The Cthulu of the Cthulucene is used to describe ‘cthonic ones…beings of the earth, both ancient and up-to-the minute. I imagine chthonic ones as replete with tentacles, feelers, digits, cords, whiptails, spider legs, and very unruly hair’ (2016, 2). For Haraway, the climatic conditions of the 21st century announce a moment where it is imperative to think beyond the human. Describing this era as that “of the human”, to Haraway, is perhaps not the most useful way of forging forwards in response-ability with the non-human creatures we share the planet with. As such, Cthulucene is suggested over both Anthropocene and Capitalocene as a means of ratifying this oversight.
Through this constellation of opinions and opposing terminologies, Anthropocene, Capitalocene and Cthulucene, what emerges is not one fixed notion of The Anthropocene, but perhaps a variety of Anthropocenes. While it is important to be critical of the underpinnings and connotations of the term ‘Anthropocene’, it is also undeniable that the term itself has a heft, weight and a ubiquitous adoption beyond the world of academic study, which Haraway and Moore’s perhaps do not.
In your own reading and writing on the subject, try to be critical and mindful of which type of Anthropocene you are describing. Please see our ‘Further Reading’ list at the end of this article for more suggestions aligned to the question of what the Anthropocene is, whose Anthropocene it is, and what that particular Anthropocene might imply ethically, historically and philosophically for your research and writing.
What is “Deep Time”?
The Anthropocene concept proposes that we, humans, now occupy and influence “deep time”. Deep time is a term used to describe the timescales one would usually associate with geological periods. Where human history deals with days, weeks, months and years, geological history deals with much deeper and challenging scales. Millions of years exist as a blink of an eye in geological terms. In The Anthropocene, the distinction between human measures of history and geological measures of history start to collapse. Thus, in the Anthropocene, we begin to occupy deep time registers.
Historically human history and geological history have remained two distinctly separate fields of study. Indeed, what makes the concept of The Anthropocene so interesting as an academic field is that it breaks down such scholastic barriers. As Dipesh Chakrabarty argues in The Climate of History: Four Theses, the clashing of these two types of historical scale causes a mixing of the seemingly ‘immiscible chronologies of capital and species history. This combination, however, stretches, in quite fundamental ways, the very idea of historical understanding’ (2009, 220).
What, then, are we to do with such timescales? How can we “think” deep time and act within deep scales of time? The very way in which we understand and navigate the world is shot through with this rather alarming conflation of human scales and deep scales of time. Mobile phones are an interesting example of this type of short/deep time slippage. Not only do they require ten times more precious Earth metals than a laptop or desktop computer, but the data centres fuelling them emit large doses of carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere. As such, a mobile phone has roots in the deep geological past whilst finding itself projected into a speculative atmospheric future. All the while they are utilised for short-term, humdrum activities in the fleetingly brief present moment.
Timothy Morton’s work on Hyperobjects is interesting in relation to this deep time/human time imbrication. Morton coins the idea of ‘Hyperobjects’, suggesting they are objects that are,