthropocene a skeptical reader might still be left with the nagging suspicion that these insights do not capture the full picture. What if the selection of cases analysed is biased in favour of the new materialist perspective? What, in fact, are the criteria for the selection of a relevant case with regard to analysing power in the Anthropocene? And when can we be sure that the analysis of such a case is scientifically valid, and therefore should be found acceptable on either new materialism’s own terms or some general terms applicable to the social sciences overall? The first of these questions is not necessarily easy to answer, simply because the Anthropocene is characterised by an infinite series of human/non-human entanglements, which in principle makes everything relevant. The realisation that this is so has also been the starting point for this chapter and poses a challenge that cannot be avoided if one takes the emergence of the Anthropocene seriously (as new materialism does). In the evergrowing assemblage of entanglements that make up the contested terrain of the Anthropocene, there is nothing that a priori is more relevant than anything else. Still, if pushed to define a selection criterion that could determine whether a given case is significant enough to warrant investigation, one could point to a criterion that builds on the assemblage itself and, hence, zeroes in on the degree of entanglement: focus on the cases where there would appear to be a particularly high degree of human/non-human entanglement. While obviously imperfect, such a criterion has the advantage that it almost automatically breaks with the sociocentric bias of the social sciences, and in so doing brings the analysis of power closer to the conditions that are important in the Anthropocene. Adding to this shift in perspective, the proposed criterion nudges the analysis of power away from typical areas of interest – such as political institutions 156

The Methods of Power like parliament or established interest groups – and instead situates the social sciences within the heart of the Anthropocene, where processes of change are unfolding, and conflicts are most evident. As we have seen in this chapter, such repositioning is essential for creating new and relevant knowledge about power and opportunities for action in the Anthropocene. Without engaging with climate change where it actually happens, we risk becoming numb to its long-term effects as well as its more immediate consequences for communities around the world. As for the second question (what makes the analysis scientifically valid?), the answer is also based on a fundamental recognition of how the Anthropocene challenges the current understanding of ‘good’ social science research. Roughly speaking, one might say that because the human/non-human world is always in motion, it is impossible to impose a definitive limit on which variables must be uncovered for the analysis of power (or any other issue) to be scientifically valid. This does not necessarily mean that the analysis – and the social sciences more generally – should abandon existing requirements pertaining to transparency, systematicity, reproducibility and coherence; rather, the point is that these requirements are not in themselves sufficient to determine whether the analysis is valid, which is why an alternative (and more up-to-date) criterion of success should be added to the mix. No less imperfect than the previous ones, such a criterion could be that of power itself; that is, the possibility of movement and resistance. Another way of saying this is that an analysis of power can be characterised as successful the moment it provides knowledge about how (and with what consequences) change is engendered in and through the Anthropocene’s many and variegated human/non-human entanglements. In addition to how this criterion (like the one 157

Power in the Anthropocene regarding case selection) breaks with the sociocentric bias, it is also advantageous insofar as it actively contributes to the possibility of empowerment and agency. In fact, one could go so far as to say that rather than continuing the traditional assumption that the analysis of power is something that occurs separately from what the analysis is about, the new criterion assumes that the analysis is only valid if it contributes to affecting the world around it, taking to heart Foucault’s dictum that knowledge is made for cutting. If anything, this ambition could be said to support, if not augment, the continued relevance of the social sciences in the Anthropocene! Whether this exclamation point is enough to convince the sceptical reader must be left unsaid. But the hope motivating the review of the four cases presented above has been to show how and why analytical criteria, such as those I have highlighted in this chapter, support the new materialist power analysis – and that they can help to create the basis for a new form of political organisation that captures and responds to the many challenges facing the Anthropocene. How this can be carried out more concretely is the topic of the next chapter.

Notes  1 For example, Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World.  2 For example, Højgaard, Juelskjær and Søndergaard, ‘The “WHAT OF” and the “WHAT IF” of Agential Realism’.  3 Fox and Alldred, ‘New Materialism’; but see also Blok and Jensen, ‘The Anthropocene Event in Social Theory’.  4 Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse.  5 See also Coole and Frost, New Materialism; and van der Tuin and Dolphijn, New Materialism.

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The Methods of Power  6 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 10.  7 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, ch. 2.  8 In addition to the earlier discussion about the need to reorient empirical analysis, this insight also connects new materialism with what Deleuze and Guattari, in What is Philosophy?, call ‘radical empiricism’, by which they mean an approach that envisions concepts and knowledge as situated phenomena that are in themselves a product of conflict and change.  9 Coles, Moving Democracy; and Kompridis, ‘Receptivity, Possibility, and Democratic Politics’. 10 Tønder, ‘Five Theses for Political Theory in the Anthropocene’. 11 Foucault, ‘What is Enlightment?’, 88. 12 See also Connolly, Facing the Planetary, ch. 6. 13 See De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, for a critical-­ genealogical analysis of this ‘human’ construction of space and time. See also Hastrup, Thule, for an analysis of the experiences of space and time among the Greenland Inuit that differ from the sociocentric-chronological worldview. 14 Bencard, ‘Det er bakteriernes planet, vi andre bor her bare’; Pedersen, Magtfulde mikrober. 15 Allwood et al., ‘Reassessing Evidence of Life in 3,700-Million-Year Old Rock of Greenland’; Rosing, Rejsen til tiders morgen. 16 Whyte, ‘Indigenous Climate Change Studies’, 154. 17 Shoshitaishvili, ‘Deep Time and Compressed Time in the Anthropocene’. 18 Hansen, ‘Dansk landbrugs strukturudvikling siden 1950’, 6. 19 Lund, ‘Landbrugets andel af det danske CO2 udslip vokser’. 20 Bennetzen et al., ‘Agriculture Production and Greenhouse Emissions from World Regions’. 21 Schmidt, ‘The Impact of Climate Change on European Agricultural Policy’. 22 Moore and Patel, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. 23 Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse; Scott, Against the Grain. 24 This challenge is not unlike the general concerns that new materialism raises with regard to eco-Marxist analyses of climate change and the Anthropocene. I discuss these challenges in Chapter 6. 25 Ahl, Naboplanter. 26 Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees. 27 Coccia, The Life of Plants, 5. 28 See also Latour and Weibel, Critical Zones, for an exploration of how to become ‘terrestrials’.

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Power in the Anthropocene 29 Ahl, ‘Agriculture’. 30 Papazu, Participatory Innovation; Papazu, ‘Storifying Samsøs Renewable Energy Transition’. 31 Papazu, ‘Storifying Samsøs Renewable Energy Transition’, 216. 32 Bennett’s discussion of North American power outages is a direct extension of her theoretical considerations of ‘thing-power’. For more on this, see the discussion in Chapter 3 of Bennett’s contribution to the new materialist power analysis. 33 Bennett, ‘The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout’, 449. 34 Bennett, ‘The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout’, 451. 35 Sharp, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization. 36 I would like to thank Anne-Sofie Dichman for a wide range of conversations on these issues and their relevance to feminist theory more generally. See also Grusin, Anthropocene Feminism, for discussion of the relationship between feminist theory, new materialism, and the significance of the Anthropocene for the study of gender and sexuality. 37 The term ‘me too’ comes from African-American activist Tarana Burke, who has used the term since 2006 to raise awareness about discrimination and sexual assault in the United States. 38 The most talked-about legal proceedings were probably those against film producer Harvey Weinstein, who in February 2020 was found guilty of sexual assault and third-degree rape. 39 Butler, Bodies That Matter; Butler, Gender Trouble. 40 Butler, ‘Thinking in Alliance: An Interview with Judith Butler’. 41 Ahmed, ‘The Same Door’. 42 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 36. 43 Neimanis, Bodies of Water, 9. 44 The contributions by Ahmed, Haraway and Neimanis bring new materialism closer to ecofeminism, extending the analyses of theorists such as Val Plumwood (as discussed in Chapter 3). 45 See also Dichman, ‘More-than-human Gender Performativity’. 46 Mendes, Ringrose and Keller, ‘#MeToo and the Promise and Pitfalls of Challenging Rape Culture’; Park, ‘#MeToo Reaches 85 Countries with 1.7M Tweets’. 47 Reestorff, Culture War; Reestorff, ‘Danske medier underminer #MeToo i jagten på hurtige klik’.

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The Methods of Power 48 The notion of virality suggests a series of links to the COVID-19 crisis, both in terms of the virus itself and how information about it spread, and may help to underscore the changed conditions of human/non-human entanglements. For more on this in relation to the COVID-19 case, see Denman and Ejsing, ‘Democratic Politics in Virulent Times’. 49 Arquette and Ponti, ‘Rosanna Arquette talks Ecology and MeToo’.

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5

The Organisation of Power

Political Organisation and the Normative Features of Power Analysis The purpose of this chapter is to explore and explicate the political vision emanating from the new materialist analysis of power. The starting point is an overlooked but rather striking coincidence between two interests prominent in debates about power: 1) to describe and analyse the exercise of power in a given context, and 2) to define and justify the best possible form of government. Although these two interests are often considered incompatible, the discussions in this book have shown how they appear side-by-side in virtually all of the analyses of power coming from twentieth-century social science inquiries. As an example, recall the discussion of direct and indirect power in Chapter 2. While the former endorses the idea of a polyarchy as the best form of government, the latter serves as a justification for a more elitist form of government. A similar relationship is found in Lukes’s analysis of structural power, which is generally used as a justification for a class-based understanding of politics. Moreover, Lukes’s analysis lays the foundation for the contributions of Foucault, Forst and Bourdieu, each of which 162

The Organisation of Power supports an understanding of the ideal form of government as either deliberative (Forst), network-based (Bourdieu) or organised around concerns for resistance and freedom (Foucault). In all of these cases, the connection between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ (aka the ‘descriptive’ and the ‘normative’) appears strong. We might even go as far as to say that based on the insights unearthed in the previous four chapters, it seems impossible to describe and analyse the exercise of power without also trying to define and justify the best possible form of government. The reason why this connection remains somewhat unexamined is probably – as I have suggested throughout this book – that many continue to cling on to the notion of the social sciences as a value-neutral project that follows the same conventions and demands as the mainstream view of the natural sciences. Some, of course, have disputed this ambition, which in turn has made it possible to recognise a ‘weak’ or ‘non-essential’ connection between the descriptive and the normative sides of the social sciences.1 In this chapter, I want to go a step further and argue that the descriptive and normative neither can nor should be kept separate, and that this is true whether we talk about the study of power in particular or the social sciences more generally. My motivation for this approach goes back to what I referred to in Chapter 1 as ‘essentially contestable concepts’. This term not only emphasises the many internal conflicts embedded in social science conceptual work, but also helps to emphasise how describing a phenomenon – whether it is an institution, an ecosystem or something completely different – entails a normative assessment of its role and significance. When we call an institution ‘democratic’ or describe an ecosystem as ‘unbalanced’, this description contains a value judgement, which we use to assess whether the phenomenon is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. While this 163

Power in the Anthropocene value judgement does not mean that a given description always leads to the same normative assessment, it does mean that the descriptive and normative often support each other, forming a single, common unit of analysis. We can expand this understanding by returning to what I have referred to as the two main aspects of power: power-over (potestas) and power-to (potentia). Although the ideal study of power should probably be able to encompass both aspects, actual analyses often privilege one over the other; either because the chosen analysis makes it impossible to accommodate both aspects at once or because the analysis’s accompanying assumptions attribute greater importance to one aspect than the other. We have already seen how this weighting has analytical and methodological consequences for how the study of power contributes knowledge and guidance to the social sciences. Add to this that the weighting also makes a difference when it comes to identifying the best and/or most effective form of government. An analysis that places greater emphasis on ‘power-over’ than ‘power-to’ will tend to highlight an authoritarian-hierarchical organisation of political life. Conversely, an analysis based on ‘power-to’ will probably be more interested in a form of government based on pluralisation and a deepening of democracy in all aspects of political and social life. These trade-offs are in themselves an expression of an inner logic in the study of power. Because the analysis of power maps a particular organisation of politics – and because it, by virtue of this mapping, constitutes its own exercise of power – any attempt to determine the relationship between the various aspects of power will also be reflected in how this organisation is understood and articulated. Few have written better on this subject than German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Nietzsche is particularly 164

The Organisation of Power known for what he calls the ‘will to power’* (Wille zur Macht); that is, the ability to think and act that emerges from power itself and that, according to Nietzsche, stands out as a necessary condition for the ability to create something new and different.2 For our purposes, Nietzsche’s discussions are interesting because they emphasise how power not only creates opportunities for others, but also strives for – indeed, ‘wills’ – itself. What power strives for, and what follows from this striving, normatively speaking, remains an open question. In certain interpretations of Nietzsche’s work, the answer is a perfection of power, where no thing or no one escapes the wishes and desires of the holder of power.3 In other interpretations, the answer zeroes in on turning creation into its own goal, linking the will to power to what I, in Chapter 3, referred to as ‘virtual potential’; that is, a high-intensity, long-lasting mode of power that the human and non-human share in common, and that is a condition of opportunity for all other modes of power. Nietzsche himself seems to suggest that interpretations along the latter lines are more accurate. According to Nietzsche, the will to power is about challenging existing dogmas, institutions and traditions in order to create new values for who- or whatever inhabits the world at any given time. Such creation-making activity is only possible because the world itself is an infinite series of entanglements imbued with potentiality and new possibilities for becoming and empowerment. As Nietzsche puts it, anticipating much of what new materialism has argued for the past ten-odd years: ‘Our strength itself drives us to sea, where all suns have hitherto gone down: we know of a new world –.’4 Considerations such as these are not only interesting in their own right, but lead us to better see how new materialism envisions the relationship between the descriptive and normative 165

Power in the Anthropocene aspects of social science power analyses. Given what we have seen thus far, it can come as no surprise that new materialism defines this relationship via a prioritisation of power’s possibility-­ creating potential. As I have already suggested, this ­prioritisation implies a radical and extensive democratisation of society, which goes far beyond what we usually find in the literature on climate change and the Anthropocene. Rather than promoting a form of government that either does away with democracy (thereby becoming authoritarian) or insists that we can simply optimise existing democratic institutions (thereby maintaining the status quo), new materialism is based on what is referred to in the study of collective intelligence and complex systems as ‘the politics of swarming’.*5 The idea is to mobilise as many actors as possible – and to do so in as many assemblages as ­possible – in order to create support for structural-­transformational changes in society. From a new materialist perspective, this means, among other things, that political actors are not only humans but also include animals, plants, ocean currents and other forms of what we ­commonly call non-human life. It also means that political decisions are not made and legitimised in only one place (e.g., a national parliament); instead, they grow from the bottom up out of a sense of respect for local conditions. Both aspects help to release the necessary democratic energy, supporting and strengthening other findings in recent research on political mobilisation, social transformation and deliberative and/or ecological democracy.6 While the politics of swarming appears as a significant innovation vis-à-vis other debates in contemporary democratic theory, we should not overlook how its roots reach deep down into the history of political ideas, mirroring disagreements that are as old as the concept of power itself. To uncover some of 166

The Organisation of Power this history, this chapter not only examines the idea of the politics of swarming in itself; it also takes a few steps back to reveal how two ‘philosophers of power’ from the history of philosophy who are important to debates in new materialism, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Baruch Spinoza (1632‒77), analyse issues related to political organisation. Apart from belonging roughly to the same era – one that in interesting ways tracks some of the same uncertainties that define ours – the debate between these two philosophers contributes to a better understanding of the politics of mobilisation and organisation, thereby crystallising some of the most important issues concerning the study of power in the Anthropocene. Hobbes and Spinoza are both interested in understanding the relationship between nature and power, but – for our purposes most interestingly – they fundamentally disagree on what this entails for politics. While Hobbes considers authoritarian rule to be the best answer to the threat of anarchy, Spinoza sees far greater potential in a democratic form of government involving both human and non-human actors. The reasons for this difference are crucial to understanding why a new materialist power analysis considers the politics of swarming to be the better (and, indeed, most realistic) option for political organisation in the Anthropocene – and why this form of political organisation is in line with the power analysis presented in the previous two chapters. With this in mind, this chapter is organised into five sections.7 The first section expands the idea of the politics of swarming, focusing particularly on its definition and normative justification. The second exemplifies the politics of swarming through six proposals based in current practices that address climate change and the Anthropocene’s changing conditions for attachment and 167

Power in the Anthropocene belonging. The third takes a step back in the history of ideas to show how a Hobbesian model that privileges power-over at the expense of power-to is not only problematic in itself, but also insufficient in the face of the many political challenges posed by an Anthropocene climatic regime. The fourth expands this critique via a discussion of Spinoza’s radical Enlightenment philosophy, which, unlike Hobbes’s contribution, supports many of the new materialist assumptions, and thereby contributes to an even better understanding of the idea of the politics of swarming. The fifth and final section expands on these considerations in order to bridge the theoretical and practical discussions presented in this chapter.

