TY - JOUR

T1 - Nuclear Weapons, Extinction and the Anthropocene

T2 - Reappraising Jonathan Schell

AU - van Munster, Rens

AU - Sylvest, Casper

PY - 2021/7

Y1 - 2021/7

N2 - In the Anthropocene, International Relations must confront the possibility of anthropogenic extinction. Recent, insightful attempts to advance new vocabularies of planet politics tend to demote the profound historical and intellectual links between our current predicament and the nuclear age. In contrast, we argue that it is vital to revisit the nuclear-environment nexus of the Cold War to trace genealogies of today's intricate constellation of security problems. We do so by reappraising the work of Jonathan Schell (1943-2014), author of The Fate of the Earth (1982), who came to regard extinction as a defining feature of the nuclear age. We show how a deep engagement with nuclear weapons led Schell to an understanding of the Earth as a complex, delicate ecology and fed into a sophisticated, Arendtian theory of extinction. Despite its limitations and tensions, we argue that Schell's work remains deeply relevant for rethinking human-Earth relations and confronting the Anthropocene.

AB - In the Anthropocene, International Relations must confront the possibility of anthropogenic extinction. Recent, insightful attempts to advance new vocabularies of planet politics tend to demote the profound historical and intellectual links between our current predicament and the nuclear age. In contrast, we argue that it is vital to revisit the nuclear-environment nexus of the Cold War to trace genealogies of today's intricate constellation of security problems. We do so by reappraising the work of Jonathan Schell (1943-2014), author of The Fate of the Earth (1982), who came to regard extinction as a defining feature of the nuclear age. We show how a deep engagement with nuclear weapons led Schell to an understanding of the Earth as a complex, delicate ecology and fed into a sophisticated, Arendtian theory of extinction. Despite its limitations and tensions, we argue that Schell's work remains deeply relevant for rethinking human-Earth relations and confronting the Anthropocene.

U2 - 10.1017/S0260210521000061

DO - 10.1017/S0260210521000061

M3 - Journal article

VL - 47

SP - 294

EP - 310

JO - Review of International Studies

JF - Review of International Studies

SN - 0260-2105

IS - 3

ER -