Antropocene e decentramento dell’umano. Un confronto tra Chakrabarty e Descola

Over the past fifteen years, Chakrabarty has offered a detailed reflection on the role of the humanities in debates on the Anthropocene. In this article, my aim is to highlight some points of convergence and divergence on this issue between Chakrabarty and the ‘ontological turn’, focusing on the work of Descola. Chakrabarty shares with Descola and other leading proponents of this approach (as Latour and Viveiros de Castro) the need of a deep rethinking of the concept of humanity, a strong critique of anthropocentrism, a new consideration of the ethical and political significance of the entanglements between humans and non-humans. Two points of divergence between the Indian historian and the ‘ontological turn’ are, however, their respective assessments of modernity and its emancipatory demands, and the possibility of deriving an ethics centered on principles of responsibility, freedom and justice from its connection with a specific ontological regime.