The Politics of Swarming in the Anthropocene Let us begin with the obvious. What characterises the politics of swarming? How does it differ from other images of politics? Can it inspire and support a new approach to democracy and political organisation in the Anthropocene? First and foremost, the politics of swarming is characterised by bridging the gap between a radical-ecological theory of democracy and knowledge from disciplines such as biology and informatics.8 Both sets of literatures express an interest in the potential that a swarm – whether it is composed of humans, social data, artificial intelligence, animals, plants and/or other forms of biological life – holds for processes of learning and collective intelligence. The potential arises because the individual parts of the swarm each contribute knowledge and input, which subsequently makes it possible to make a joint decision on a difficult and often complex topic. Examples of this include 168

The Organisation of Power a bee colony that needs to find a new home; an algorithm that orders input according to self-learning processes of organisation; a cell that mutates because the environment surrounding it changes its structure and mode of operation; and/or a group of people who, in the midst of a revolution, suddenly find themselves advancing on the barricades without knowing how they ended up at that very place (see the box below for an expanded account of the beehive example). All four examples involve an assemblage of actors who do not conform to one fixed command structure, but who instead follow a gradual but at the same time self-organising decision-making process, where the assemblage makes its decision based on a constant exchange between new knowledge and feedback loops testing the usefulness of this knowledge. The result resembles what the literature refers to as ‘non-linear evolution’* – a process in which change happens in fits and starts, making it particularly important to cultivate an awareness of the power associated with tipping points, planetary shocks and other unpredictable moments of societal transformation.9 We can further our understanding of this process by imagining the politics of swarming as a network of cross-cutting connections, where no point in the network has supreme authority, and where each member participates on a more or less equal footing with everyone else. This image corresponds to the globe-shaped structure in Figure 5.1. Note that each node in this structure is connected to all the other nodes, and that the connections between them have different strengths, depending on the need for action and communication in the given situation. Note also that, in contrast to a centralised structure (presented as a cone in Figure 5.1, and which corresponds to the structure that later in this chapter we will see Hobbes argue in 169

Power in the Anthropocene favour of), in the politics of swarming there is not one single but rather many centres of power. The plurality of centres helps to emphasise how and why the purpose of the politics of swarming is neither to create consensus on a given issue nor to insist on unification across the actors involved. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. The purpose of the politics of swarming is to ensure maximum freedom for everyone involved in order to promote collective decision-making processes, where experiences are shared among the actors and where new solutions are tested through ongoing experimentation. This vision resonates with Spinoza’s argument, which, as we shall see later in this chapter, goes on to emphasise how and why the strength of the politics of swarming lies in diversity and pluralisation rather than in conformity and unification. At this point, the critical reader will surely sound the alarm, claiming that the discussion is heading in the wrong direction. Not only is it doubtful whether all swarms will make a positive contribution to combating climate change (just think of the climate deniers in countries such as France and the US); more fundamentally, the idea of the politics of swarming is also problematic in two basic ways.10 First, politics is always about authority, sanctions and the formation of hierarchy; and

LEVEL 1

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Figure 5.1  Network and hierarchy

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The Organisation of Power second, due to its anarchic decision-making process, the politics of swarming undercuts an effective solution to the many Anthropocene challenges that require decisive intervention here and now. Indeed, the objection goes, without a hierarchical decision-making authority that allocates privileges and rights based on some general principles, it will simply not be possible to ensure the transition to a sustainable and socially just society. My suspicion is that it is the critic who is on a fool’s errand when pursuing these criticisms. In addition to a tendency to underestimate the interest of the anarchist tradition in collective action,11 the criticisms are also an expression of an erroneous conclusion regarding the ‘political’ nature underpinning the politics of swarming. The point of the politics of swarming is not to disregard the parts of political life that are about authority and other forms of dominance-based power; rather, it is to identify and nurture the places where the possibilities for change are most obvious, and where hierarchically organised authority can no longer be effective or simply appears normatively undesirable. What is more, it actually seems as though the idea of the politics of swarming is more realistic than any of the many other suggestions in the literature on the climate and biodiversity crises and the Anthropocene. On the one hand, the politics of swarming is based on a recognition that politics in the Anthropocene is not about humans alone, and that it is therefore necessary to begin with the very entanglements of human and non-human modes of life. On the other hand, the politics of swarming also assumes that political and social transformation in a world such as the Anthropocene (a world where the Earth’s ecosystems and existing societal structures are under pressure) does not happen from some centre of power that no one can identify, but instead takes 171

Power in the Anthropocene place from the periphery inwards. Why? Because the periphery is where the opportunities for influence are greatest, and where even the smallest initiatives can contribute to political and social ‘quantum leaps’ (as discussed in Chapter 3). The beehive as a politics of swarming Consider the world of honeybees as an example of the politics of swarming.12 When a bee colony becomes active after a long winter period, it often needs to move to another place where the conditions for survival once again can be secured. The decision to do so is not the queen’s, but instead involves the entire swarm of bees. Hence, when a majority for a decision to move has been established, approximately 70% of the bees leave the old hive, settling on a nearby tree branch where they wait for so-called ‘scouts’ to search the surrounding area for new homes (the remaining 30% remain and renew the old hive). At first, the scouts do not agree on which area is best, but through the exchange of input and experience, which they communicate to each other and the other bees through complex ‘dances’ that indicate the location and quality of the sites searched, an agreement slowly arises regarding the best place for the new beehive. When a critical mass is in place and the agreement is robust enough for a decision to be established, the swarm leaves the branch and begins work on building a new hive. The process leading to this decision gives the honeybees a particularly democratic touch that downplays the need for hierarchy and instead resembles what contemporary political theory discusses in terms of radical or participatory democracy. 172

The Organisation of Power What does this mean more concretely for the question of political organisation? To begin with, it means an interest in revitalising civil society, which has always played a crucial role in the history of democracy and is now facing yet another challenge: to create a new set of political bonds and modes of belonging and attachment to match the new climate reality of the Anthropocene in all its complexities and internal ­tensions.13 A good example in this regard is the Denmark-based Andelsgaarde initiative, which, in direct continuation of the discussion of regenerative agriculture in Chapter 4, seeks to revive age-old Danish cooperative traditions by transforming derelict country estates to use for sustainable agriculture. The initiative has at the time of writing more than 3,000 members, who each pay a yearly fee of approximately $2,000 for a share in the land purchased by the initiative across the country. The point of these activities is not only to become self-sufficient but also to ‘cultivate the land and the forest in a sustainable manner that addresses the growing climate and biodiversity crises’.14 Similar initiatives inspire interventions across the globe where new practices of commons, in the tradition highlighted by Elinor Ostrom and later expanded and refined by J. K. Gibson-Graham and others,15 challenge existing ways of organising food production, social belonging and politics. Many of these involve a reconfiguration of larger ecosystems, either through the redistribution of surplus produce from globalised food markets,16 or through the inclusion of non-humans in the political community.17 From a new materialist perspective, these initiatives are interesting because they explicitly involve the consideration of the non-human, and because they depend on decentralised decision-making processes based on input from below. And even more important: the initiatives see a strength in their built-in 173

Power in the Anthropocene diversity, partly because they create a more sophisticated knowledge of possible solutions to climate change, partly because they expand the potential for action through identification with the non-human parts of the world. Another way of saying this is that the idea of the politics of swarming helps to reshape the relationship between formal political institutions such as parliament and the many actors and movements involved with civil society. Rather than seeing the latter as a supplement that can be involved when necessary to legitimise a given decision, it is civil society, with its diversity of energy and power, which constitutes the very engine of political life. This is not only because it creates the greatest possible legitimacy, but also because, on a more practical level, it helps to promote the most intelligent solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises. Studies from Australia, Europe and the USA thus suggest that the more civil society is involved in the green transition, the more progressive the decisions become. An Australian experiment, for example, shows how citizens who were initially sceptical of climate-mitigation measures ended up supporting these measures after they had been consulted.18 Similarly, the recently concluded climate citizens’ assemblies in Denmark, England, France, Scotland and Spain show that there is great potential for expanding the decision-making process to include more groups in society.19 The British national climate citizens’ assembly thus proposed an expansion of public transport, higher air travel taxes, conversion of agricultural land to plant-based food production, and much more. In France, a similar climate assembly proposed an amendment to the constitution so that it would protect nature from encroachment by climate change triggered by humankind. If there has ever been scepticism about the possibility of expanding and revitalising democracy in the 174

The Organisation of Power Anthropocene, these initiatives and proposals alone should be enough to prove otherwise! It is important to emphasise that the interest in democracy, civil society and the politics of swarming does not necessarily contradict the many official initiatives that, based on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, seek to coordinate the political-administrative responses to the climate crisis. In relation to some of the major polluters, including Europe and the United States, this includes in particular goals such as climate neutrality by 2050 or the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by 2030. Goals such as these have great symbolic significance and help to focus attention on the importance of fighting climate change. Still, the problem with efforts following from these declarations is that they do not create in themselves the necessary processes of political and social change; indeed, in some contexts they might actually contribute to a stifling of this process. From a new materialist perspective, this problem arises due to the strong (and growing) interest in technological solutions based on industrial partnerships, which often entail a distorted understanding of the possibilities of governance and government in a time marked by increasingly complex entanglements of the human and non-human.20 On the one hand, the technological solutions and partnerships contribute to the false notion of a strong state authority that claims to solve the climate crisis through experts-turned-technocrats in combination with a centralised exercising of power. On the other hand, the same solutions also take focus away from the meaning and power of non-human life, thereby demotivating an actual reorientation of human behaviour and consumption. In both cases, we end up with a politics that sustains or even augments the sociocentric bias, which in itself impairs our collective ability to 175

Power in the Anthropocene capture and counteract the power relations sustaining the current (often unequal) distribution of privilege and attention in the Anthropocene. As already indicated, most of these considerations follow directly from the new materialist expansion of the social science power analysis. New materialism proposes that we expand the analysis of power in breadth and depth precisely to be able to identify the possibilities for change that traditional analyses of power have not taken seriously. And as new materialism also promotes a normative understanding of the will to power, which has creation as its goal, it helps to support that which can be referred to in the terms presented in Chapter 3 as ‘gradual’ and/or ‘virtual’ modes of power. Both imbue the idea of the politics of swarming with its content and direction in the debate about the climate and biodiversity crises and the Anthropocene more generally.

A New Form of Political Organisation Clearly, this characterisation of a politics of swarming might still seem somewhat vague and empty. It can be particularly difficult to imagine what a political organisation that seeks to bridge the human and non-human can and should look like, and, not least, how its realisation might come about more concretely. Below I alleviate some of these concerns by placing the insights proffered so far alongside debates in environmental political theory about ecological democracy. But first, to illustrate what the politics of swarming might entail, here are six suggestions for further consideration. The proposals resonate with ideas and initiatives that have emerged in the wake of movements such 176

The Organisation of Power as #FridaysForFuture, Green Student Movements, Extinction Rebellion in the UK and elsewhere, subgroups within France’s Gilets jaunes committed to new forms of commoning, local food and justice movements in Australia and the United States, and Indigenous groups in Chile and elsewhere fighting for multispecies justice. All of these groups are part of a global (but often ignored) conversation about political organisation and democracy in the Anthropocene. Moreover, they all share an interest in the non-human, which might set out from a distinctively ‘human’ perspective but eventually points towards an assemblage of actors that, in principle, does not place greater emphasis on one rather than the other. Keep in mind that the proposals are by no means an exhaustive list. Still, they might serve to illustrate how a political organisation that matches the infinite Anthropocene human/non-human entanglements can evolve through concrete measures, however minuscule and uncontroversial they might seem when treated on a case-by-case basis. 1. Climate citizens’ assemblies: The first proposal is to introduce climate citizens’ assemblies at the local, national and international levels. Such assemblies have already been tested in Denmark, England and France, and in cities such as Sydney, Warsaw and Porto Alegre.21 The goal of a climate citizens’ assembly is to supplement existing representative institutions with a mandate organised around a concern for sustainability and future generations, making nature – and the nonhuman more generally – an additional reference point for the expression of what we normally call ‘popular sovereignty’. At the local level, a citizens’ assembly typically consists of approximately 35 randomly selected people, whereas anywhere between 100 and 500 can be involved at the national 177

Power in the Anthropocene and international levels.22 Participants are chosen based on a lottery using variables such as age, gender, income and education as the selection criteria. Not only does this selection method secure a representative sample of the population, it also counteracts the professionalisation that characterises the existing political system and, thus, allows for more divergent forms of knowledge and expertise than is currently the case. Moreover, the method ensures the continuous replacement of assembly participants, which in itself strengthens society’s democratic competencies, as the chosen citizens can subsequently contribute to the education of other active citizens. While some critics worry that climate citizens’ assemblies lead to either epistemic elitism where a few select citizens get to decide for all,23 or distrust due to a lack of real influence on decision making,24 there is growing evidence to suggest that these issues can be addressed through a carefully designed process that ensures better transmission between members of the citizens’ assemblies and the surrounding political system.25 Moreover, as already noted, climate citizens’ assemblies provide a real boost to the fight against climate change because they typically recommend more radical measures and policies than the ones currently on offer. Given these characteristics, the local and national climate citizens’ assemblies suggest a new and stronger link between traditional political arenas and the decentralised connections that characterise the politics of swarming. The same applies to climate citizens’ assemblies at the international level, where initiatives such as the ‘Conference for the Future of Europe’ and the ‘Global Assembly’ project developed in preparation for the COP26 negotiations in Glasgow have shown the way for a globally oriented use of the format.26 178

