Geopraxis: A Concept for the Anthropocene

This essay deals with the most urgent political-epistemological question in the Anthropocene debate, namely the identification of the subject of the ongoing planetary transformation. It presents philosophical perspectives, concepts and historiographical approaches that can help bring into focus humans’ transformative action. It proposes geopraxis as a viable concept, which connects the geological agency of today’s societies with the political problem of collective action, in line with the Gramscian concept of praxis. A historical and open conception of humanity, as a de-essentialized process of decision-taking and self-determination, is here defended as the theoretical basis for geoanthropology, as the emergent cross-disciplinary Anthropocene paradigm.