In recent years, extinction has become something of a buzzword used to portray the state of consciousness of the epoch. Its definition as a concept, however, heavily oscillates between naturalistic, speculative, ethical and critical connotations. The aim of this paper is to build an original position around some of the most relevant issues raised by the concept of extinction, such as the position of humankind as both its perpetrator and victim, the role of extinction management in contemporary biocapitalism and a possible critical engagement with catastrophe that avoids both paralysis and underestimation. The first section addresses some aspects of the question on ‘what is extinction’ starting from its biological meaning and elaborating on its ontological implications. The second section scrutinizes two relevant approaches to extinction within contemporary humanities, that is speculative realism and extinction studies, and highlights their respective shortcomings. The third section advocates for a more explicitly political conceptualization of extinction and indicates in the biopolitical framework a relevant source of critical categories. The fourth and final section tentatively introduces a constructive claim around the possibility of an ecopolitics of extinction.
Gregorio Tenti (Tue,) studied this question.