The Organisation of Power 2. New forms of representation: To support the efforts of a new network of climate citizens’ assemblies, it is also necessary to push beyond the current human-centred character of democracy, allowing for new forms of representation that enable non-human forms of life to participate on a more equal footing with humans. One option that has already been tested in the context of the COP21 negotiations in Paris is to appoint a group of people to speak and negotiate on behalf of other species and constellations of non-human life, whether this be the forests, the oceans, the ice sheet, the animal kingdom or something entirely different.27 A similar initiative has been tested by the ‘Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology’, which, in the spring of 2022, engaged art collectives such as ‘Becoming Species’ and ‘Center for Militant Futurology’ in an attempt to formulate a series of new declarations for a more-than-human world.28 The initiative included almost fifty participants who spent two days working at – and sometimes even trespassing on – the intersection of human and non-human modes of life. Each participant imagined themselves as a different species and used this imaginative experience to delimit a new set of principles for belonging and community. The latter included statements such as ‘Give way!’, ‘Become many!’ and ‘Practice listening – open yourself to all the other flows and beings that exist in the world’.29 A third possibility that oversteps the human perspective even further is to expand political rights to rivers and other forms of non-human life, as has been done in countries such as Ecuador and New Zealand, so that they now have the same constitutional rights as humans have enjoyed for the last many decades and centuries.30 While the extension of these constitutional rights might seem like a way of anthropomorphising 179

Power in the Anthropocene the non-human world, it also creates instability in the notion of a distinctively ‘human’ rights-bearing subject. If and when this happens, the extension of rights becomes a valuable contribution to the experimentation with traditional forms of political representation, which in turn helps us to recognise the irrevocable entanglements of human and non-human modes of life that define the Anthropocene. 3. Empowering cross-cutting and transnational networks: One of the greatest challenges posed by the climate crisis is that even though most civil society initiatives are oriented towards local conditions, climate change is in itself anything but local in nature. In debates about political organisation of and in the Anthropocene, a mismatch therefore easily arises between the nature of the problems and the outlooks and perspectives accompanying the imagined solutions. To avoid this outcome, it is crucial to empower cross-cutting, ­transnational networks that ensure the exchange of ­experiences  – and thereby contribute to the collective learning process – both across topics and across national borders. Such networks speak directly to the goals of the politics of swarming. Extinction Rebellion, with its local groups around the world, is an example of a self-organising, cross-cutting network, which aims at inspiring new initiatives to overcome global climate change. Another cross-cutting network is what Naomi Klein calls ‘blockadia’, which is a loose network of groups and movements from North America to Southeast Asia, all of which are fighting against climate change in their local communities and which – in a manner quite similar to Extinction Rebellion – exchange information and experiences in order to engender the change needed.31 These networks and many others like them are crucial to the global struggle for a fair 180

The Organisation of Power and sustainable future, especially because they emphasise how political change almost always begins at the periphery, where traditional power analyses do not look, but where new groups and movements gather in the fight for a new distribution for power and privilege. 4. Foregrounding the knowledge and experience of Indi­ genous communities: One of the most promising aspects of many of the networks I have just mentioned is the inclusion of the knowledge and experiences embedded within Indigenous communities and their practices of caring for the environment. Often this knowledge does not find its way into formal political decision-making processes, which in itself is paradoxical, given the lack of understanding and insight it implies for those affected by climate change. An example of this would be Inuit knowledge of the movements of the ice sheet, which provides a more nuanced picture of the situation in local communities than the one offered by satellite images. While the latter can map a historical movement through a set of chronologically ordered time series, the former is needed to make sense of climate change as something more (and other) than a purely geologicalclimatological occurrence.32 A similar example could be the Lakota Oyate, who have been fighting in the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on the border between North and South Dakota in the United States against the expansion of a new natural gas pipeline (known as the Dakota Access Pipeline). Here, too, Indigenous knowledge about land use plays a crucial role, challenging the notion that landscapes are void of meaning and, hence, available for exploitation and use.33 Finally, one could also mention the Asian mushroom collectors discussed in Chapter 3, who follow the movements 181

Power in the Anthropocene of the forest across national borders (and continents) to find the best growing areas. Together, these examples point in the direction of overlooked knowledge that provides crucial information about the history and consequences of climate change as well as the implications it has for access to (and the well-being of) the natural resources needed for the flourishing of life. As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, such knowledge often hinges on an expanded conception of time and politics, which in turn shifts the burden of change away from the underprivileged, making it obvious how and why human/ non-human relationships are internally differentiated and, hence, irreducible to a simple zero-sum game that limits future-oriented initiatives to a matter of winners and losers (whether on the human or non-human side). Overcoming this perspective is in itself an important precondition for the creation of new assemblages that correspond to the distribution of power in the Anthropocene, however variegated and contested it might appear in this or that context. 5. Expansion of the cooperative tradition: A fifth proposal is the expansion of the cooperative and/or commons tradition, which in countries such as Denmark, Greece and Spain has had a positive impact on societal development, but which has also become increasingly commercialised in recent decades. An interesting counter-development is the aforementioned Andelsgaarde initiative, which takes up regenerative agriculture and is actively working to include nature and the nonhuman in its organisational form. Other options in the same direction include cooperatives for food, transport, heating and electricity. The advantage of such forms of co-ownership is partly that they underpin the green transition through sustainable production methods, and partly that their political 182

The Organisation of Power DNA is based on citizen involvement and co-determination/ decision making.34 The cooperative-commons tradition thus represents a classic example of a politics of swarming, which depends on a bottom-up process, in which the non-human can be involved much better than if we started at the top of the political hierarchy, but which does not lead to the coordination problems that critics otherwise normally put forward. Owning and deciding something together does not necessarily lead to chaos, even though the decision-making processes are often complicated, slow and conflict-ridden (as anyone who has attended a cooperative meeting will know!). 6. Artistic imagination: The final proposal focuses on another significant problem in relation to political organisation in the Anthropocene: the very ability to imagine a world different from the one in which we are now living, which in so many different ways is contributing to the climate crisis. I have already advocated (in Chapter 2) for another form of social science that addresses the problem by seeing itself as a cross-cutting hub for the development of new analyses and knowledge. Another area of importance for this project is the artistic disciplines – and art in general – which have always played a significant role in the push for new forms of society. In relation to the climate crisis, an example of this could be the further expansion of a project such as ‘A Year without Winter’, which in the period between 2015 and 2018 brought together designers, artists, researchers and activists in an attempt to rethink everything from the fashion industry to housing associations and travel habits.35 Or it could be a project such as ‘The Anthropocene Curriculum’, which is part of the Berlin-based Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and which has been contributing with exhibitions, happenings 183

Power in the Anthropocene and weekly workshops about the climate crisis and possibilities for new lifestyles since 2013. Or it could be the ‘Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology’, which also uses art to create a new conversation about the relationship between the human and the non-human. These three initiatives might seem small and insignificant in relation to everything that is going on in national parliaments and international organisations, such as the EU and UN. Still, the initiatives are crucial for political and social innovation. Not only do they gather knowledge across existing professional boundaries, they also help to shape our collective imagination beyond what we ourselves previously thought possible. This is especially true of our relationships to nature and the non-human, which have always been a source of imagination, creativity and curiosity. Drawing on the creative arts can thus help us to imagine a world that is yet-to-come but nevertheless resonates with concerns and desires operating in the present. Although these six proposals do not constitute an exhaustive list, they might help to concretise the politics of swarming and, thus, inspire an approach to political organisation different from that which currently characterises the debate. The proposals share an interest in bridging the human and non-human, and in so doing demand more from citizens than does current representative democracy. This applies both in relation to the amount of participation and the nature of this participation. As citizens of the Anthropocene, working with and against its multiple and often contradictory forces, it is simply not possible to opt out of the community in the same way as if one were a member of a football club or political party. In the Anthropocene, there is no longer any neutral place to seek refuge, and therefore no 184

The Organisation of Power place where you will not be confronted with the climate and biodiversity crises and their significance for human/non-human entanglements. Without the opportunity to opt out, responsible citizens must instead view themselves as active participants in the politics of swarming. As we have seen repeatedly in this book, such organisation is more important than ever. In addition to highlighting the changed nature of participation, the six proposals also help to illustrate how the politics of swarming intersects with other efforts in environmental political theory, particularly around the notion of ‘ecological democracy’. According to Robyn Eckersley, ecological democracy, particularly in its early version, aims at providing an alternative to mainstream representative democracy by extending ‘who or what should be recognized as having rights and/or entitled to political representation, to whom decision-makers should be accountable, and over what spatial time horizon’.36 The politics of swarming shares this ambition but extends it in two directions, adding insight to the more recent interventions that Eckersley also notes in her review of the literature. First, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 3, the politics of swarming draws sustenance from a distinctively zoecentric outlook, which envisions life as an animating force that inspires action at all levels of existence. Second, building on this insight, the politics of swarming avoids singling humans out as particularly reflective (when compared to non-humans) and, hence, as better equipped to make decisions about the well-being of all. Both interventions resituate the very locus of democracy, moving it from a matter of human relations alone to one that operates within the many human/ non-human entanglements that, as we have seen throughout this book, underpin conditions of politics and sociability in the Anthropocene. 185

Power in the Anthropocene Hobbes and Overcoming the State of Nature To better understand the assumptions and implications associated with this new materialist vision of democracy and power, we might reach back into the history of political thought to learn more about the main positions that inform our contemporary debates. As I suggested in the introduction to this chapter, this strategy is particularly relevant with regard to thinkers such as Hobbes and Spinoza. Each thinker stands out in his own right, and both inform how the social sciences today approach issues tied to political organisation, including – and, for our purposes, perhaps particularly interestingly – the relationship between ‘power-to’ and ‘power-over’ and ‘the will to power’ as a desire to create the most powerful and creative society possible. In what follows, I start with Hobbes because he is held as especially important among critics of the politics of swarming and, thus, allows us to test its assumptions and implications against someone who shares some of the same concerns about democracy and power but draws the opposite conclusions. To begin with, it is worth noting that Hobbes’s ideas and insights were formulated in an age that was in many ways as explosive and conflict-ridden as our current Anthropocene age. On the one hand, Hobbes formulated his thoughts as a direct commentary on the English Civil War (1642–51), which pitted the king against the English parliament. Hobbes himself took the king’s side, partly because he regarded the conflict as an expression of a lack of respect for the basic principle of obedience, which, according to his own convictions, was the very precondition for a productive and stable society.37 On the other hand, Hobbes could not entirely deny having contributed to the ideas and demands invoked by parliament, mainly due to 186

The Organisation of Power the fact that Hobbes himself had at least one foot in the dawning age of the Enlightenment, which not only threatened to undermine  the traditional theological arguments for political sovereignty, but which also raised new demands regarding the conceptualisation of power. Hobbes’s contribution to this conceptualisation makes his oeuvre one of the most essential frames of reference for contemporary social science. Without his many insights, our understanding of power and political organisation would simply not be the same. That this is the case is probably most obvious in relation to the notion of the state as a sovereign entity fighting other states, while being internally defined by a clearly delimited hierarchical structure, where all decisions refer back to a single, common authority – whether a monarch or an elected parliament. Although this conception of sovereignty might have lost some of its power, especially as international organisations such as the UN and EU have established new and more binding forms of supranational cooperation, it nevertheless remains with us in a number of ways.38 An important reason for this is undoubtedly the many political challenges presented by climate change (and thus the Anthropocene). Hence, most international climate negotiations continue to work as a mode of inter-state cooperation, which has rendered it difficult to establish common ground, not only in relation to green transition policies but also in relation to pressing issues concerning climate migration and the redistribution of natural resources. We can add to this state of affairs the fact that many people now consider climate change to be such a crucial political challenge that it amounts to a state of emergency that can only be solved by replacing our current democratic regimes with a more authoritarian form of government.39 We find this conviction 187

Power in the Anthropocene among those who call for a global solution to the climate crisis, whether they are eco-modernists who place their trust in new forms of technology40 or more radical eco-activists who see democracy as sluggish and unable to provide the necessary solution.41 Similarly, we also find it among those who, in the wake of COVID-19 and other crises, see a strengthening of the nationstate as the only viable way forward.42 For both types of argument, it is as if the geopolitical world has returned to Hobbes’s point of departure. As two of the world’s leading climate commentators write, climate change is ‘the first major change that humans have lived through in a while, since the emergence of what we sometimes think of as the modern period of sovereignty, as theorised by Thomas Hobbes, among others’.43 The life of Hobbes Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 and died in 1679. His father was a priest, and Hobbes himself received a classical education that gave him admission to Oxford University, where he began studying scholastic philosophy in 1603. After graduating in 1608, Hobbes tutored the influential Cavendish family, which belonged to the part of the English nobility that, unlike those who supported Cromwell, accepted the sovereign authority of the king over parliament. Hobbes’s work for the Cavendish family took him on a series of trips around Europe, where he became acquainted with some of the very latest ideas in European philosophy, history and literature. His interest in these subjects was first expressed in his 1628 English translation of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, which describes the war between Athens and Sparta 188

The Organisation of Power (431–404 BC). Hobbes regarded Thucydides’ description of this conflict as a significant critique of the democratic form of government and therefore also as a defence of absolute monarchy. Hobbes further developed these thoughts in three of his most famous books: De Cive (published in Latin in 1642), Leviathan (published in 1651) and Behemoth (aka The Long Parliament, published in 1681). These books, marked by Hobbes’s attempt to develop a philosophy that could be compared to geometric science, are a testament to his lifelong interest in politics and society; an interest that often brought him into disfavour with the shifting English governments and meant that he had to live in exile in Paris for a number of years. Given this assessment, it seems only natural to look more closely at Hobbes’s own body of writings. What characterises Hobbes’s understanding of the relationship between power and nature, what can it tell us about the opportunities for political organisation in the Anthropocene, and, just as importantly, are there insights that contemporary interpretations of Hobbes overlook, but which in reality point in a different, more radical direction? Any answer to these questions must begin with what Hobbes himself calls the ‘state of nature’; a state, according to Hobbes, where nature as such appears as a wild, uncontrollable power, and where humans therefore live a life that is ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short’.44 Behind these oft-quoted words lies an even more basic assumption that all people are governed by the fear of dying, and that this fear will persist as long as the state of nature prevails.45 Hobbes substantiates this assumption by characterising the state of nature as being given 189

