RCSC/Open Research Forum: Anthropocence and Aesthetics

Presentation and discussion hosted by Prof. Dr. Jörg Metelmann and Prof. Dr. Daniel Cuonz in cooperation with the RCSC’s Open Research Forum

This is event, organized in cooperation with the RCSC’s Open Research Forum, is hosted by Prof. Dr. Jörg Metelmann, Visting Fellow at our centre this semester, and his colleague at the University of St Gallen, Prof. Dr. Daniel Cuonz. The starting point of their presentation and book project, from which the title of this event is taken, is the question of how to understand the Anthropocene as a cultural epoch (and not as a geological age). If the Anthropocene is a hyper-hyper-object because it is composed of capitalism and climate change (both hyper-objects according to Timothy Morton's term), then it can also be described as a colossal context that transcends cultural semantics. Some of the descriptive paradigms used so far, such as entanglement, latency or scales, would thus miss the actual problem. The search for narratives that make the Anthropocene narratable and thus comprehensible should also be met with skepticism. Shouldn’t the question of perception come before the question of narratability if we want to approach the subject-matter appropriately? What role do rhetoric and aesthetics play in this, what is the role of cultural studies, which is a method of reflexive meaning creation - but which cannot fall back on the well-known nature-culture dichotomy?