The Critical Anthropocene Research Group (CARG) was established in 2017 to investigate the emerging and multiple discourses associated with the proposed geological era of the Anthropocene. Our research explores a variety of redefinitions of the Anthropocene (such as the Chthulucene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene), as well as the unacknowledged but persistent presence of ‘the universal human subject’ in some scientific and popular articulations of the term.
ABOUT THE TEAM
Jill Didur is the PI of the inter-university Critical Anthropocene Research Group. CARG’s primary mandate is to encourage interdisciplinary research projects that examine the cultural, historical and political roots of human-induced climate change with an emphasis on its origins in the history of empire and globalization. These projects include investigations of the potentiality of language, narrative, aesthetic forms, and digital and material culture to redirect the culturally embedded positionality of ‘the human’ in the era of the Anthropocene.
OUR RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
Anchored at the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, and Technology, CARG brings together faculty and students from four different Quebec-based universities (Concordia, McGill, UdeM, ULaval) to investigate alternatives to the universal human subject in favour of relational, multispecies notions of being, and more just notions of ‘sustainability’. The core multi-disciplinary team members working in the area of global environmental humanities in the wake of the Anthropocene includes four research axes: 1) Indigenous and Decolonial Studies, 2) Animal Studies, 3) Plant Studies, and 4) Nuclear Studies.
Activities of the team in 2021 include the Representing the Anthropocene research project.
Jill Didur 