Power in the Anthropocene by the absence of a common normative order, which is why it cannot protect the individual from assault from others who are also trying to create a better life here and now. The state of nature thus leads to a situation where everyone is ‘Enemy to every man’, and where ‘there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain’. The latter is particularly problematic, as it undermines the possibility of progress and community. Indeed, rather than supporting positive development, the state of nature is synonymous with an asocial state, where the ‘concord’ between people is reduced to a ‘naturall lust’, lived in a tendentious, ‘brutish manner’.46 This outlook, according to the conventional interpretation of Hobbes, makes the political task one of overcoming the state of nature, which in Hobbes’s own eyes also implies a normative shift from power-to to power-over. The latter is at least as interesting to us as the former, as it emphasises the introductory point of this chapter concerning the relationship between the descriptive and normative aspects of any analysis of power. If we follow Hobbes’s own argument, power-to is particularly prevalent early in the evolution of civilised societies, where everyone has equal access to natural law (jus naturale), and where the structure of society therefore resembles something like a democracy in which each individual has the same formal opportunities to make their voice heard as everyone else.47 But because this natural democracy creates an anarchic state – thereby undermining the possibility of extracting natural resources for the purposes of wealth and progress – a different constellation of power must be established, which does not depend on everyone’s participation, but which is nevertheless for the common good.48 This constellation arises through a social contract that disarms the power-to in favour of an authoritarian form of government based solely on 190

The Organisation of Power power-over. As Hobbes, with the help of a quotation from the Old Testament Book of Job, writes on the first page of Leviathan, where the sovereign is portrayed as an all-encompassing figure who rules over humans and nature alike: Non est potestas super terram quae comparetur ei – that is, ‘there is no power [understood as power-over] on earth to be compared with him’ (Job 41:24). The question, of course, is whether such a total transition from potentia to potestas is really possible, or whether, after all, there will be elements of something more anarchic that cannot be mastered as completely as Hobbes imagines. Although Hobbes strives to show that a total transition is possible – among other things by assigning a wide range of prerogatives to the sovereign ruler, including sentencing, the granting of political and social privileges, and the organisation and regulation of private ­property49 – there are also some elements in the text which suggest that he actually entertains considerable doubts about the project. The first piece of evidence is Hobbes’s persistent interest in half-human and half-animal werewolves, which emerge under cover of night and howl loudly.50 For Hobbes, these werewolves are a sign that, after all, it is not quite as straightforward as it appears to imagine a form of society in which the state of nature is completely neglected. This concern comes even more to the fore in the name ‘Leviathan’, which Hobbes uses to denote sovereignty as power-over. As noted above, the name Leviathan can be traced back to the Book of Job, which uses it to describe a whale or sea snake that possesses far greater powers than any human, and which therefore constitutes a competitor to God’s own power.51 These descriptions continue well into the early modern era, when thinkers such as Francis Bacon (1561–1626), François Rabelais (1494–1553) and John Milton (1604–74) use 191

Power in the Anthropocene the name Leviathan to highlight a brutish-animal power that makes the oceans simmer and bubble ‘like liquid fire’.52 Even as recently as Herman Melville’s classic Moby-Dick from 1851, Leviathan is used to name the white whale that Captain Ahab hunts but ultimately succumbs to in his quest across the oceans for recognition and self-understanding. Common to all of these literary invocations is that Leviathan names both a sovereign power established through the social contract and the personification of the unruly and challenging potentiality that permeates the original state of nature. It is as if Leviathan, as name as well as power, is simultaneously more than many and less than one – not unlike the Anthropocene, as it has today become the main challenge for democracy and political organisation. Although Hobbes attempts to negotiate this duality by appealing to a divine authority that extends beyond the human world,53 I introduce these considerations to suggest a fundamental uncertainty regarding the possibility of overcoming the forces that characterise the state of nature, which makes humans more animalistic than we normally imagine.54 If it is not possible to separate the human from the non-human, then how can we be sure that human attempts to conquer nature are anything more than an empty echo of the sea snake hissing from the ocean floor? This question might seem rhetorical, but it is hard to dismiss, because Hobbes himself highlights rhetoric as an effective way of establishing a new reality.55 Rather than seeing Hobbes’s ambiguities as poor philosophical craftsmanship, in my view it is better to see them as additional insights into how the non-human and power-to always remain present in any form of political organisation. Even in the most consistent organisation of power-over, power-to exists in all its diversity and savagery. In Hobbes’s case, this is probably mostly a conceptual point. But as 192

The Organisation of Power we have seen repeatedly in previous chapters, it is also relevant to the understanding of political organisation in the Anthropocene, where the infinite number of human/non-human entanglements makes it even harder to override and/or conquer the inherent power of the material world. Every time the human part of the world tries to change the course of nature, the non-human part responds in a manner that can be neither controlled nor predicted. As we saw in Chapter 3, this context is a crucial part of what we might call the plus-minus game of the Anthropocene. From a new materialist perspective, this point has two consequences, both of which might help to justify why we should replace the attempt to centralise power with a political organisation structured around the politics of swarming. To begin with, it is worth highlighting the risks associated with a politics that ignores the existence of power-to and/or insists on the possibility of taming it by way of a particularly strict and authoritarian form of government. According to new materialism, both possibilities create a false expectation of order and stability, which can ultimately lead to the exact opposite: rebellion and chaos. This applies to a strong hierarchical organisation of power, where it is the ‘strong leader’ who makes all the significant decisions; and it applies to a more technocratic government, where experts and other specially initiated people decide what is best for the majority. In both cases, the attempt to tame the power-to will create a backlash that eventually explodes with extra force (not unlike what Foucault anticipated in his discussion of power and resistance). We can add to this dynamic the pressures of the Anthropocene, which track a complex interplay of human and non-human forces, emphasising the limitations of the assumption of complete sovereignty. The combination of these considerations helps to justify why a political organisation that privileges power-over as its raison d’etre is 193

Power in the Anthropocene not the right solution to the climate crisis and the Anthropocene more generally. Rather than believing in the p­ ossibility of topdown governance, contemporary political organisation must rely to a much greater degree on bottom-up input. The second point that follows from Hobbes’s own ambiguities, and that is important for understanding why the politics of swarming can be an attractive form of political organisation, concerns the normative content of power; that to which I have referred as the ‘will to power’. Although Hobbes pretends that norms and normativity only arise with the establishment of the social contract, it is difficult to maintain this notion after accepting that the divide between potentia and potestas is not as categorical as one might immediately think. Thus, as the previous discussion shows, it is not only power-over but also power-to that has normative content, which means that the latter can help to pull society in one direction or another. The question that arises is therefore not whether, but rather what we can say about this normative content. In short: what characterises the normative aspect of power-to and what forms of political organisation and leadership follow from it?

Spinoza and Natural Democracy Of all the many philosophers throughout the history of political thought, Spinoza is probably the one with the most to say on this question, which is also why he is considered one of the founders of new materialism. Like Hobbes, Spinoza was a child of the dawning Enlightenment, which emerged in the seventeenth century and reactualised the question of power and political organisation. And like Hobbes, Spinoza tries to answer 194

The Organisation of Power this question through an analysis of the concept of nature, which sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish his thoughts and reflections from those we find in Hobbes. Table 5.1 provides an overview of Hobbes’s and Spinoza’s respective views on key concepts. Unlike Hobbes, Spinoza’s contribution is far more concerned with power-to, which also means that his understanding of political organisation is radically different from Hobbes’s. For Spinoza, the goal of political organisation is not authoritarian rule, but rather a grassroots democracy that underpins the idea of the politics of swarming and its revitalisation of civil society. The historical background for this is Spinoza’s own life story as a radical Enlightenment thinker who lived clandestinely and on the run from both political and religious authorities, and who never really rose to the level of explicit attention from other philosophers in the decades and centuries after his premature death. While this might seem to suggest that Spinoza is a figure of the past, this does not mean he is irrelevant to our current discussion of the climate crisis and its political challenges. Far from it! As we shall see, Spinoza’s contributions are significantly relevant for the analysis of Anthropocene society as well as for an understanding of the normative content of potentia, including how it might inform our analyses of the interplay between human and non-human forces.56 Why, then, is it that Spinoza’s philosophy can be characterised as the foundation for new materialism?57 The answer lies mainly in his argument that there is only one material world that enables all forms of life, including human and non-human life. Another way of saying this is that Spinoza does not assume any categorical difference between human and non-human life, which is why he often highlights them as entangled aspects of 195

Power in the Anthropocene one and the same world. To the dismay of his contemporary philosopher colleagues, all of whom accepted a monotheistictheological worldview, Spinoza even goes so far as to say that if there is a god, this god is nothing but that which one would call nature from a strictly materialistic perspective. Deus sive natura – ‘God or nature’ – is Spinoza’s philosophical motto, which he presents in various ways in his main work, Ethics.58 The life of Spinoza Baruch Spinoza was born in 1632 and died in 1677. Spinoza’s Jewish family had fled from the Spanish Inquisition before his birth; first from Spain to Portugal, and then from Portugal to Holland, where Spinoza’s parents settled in Amsterdam as traders. Spinoza never managed to obtain a formal university education, but throughout childhood he received instruction from the leading rabbis of Amsterdam. Spinoza excelled as a highly skilled but also very critical student who never hesitated in posing challenging questions to his teachers about their understanding of the Old Testament and the Torah. Spinoza was so persistent in his criticism that after repeated warnings from the rabbinate, he more or less voluntarily accepted excommunication from the Jewish community in 1656. In the time following his excommunication, Spinoza lived in various villages, where he, in parallel with his theological and philosophical self-studies, subsisted by working as a lens grinder. Spinoza became particularly known for his naturalistic (pantheistic) philosophy together with his defence of freedom of speech and republican democracy. He developed both in his three most famous books: Ethics, The 196

The Organisation of Power Theological-Political Treatise and The Political Treatise. Of these, only The Theological-Political Treatise was published during his lifetime (1670). The other two (of which The Political Treatise is incomplete) were published posthumously, as they were considered so controversial that their publication could endanger Spinoza’s life. Spinoza continues this line of thought by making yet another seminal point: nature as such is not given by one particular expression or one particular form, but instead appears as an infinite series of possibilities, each given by a particular ability to create and shape the world. A tree thus appears as one way of creating and shaping the world, while a human being and/or a car appears as another way of doing the same. Or, as Spinoza puts it, everything is ‘in God’, which also means that everything is only possible through nature, which must therefore be seen as the general power through which all things on Earth arise.59 Such an understanding of nature clearly stands in stark contrast to the one found in Hobbes, which continues to prevail in the social sciences, especially their sociocentric versions that help in various ways to promote a more or less authoritarian solution to the climate crisis. Spinoza adds weight to this concern by nuancing the concept of nature so that it does not appear as one unit, but rather is given by the interplay between two aspects: natura naturans and natura naturata.*60 Natura naturans, which can best be translated as ‘nature naturing’, denotes the divine ability to put things in the world and thereby create new life. Natura naturans can thus also be understood as the aspect of nature that is most closely connected with potentia (and power-to). In fact, one can go so far as to say that as the power that expresses the 197

Power in the Anthropocene creative power of nature, potentia is also the power that protects natura naturans and wants to give it the best possible opportunities for development (more on this below; see also the discussion of power as ‘virtual potentiality’ in Chapter 3). Opposite this endeavour is natura naturata, which is best translated as ‘nature natured’. While this part of the concept of nature might appear more powerful than natura naturans, especially because it is easier to see with the naked eye, natura naturata  is not its own creator, which also means that its self-sustaining abilities are far more vulnerable to outside influence. Natura naturata is therefore more closely associated with potestas than it is with potentia. For as is the case with potestas, natura naturata also involves an attempt to cut itself off from the surrounding world in order to create a dominion. According to Spinoza, this is possible over a shorter period of time but ­unsustainable in the long run, as there will always be external forces stronger than those embedded in potestas ­themselves. On the basis of these considerations, a more nuanced picture emerges of both the concept of nature and the associated normative considerations, which helps to justify the politics of swarming as the most effective form of political organisation in the Anthropocene. As for the first – the concept of nature – Spinoza helps us to see this as a multidimensional network of connections and entanglements that are always as far-reaching as the world is. We can even say that, according to Spinoza’s conceptualisation, nature appears as the world, which also means that there is no thing or no one standing above, below or beside nature. The network described by the concept therefore has no natural delimitation, but is always moving towards a new set of connections and entanglements.61 198

The Organisation of Power This outlook does not mean, however, that particularly strong nodes cannot arise from time to time – what I referred to in Chapter 3 as assemblages – which have greater consistency and/ or significance than others. Figuratively speaking, these assemblages can be characterised as ‘densities’ or ‘mountain peaks’ that spring forth at any given time and that can be more or less difficult to move or otherwise change (without, however, for that reason constituting a ‘natural’ meeting point for the rest of the network). From a Spinoza-informed new materialist perspective, these nodes can be seen as an attempt to convert the possibilitycreating potential (potentia) of power into a more dominant form of power that is broadly reminiscent of what Hobbes, in his more authoritarian moments, called Leviathan (and which can thus also be referred to as potestas). It is thus erroneous to assume that Spinoza has no understanding of power-over and its role in modern society; the point is, rather, that he is directly critical of it and goes against those who try to build an entire society upon it. For Spinoza, it is paramount that we challenge and question power-over. That this is the case becomes even clearer when we turn to the normative question of what, according to Spinoza, characterises the best way of organising power. As already indicated, we find the answer to this question in the connection between potentia and natura naturans. The argument is as simple as it is farreaching. To the extent that potentia is the power that protects natura naturans – and to the extent that natura naturans is the creative force without which there would be no world – we can and must also say that potentia can best fulfil its role by giving nature the best possible opportunities for development. This connection between potentia and natura naturans does not necessarily mean that all parts of nature must be preserved, nor that no 199

Power in the Anthropocene changes must be made over time. What it does mean, however, is that no matter what happens to the network of nature, it can only be justified if the impacts and/or changes made to it lead to stronger and more sustainable connections and assemblages. Without ensuring such an outcome, the interventions will go against nature’s creative power – its built-in ‘will to power’ – and therefore cannot be justified normatively. Another way of saying this is that from the ontological proximity between potentia and natura naturans follows a normative dictum: make nature as strong as possible by allowing it to affect and be affected in as many ways as possible. All of these arguments culminate in Spinoza’s thoughts on political organisation, which, in fact, are also the starting point for the very idea of the politics of swarming. As one of the first in the modern history of political ideas – and possibly also the history of ideas tout court – Spinoza goes out of his way to criticise the monarchy and other authoritarian forms of government that pretend to be able to gather power in one place; whether in one person or more broadly in a monopolistic institution of some sort. Spinoza rejects both forms of government with reference to the manifold modes of power, emphasising instead democracy as the most natural: ‘the democratic state … [is] the most natural form of state, approaching most closely to that freedom which nature grants to every man’.62 Spinoza’s use of ‘natural’ here denotes a remarkable duality: the natural is both a reference to the very concept of nature and an attempt to give democracy priority as the normatively most desirable. This duality helps to turn Spinoza’s understanding of democracy in the direction of what we would today call ‘grassroots democracy’ or ‘ecological democracy’. It also helps to explain and justify why this kind of democracy is best understood as a mutual constitution of 200

The Organisation of Power unity and plurality, homogeneity and heterogeneity. On the one hand, Spinoza’s democracy – and thus the politics of swarming – appears as a single, unifying form of government, where power is concentrated in an institution that holds authority over all parts of society. On the other hand, the point of this collection is not to create a homogeneous and authoritarian government, but rather to promote a dynamic infrastructure that enables connections across existing boundaries, including the boundary between human and non-human life.63 According to Spinoza, the democratic state must therefore gather power and then give it back to its members, who subsequently use it to act and think in accordance with nature’s own creative power. The result is a decentralised exercise of power, where the ‘strong state’ does not (as with Hobbes) try to seize the outside world, but where it instead works for sustainable and generative connections across existing boundaries and contradictions. This is also exactly what is being pursued within the politics of swarming, and it is the backdrop to the revitalisation of civil society that I highlighted earlier in this chapter. Table 5.1  Hobbes and Spinoza on power and political organisation Hobbes

Spinoza

Concept of nature

Nature defined as a condition of anarchy and conflict

Nature defined as an active network of connections and entanglements

Concept of power

Priority to power-over by way of a disavowal of power-to

Priority to power-to but acknowledgement of power-over

Normative goal

Order and security

Sustainable growth

Preferred mode of government

Autocracy

Democracy

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Power in the Anthropocene To summarise, we might say that Spinoza’s most important contribution to the discussion of power and political organisation in the Anthropocene is partly to promote a more nuanced and up-to-date concept of nature, and partly to show how power-to also has a normative content that enables it to pull society in a more democratic direction. Both contributions make Spinoza an important point of reference for new materialist philosophy and its arguments in favour of ecological democracy and the politics of swarming. Thus, for most new materialist theorists, the challenge is less whether there is an organisation of power that can meet the challenges facing the Anthropocene, and more to show how existing ideas concerning the nature‒democracy relationship can be reactualised and thus brought into play in a new and relevant manner.

