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Open Humanities Press– Anthropocene Back Loop
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>Open Humanities Press– Anthropocene Back Loop</title> <meta charset="UTF-8"/> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type"content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> <meta name="description" content="A scholar led open access publishing collective" /> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1" /> <!-- for google scholar --> <meta name="citation_publisher" content="Open Humanites Press" /> <meta name="citation_title" content="Anthropocene Back Loop: Experimentation in Unsafe Operating Space" /> <meta name="citation_publication_date" content="2020" /> <meta name="citation_author" content="Stephanie Wakefield" /> <meta name="citation_pdf_url" content="http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/download/Wakefield_2020_Anthropocene-Back-Loop.pdf" /> <meta name="citation_language" content="EN" /> <meta name="citation_isbn" content="978-1-78542-071-9" /> <meta name="citation_isbn" content="978-1-78542-072-6" /> <meta name="citation_keywords" content="Anthropocene; resilience; experimentation;" /><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/normalize.css" /><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/ohp-styles.css"> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/media-query-styles.css"></head> <body> <div id="site-container"> <div id="site-header"><header> <div id="banner" role="banner"> <a href="/"><img id="ohp-logo" src="/images/ohp-logo_300x75.gif" alt="Open Humanities Press"/></a> </div> <nav> <ul id="site-menu" role="menubar"> <a href="/"><li >HOME</li></a> <a href="/books/series"><li class="active">BOOKS</li></a> <a href="/journals/titles"><li >JOURNALS</li></a> <a href="/labs/about-ohp-labs"><li >LABS</li></a> <a href="/about/community"><li >ABOUT</li></a> <a href="/submit/submissions"><li >SUBMIT</li></a> </ul> </nav> </header></div> <div id="site-body"> <nav id="group-navigation" role="navigation"> <p class="signpost">Books</p><!--then we use tabs--> <ul id="group-menu"><a href="/books/series"><li>Series</li></a><a href="/books/titles"><li class="active">Titles</li></a></ul> <ul id="local-menu"> <a href="/books/titles/a-history-of-asking"> <li> <p class="item">A History of Asking</p><p class="item-description">Steven Connor</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/a-stubborn-fury"> <li> <p class="item">A Stubborn Fury</p><p class="item-description">Gary Hall</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/aesthetic-programming"> <li> <p class="item">Aesthetic Programming</p><p class="item-description">Winnie Soon and Geoff Cox</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/after-video"> <li> <p class="item">after.video</p><p class="item-description">Oliver Lerone Schultz, Adnan Hadzi, Pablo de Soto and Laila Shereen Sakr</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/ai-art"> <li> <p class="item">AI Art</p><p class="item-description">Joanna Zylinska</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/anthropocene-backloop"> <li class="active"> <p class="item">Anthropocene Back Loop</p><p class="item-description">Stephanie Wakefield</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/architecture-in-the-anthropocene"> <li> <p class="item">Architecture in the Anthropocene</p><p class="item-description">Etienne Turpin</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/art-in-the-anthropocene"> <li> <p class="item">Art in the Anthropocene</p><p class="item-description">Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/articulating-media"> <li> <p class="item">Articulating Media</p><p class="item-description">James Gabrillo and Nathaniel Zetter</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/barbarian-currents"> <li> <p class="item">Barbarian Currents</p><p class="item-description">Gabriel Menotti and German Alfonso Nunez</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/being-up-for-grabs"> <li> <p class="item">Being Up For Grabs</p><p class="item-description">Hilan Bensusan</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/bifurcate"> <li> <p class="item">Bifurcate</p><p class="item-description">Bernard Stiegler and the Internation Collective</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/black-ops"> <li> <p class="item">Black Ops</p><p class="item-description">Tom Cohen</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/capital-at-the-brink"> <li> <p class="item">Capital At The Brink</p><p class="item-description">Jeffrey R. 