By Sinan Farooqui
Class of 2022
Over the eons, the incessant ticking of time has culminated in our present reality: The Anthropocene, or the age of humans. This title comes with implications and indications about the state of the world, its hierarchies and underlying attitudes. And it was these concepts that formed the focus of Professor Whitney Bauman’s recent lecture, ‘Thinking Through the Anthropocene,’ at Duke Kunshan University.
Bauman, associate professor of religious studies at Florida International University, began his talk – part of the Humanities Research Center’s colloquium series ‘ by mentioning his conversations with James Miller, professor of humanities at Duke Kunshan, on the topic of planetary humanities. Couched within those conversations was the observed contemporary global milieu, i.e. the millennial argument between neoliberal globalism and nationalization. Spurred by the advent of globalization, this debate has captured the attention of people around the globe, especially because of the far-reaching hand of globalization itself.
On the other hand, Bauman proposed an alternative to both neoliberal globalization and nationalization, drawing from the Indian scholar Gayatri Spivaks’s distinction between globalization and planetary subjects.
He gave his audience three questions to ponder over:
- What do you think of when you think of nature?
- If you had to put religion (or, more broadly, the humanities) on a map with science, what would be the relationship between the two?
- Where is the truth and how does our knowledge get to it?
From the audience’s responses, Bauman proved his point that the concept of the Anthropocene confirms the idea that humans are at the top of the planetary hierarchy and somehow in control. Relying on Western modern understandings, individuals view themselves as distinct from nature and, thus, a dominant force over nature.
Moreover, the concept of the Anthropocene lumps all humans together as a single Anthropos, erasing class and cultural, racial, religious differences. Yet Bauman argues that not all people are equally responsible for the current global ecological crises.
He said that the two phenomena that define the Anthropocene are globalization and climate change. Globalization is defined by increasing interconnectivity, brought on by the advent of industrialization, technological advancements and the rise of global trade. It is through this that individuals can be affected in their daily lives by decisions taken and implemented thousands of miles away. Yet although a large portion of the population is familiar with the notion of climate change, global action is yet to be taken.
Bauman’s second question demonstrated that most of the audience, in keeping with Western modernity, saw religion and science as separated. Religion is largely viewed as subjective, while science as objective, he said. Yet through his lecture he aimed to help people see that they are inextricably connected.
They create one another and cannot be separated by some sort of understanding of a neutral, secular space, he said. To clarify his definition on ‘religion,’ considering the diverse audience and its wide breadth of perspectives, he referred to its anthropological roots, saying religion was a collecting process, to make sense of the world we live in. In short, it helped humans find meaning in the randomness of life.
Compared with religion, which weaves concepts and society together, Bauman said science takes them apart, to find meaning in the flow of life and the planet. He even made the bold argument that ‘all facts are over-theorized and all theories are under-factualized.’
The professor said both religion and science talk of the natural world, of which humans are a part, despite their assumptions. Nature is an all-inclusive category, consisting of all aspects of the universe, he said. There is nothing unnatural if it exists it is nature. However, individuals inherently make hierarchies and distinctions between what is natural or unnatural.
Here, Bauman moved onto his third point: The singularity and objectivity of modern Western truth. Utilizing an amusing yet easily comprehensible mix of metaphors, he began to decolonize Western epistemology. This means paying attention to non-Western systems of knowledge production, removing the sciences as the measure against which all knowledge must be judged, and paying attention to wisdom and perspectives from not just the human world.
There exists a double understanding of truth, based on human exceptionalism and dead nature, plus the reductive-productive model, he said. These concepts formed the basis for his work during his Humboldt Fellowship, namely the transition from monotheistic worldviews to naturalistic world view; e.g., from God to nature, church to science, faith to reason, belief to knowledge. He argued that the imposition of a single truth globally accentuates environmental problems and moreover, harm toward world bodies.
Bauman played on the basic economic presumption that humans are selfish and logical creatures, noting reason to be a human concept. However, ‘we are only pawns in the chess game of life,’ and new aspects emerge daily which are unaccounted for. Life is more than reason, as emotions and desire play a huge part in the human condition, he said.
Can we have a viable understanding of truth without the singularity aspect of it? In answer, Bauman said the very existence of some fields and areas of knowledge, such as multiperspectivism and viable agnosticism, negates this question.
Bauman concluded that humans must put their perspective in context with other natural perspectives, the needs of other components of the natural world should be articulated to the public by experts in their fields. No one has the whole truth, he said, but together we can achieve a shared perspective that weaves together a far more comprehensive view of the world than of a single individual.
Sinan Farooqui is a first-year undergraduate student from Pakistan who works with Duke Kunshan’s Humanities Research Center.
