Situating the Anthropocene: planetary urbanization and the anthropological machine

AbstractThe anthropological machine is the discursive framework, the dispositif that grounds "Western man" in a sense of civility, secured through a violent division within and between the human and nonhuman: not the after-effect of the civilizing act but its very foundation. This paper explores Agamben's machine at multiple sites: in its expression in everyday lives of urban citizens, and its legitimation of capitalist urbanization on broader spatial and temporal scales, its "worlding" through planetary urbanization and normalization of climate change. Complicit in capitalist urbanization and climate change, the anthropological machine has acted as a "switch point" since the 1600s. It now frames an emergent response: triage as the inevitable sacrifice of some peoples and parts of the planet to preserve others. If the urban is to become the site of mondialization, confronting the apparent inevitability of triage we must think beyond the either-or of a people or a planet. Thought in relation to the urban, the anthropological machine offers a meeting ground between urban political economy and assemblage urbanism. It enables us to situate the Anthropocene and differentiate the urban. But it also exposes a deep divide between scholars reframing the human beyond "Western man": between those for whom the more-than-human expresses the dreams of a biophilic city and those for whom the less-than-human is increasingly its living nightmare.Keywords: anthropological machineclimate changeplanetary urbanizationassemblage urbanismdispositifAnthropocene This article is part of the following collections: Urban Geography Annual Plenary Lectures Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.AcknowledgmentsI owe thanks to several people in the development of this paper: Sabine Broeck for her extraordinary insights that inspired me to turn to Agamben; Martin Danyluk and Christopher Hilbrecht for meticulous RA work; Rachel Silvey and Mark Hunter for organizing venues for its presentation; numerous grads and faculty for their insightful questions; John Paul Jones and Jamie Lorimer for their willing feedback; Rosemary Collard and Alexis Mitchell for critical commentary on a final draft and, above all, Bob Lake for his encouragement and extraordinary patience. Thank you all and apologies to anyone I may have missed.