Politics of the Anthropocene: Formation of the Commons as a Geologic Process

In the Anthropocene humanity acquires a new collective geologic identity. There are two contradictory movements in this Anthropocenic thought; first, the Anthropocenic trace in the geologic record names a commons from below insomuch as humanity is named as an undifferentiated “event” of geology; second, the Anthropocene highlights the material diversities of geologic bodies formed through historical material processes. This paper addresses the consequences of this geologic subjectivity for political thought beyond a conceptualization of the commons as a set of standing reserves. Discourses of limits and planetary boundaries are contrasted with the exuberance and surplus of fossil‐fuelled energy. Drawing on the political economy of Georges Bataille and the material communism of Maurice Blanchot, I argue for the necessity of a political aesthetics that can traverse the difference between common and uncommon experience in the formation of an Anthropocene commons.