The fabric of democratic society is in a state of instability. The already sluggish transition towards a socially just future in terms of energy and material resources seems to have been brought to a halt before it had even properly begun. More extraction, more consumption, less consideration, less balance. But beneath the historical events of the moment – the wars, election results and reactionary political shifts – lie longer-term processes: the restructuring of the metabolism of a civilisation built on combustion, more complex chemical process structures, and the expansion of the extractivist material regime. Can a critique of fossilised reason, can a new geoanthropology, conceive of humanity and the planet together in a productive rather than destructive way?
Disruptocene interprets the rise of ruthless power politics as a symptom of a profound and far-reaching transformation in the relationship with nature in the dawning era – be it still ecologically-democratic, or, by decree, digital-nuclear-technocratic. After the Petro-era comes the Multi-Element Modern, and it will be no less explosive.
Essay
Alexander Klose, born in 1969, is a cultural researcher, curator and writer. He has been leading the ‘Chemistry in transition’ research team at the Just Transition Centre in Halle since 2024.
Benjamin Steininger, born in 1974, is a cultural studies scholar, historian of science and technology, curator, and postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Jena. His research focuses on industrial catalysis and fossil raw materials in the modern era and the Anthropocene.
Since 2017, they have been exploring the complexities and contradictions of petro-modernity as part of the ‘Beauty of Oil’ research collective.
