[INTRODUCTION]: Unsettling anthropocentrism
Author(s): Eileen Crist and Helen Kopnina
Source: Dialectical Anthropology , December 2014, Vol. 38, No. 4, Special Theme:
Unsettling Anthropocentrism (December 2014), pp. 387-396
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43895114
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Dialect Anthropol (2014) 38:387-396
DOI 10.1 007/s 1 0624-0 14-9362-1
Unsettling anthropocentrism
Eileen Crist * Helen Kopnina
Published online: 21 November 2014
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract This paper provides a brief critique of anthropocentrism and introduces
the papers of the special theme issue on "non-anthropocentric conceptions of
nature."
Keywords Anthropocentrism • Human supremacy • Worldview
In an article titled "Robochop," The Economist reported a practical problem and its
technological solution. The problem was that swarms of jellyfish clogged up the
pipes of a Swedish nuclear power plant on the Baltic Sea coast, forcing the plant's
temporary shutdown. The proposed solution involved utilizing an invention of "a
fleet of killer robots that turn jellyfish into mush." The devices known as JEROS
(Jellyfish Elimination Robotic Swarms) are designed to follow a lead robot and
work in formation: They can apparently chop up to 900 km of jellyfish an hour.1
The report raises an irrepressible question: Is there not something wrong - even
deeply disturbing - about this picture?
Questioning anthropocentrism is far more than an academic exercise of debating
the dominant cultural motif of placing humans at the center of material and ethical
concerns. It is a fertile way of shifting the focus of attention away from the problem
symptoms of our time (be these symptoms as far-reaching as rapid climate change
1 The Economist , "Robochop: An automated jellyfish exterminator takes to sea." October 19, 2013.
E. Crist (K3)
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA
e-mail: ecrist@vt.edu
H. Kopnina
The Hague University of Applied Science, Johanna Westerdijkplein 75,
2521 EN The Hague, The Netherlands
e-mail: h.kopnina@hhs.nl
^ Springer
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388 E. Crist, H. Kopnina
or as inconvenient as "just"
root causes. And certainly t
action constitute a significa
What does it mean to po
initially be broached in a no
a consequence of human-c
displacements over the long
grouped into two compreh
of nonhumans, "subhumans,
and human mindscapes alik
means of a Western cognitiv
of the human" through po
other life forms? Political
Western thought "the Dif
proffered differences - usu
and nonhuman (or "subh
morality, civilization, tec
distinctive qualities, whi
nonhumans. The dominan
especially as a distilled an
attributes but simultaneous
This ideational displacem
compulsion to story the a
narrative.
Alongside hierarchical noti
than-(civilized)-human wor
empires, and societies hav
wetlands, dewatered, diver
recently) seas, and overall r
impacts on natural landscap
forced to flee to ever more
In similar fashion, certain
savageand often endured s
and "inferior" people hav
incremental and large-scale
The ideational and physical
another in the pattern o
nonhuman and "subhuman" world has buttressed the cultural conviction of human
2 The word "subhuman" has been applied to both animals (especially primates) and indigenous people.
Throughout this Introduction, we use it with purposeful ambiguity as a catch-all derogatory concept that
has, in different contexts, targeted nonhumans and human beings. See Williams (2012).
3 Rodman (1980). The focus on Western anthropocentrism is warranted by the present-day world
dominance of Western culture and by the fact that this culture has a long historical legacy of
anthropocentric orientation toward the natural world. Two qualifications are in order: One, anthropo-
centrism is not a monopoly of Western societies; and two, there have been intellectual currents and
subcultures within the Western world that have opposed it.
Ô Springer
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Unsettling anthropocentrism 389
superiority and that strengthenin
guideline for increasing domination
interplay of cognitive belittlement a
of anthropocentrism. The synthesis o
ideas and technics of subjugation
worldview. Borrowing from social th
of "worldview,"4 the worldview of
widespread, underlying framework t
tions within which human entitleme
During the long course of history
World and the industrial revolution,
II, the Human Center has all but over
of invisibility all that is "uncivilized
become increasingly humanized, tam
leaves its deliberate and inadvertent
the world in the semblance of what
picture."5 The world's places and
naming, classifications, surveillances
cannot be figuratively or literally re
GPS, or other technology, and tagge
reserve. Ultimately, with the advent
center has thickened its technologica
being fully gridded by ever-expan
communication, and trade.
