Alternatives: Global, Local, Political / Hobbes in the Anthropocene: Reconsidering the State of Nature in Its Relevance for Governing

Abstract

The theoretical work of Thomas Hobbes marks the dawn of political modernity and thus also the beginning of modern reasoning about governing. In his Leviathan, Hobbes creates the modern space of the political through the exclusion of the worlds social and natural abundance. This crossroads of political thinking might not least be of relevance for the Anthropocene. After all, affirming the Anthropocene returns mankind to a cosmos of infinite humannature interrelationships, which strongly resembles Hobbess conceptual depiction of the premodern state of nature and its incomprehensible, contingent, and precarious world, a world that Hobbes had intended to ban for good. In this context, this article reconsiders the state of natures internal dynamics in its relevance for governing in the Anthropoceneat the expense of the normative claims of modernist governing. After all, embracing the complex ontologies of the Anthropocene and the state of nature disperses agency among the human and nonhuman world, which questions the idea of ethical and political accountability. Without such a reference, governing runs the risk of becoming arbitrary and thereby another shallow projection of modernist conceptions. This article develops an interpretation of political subjectivity as a reference for governing, deriving from the materialistic world of the Hobbesian state of nature. On this foundation, the article elaborates on how this reading of subjectivity reconfigures the conception of political space and how this shift affects the scope of governing. ; (VLID)6189617 ; Version of record