The Way Forward! Without exaggerating too much, we can now say that the ring is closed. From a general characterisation of the politics of swarming to a critique of an authoritarian and centralised solution to the climate crisis – and from there to an argument regarding the ‘natural’ form of government – we are now back to the question of democracy and political organisation in the Anthropocene. What should politics look like given the current climate and biodiversity crises, and what might the struggle for a better and more just green transition look like? It is tempting to conclude that the answer to this question is the same as when we started; namely, that in light of the challenges facing the Anthropocene, the best way to organise centres on the politics of swarming. Still, compared to when 202

The Organisation of Power we started the discussion, I hope that this answer appears better substantiated. This is not least because the analysis of Hobbes and Spinoza enables us to delimit with greater certainty both the relationship between power-over and power-to, and the normative considerations that will always be associated with this relationship; that to which I have referred as ‘the will to power’. Based on the discussion in this chapter, the politics of swarming thus seems like a normatively attractive mode of organisation because it recognises how power-to will prevail in the face of power-over, which also means that it emphasises a normativity that cherishes and promotes the expansion (not contraction or exploitation) of life as such – human and non-human. As we have seen repeatedly in this chapter, both are essential to any form of leadership and control in the Anthropocene. Another way of saying this is that behind the many considerations presented in this chapter lies a very simple message; namely, that power cannot (nor should it) be limited to one particular form of expression, but that it is best expressed when distributed across the human/non-human divide. As I suggested in the first and second sections of this chapter, this is best done by involving the population as much as possible, even if doing so entails a great burden for the individual citizen. Fortunately, there are already many initiatives across the globe that, while often unnoticed by mainstream scholarship, are moving in this direction. The new materialist analysis of power is valuable in this context, because it can help to explain why these initiatives make a difference and why more (not fewer) such initiatives are needed. This applies to both the creation of climate citizenship, the desire for new forms of representation, and all of the other initiatives that strengthen civil society and thereby further develop the democratic mindset. All other things being equal, 203

Power in the Anthropocene these initiatives must all be said to be the path forward for the political organisation of the Anthropocene!

Notes  1 Boltanski, On Critique; White, Sustaining Affirmation.  2 Nietzsche, Will to Power, 113.  3 Taylor, A Secular Age, 256, 634.  4 Nietzsche, Will to Power, 219.  5 For a discussion of the two existing approaches to political organisation in the Anthropocene, see Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan; Dryzek and Niemeyer, ‘Deliberative and Climate Governance’.  6 See, inter alia, Coles, Visionary Pragmatism; Eckersley, ‘Ecological Demo­ cracy and the Rise and Decline of Liberal Democracy’; Latour, Facing Gaia; Niemeyer, ‘Democracy and Climate Change’; Schlosberg and Craven, Sustainable Materialism.   7 Parts of this chapter are based on material first introduced in Ejsing and Tønder, ‘Klima, demokrati og lederskab i en ny tidsalder’. Thanks to Mads Ejsing and Ioannis Rigkos-Zitthen for helping to develop the ideas presented in this chapter.   8 Camazine et al., Self-Organization in Biological Systems; Connolly, Facing the Planetary; Hardt and Negri, Multitude.   9 Bertuglia and Vaio, Nonlinearity, Chaos and Complexity; Connolly, Climate Machines. 10 Rather than developing these criticisms with reference to specific texts and arguments, I have tried here to articulate them in their purest form. For more on the criticisms, see, inter alia, Dean, Crowds and Party; Laclau, ‘Can Immanence Explain Social Struggle?’; Žižek, Organs without Bodies. 11 Graeber, The Democracy Project; Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed. 12 The following is based on Seeley, Honeybee Democracy. 13 Schlosberg and Craven, Sustainable Materialism. 14 Andelsgaarde, ‘Vedtægter for Foreningen Andelsgaarde’; Blok and Willig, Den Bæredygtige Stat, ch. 4. 15 See contributions in Amin and Howell, Releasing the Commons. 16 Dichman, ‘Sweaty Commons’. 17 Rigkos-Zitthen, ‘Commoning in the Anthropocene’.

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The Organisation of Power 18 Niemeyer, ‘Democracy and Climate Change’, 438. 19 See below for more on climate citizens’ assemblies. 20 See also the discussion of geo-engineering in Chapter 1. 21 The OECD estimates that more than 700 citizens’ assemblies (or similar mini-publics) were organised between 1986 and 2023. Of these, approximately 125 were devoted to issues around climate change. 22 Reuchamps, Welp and Vrydagh, De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies. 23 Lafont, Democracy without Shortcuts, 111. 24 Böker, ‘Justification, Critique and Deliberative Legitimacy’, 28. 25 See Boswell, Dean and Smith, ‘Integrating Citizen Deliberation into Climate Governance’; Brandt Jensen, Langkjær and Tønder, ‘Giv klimaborgerting bedre rammer’. 26 See Curato et al., Global Assembly and Ecological Crisis. 27 Latour, Facing Gaia, ch. 8. 28 Tønder and Erev, ‘How to do More-Than-Human-Politics’. 29 Tønder and Erev, ‘How to do More-Than-Human-Politics’. 30 Acosta and Martínez Abarca, ‘Buen Vivir’ 31 Klein, This Changes Everything, ch. 9. 32 Hastrup, Thule. 33 Whyte, ‘The Dakota Access Pipeline, Environmental Injustice, and U.S. Colonialism’. 34 See also Rigkos-Zitthen, ‘Commoning in the Anthropocene’. 35 Hannah, A Year Without Winter. 36 Eckersley, ‘Ecological Democracy and the Rise and Decline of Liberal Democracy’. 37 Hobbes, Behemoth or the Long Parliament, 159. 38 This is especially true in the ‘realistic’ branch of the study of international politics, where Hobbes’s understanding of geopolitics has played a ormative role. For overview and discussion, see Cristov, Before Anarchy. 39 See Shahar, ‘Rejecting Eco-Authoritarianism, Again’, for an important assessment of what is commonly called ‘eco-authoritarianism’. 40 Asafu-Adjaye et al., ‘An Ecomodernist Manifesto’. 41 Hickman’, James Lovelock on the Value of Sceptics’. 42 Böss, ‘Fra velfærdsstat til sikkerhedsstat?’ 43 Wainwright and Mann, quoted in Chotiner, ‘How Governments React to Climate Change’. 44 Hobbes, Leviathan, 89. 45 Lev, Sovereignty and Liberty, ch. 3.

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Power in the Anthropocene 46 Hobbes, Leviathan, 89. 47 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch.14; see also Matheron, ‘The Theoretical Function of Democracy in Hobbes and Spinoza’. 48 The democratic aspect of the state of nature has led a number of commentators to read Hobbes as a radical theorist of democracy (Martell, Subverting the Leviathan) or as a libertarian who opposes any form of government (Flathman, Thomas Hobbes). 49 See Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 18 for an overview 50 Hobbes, On the Citizen, Epistle Dedicatory. For elaboration, see Rossello, ‘Hobbes and the Wolf-Man’. 51 Job 41:1–34 52 John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, line 229. 53 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 31. 54 For some commentators this is actually a reason to read Hobbes as an early new materialist; see especially Frost, Lessons from a Materialist Thinker. 55 Skinner, Visions of Politics, ch. 4 56 Spinoza’s relevance to the discussion of the Anthropocene is undoubtedly one of the reasons why interest in his philosophical works has exploded in the last twenty-odd years. For discussions of Spinoza in relation to the Anthropocene, see, inter alia, Braidotti ‘Don’t Agonize, Organize!’; Dahlbeck, Spinoza, Ecology, and International Law; Lloyd, Reading Spinoza in the Anthropocene. 57 In the following, I focus on Spinoza’s general ontology and omit his more specific analyses of bodies and affects. I have previously addressed the latter in my discussion of the concept of tolerance; see Tønder, Tolerance, ch. 3. 58 See Spinoza, Ethics, Part 4, Preface; see also Nadler, Spinoza’s Ethics. 59 Spinoza, Ethics, Part 1, proposition 15. 60 Spinoza, Ethics, Part 1, proposition 29, scholium. 61 In much of the contemporary literature that invokes Spinoza’s philosophy as its source of inspiration, this network is referred to as a root network – a ‘rhizome’ – that extends in all directions and has no pre-defined centre. For more on this account, see in particular Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. 62 Spinoza, Theological Political Treatise, 179. 63 Spinoza, Theological Political Treatise, 179; see also Sharp, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization, 53; Skaeff, Becoming Political, ch. 5.

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6

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene

The Critical Concern We have now come so far in our discussion that we can turn to the last of the three benchmarks I highlighted back in Chapter 1 as important for the rethinking of the social science power analysis: the relationship between power and criticism. That this topic now appears in the argument is – given what we saw in the last chapter – not particularly surprising. One reaction to the previous chapter’s argument would be that it implies a loss of our critical sense, because the very politics of swarming renders it impossible to stand outside power, making it difficult (if not impossible) to criticise any given phenomenon.1 Similarly, one might argue that the politics of swarming is missing a critical punch because it tries to reform the political system ‘from within’ and thus underestimates how skewed and unfair this system really is.2 Both concerns underline the need to examine the relationship between power and criticism more closely, exploring how and why new materialism might respond to some of its most important critics. The purpose of this chapter is to do precisely this.

207

Power in the Anthropocene The main message I hope to convey is that the two concerns just outlined fail to capture how a new materialist rethinking of the analysis of power neither implies a loss of criticism nor constitutes an uncritical defence of existing forms of power – even if the politics of swarming rejects the possibility of standing ‘outside’ power. As I hope to show, new materialism revolves around a shift in the idea of critique such that it is no longer or primarily about distancing oneself from a given organisation of power, but instead, in a vein similar to recent debates in ecofeminism,3 centres on a care for the world and all its connections between human and non-human life. Such care for the world has probably always been important to the critical project, even if it often falls out of purview due to other concerns such as justification and procedural justice. Yet, I want to argue, the link between critique and care has become extra important in the Anthropocene, where ecological crises rage in mutually amplifying ways and where it is only possible to solve societal problems, be they local or global in reach, by engaging with the world around us actively and directly. The shift in orientation is therefore – and relatedly – also crucial for the continued relevance of the social sciences, even if it involves a confrontation with established norms of value neutrality and/or universal knowledge. Both sets of norms, I want to suggest, are simply no longer sufficient at a time when an affirmative commitment to change is required, making it more important than ever to engage with the very constitution and evolution of society writ large. This chapter expands on these arguments and insights in three main sections. The first presents and justifies the new materialist understanding of the power/criticism relationship. The second tests this understanding in relation to the eco-Marxist 208

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene way of thinking, which is particularly relevant for our purposes because it also tries to address the climate and biodiversity crises, but at the same time has proven particularly critical of most ­contributions from a new materialist perspective. My hope is to show that parts of this critique build on an unnecessary deflation of the issues at hand. The third section concludes the discussion and provides an opportunity for summarising the conclusions presented in the book overall.

Critique as the Power to Care The first thing to highlight – and as also briefly mentioned in Chapter 1 – is that the very idea of an oppositional relationship between power and criticism is unhelpful insofar as it misconstrues how each feeds off the other. If ‘criticism’ entails an attempt not only to investigate but also oppose the prevailing power relations of a given phenomenon, then it should be clear that the two concepts are, in fact, part of a common whole.4 This seems particularly obvious if we conceptualise power as I have tried to do in this book, that is, as a practice that not only implies a desire for dominance (power-over) but that also orients itself towards the creation of possibilities (power-to). From this perspective, the exercise of critique is itself a practice of power because it tries to interrupt or destabilise the phenomenon in question, dislodging the relations of power within it, thereby enabling new constellations of potestas and potentia to emerge in this or that way. The reciprocal relationship between the two concepts does not mean that criticism is suddenly a logical impossibility or that the exercise of power always constitutes progress in relation to the 209

Power in the Anthropocene existing situation. As I also suggested in Chapter 1, the upshot instead is that we must regard criticism (and critical theory more generally) as a specific practice of power that works with and against the established, often more hegemonic constellations of power at work at any given time. On the one hand, criticism is simply not possible without the power to oppose the common way of understanding a given phenomenon. On the other hand, criticism also helps to determine the direction and orientation of power-to, in the sense that the one who exercises criticism (the ‘critic’) is also an actor who shapes their surroundings and, in so doing, is a part of the total exercise of power in society. The result is a mutually reinforcing relationship in which each side influences, reinforces and sometimes amplifies the other. To put it bluntly: where there is criticism, there is power; and where there is power, there is criticism. The mutually reinforcing relationship between power and criticism is also important to another of the new materialist thinkers already discussed in this book: Bruno Latour. Latour, however, wants to take a step further than what I have so far described here.5 The problem that animates Latour – and that I want to focus on in the remaining part of this chapter – ­concerns the way in which the practice of critique enables, expands or diminishes the grip that power holds on society, be it locally or globally (or both). Is there anything we can say about this directionality at the intersection of power and critique? Is the practice of critique indifferent to the direction that power takes at any given moment? If not, what points of orientation might guide critics in their work? And what significance does this have for the enabling dimensions of power itself? According to Latour, these questions require us to dive even deeper into the power/criticism relationship and to consider 210

