Class #21: Donna Haraway, “Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene,” Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

The age of the Anthropoccene marks humans as the driving geological force. Anthropos, us humans, have become the ones that drive change. Donna Harraway in her essay breaks down the structure and meaning of names or labels. She believes a name carries with it a kind of narrative; a name can influence our way of thinking. Harraway belives we need to move beyond the Anthropoccene as a name. She believes it doesn’t accurately promote the age of living that we are living. We are living in an urgent time and we need an image that encourages responsibility to change. She proposes the name chthulucene. Harraway shines light to the reality that we are living on a damaged planet and we must learn to live on this damaged planet. Part of what she is doing is trying to subvert 2 opposing attitudes towards climate change is massive species extinction. The idea that humans have faith in techno fixes, hoping that technology or God will save us. We also fall into this dark place of utter despair, which leads us to believe there is nothing to be done. Harraway believes we should actively stay with the trouble instead. We should focus on how we can create new kid of activisms with non-humans. Through learning and creating these networks and relationships we can enact some sort of change. Harraway states that the concepts of bounded individualism and human exceptionalism is now unthinkable today. This is another reason why she neglects the name Anthropocene because it stands for these two viewpoints. Instead the name cthulucene empathizes the non-human too and our ways in how we are entangled in the world. We need to learn to live with the consequences of the damaged we’ve done to our planet, but Harraway thinks our response to the consequences needs to change. She states that we must think, and we must revolt.There is a notion of privilege with the name anthroposcene, which is only meaningful for western civilization.The story of the anthroposcene doesn’t encourage a narrative of how we need to limit our consumption. Chthuluscene does give this narrative, and opens up new possibilities for creative thinking while encouraging collectivity.
I completely agree with Harraways viewpoint that as humans we try to create these quick technological fixes, that don’t really help the source of the problem. Also, many of us are living in this bubble of despair because we are losing hope that people would be willing to change their lives. I do agree that we can’t change the reality were living in, and the reality is that our planet is going through climate change, habitats are being destroyed, animals are going instinct, and pollution is at an all time high. We can’t ignore this, and instead we should unite to creatively find solutions to these problems. However, first we need to change the way we are looking at our position in this world, we are connected to the ecosystem and to other non-human life around us. We must change the lens we have on reality, and maybe we would see progress.  

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