Dr Justin Westgate – Doctoral research

Unsettling the Anthropocene:
Experiments in dwelling on unstable ground

My doctoral research was undertaken at the Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space (ACCESS). This transdisciplinary project interrogated human-nature relations in light of critical planetary entanglements, crossing geography, anthropology, and creative practice, with fieldwork including: investigating emergent responses and communitas within post-disaster sites, considering solid-fluid structural resilience found within coral biology, evaluating alternative energy technologies enrolled within a speculative design framework. It included three months spent as a visiting research fellow at Goldsmiths College London design school, participating in the ‘xskool’ socio-ecological design workshop run by John Thackara and Konstfack in Sweden, as well as the international interdisciplinary Anthropocene Campus at Haus der Kulturen Welten in Berlin and Melbourne.

I conclude that Anthropocene dwelling requires suspending secure Holocene attachments and, rather, inhabiting unsettledness and paradox. From this argument stem a series of contributions to broader Anthropocene and environmental humanities literature. First, contradictions arise for the theorisation of human-nature relations, conceptions of ‘progress’, and for socio-political response more broadly. This suggests the need for humans to learn to dwell within states of unease, and to use those conditions generatively to stimulate novel outcomes outside of modern conventions. Second, attending to affective registers opens portals into potential human responses to the Anthropocene. Existential ideas remain highly relevant to disturbing conditions of ecological emergency; not only confronting us with profound sense-making but revealing shared vulnerabilities and a coexistence of being within non-human others. Third, intransigent Anthropocene responses may be coloured by denialism, intolerance, and cynicism, suggesting the need for increased misanthropological analysis. Ultimately, we must approach the Anthropocene with clear, tempered examination that avoids overt optimism or fatalism. The Anthropocene is uncharted territory for humans and the planet; and navigating pathways through its unsettled dimensions demands attentiveness to the full range of human faculties.