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene that criticism is not merely a matter of challenging what we think is ‘wrong’, but is also about establishing new connections between existing actors, and thus reshaping the world in this or that manner. While this forward-looking aspect already subsists within the mutually reinforcing power/criticism relationship, it is something that most critics, especially in the social sciences, have overlooked, regardless of how important it seems given the challenges presented by the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity.6 Latour expands on this insight by proposing a shift in the critical project from what he calls ‘matters of fact’ to what he calls ‘matters of concern’. Whereas the former connotes things or conditions that we, as a society, have defined as being true in some definitive sense, for example, that the state decides what is right and wrong, the latter takes up the concern and care that circumscribe the many connections and entanglements subsisting within the material world (including human/non-human entanglements).7 Latour’s ambition is to make this kind of care the primary objective of critical theory. As he puts it: What I am going to argue is that the critical mind, if it is to renew itself and be relevant again, is to be found in the cultivation of a stubbornly realist attitude—to speak like William James—but a realism dealing with what I will call matters of concern, not matters of fact.8

For our purposes, this expanded understanding of power and criticism presents a welcome opportunity to emphasise the point about the normativity embedded in any analysis of power. For although it might well be that neither power-to nor powerover follows one particular moral principle, and even though they cannot in any other way be reduced to one thing or one expression, they are both ‘directional’ in some more or less 211

Power in the Anthropocene perceptible manner. This is especially true of power-to, which, as I suggested in the discussion of Spinoza in Chapter 5, strives for the maintenance and, ultimately, sustainable expansion of the entanglements of human and non-human life. Coupled with Latour’s comments regarding ‘matters of care’, we can now say that power-to implies an interest in caring for the world as such. We can also say that this interest is normatively binding insofar as power-to cannot exist if the world does not also exist. An exercise of power that undermines the continued existence of the world is thus also an exercise of power that undermines its own conditions of possibility. While this insight seems quite logical (without a world to criticise, critique itself is not possible), it is seldom taken seriously and/or explored at length in the study of the power relations in any given society. It is worth dwelling on this point in relation to the discussion of the climate and biodiversity crises – and the Anthropocene more generally. Most importantly, against the depletion of the Earth’s resources, which occurs when a multinational mining company destroys the nature surrounding it – or when a chemical company pollutes the groundwater by dumping waste materials in nearby fields – we can now say that this depletion should be called out as unjustified. Why? Because the depletion contradicts the normativity embedded in power-to, which, due to its interest in enabling new relations across existing differences, has creation as its very goal, requiring us to care for the world in a manner that one does not find (and probably never will find) in the practices of multinational mining and large chemical companies. This conclusion applies even though depletion might seem to be one of the greatest demonstrations of power one can ever imagine. Ultimately, however, this impression loses its grip on our imagination because depleting the Earth amounts 212

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene to what, in Chapter 3, I referred to as a ‘blunt’ exercise of power; that is, an exercise of power that does not create anything new or lasting, and that is therefore unsustainable in the longer run (for nature as well as for power). Once we recognise this limitation, we also realise that the supposedly powerful often is the least empowered person or entity present in any given assemblage of relations, be they human or non-human (or both). At the same time, this means that an exercise of power, which, at first sight, seems less significant and powerful, might prove to be far more crucial, in the sense of being more empowering, to a sustainable transformation of society. The shifts in Japanese mushroom culture that I mentioned in the introduction to Chapter 3 offer an example of this, as do the attempts to establish new communities, such as the Andelsgaarde experiments that are currently taking place, which I highlighted in Chapter 4 as examples of a politics of swarming. Taken together, these examples express a more gradual and expansive exercise of power, which, in the longer run, is more sustainable – and therefore more powerful – than that which characterises the many attempts made by multinational corporations to exploit and deplete the Earth and its resources. The key message seems obvious: do not let yourself be fooled by the seemingly insignificant or generous – both might be (and often are) much more powerful than you think! Criticism in the Anthropocene is about identifying these differences across local and global conditions in order to support the enabling capacity that power-to has to care for the world as such. Many of the discussions in this book have had this kind of criticism as their goal, and, hence, my hope is that they contribute to what this book as a whole is preaching: a shift in the practice and self-understanding of the social sciences. From a 213

Power in the Anthropocene new materialist perspective, critical social science is not a science that simply assesses the world from the outside and strives for neutral values and politics. Rather, and I would argue more importantly, critical social science aims to get as close as possible to the human/non-human entanglements. Critical social science is interested in these entanglements, not only because they are important in themselves, but also because they bring us closer to a caring for life and its ability to become more sustainable and empowering for those living it – past, present and future. In short, a critical social science is committed and curious about the world around it.

An Eco-Marxist Test A good way to test these qualities is to compare insights from new materialism with a competing approach to the study of power: the ‘eco-Marxist’ approach. The comparison is useful because eco-Marxism, like new materialism, has roots in the modern materialism discussed in Chapter 3. But where new materialism sees the material world as something that goes beyond the economic sphere, eco-Marxism emphasises a closer connection between capitalism and the climate crisis. This difference opens up a number of new issues related to the power/ criticism relationship, two of which are particularly important for our discussion: 1) the Anthropocene as an explanatory framework for the climate and biodiversity crises, and 2) the proper way to conceptualise power in light of these crises. In the following, I review both issues to test the new materialist understanding of the relationship between power and criticism. As we shall see, the test is not insurmountable; on the contrary, 214

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene it helps to expand the relevance of new materialism to many of the most significant problems and challenges of our time. Let us begin with the question of the Anthropocene.9 According to eco-Marxists such as Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg, it is not possible to speak of the Anthropocene as I have tried to suggest in the previous chapters, because it, by definition, presupposes that ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ are two all-encompassing categories that might influence each other but that can and should be analysed as internally homogeneous.10 The problem is, of course, that such homogeneity is not possible; and not only because technology, culture and nature are hopelessly intertwined, but also because humanity is characterised by great internal social and economic differences, meaning that it never has the appearance of a homogeneous entity, as in the expressions ‘humanity’ or ‘humankind’. According to eco-Marxism, the consequence of this insight must be that we avoid using a term such as the Anthropocene, whose only purpose, in this reading, is to act as a smokescreen to deflect a more fundamental analysis of the challenges of our time, including the exploitation and domination of humans and non-humans alike.11 Rhetorically speaking: if humanity is to serve as the name for a completely new era in the history of the Earth, should it not also appear as a single, unified force? And if it does not, is it then not best to avoid using the Anthropocene concept? For Malm and other eco-Marxists, these questions are an important reason to replace the term ‘the Anthropocene’ with another, according to them, more precise term: ‘the Capitalocene’.12 Based on Marx’s historical materialism, Malm thus shows how the climate crisis is due to a fundamental recalibration of the capitalist system, which began in the late eighteenth century, when the demand for higher profit rates 215

Power in the Anthropocene led to the introduction of new machines that could do the same work as the labourer – just faster and cheaper. The premise for this development was the extraction of fossil fuels that led to an explosive increase in the burning of oil and the use of other raw materials, which in turn increased global CO2 emissions, leading to the ‘Great Acceleration’ that took off some time after the Second World War.13 The result was a new form of capitalism, which Malm calls ‘fossil capitalism’, in which climate change,  economic growth and social inequality are inextricably linked, and in which certain groups are able to utilise both human and non-human resources for their own advantage. The opportunity for this exploitative utilisation continues to this day. Where some are climate crisis losers, either because they have to move from their homes or because they can no longer put food on the table, there are other groups who, due to their privileged position in society, can exploit the climate crisis for their own gain – either because the crisis creates new commercial opportunities or because it leaves certain sectors of the population so desperate that they are willing to work for even lower wages than previously. The question that now arises is quite simple: are eco-­Marxists correct in assuming that the very use of the Anthropocene concept overshadows any understanding of this problem? And if they are correct, is the consequence that we must reject the new materialist analytical framework, including its definition of the power/criticism relationship? The answer to both questions is no. To begin with, it is worth noting that the eco-Marxist arguments follow from an analytical strawman that fails to account for the new materialist critique and its contributions to the conceptualisation and analysis of politics in the Anthropocene. As should be clear from the discussions in this book, especially 216

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene the discussion in Chapters 1 and 3 regarding the internal differentiations of the Anthropocene, and how some interpretations of the Anthropocene might coexist with competing notions such as the Chthulucene, new materialism does not assume that humanity constitutes a homogeneous entity. Instead, new materialists of the kind I have highlighted insist on analysing specific assemblages of human and non-human materiality in relation to their divergent degrees of intensity and duration. In other words, the differentiation that eco-Marxism calls for is already embedded in much of new materialist philosophy, allowing the latter to engage in a historically critical analysis of an economic system grounded in capitalist principles of exploitation and ­surplus value. We find examples of such criticism in a number of places within new materialism. One example is Latour’s discussion of how the fight against climate change is linked to what he and Nikolaj Schultz call a new ‘ecological class’ structured around the realisation that politics, in addition to political and economic interests, revolves around a distinction between those who work for a sustainable future (‘the terrestrials’) and those who do not.14 Something similar applies in William Connolly’s recent works, where climate change and economic inequality are crucial components in the analysis of political power in the Anthropocene.15 For these and many other new materialists, therefore, there is no contradiction between being interested in the inherent power of the material world and being critical of the historical trends that developed in the wake of the rise of capitalism. To claim otherwise necessarily falls into the trap of reducing new materialism to something that it is not. In fact, it is possible to go a step further and say that new materialist philosophy reinforces and expands the critique 217

Power in the Anthropocene that eco-Marxists otherwise assert.16 As an example, take the ­capitalist way of producing food, which promotes a specific kind of pasteurisation across national borders. While the latter might seem irrelevant to the social sciences, it matters 1)  because  ­ pasteurisation affects the immune system, and thus which diseases become prevalent at any given time, and 2) because  the subsequent microbiological changes affect the brain’s  ability to process the body’s diverse inputs – thereby having an impact on the ability to think rationally.17 The chain of causes and correlated events might seem long and hard to trace. Still, the many ways in which a capitalist mode of production goes all the way into the gut (and back again) surely has consequences for the very perception of the capitalist system as rational and legitimate, and thus helps to reinforce the importance of a critique that incorporates the importance of non-human materiality for the evolution of society broadly understood. New materialism proposes to do precisely this. Moreover, as we have seen several times in this book, it is not possible to understand how human life, in all its diversity, evolves without also including an analysis of the evolution of non-human life (and vice versa). Another reason for rejecting the eco-Marxist critique of the new materialist use of the Anthropocene concept relates to the insistence of the former that economic conditions be given priority in the analysis of power in the social sciences. Such a ranking is not only analytically reductionist but also seems contradictory, especially because economic conditions are not the only force at play when we are working to understand and counteract the consequences of the climate crisis and other important societal challenges. As even Marx knew,18 a satisfactory explanation of the development of society requires 218

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene a large number of other factors. While some of these factors might be of a more ideological-discursive nature, new materialism reveals how there are also parts of the material world that matter – and thus shape the structure and evolution of society – on other premises than the purely economic, including those relating to geological and/or biological conditions. Both help to emphasise why – contrary to what eco-Marxism claims – it is not possible to reduce the material world to purely economic conditions. In addition to consolidating the use of the Anthropocene as a concept and analytical framework, these considerations form the basis for a more direct response to eco-Marxist critiques of the new materialist suggestion for a new and more contemporary analysis of power. In relation to the discussion in Chapter 3, it might be helpful to direct our attention to the theses concerning the nature of power (Thesis 1) and the assemblage of power (Thesis 2). According to the latter, power must be understood as a potentiality that is inherent in both human and non-human forms of the material; and this assemblage of human and non-human materiality is, in principle, the most important unit of analysis. According to Malm, however, it is absurd to claim that there is no qualitative difference between the human and non-human, especially because the exercise of power must be considered both philosophically and politically to be linked to an (anthropocentric) assumption of ‘consciousness’ and ‘rationality’.19 For Malm, this applies in general – but is probably particularly important in relation to the climate crisis – where the assumptions about consciousness and rationality are crucial for the possibility of holding specific actors and institutions responsible for their actions. As Malm writes: 219

Power in the Anthropocene The only sensible thing to do now is to put a stop to the extension of agency. In this warming world, that honour belongs exclusively to those humans who extract, buy, sell and combust fossil fuels, and to those who uphold this circuit.20

As was the case with the more general opposition to the term Anthropocene, it can be difficult to respond to this critique in the way one normally would, that is, by acknowledging the validity of the critique in order to strengthen one’s own argument. For one thing, as we have already seen, there is considerable interest among new materialists in examining the significance of capitalism for global climate change. More importantly, Malm is simply incorrect in the first place: new materialist critiques of the human/non-human dualism do not imply any ambition to absolve global investors and/or companies from responsibility for the pollution that is threatening to lead to world doom. Rather, the new materialist insistence on the human/non-human nexus (and the entanglements it implies) contains an attempt to expand and nuance the discussion of power and responsibility, thereby creating a better understanding of how interventions in one part of an ecosystem have negative consequences in other parts of the same system. The question is not so much whether certain actors are more responsible than others (they are!), but rather how one, through a critique of power, might assign responsibility in a manner that opens up avenues of action that are sustainable in the long run. Based on what we saw in Chapter 3, especially in relation to discussions about the assemblage of power (Thesis 3), new materialism seeks to answer this question by analysing the historically specific ways in which power is organised – and thus how the material potential inherent in all things (human as well as nonhuman) gets distributed across space and time (itself a matter of 220

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene materialisation, as Barad would say). Although this is an empirical question that requires concrete examination of the bodies in motion, it is very likely that such an analysis will reveal a number of nodes where the assemblage of human and non-human things is particularly condensed, and, therefore, where there is a particularly high concentration of power. New materialist insights encourage us to explore these nodes in more detail. In some cases, the nodes might be an expression of an explosive potential open to all participants. In other cases, the nodes might well be based on exclusionary mechanisms that involve the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few, thus reducing the responsiveness of the assemblage itself to the need for survival and continued development. As we have seen, a critical new materialist analysis will be interested in these historically conditioned differences, which are crucial to understanding whether there are any actors with a particular responsibility for a specific societal development, including the current climate crisis.21 As with the question before, the point is not to assume a given constellation of power at any given time, but rather to approach the field as an in principle open-ended terrain of possibility. While the result of this approach will often confirm suspicions regarding the concentration of power, it might also alert us to nuances and possibilities for empowerment that escape the eco-Marxist demand for unity, analytically as well as politically. As we saw in Chapter 5, this applies especially to the multiple grassroots initiatives that emerge beneath and around the current constellation of power-over, and that suggest the beginnings of a new politics of swarming in which sustainable growth is front and centre. These considerations help to confirm the original suspicion: that the eco-Marxist critique of new materialism revolves around 221

