Climate collapse and the destruction of the future

• Main Author: Rafael Mofreita Saldanha
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) 2020-12-01
• Series: O Que Nos Faz Pensar
• Online Access: http://www.oquenosfazpensar.fil.puc-rio.br/index.php/oqnfp/article/view/705

We will try to explore some of the effect of climate collapse on our experience of time. Our hypothesis is that human caused changes to earth’s stability affects how we experience the future since the very idea of ‘future’ would be compromised. We will start from Koselleck’s notion of “time strata” to try and understand how this crisis affects our experience of time. Before this crisis it was possible to think our experience of time and history as constructions on top of repetitions that served as background to events. Climate collapse puts that idea of background in question since repetitions that were assumed to be natural are actually changin their rythms. At the end of this article we will propose an alternative time disposition enabled by certain elements of amerindian thought approached through the reading of Danowski and Viveiros de Castro.