In March 2024, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) officially rejected the Anthropocene as new geological epoch. This decision was not due to a denial of humanity’s impact on the planet but rather the inability of science to reliably determine the precise starting point of such impact. The ICS acknowledged, however, that in the humanities, social sciences, and various ecological movements the term “Anthropocene” might be fruitful to name the irreversible influence of humans on the geological and ecological shape of the Earth. 

The workshop, co-organized by Lilla Balint (UC Berkeley) and Leonhard Herrmann (University of Leipzig) and hosted by Berkeley’s Department of German, takes these debates as its starting point. Despite the problems that data-driven approaches face in defining the Anthropocene’s phenomenological extensions, the traces of human activity are unmistakably inscribed into the planet’s very structure. As a concept, the Anthropocene reimagines the relationship between humans and nature—a relationship that has oscillated between the identification the with and destruction of nature. Thus, the Anthropocene becomes legible as the latest chapter in the archive of nature that dates back to the geological origins of the planet.