Climate of History in a Planetary Age

"For the past decade, no thinker has had a greater influence on debates about the meaning of climate change in the humanities than the historian Dipesh Chakrabarty. Climate change, he has argued, upends our ideas about history, modernity, and globalization, and confronts humanists with the kinds of universals that they have been long loath to consider. Here Chakrabarty elaborates this thesis for the first time in book form and extends it in important ways. "The human condition," Chakrabarty writes, "has changed." The burden of "The Climate of History in a Planetary Age" is to grapple with what this means for historical and political thought. Chakrabarty argues that our times require us to see ourselves from two perspectives at once: the planetary and theglobal. The global (and thus globalization) are human constructs, but the planetary Earth system de-centers the human. Chakrabarty explores the question of modern freedoms in light of this globe/planet distinction. He also considers why Marxist, postcolonial, and other progressive scholarship has failed to account for the problems of human history that anthropogenic climate change poses. The book concludes with a conversation between Chakrabarty and the French anthropologist Bruno Latour. Few works are as likely to shape our understanding of the human condition as we open ourselves to the implications of the Anthropocene"--
For the past decade, historian Dipesh Chakrabarty has been one of the most influential scholars addressing the meaning of climate change. Climate change, he argues, upends long-standing ideas of history, modernity, and globalization. The burden of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age is to grapple with what this means and to confront humanities scholars with ideas they have been reluctant to reconsider&;from the changed nature of human agency to a new acceptance of universals. Chakrabarty argues that we must see ourselves from two perspectives at once: the planetary and the global. This distinction is central to Chakrabarty&;s work&;the globe is a human-centric construction, while a planetary perspective intentionally decenters the human. Featuring wide-ranging excursions into historical and philosophical literatures, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age boldly considers how to frame the human condition in troubled times. As we open ourselves to the implications of the Anthropocene, few writers are as likely as Chakrabarty to shape our understanding of the best way forward.