The ideational and physical decent
along with the biosphere's concomit
shared understanding of Earth as a st
destiny, as a physical backdrop (and even "starter planet" in visions of
extraterrestrial expansion) for civilization's march, and as a sort of cosmic human
property. The original ontology of Earth as inexhaustible, largely unknown,
enchanted, mysterious, and more encompassing has been supervened, while the
man-made ontology of the civilized human has become physically entrenched and
certainly conceptually reified. This ontological inversion of a part (anthropos)
claiming the whole (the biosphere) has transpired over history's course, until today,
"Worldviews lay down the framework of fundamental concepts within which we interpret everything
that appears in the world in a specific way as something." Further down, citing anthropologist Robin
Horton, Habermas describes worldviews as "regulat[ing] our dealings with external reality, with what can
be perceived or handled in the objective world, in such a way as to exclude alternatives" (Habermas
1984). Given the immense breadth of actions toward and uses of the natural world that anthropocentrism
can legitimate and guide, its characterization as a worldview seems amply justified.
5 Heidegger (1977). For Heidegger the era of modern techno-science inaugurated the age of the world
picture. He writes that "world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world
but the world conceived and grasped as picture. What is, in its entirety, is now taken in such a way that it
first is in being and only is in being to the extent that it is set up by man, who represents and sets forth"
(129-130, emphases added). From an ecological perspective what Heidegger's words point toward is that
the post-Enlightenment colonization of the biosphere is simultaneously representational and physical. As
the natural world's ontology is remade, the remaking as such is reified within the collective's experience.
Ô Springer
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390 E. Crist, H. Kopnina
to paraphrase social theorist
is to see.6
Anthropocentrism can be dissected by looking at it thus "from the outside in," in
terms of who and what has become dislocated to the world's edges and beyond the
mindscape's awareness or concern. But looking at it from the "inside out" adds an
indispensable understanding of anthropocentrism' s upshot: The self-placement of
Man at the Center has disallowed a vantage point from which any need or desire for
limiting human expansionism might be discerned. By virtue of how it constituted
itself, human-centeredness has spawned an enterprise that can only grow (Thus, the
modern era "religion of growth" may have its metaphysical foundations in the
anthropocentric worldview.).
The reason for this is that a call for limitations comes within a society's horizon
in one of two ways: either from inner restraint arising from respect toward others
(nonhuman and human neighbors); or from external resistance successfully
thwarting that society's expansionism. Both these sources of limitations to the
civilized enterprise have been disabled by the anthropocentric worldview. Moral
consideration for nonhumans (as well as for devalued humans), and respect for their
intrinsic being and homelands, have been virtually annihilated via ideational
disparagements: thus inner restraint has found no worthy grounds. What's more,
forests, rivers, mountains, wild animals, and indigenous people have been quite
unable to halt the advent of the civilized conqueror: External resistance has been
nonexistent or futile. The Human Center - wherein civilized humans have deemed
themselves supreme and unrivaled - has thereby willy-nilly relinquished any
standpoint from which to discern any reason to limit itself. This is a clear-cut
consequence of anthropocentrism and as such it has happened to Man beyond his
deliberate choosing.
As long as no adverse repercussions arose to discomfit civilized humanity's
march, the consequences of no limitations have been either unproblematic or
unperceived. Auks, passenger pigeons, thylacines, and baiji, to mention a handful
among countless unknown and known beings, have been extinguished. Animal
populations and especially carnivores like wolves, cougars, bears, sharks, lions,
tigers, and many others have declined precipitously. The numbers of fish, sea turtles,
whales, and other sea mammals have taken a nosedive, while forests have receded,
deserts expanded, topsoil evanesced, and rivers and lakes been thinned of life.
Indigenous ways and languages also became and are becoming extinct. None of
these events - if perceived at all - have been perceived as existentially or ethically
problematic.
