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How should IR deal with the “end of the world”? Existential anxieties and possibilities in the Anthropocene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Dahlia Simangan Open the ORCID record for Dahlia Simangan [Opens in a new window]
Dahlia Simangan*
Affiliation:
The IDEC Institute, Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) and the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan
*
Email: simangan@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
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Abstract

The Anthropocene, a proposed new geological age marking the planetary impact of humanity, is no longer a newcomer to the field of International Relations (IR). Several scholars have recognised the value, as well as the danger, of the Anthropocene for theorising international relations. This article focuses on the existentialist questions and ideas derived from IR’s engagement with the Anthropocene, particularly on the anxieties surrounding the extinction of the human species, the meaning of the Anthropos, and humanity’s planetary stewardship. By drawing on scholarly discourses on these physical, spiritual, and moral anxieties, I argue that existentialist thinking helps expose IR’s anthropocentric, universalist, and hubristic tendencies, which are also prevalent in the broader Anthropocene discourse. It also serves as a reminder of the freedom to explore possibilities, albeit with a lack of certainty, for reimagining the place of humanity and IR as a discipline in this new geological age. Therefore, existentialism reveals IR’s dissonance with the paradoxes and uncertainties that the Anthropocene brings while offering a path toward theorising the “end of the world”.

Keywords

AnthropoceneanxietyexistentialismInternational Relations
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 49 , Special Issue 5: Existentialism and International Politics , December 2023 , pp. 855 - 871
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association.

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References

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36 Although I do not discuss the concept of anxiety as a public mood, as Rumelili has done, I agree with Rumelili that public moods oscillate through time. Anxiety in the Anthropocene may be manifested differently across time and space, depending on the type of anxiety – death, meaninglessness, and condemnation.

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117 This refusal, however, is acting in ‘bad faith’, hindering collective action necessary in the Anthropocene. See also Damon Boria, ‘Creating the Anthropocene: Existential social philosophy and our bleak future’, in Patricia Hanna (ed.), An Anthology of Philosophical Studies, vol. 10 (Athens: Athens Institute for Education and Research, 2016), pp. 1–13.

118 This is encapsulated in the first of Chakrabarty’s four theses on climate history: ‘anthropogenic explanations of climate change spell the collapse of the age-old humanist distinction between natural history and human history’. Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘The climate of history: Four theses’, Critical Inquiry, 35:2 (2009), p. 201.