The Anthropocene, Resilience and Post-Colonial Computation

Tools

McQuillan, Daniel. 2017. The Anthropocene, Resilience and Post-Colonial Computation. Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, 5(2), pp. 92-109. ISSN 2169-3293 [Article]

Preview

Text
anthropocene-resilience-and-post-colonial-computation-mcquillan-for-gro.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives.
Download (128kB) | Preview

Official URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2169329...

Abstract or Description

What forms of politics come with the contested ideas of the Anthropocene and resilience? Rather than taking these ideas as a given and looking at their political consequences, I will ask what politics enters at their points of construction, where they are understood as being constructed computationally. This allows me to read across from the Anthropocene and resilience to the other forms of computational anticipation that are becoming pervasive at the level of everyday life. As truth claims that depend on algorithms, I will argue that all of these constructions derive their authority from an entanglement of computation and science. Under current conditions, this entanglement brings it's own political tendencies, which can be characterised as colonial. To counter this implicit colonialism I will draw on the feminist and post-colonial approaches of standpoint theory. I believe this offers an alternative to the current entanglements of anticipatory computation, and allows us to re-work it into a post-colonial politics of algorithms and atmospheres.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1080/21693293.2016.1240779