And so, when with demeaning intent Man rendered the more- than-human world
as the /essćr-than-human world, he forfeited the capacity to discern the destruction
and retreat of Earthly marvels. "Men pay for the increase in power with alienation
from that over which they exercise power," Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
incisively observed.7 The price of anthropocentrism has been exactly that: as
civilized Man's power over the natural world has grown, so by the same token has
6 Debord (2006).
7 Horkheimer and Adorno (1972).
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Unsettling anthropocentrism 391
his blindness to the wonder of the bios
violence he has unleashed within it. Th
and everything annihilated on the way
A dramatic indicator of our alienation
invisibility of the mass extinction that
testimony to the inability of the domin
countenance and metabolize its own hor
himself first and foremost has thus not
expansionism, but also a loss of sight t
a mass extinction - that could possi
proclaimed exultation and forward mar
Yet today there is something new und
need to contain the ill side effects of h
because the disregard of any limits t
industrial food production, energy use
industrial infrastructure is backfiring a
of the human enterprise - hitherto un
dismissable others - is ramifying in wa
civilization as a whole: rapid climate
resource depletions to mention some
mounting sense of troubles imminent
our time.8
What is the prevailing response to the discernment of potentially intractable
problems? Has it been to probe the anthropocentric worldview that has undergirded
and sponsored civilization's limitless expansionism and yielded a world out of
balance? Not to date. No mainstream politician, media, or NGO has conceded as
problematic the historical legacy of humanity displacing wild nature, reinventing
Earth as civilization's stage set, and extinguishing incalculable beings regionally
and globally. Instead, the reigning response has been a riff on the received human-
supremacist narrative: We are the resourceful race, the technological magicians, the
"God species" - and by marshaling our unique strengths, we will resolve the
difficulties confronting us. In the wake of confirming, instead of confronting, the
human supremacy complex, the standard approach to civilization's challenges is
twofold: piecemeal and technological. The piecemeal approach treats problems in
isolated and consecutive fashion, rather than as so many symptoms of a lived
worldview; while the pitch for technological fixes sustains human exceptionalism
by foregrounding humanity's supposed strong suit as the saving grace.
And so we are today barraged by a suite of approaches framed in a
compartmentalized and technical register. Shortages of freshwater for agriculture,
industry, and urban centers will be tackled via mega-engineering projects such as
desalinization or the redirecting of entire rivers or their waters. Diminishing fossil
8 It must be added, however, that obliviousness to ecological mayhem is still epidemic. As British
environmental journalist George Monbiot wryly notes, people continue to "live as if trapped inside a
Sunday supplement: obsessed with fame, fashion and the three dreary staples of middle class
conversation: recipes, renovations and resorts. Anything but the topic [of the destruction of Earth's living
systems] that demands our attention" (Monbiot 2014).
^ Springer
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392 E. Crist, H. Kopnina
fuel reserves will be addr
technologies that extract d
tops, or (previously) forest
algae, switchgrass, or some
climate disruption worsen,
adjust Earth's thermost
rearrangements of crops
degraded, or flooded land
portions. As fisheries be
numbers of ocean fish need
figure out a way to feed fi
or desalinization plants, rob
The prevalent piecemeal-t
lems focuses sole attention
Man in the face of adversit
Earth as the Planet of th
scrutinized or doubted; a
qualities as the ones we c
adherence to anthropocentr
deliberate strategy. Just as
so it has swallowed up hum
anthropocentric worldvi
civilized humanity as the ap
has so conditioned human
life - abundant in diverse b
thinkable.
But it is possible and, we s
thinkable. As many critic
activists are realizing, d
community of life are the
endeavor to participate in t
of disciplinary and themat
Ronald Simkins challeng
anthropocentric treatise th
thus been causally implic
interpretation is based o
passages, most notably th
emphasized.10 He contends
"theocentric worldview,"
granted Man authority to
9 Never mind that the explosion
humanity has wreaked in the ocea
10 Other renown Biblical commen
traditional anthropocentric readin
from it (Berry 2009; Bernstein 2
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Unsettling anthropocentrism 393
communicates a more humble perspe
maintains, "are radically nonanth
humans." Simkins thus offers a fund
central to Western civilization. Inste
significantly contributed to guiding h
a very different outlook: that its anthr
imposition of an already deeply anth
approach to Scripture profoundly ch
infected Western Judeo-Christian
artificial (human-made) precipice ove
Matthew Calarco' s deconstruction of
its key characteristics. Anthropoce
exceptionalism that exalts the human
In Western discourses, Calarco emph
theorize "the special place that hum
various domains." Anthropocentrism
binary distinctions are intrinsic to l
exceptionalist logic of anthropocentr
out of dualisms, within which huma
that belong solely to humans," while
traits and thus of inferior statur
nonhumans are commonplace both
and in the realm of ethics (ideas abou
strong moral hierarchy deserves spec
action orientations: only by giving re
over the nonhuman, and by withdra
human realm, can a reign of displacem
the natural world (and its multitude
Elaborating his typology further, C
Historically, anthropocentrism has ne
it functions to include only a selec
humanity proper." a Calarco thus calls
human" has not tracked along species
of human others - indigenous and les
proper" - are a straightforward exte
"subhuman" and "savage" have precis
humanity and lump them into the sp
domination can be exercised.). The
institutional effects - the "discursiv
He highlights the "animal-industrial c
of animals constitutes a pervasive an
modernity.