Power in the Anthropocene an analytical strawman that exaggerates the real differences between the two approaches. In fact, the coincidence between eco-Marxism and new materialist philosophy is so great that it is reasonable to believe that the disagreement highlighted by Malm and others is not about the analysis of power per se, but that it has instead arisen due to a disagreement over epistemological interest (i.e., what ‘good’ science should produce for society writ large). The explanation would go something like this: to the extent that the critique of new materialism follows from a misreading of its assumptions and arguments, the reason for this outcome falls back on two fundamentally different objectives for the analysis of power. Where eco-Marxists profess the need for a revolutionary upheaval of society, new materialist theorists have a greater interest in a wide range of initiatives that are not in themselves revolutionary, but that instead build on the idea of the politics of swarming, including its emphasis on tipping points and phase transitions.22 The new materialists justify an interest in these aspects of social and political life with reference to the desire to promote a democratic mindset based on a pluralisation of the human/non-human connections. According to new materialism, such a project cannot be understood from an exclusively humancentric or sociocentric perspective (as is the case with eco-Marxists), but requires a broader analytical framework that focuses on the global-ecological conditions for life. Specifically, the analysis of power must expand the potential of power to include all forms of materiality; it must question the privileged position of humankind in the social sciences; and it must work to incorporate experiences and knowledge from the non-human part of life in the world. On all three scores, the new materialist analysis of power puts pressure on eco-Marxism, creating the reactions and arguments traced above. 222

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene A Final Summary With these remarks, we have finally covered the three benchmarks I set up in Chapter 1. As I have emphasised repeatedly, the aim of the three benchmarks has been a rethinking of the concept and analysis of power that, with the help of new materialist philosophy, can focus on the human/non-human entanglements in all their historically situated manifold. This focus, I have argued, is necessary to be able to analyse and counteract the challenges that the climate and biodiversity crises and the Anthropocene more generally are raising for us as a society. Formulated in schematic terms, the main messages of this book are as follows: 1. The sociocentric bias: The existing social science analyses of power track a narrow interest in human action, which blinds them to the multiple and often internally amplifying forces that characterise the Anthropocene. This renders the social sciences unable to find innovative and sustainable solutions to the greatest challenge of our time: the climate and biodiversity crises. In order to overcome this dead-end, it is necessary to displace what I have called the sociocentric bias. Without such displacement, no real change in analytical outlook and politics will occur. 2. The three theses of power: A promising way of carrying out this work runs through the new materialist interest in the entanglements of human and non-human life. The aim is to acknowledge the significance of the category of the ‘human’ in contemporary practices and discourses while also rejecting any categorical distinction between humans and non-humans. The best way to achieve this outlook is 223

Power in the Anthropocene to highlight terms such as ‘entanglement’, ‘symbiosis’ and ‘more-than-human’. The result is three theses on power that 1) highlight the material potential inherent in both human and non-human life; 2) examine how the human and nonhuman are brought together in assemblages that give them their specific expression; and 3) emphasise how power can be exercised without being strictly rational and/or deliberately justified. 3. Five methodological guidelines: Supporting concrete analyses based on this new conceptualisation of power requires a new social science methodology. This shift is not so much about qualitative case-based analyses versus quantitative studies based on statistical material; rather, what is crucial is how the researcher approaches the material. Here, our discussion has shown how five methodological guidelines can be useful: 1) listening to the context, 2) following the movement, 3) combining multiple scales, 4) cultivating the diversity of things, and 5) highlighting the possibilities for change and pluralisation. Following these guidelines will most likely seem different from case to case. Still, they share an interest in approaching the field as an in principle open-ended terrain, giving way to concrete analyses of how power is both concentrated and open for reconfiguration. 4. Organisation of power: Closely linked to these methodological guidelines are a number of considerations of a more political nature, which we must not neglect, as the analysis of power will always resonate with questions relating to norms and normativity more generally. Here, our discussion has shown how the new materialist analysis of power normatively promotes a political organisation that strives to create maximum opportunities for power-to. As we have seen, this 224

Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene kind of organisation implies a grassroots democracy that cultivates the human/non-human entanglements. I call this result swarming self-organisation. As noted in Chapter 5, this is a kind of politics that begins and ends with a network of cross-cutting connections, where no point in the network has supreme authority, and where each member participates on a more or less equal footing with everyone else. 5. Criticism as power-to care for the world: The politicalnormative considerations also make it natural for the new materialist analysis of power to base its critical work on the idea of caring for the world, as such. As we have seen, such care is an integral part of power-to, which unfolds best as the world evolves in a more sustainable direction. The new materialist analysis of power uses this realisation to be critical of concrete forms of power, including forms that might seem more explosive than others, but that in reality undermine the conditions for living through exploitation and depletion of the material resources shared by us all. Together, these contributions lead to the new materialist ­rethinking of an analysis of power, which in both breadth and depth goes beyond existing studies of power. Resonating with other efforts in environmental political theory, ecofeminism, postcolonialism and Indigenous scholarship, my main argument throughout this book has been that such an extension is necessary for the social sciences to maintain their relevance in an age that is markedly different from that which underlies how we traditionally examine power. Whether this argument is c­ orrect – and whether it can carry that which I have ­suggested – is ultimately up to you, the reader, to decide. The ball is in play. Game on! 225

Power in the Anthropocene Notes  1 Bohman, ‘How to Make a Social Science Practical’; Rostbøll, ‘Kant and the Critique of the Ethics-First Approach to Politics’.  2 Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism; Žižek, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight.  3 See, inter alia, Estévez-Saá and Lorenzo-Modia, ‘The Ethics and Aesthetics of Eco-caring’.  4 As stated in Chapter 1, and further developed in Chapter 2, this understanding of power and criticism is particularly prominent in Foucault’s work and leads to what Foucault himself calls the ‘critical ethos’. For more on this, see especially Foucault, ‘What is Critique?’   5 Latour, ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?’; see also Blok and Jensen, ‘Redistributing Critique’.  6 Latour, ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?’, 238; see also Latour, ‘Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene’.  7 Notice how Latour uses the term ‘matters of concern’ to highlight both the care and the materiality associated with the exercise of that care; both are important to our discussion of critique and power in the Anthropocene.   8 Latour, ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?’, 231.  9 The following discussion is based on Tønder, ‘Det antropocæne’. 10 Malm and Hornborg, ‘The Geology of Mankind?’, 63. 11 As American sociologist Jason Moore writes, ‘The Anthropocene sounds the alarm—and what an alarm it is! But it cannot explain how these alarming changes came about. Questions of capitalism, power and class, anthropocentrism, dualist framings of “nature” and “society”, and the role of states and empires—all are frequently bracketed by the dominant Anthropocene perspective.’ Moore, Anthropocene or Capitalocene?, 5; see also Malm, ‘Revolutionary Strategy in a Warming World’, 109. 12 Moore, ‘The Capitalocene, Part I’; and Mau, Mute Compulsion. The term Capitalocene operates here as a cousin to the term introduced by Haraway: the ‘Chthulucene’. Both terms aim to challenge the homogeneity of the Anthropocene, and provide in this sense important insight into the discussion of how to conceptualise and analyse issues of power in a time of climate crisis. But where the Capitalocene entails a complete rejection of any use of the Anthropocene, Haraway and others are more amenable (as discussed in Chapter 1) to allowing the terms coexist, encouraging us to explore the tensions and resonances between them. As indicated in the previous chapters, and as I discuss below, such an approach is preferable to avoid analytical and political reductionism.

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Power and Criticism in the Anthropocene 13 Malm, Fossil Capitalism, 292. 14 Latour and Schultz, On the Emergence of an Ecological Class. 15 Connolly, Facing the Planetary. 16 See also Ejsing, ‘Why the Turn to Matter Matters’. 17 Pedersen, Magtfulde mikrober. 18 See Nail, Marx in Motion. 19 Malm, Revolutionary Strategy in a Warming World, 83, 85. 20 Malm, The Progress of This Storm, 112. 21 Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, ch. 5. 22 The following is inspired by Coles, ‘Moving Democracy’. Based on recent complexity theory, Coles shows how a new materialist analysis avoids a categorical choice between revolution and the status quo, instead making it possible to identify opportunities for change in relation to the internal composition of the assemblage.

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A New Materialist Glossary

The following glossary is an attempt to support the reading and understanding of the new materialist study of power, the climate and biodiversity crises, and the Anthropocene more generally. While this list is by no means complete, I hope that it may be of help to readers new to new materialism and the discussion of the Anthropocene. Agency: This term originates from the Latin agere, ‘to act’, and it highlights the ability to influence and/or create a change in the world. From a new materialist perspective, the agency concept is also part of both the actor and power concepts; to have agency is both to be an actor and to exercise power. Moreover, according to new materialism, the ability to effect change is situated within historically situated assemblages and, as such, it is distributed across the actors who are constituted through these assemblages, and who are assigned meaning and significance by virtue of being parts of them. ANT (Actor‒Network Theory): An important source of inspiration for new materialism and its understanding of the inherent power of the material world. The theory is associated 228

A New Materialist Glossary with Bruno Latour’s work to map the conditions for knowledge and meaning in the natural sciences. The main point is that knowledge and meaning arise in the interplay between language and material conditions, and that neither exists prior to the network itself. In this way, there is no ‘reality’ nor any ‘actor’ outside the person(s) comprising the network. Other important contributors to ANT include John Law, Annemarie Mol and Noortje Marres. Assemblages: An important concept in new materialism, which, like actor‒network theory (ANT), is based on the human/nonhuman entanglements and thus avoids any form of dualistic and/or sociocentric thinking. More specifically, the concept is an attempt to recognise that even though everything is connected in principle, in a given context there will always be some parts that are more connected to each other than other parts. Since the assemblage delimits the relevant actors in a given case, it is also with this concept that the analysis of power must begin. Distributed agency: See Agency. Domino effects: This term refers to the most recent climate research, which reveals how climate change in one area of the Earth’s ecosystems can affect climate change in another area, creating a self-reinforcing process. According to new materialism, the concept helps to emphasise the human/non-human entanglements. Dualistic ontology: An understanding of ‘being’ (i.e., what is) as divided into separate categories. The typical dualisms are culture/nature, body/soul, man/woman and human/non-human. 229

Power in the Anthropocene According to new materialism, these dualisms are all problematic, as they do not recognise that all living things arise from the same material substance. Duration: This concept emphasises the importance of understanding politics – and the evolution of society more generally – from a temporal perspective. In relation to the analysis of power more specifically, new materialism uses the term to capture how the exercise of power can extend over shorter or longer periods. Differences in duration can thus have a great impact on the ability of power to create a sustainable society and must therefore also be seen in the context of the intensity through which it is exercised. Entanglements: From a new materialist perspective, entanglement highlights how human and non-human modes of life intersect in ways that are ineliminable without being strictly identical. While the term comes from the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who used it to characterise the relationship between the perceived and the perceiver (and, subsequently, in the discussion of ‘flesh’), in new materialism it takes on an even greater significance, providing a general point of reference for analysing life in the Anthropocene. Ethnographic method: A research method used particularly in anthropology and parts of sociology and political science. The method focuses on direct observation, participation and qualitative interviews with selected groups and individuals. According to new materialism, the ethnographic method is valuable because it can be used to follow a given area much more closely than is possible via quantitative methods based on statistics and questionnaires. 230

A New Materialist Glossary Gaia: ‘Gaia’ comes from ancient Greek mythology, referring to Mother Earth as the origin of all life. At the same time, Gaia is also known as a combative and manipulative goddess who sets traps for her children and her surroundings. In the most recent literature on the Anthropocene, the Gaia figure is used to highlight the forces that cannot be reduced to the purely human, but that nevertheless have crucial significance for the development of society understood more broadly. Gaia is particularly important to thinkers such as Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers. Great Acceleration: A term introduced to describe the relationship between climate change and global societal developments since 1945. The term supports the new materialist understanding of the human/non-human entanglements, as it shows how increasing use of fossil fuels, fertilisers and more is closely linked to changes in the Earth’s ecosystems. The term is also sometimes used in connection with the ‘hockey stick graph’, which shows an exponential increase in anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists such as Will Steffen and Paul Crutzen have been important in providing empirical support for the term. Immanent power of things: This denotes the assumption that all things – and not just humans – possess some degree of power. In recent literature, the concept is particularly associated with Jane Bennett’s new materialist philosophy, but it can in fact be traced all the way back to philosophers such as Lucretius and Spinoza, both of whom are important for Bennett’s own thinking. The assumption is that things – a stone, a cup, a piece of clothing, or something else entirely – help to influence the evolution of society, and that things even strive to maintain themselves. 231

Power in the Anthropocene Intensity: This denotes the strength with which a power expresses itself along a continuum between ‘high’ and ‘low’. According to new materialism, the concept is important, as it emphasises that the exercise of power is not only a matter of quantity but also depends on how power is expressed. As stated in Chapter 3, the nature of a given intensity is closely linked to its duration. Natura naturans/natura naturata: Spinoza in particular uses these concepts to highlight two aspects of our understanding of nature and the natural: nature as a creative force (natura naturans) and as the created (natura naturata). According to new materialism, this difference is important, as it nuances our overall understanding of nature so that we do not only perceive nature as something given once and for all. The difference is particularly important in discussions of the Anthropocene phase, where nature – to a greater extent than before – has become an active participant (and opponent) in politics. Non-linear evolution: A term used to emphasise how neither biological nor societal change follow one particular pattern that drives history towards a given goal (liberation, happiness, enlightenment, rationality, or something completely different). Contrary to this understanding, non-linear evolution highlights the possibilities of displacements and quantum leaps, which spring from the material world itself, but which cannot be said to follow a predetermined pattern. Ontological monism: This term covers an assumption that all forms of being originate from the same material substance. In this way, it stands in contrast to various dualistic ontologies, in 232

A New Materialist Glossary which a categorical distinction defines how we might conceptualise, for example, culture and nature. According to new materialism, such an understanding of being is erroneous, as it fails to recognise how power works on both sides of this (and other) divide(s). The monistic way of thinking goes back to thinkers such as Lucretius and Spinoza and is sometimes referred to as ‘radical immanence’. Politics of swarming: This term originates from the biology and study of complex systems and is used primarily to describe how order is created spontaneously when many actors interact with each other. According to new materialism, the term can also be used to describe how political communities can organise themselves without being subject to a strict hierarchical structure, where the rules of coexistence are given in advance. Philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza provide important support for this insight. Radical empirical/empiricism: Radical empiricism is a doctrine of philosophy of science that emphasises the importance of working empirically, but that also challenges traditional forms of empirical research that perceive actors and structures as fixed and/ or stable units. According to radical empiricism, it is not enough to observe how actors and structures affect a given development; we must also explain how the actors and structures themselves are created. According to thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, this requires a radical empiricism, which examines the world around the actors and structures (in particular the material world). Scales: This term is used to highlight the many levels that are important for the development of society. While some levels relate 233

Power in the Anthropocene to the microscopic (e.g., bacteria, molecules), others relate to the planetary (e.g., the atmosphere, geological processes). According to new materialism, it is necessary to include these levels alongside the more traditional levels and scales within social science research: individual, organisation, structure, discourse and so on. Moreover, while each scale resonates with all the other scales, they do not necessarily constitute a coherent whole. Sociocentric bias: An important point of reference for the new materialist critique of existing social science approaches to the study of power. Drawing on insights from William E. Connolly and others, the argument is that social science inquiry has come to assume a distinction between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ – that is, between that which is human-made and that which is given by nature itself – and that this distinction is problematic because it does not recognise how the two sides in reality occur simultaneously. According to new materialism, the result is a reductionist understanding of society that places people above all other forms of life. Tipping points: This term often appears in climate science research, where it describes a point where a given ecosystem will change radically and irreversibly if its current path continues without intervention. According to new materialism, the term also applies more broadly to how a society in certain transitional phases can be particularly susceptible to both internal and external inputs. In such situations, it is more the quality than the quantity of a given mode of power that defines whether radical change will occur or not. Analyses of tipping points are closely related to the discussion of climatic domino effects where changes in one system lead to changes in another. 234