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Collings</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/thinking-with-ai"> <li> <p class="item">Thinking <em>with</em> AI</p><p class="item-description">Hannes Bajohr</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/tocqueville-and-democracy-in-the-internet-age"> <li> <p class="item">Tocqueville and Democracy in the Internet Age</p><p class="item-description">C. Jon Delogu</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/twilight-of-the-anthropocene-idols"> <li> <p class="item">Twilight of the Anthropocene Idols</p><p class="item-description">Tom Cohen, Claire Colebrook and J. Hillis Miller</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/volumetric-regimes"> <li> <p class="item">Volumetric Regimes</p><p class="item-description">Jara Rocha and Femke Snelting</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/ways-of-following"> <li> <p class="item">Ways of Following</p><p class="item-description">Katve-Kaisa Kontturi</p></li> </a> <a href="/books/titles/writing-medium-machine"> <li> <p class="item">Writing, Medium, Machine</p><p class="item-description">Sean Pryor and David Trotter</p></li> </a></ul> </nav> <div id="main" role="main"> <div id="main-header"><header> <h1>Anthropocene Back Loop: Experimentation in Unsafe Operating Space</h1> <p class="creators"><i>by</i> Stephanie Wakefield</p></header></div> <div class="responsive-wrapper"> <img id="thumbnail" class="shadow" src="/book-covers/anthropocene-back-loop_cover_200x300.jpg" /> <ul class="caption"><li><a href="/books/series/ccc2-irreversibility">CCC2 Irreversibility</a></li><li>Published: 2020</li> <li>ISBN: 978-1-78542-071-9</li><li>PDF ISBN: 978-1-78542-072-6</li></ul> </div><ul id="context-menu" role="navigation"><a href="http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/download/Wakefield_2020_Anthropocene-Back-Loop.pdf"><li>Download PDF</li></a><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/anthropocene-back-loop-stephanie-wakefield/1137005522"><li>Buy Hardcopy</li></a></ul><p>In the face of climate chaos, post-truth politics, and growing tribalisms, it’s clear that liberalism’s old structures are unraveling. Drawing on resilience ecology, Stephanie Wakefield suggests we understand such phenomena to be indicators that we are entering the Anthropocene’s back loop, a time of release and collapse, confusion and reorientation, in which not only populations and climates are being upended but also physical and metaphysical grounds. <em>Anthropocene Back Loop</em> takes us on a journey though different responses and manifestations of the back loop, exploring urban resilience infrastructures, post-apocalyptic imaginaries in fiction and critical theory, and a range of everyday practices from survival skills and physical fitness to experimentation with one’s soul. Rather than returning to liberalism’s safe operating space, what is needed and what can be seen in many contemporary practices, Wakefield argues, are forms of experimentation geared toward charting autonomous modes of living within the back loop’s new unsafe operating spaces. Such efforts often let go of old frameworks, hubristically experiment with new uses, cultivate an allowance for the unknown, and embrace a confidence in exploring one’s own pathways. What these iterations suggest is that the back loop, long imagined in the singular, is spiraling out into myriad trajectories. After all, if we take seriously the idea that liberalism’s single world order is unraveling, we have the opportunity - one many have long fought for - to create our own new codes, if not new worlds. Being in the back loop means that we have already crossed various tipping points, and that in doing so, everything from social practices, technologies, and truth to plants, animals, and places have become shaken out of their normal frameworks. We are free to move on new planes.</p> <blockquote class="endorsement">“Announcing the apocalypse is easy. But doing something constructive with planetary catastrophe is rare and precious. Stephanie Wakefield’s repurposing of the ecological `back loop’ for the badlands of the Anthropocene will not only fire your imagination, it will wind you up and send you out to slash, burn, pump, hammer, rivet and rewire a liveable world into existence.”<div class="attribution"><cite>Nigel Clark</cite> – Chair of Social Sustainability, Lancaster University</div></blockquote> <blockquote class="endorsement">“Are we just survivors? Is our fate to endlessly – and aimlessly — govern the climate crisis? In this unexpected and inspiring book, Stephanie Wakefield reclaims the Anthropocene ‘back loop’ as a time for experimentation rather than fear, a time to probe possibilities rather than desperately cling to a ‘safe operating space’ that is safe only for a few. Anthropocene Back Loop returns to a key insight: Being is a question, not a blueprint. What other modes of life can we invent?”<div class="attribution"><cite>Bruce Braun</cite> – Professor, University of Minnesota</div></blockquote> <div> <h2>Author Bio </h2> <p>Stephanie Wakefield is an urban geographer and teacher. She is currently an Urban Studies Foundation International Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at Florida International University in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies and Institute of Environment. She writes frequently for popular, art, and academic journals.</p></div> <div> <h2></h2></div> </div> </div> <div id="site-footer"><footer> <p>The content of this site is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License</a>.</p> <p>Images and other media may be under different licences.</p> <p><a id="ibiblio-link" href="http://www.ibiblio.org/"><img src="/images/ibiblio-xs.gif" alt="Hosted by ibiblio" class="center" height="20" width="67" /></a></p> </footer></div></div> </body> </html>