In his effort to destabilize the an
ruminations of philosopher Freder
Plumwood. The central challenge he
Plumwood is the following: "What po
Springer
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394 E. Crist, H. Kopnina
anthropocentrism"? An ign
world - "so overrich in w
divine" - brings into view
tion": A profound zone of n
can be realized and experi
Indeed, Deborah Bird Ro
exploration of an achiev
hierarchical stance has ofte
inhabited places according
are familiar with. Her pape
a "poetics of fit." Instea
conquest - as it might with
tation called forth "love and
This standpoint rested on
forming dynamic and holis
flow. "The desert," Rose
inhabited [by Aboriginal
comprehend." In her narra
of (instead of over) the wo
respect, "Dreaming" storyli
not dominating. Among th
Rain (also a major Dream
blooming, singing, burstin
us, lived by "chasing water
the dictates of water's com
Thus, the indigenous huma
everyone and everything e
wildly different seasons al
centered perspective, and th
mastery , and thus allude
domination, manipulation, or
human-supremacist agendas
sourced from harnessing,
attending a universe of lif
natural world, its construc
superiority and a transient e
is sacrificed is the very sou
unexpectedness, reciproci
ecologies," to use Rose's phr
the natural world's creativ
expression cultural creativity
was not visited, songs wer
desert's diverse ways mater
Such holism is largely lost
and built a humanized w
dominated by the digital sc
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Unsettling anthropocentrism 395
a recent interview, "nowadays very
reefs, redwoods, and whales. You ca
work, stare at a screen, stare at a scre
students how much time they spend o
average of 10 min versus 8-10 h wa
"semiotic capitalism," critical theoris
front of a screen is virtually everyon
is placed at capital's service, but also
life has spread beyond the spheres of
cative lifeworld itself: From a critica
"Facebook" phenomena represent sem
and social interaction. An antidote to
offered by Lissy Goralnik and Micha
Goralnik and Nelson describe the
environmental pedagogy which they
education beyond the classroom and
learning in natural, quasi-wild enviro
mative? They argue that it can shi
(including sterile juxtapositions of
richer intellectual and emotional s
philosophy enlarges the scope of lear
valorizing place-based understandings
curriculum is enriching in engaging
relational fields of students, teach
settings. Immersion in the natural w
transcend half-baked dualistic ideas,
conflicts, and develop an ethic of c
community of humans and nonhuma
"catalyze a metaphysical shift toward
of the chief dangers of our time is th
continue to recede. Since lack of contact with wild nature often translates into a lack
of care for its fate, Goralnik and Nelson's pedagogical initiative offers an antidote
that will hopefully inspire similar curricular innovations around the world.
We close this special issue with David Kidner's contribution in which the face
value assumption of anthropocentrism - that it constitutes a perspective that serves
human interests - is radically challenged. "Anthropocentrism," Kidner contends, is
not anthropocentric. He traces the roots of what is considered anthropocentric
thinking - especially the belief that "all forms of life exist to serve us" - in a
reductive technological-economic order that gained ascendancy in early modernity
and has culminated in the industrial system of our time. This system has colonized
human consciousness just as surely as it has colonized the natural world; as Kidner
puts it, within it both "humanity and nature are being dissolved." Far from being
beneficiaries of an order that displaces embodied forms of awareness, reduces value
11 Turner (2014).
12 Berardi (2009).
Ö Springer
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396 E. Crist, H. Kopnina
to money, and approaches
beings are unknowing perpe
unable to escape their con
Echoing critical theory them
domination of human cons
as the nuances of human aw
economist and the market
forests are replaced by th
submits that when we bl
implicitly stating that natu
tigation into the historical
discloses that human intere
is "an unthinkable human s
symbolic and material temp
lies profound human unfre
same forces that are destro
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