From Anthropocenogenic to Eco-planetary Consciousness

The destructive conditions of the Anthropocene and their contribution to climate change are well known. Another consequence, less widely appreciated, is the emergence of a phylum of noo-technologies with serious consequences for the mind and brain: a process of denoetization characteristic of our moment of cognitive capitalism.

This drawing is composed of two plateaus. The first consists of red texts superimposed upon red abstract figures associated with the effects of the Anthropocene. The second employs green texts floating above a green abstract linear field representing the Ecocene. The Ecocene will generate a counter neuro-technical phylum, together with associated objects and things that help initiate new epistemological frameworks based upon deep ecology, cognitive justice, and planetarity, all of which have consequences for the mind and brain.

Using Bernard Stiegler’s model of exosomatic organogenesis, anthropocenogenic and ecocenogenic technologies are understood as responsible for the morphological and material formation of the human brain, here expressed through the colors red and green. Through a process of maieutics, or mirroring, technics coevolve with corresponding changes in the brain, and vice versa. These changes feed back upon the social, political, economic, and cultural relations that helped form them in a continuous spiral of generation and differentiation.

The red and green linear fragments represent the boundaries and folds of cerebral maps known as sulci, which give the exterior surface of the brain its characteristic texture. Under epochal pressures, these boundaries undergo transformations analogous to radical cartography or counter-mapping. The brain is not a crystallized entity incarcerated within the bony skull but rather an intracranial–extracranial complex that is rhizomatic, queer, feminist, and posthuman.

The drawing outlines a transition from anthropocenogenic exosomatic organogenesis to what I call ecocenogenic exosomatic organogenesis. As such, it continues the ongoing process of sapienization, initiated approximately 2.5 million years ago, and the new forms of consciousness that it has rendered possible.