A New Materialist Glossary Vitality: This concept is associated with the vitalistic tradition, which in various ways emphasises that nature is not only subject to mechanical laws, but also itself contributes to change and innovation. In this way, the vitality concept is also closely linked to the new materialist assumption of the immanent power of things – and the material world more generally. At the same time, the concept emphasises the creativity associated with this force, which in itself can be considered life-giving. Will to power: This concept is primarily associated with Nietzsche, who uses it to highlight the power that lies in power itself; that is, the assumption that power in itself has a will that cannot be controlled from the outside. According to Nietzsche, this will can be either ‘active’ or ‘reactive’. If the latter, power will usually lead to repression, oppression and other negative affects; if the former, it will empower new forms of belonging and coexistence, typically expressed through positive affects. New materialism uses this difference to analyse the normative aspects of a given exercise of power. Zoecentric: This term refers to an analytical perspective based on life, as such – which in this way does not place the human above the non-human (zoe is the ancient Greek word for ‘life’). According to new materialism, the zoecentric perspective thus implies an important break with the sociocentric bias, which over the past few hundred years has defined social science power analysis, but no longer applies given current ecological crises and the Anthropocene more generally.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in bold refer to entries in the glossary. Page numbers in italics refer to tables. actor-network theory (ANT), 111, 126, 128, 228–9 agency, 228 in the Anthropocene, viii distributed, 98, 106, 112–13, 116 in Latour, 111 in Malm, 220 in Marx’s historical materialism, 94 of non-human life, 27, 140, 141 agriculture, 139–43, 173, 182; see also food production Ahmed, S., 151 ancient Greece, 36 Andelsgaarde initiative, 173, 182 Anthropocene, viii–xi, 3, 32–3n9, 81, 118–19, 139 as backdrop and problematique, 8–17 eco-Marxist critique of concept, 215–19 ‘Anthropocene Curriculum, The’, 183–4

Anthropocene entanglements see entanglements Anthropocene ‘plus-minus game’, 87, 133 anthropogenic climate change see climate change Arquette, L., 154 artistic imagination, 183–4 assemblages, 88, 111, 112, 116–17, 134, 217, 219, 229; see also entanglements Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M.S., 45–9, 52, 54 Bacon, F., 191 Barad, K., 100–1, 102, 110 beehives, 172 Bennett, J., 98–100, 101, 111, 146–8 biodiversity, 9, 84–5, 133, 142 biotechnology, 151 blockadia, 180 ‘blunt’ power, 109, 138, 213

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index Bohr, N., 101 Bourdieu, P., 18, 66–70, 71, 163 Brown, W., 60 Butler, J., 59, 150 capitalism, 48, 94, 214; see also fossil capitalism Capitalocene, 215, 226n12 carbon capture and storage (CCS), 1–3, 24–5, 26–7 care, critique as power to, 208, 209–14, 225 Cartesian philosophy, 91–2 Chakrabarty, D., 87 Chernobyl, 85–6 Chthulucene, 11–12 civil society, 173–5 climate change, 1, 3, 8, 9, 102, 117 and colonialism, 95–6 and eco-Marxism, 215–16 and inequality, 10, 217 and nature, 81–2 and state sovereignty, 187–8 and transnationalism, 180 see also Greenland ice sheet climate citizens’ assemblies, 174, 177–8, 205n21 climate neutrality, 175 climate politics, 3–4, 5 Coccia, E., 141 colonialism, 27–8, 95–6 Connolly, W.E., 21, 217 consciousness, 219 context, 129–30, 134, 140, 146 cooperative tradition, 182–3 criticism, 22–3, 208, 209–14, 225 cross-cutting networks, 180–1 Crutzen, P., 8, 9, 14 cyborgs, 151

Dahl, R.A., 40–4, 52 decision, 111; see also non-decisions deforestation, 85–6, 116 democracy, 27 ecological, 185, 200–1 polyarchal, 42–3, 162 democratisation, 27–8, 60, 79n26, 131, 166; see also civil society; politics of swarming Descartes, R., 90–2, 97, 122n13 direct power, 40–4, 162 direction of power, 117–19 discursive power, 56–63 distributed agency, 98, 106, 112–13, 116 diversity, 131, 141, 170, 174; see also biodiversity domination, 21, 55, 61, 83, 88, 92, 209; see also power domino effects, 1, 3, 9, 25, 83, 229 Don’t Look Up (film), 13–14 Dryzek, J., 20 dualistic ontology, 91, 229–30 duration, 106, 114, 116, 217, 230 dystopian interpretation, Anthropocene, 13–14, 16 Eckersley, R., 20, 185 eco-Marxism, 10, 33–4n18, 214–22 eco-modernist interpretation, Anthropocene, 14, 16, 17 Eco-modernist Manifesto, 14 ecofeminism, 10, 82, 91–2, 93, 208 ecological democracy, 185, 200–1 economic factors, 94, 95 electricity, 143–8 Energy Academy, Denmark, 144

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INDEX English Civil War, 186 entanglements, 6–7, 11–12, 82–7, 110, 130–1, 156, 230 and artistic imagination, 184 and democratisation, 27–8 electricity, 147 and Gaia interpretation of Anthropocene, 15 Greenland ice sheet, 83–5, 133–8 matsutake mushrooms, 85–6 and political organisation, 193 regenerative agriculture, 139–43 and representation, 179–80 in Spinoza, 195–6 see also assemblages; sociocentric bias environmental political theory, 19–20; see also eco-Marxism; ecofeminism; ecological democracy essentially contested concepts, 23, 163 ethnographic method, 126, 230 European Union, 2 ‘explosive’ power / potentiality, 107–9, 137–8, 146, 154–5 Extinction Rebellion, 180

Gaia, 231 Gaia interpretation, Anthropocene, 14–17, 16, 120–1 gender see #MeToo geo-engineering technologies, 1–3, 24–5, 26–7 Global CSS Institute, 2 governance, 60 government see political organisation ‘gradual’ power / potentiality, 108, 109, 138, 146 great acceleration, 83, 139, 216, 231 greenhouse gas emissions, 175 Greenland ice sheet, 83–5, 104, 115–16, 132–8

feminism, 58–9; see also ecofeminism; #MeToo food production, 218; see also agriculture Forst, R., 63–6 fossil capitalism, 216 fossil fuels, 8–9, 83–4, 95, 135, 216 Foucault, M., 18, 22–3, 56–63, 132, 163 free will, 91, 94, 105, 122n13

Habermas, J., 63 Hamilton, C., 4, 5, 82 Haraway, D., 11–12, 127, 128, 151 historical materialism, 93–5, 97 history of ideas, 89–97 History of Sexuality, The (Foucault), 57 Hobbes, T., 167, 186–94, 201 homo oeconomicus, 60 honeybees, 172 human life and non-human life, 18 (see also assemblages; entanglements; sociocentric bias) reflexivity, 103–4 humanity, 10 hyper-separatism, 92 ideological-structural power, 49–52, 162 immanent power of things, 89, 98–105, 231 new materialist matrix, 105–13

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index Indigenous communities, 137, 181–2 indigenous knowledges, 96, 181–2 Indigenous land, 154 Indigenous scholarship, 82, 95–6 indirect power, 44–9, 162 intensity, 106, 114, 116, 217, 232 interests, 48–9, 50, 51 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2, 119 Inuit knowledge, 181 Kant, I., 64, 91 Klein, N., 180 knowledge production, 74, 77, 132 Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, 179, 184 Language and Symbolic Power (Bourdieu), 69 latent conflicts, 47–8 Latour, B., 4, 111, 113, 142, 210–11, 212, 217 Leviathan, 191–2 Life of Plants, The (Coccia), 141 Lilleholt, L.C., 1 Lovecraft, H.P., 11 Lucretius, 75 Lukes, S., 49–52, 54, 162 Malm, A., 215–16, 219–20 Marx, K., 90, 93–5, 97 mass extinctions, 9–10 materialism see Descartes, R.; historical materialism; new materialism matsutake mushrooms, 85–6, 116–17

matters of concern, 211 matters of fact, 211 mechanical materialism see Descartes, R. Melville, H., 192 #MeToo, 148–55, 160n37 Milano, A., 149 Milton, J., 191 Moby-Dick (Melville), 192 modernity, 11 movement, 130, 135–6, 140 Mushroom at the End of the World, The (Tsing), 85 natura naturans / natura naturata, 197–8, 199–200, 232 nature, 81–2 in Cartesian philosophy, 91–2 in Spinoza, 197–200 state of, 189–92 nature of power, 114–16 Neimanis, A., 151 new materialism, vii–viii, 217–18 critique as power to care, 208, 209–14, 225 eco-Marxist critique, 214–22 and the history of ideas, 89–97 perspective on social science, 155–8 new materialist analysis of power, 17–24, 88–9, 94 benefits of, 24–8 electricity, 143–8 five guidelines for, 129–32, 224 Greenland ice sheet, 132–8 immanent power of things, 98–105, 231 #MeToo, 148–55, 160n37 new materialist matrix, 105–13

255

INDEX new materialist analysis of power (cont.) and political organisation, 162–8 (see also politics of swarming) regenerative agriculture, 139–43 three theses on power, 113–21, 223–4 new materialist matrix, 105–13 Nietzsche, F., 75, 164–5 non-decisions, 45–6 non-human life agency, 27, 140, 141 and human life, 18, 103–4 (see also assemblages; entanglements; sociocentric bias) non-linear evolution, 169, 232 North American power outage, 146–7 noumenal power, 63–6 noumenal sphere, 64 objective interest, 48–9 ‘omnipresence of power’ thesis, 57–8 ontological monism, 96–7, 232–3 Papazu, I., 144–6 pasteurisation, 218 phenomenal sphere, 64 Pimoa cthulhu spider, 11–12 Plumwood, V., 91–2 pluriverse, 126 ‘plus-minus game’, 87, 133 political organisation, 162–8, 195, 200, 201, 224–5; see also political thought; politics of swarming political representation, 179–80 political rights, 179–80

political thought Hobbes, 167, 186–94 Spinoza, 75, 81, 167, 194–202 politics of swarming, 166–7, 168–76, 193–4, 202–4, 233 criticism, 207 proposals for, 176–85 polyarchy, 42–3, 162 Ponti, J., 154 popular sovereignty, 177 postcolonial studies, 10 power, 5–6, 12 assemblage of, 116–17 and criticism, 209–14, 225 direction of, 117–19 Hobbes and Spinoza on, 201 (see also political thought) nature of, 114–16 new materialist analysis of, 17–24, 88–9, 94: benefits of, 24–8; electricity, 143–8; five guidelines for, 129–32, 224; Greenland ice sheet, 132–8; immanent power of things, 98–105, 231; #MeToo, 148–55, 160n37; new materialist matrix, 105–13; and political organisation, 162–8 (see also politics of swarming); regenerative agriculture, 139–43; three theses on power, 113–21, 223–4 recent power analyses, 55–70: discursive power, 56–63; noumenal power, 63–6; similarities and differences, 72; social capital and symbolic power, 66–70 and the social sciences, 35–8

256

index sociocentric bias in power analysis, 20–1, 25, 35, 37–8, 43–4, 47, 54–5, 70–7, 223, 234 traditional power analyses, 38–55: direct power, 40–4, 162; ideological-structural power, 49–52; indirect power, 44–9, 162; similarities and differences, 52–5 will to, 165, 194, 200, 235 zoecentric analysis of, 87–8, 96–7 see also political organisation; ‘power-over’; ‘power-to’ power differentials, 10 power outage, 146–7 ‘power-over’, 21, 36, 60, 88, 112–13, 114, 117, 164 and critique, 209 in Hobbes, 191, 193–4 in Spinoza, 199 ‘power-to’, 22, 27, 36, 60, 88, 112–13, 114, 117, 164 and critique, 209, 210, 212 in Hobbes, 190 intensity and duration, 106–7 see also ‘blunt’ power; ‘explosive’ power / potentiality; ‘gradual’ power-to / potentiality; ‘virtual’ power / potentiality prisons, 59–60 quantum leaps, 101 Rabelais, F., 191 radical empiricism, 26, 233 Rain, The (TV series), 13–14 rationality, 111, 219

Reassembling the Social (Latour), 113 reflexivity, 103–4 regenerative agriculture, 139–43, 173, 182 renaturalisation, 149, 152 renewable energy, 144–8 representation, 179–80 Road, The (McCarthy), 13 Samsø, 144–6 scales, 130, 136–7, 233–4 Schattschneider, E.E., 46 Schultz, N., 217 sexuality, 57, 58 social capital, 66–70 social contract, 190–1, 192 social groups, 68 social media, 152–3 social sciences, 4–6 descriptive and normative aspects of, 163–4, 165–6 from a new materialist perspective, 155–8 and power, 35–8 recent power analyses, 55–70: discursive power, 56–63; noumenal power, 63–6; similarities and differences, 72; social capital and symbolic power, 66–70 sociocentric bias, 20–1, 25, 35, 37–8, 43–4, 47, 54–5, 70–7, 223, 234 traditional power analyses, 38–55: direct power, 40–4, 162; ideological-structural power, 49–52; indirect power, 44–9, 162; similarities and differences, 52–5

257

INDEX social space, 68 sociocentric bias, 20–1, 25, 35, 37–8, 43–4, 47, 54–5, 70–7, 175–6, 223, 234 sovereignty see popular sovereignty; state sovereignty space and time scales, 130, 136–7, 233–4 space of reasons, 65 ‘spacetimemattering’, 101 Spinoza, B., 75, 81, 167, 194–202 Standing Rock movement, 153–4, 181 state of nature, 189–92 state sovereignty, 187–8 Stengers, I., 4, 5, 14, 82 Stoermer, E., 8, 9, 14 subjective interest, 48 substance, 88, 121n11 Sustainable Development Goals, UN, 175 symbolic power, 67, 68–9 technological solutions, 175; see also geo-engineering technologies tentacular thinking, 128

thing-power, 98–100 Thucydides, 45 time, 136–7 tipping points, 83, 104, 234 transnational networks, 180–1 Treatise of Man (Descartes), 122n13 Trump, D., 153 Tsing, A., 85–6 Twitter, 152–3 ‘virtual’ power / potentiality, 109, 110, 165 vitality, 98, 99, 235 Waters, C., x Weber, M., 37–8, 52 Whyte, K., 95–6, 137 will to power, 165, 194, 200, 235 Wright Mills, C., 41 ‘Year without Winter, A’, 183 zoecentrism / zoecentric perspective, 87–8, 96–7, 120, 148, 185, 235 Ørsted, 2

258