The Anthropocene Eel: Emergent Knowledge, Ontological Politics and New Propositions for an Age of Extinctions

Abstract

This paper explores how the Anthropocene, a scene of ontological transformation, reconfigures disciplinary knowledge-making and challenges conventional forms of critique in the social sciences. I examine these interrelated questions by considering the emergent relations between eels, researchers and their knowledge practices, and global environmental change, over the last century. The argument unfolds in two acts. The first centres on the Danish scientist Johannes Schmidt, whose obsession with eels was pursued over three decades and 65,000 kilometres of ocean expeditions. In many ways pioneering, Schmidt’s exclusive focus on the domain of ‘nature’ exemplifies what the sociologist of science Andrew Pickering terms ‘disciplinary dualism.’ The second act focuses on the recent emergence of the Anthropocene eel. Characterised by coupled becomings and multispecies entanglements, this hybrid eel is threatened with extinction. Eel populations and disciplinary dualism, it appears, are both collapsing. This dramatic situation raises important questions about theory and politics in the Anthropocene. Confronted with catastrophically entangled and ontologically slippery objects like the Anthropocene eel, the epistemological practice of critique faces significant challenges. In conclusion, I argue that navigating the Anthropocene requires experimentation with ontological propositions adequate to the increasingly critical states of the world.