Anthropocene Knowledge Practices in McKenzie Wark’s Molecular Red and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora

Abstract

Through a close reading of McKenzie Wark’s theoretical treatise Molecular Red (2015) and Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Aurora (2015), this essay examines how Anthropocene knowledge practices challenge our conceptions of human agency in provocative and potentially productive ways. For example, our knowledge of climate science arises through global material infrastructures. As material components of Anthropocene knowledge practices, these infrastructures reveal the material labors and cyborg structures by means of which our knowledge is produced. Wark sees the heterogenous materiality of Anthropocene knowledge practices as evidence for the value of ‘low theories’ based on a ‘labor point of view.’ At the same time, Anthropocene knowledge practices reveal ‘eco-logical’ complexities and fundamental recognitions of the ‘intra-action’ of entangled matter. These complexities produce very estranged views of human agency. Robinson’s novel highlights the eco-logical implications of contemporary knowledge practices by imagining an interstellar ship that must function as a completely artificial ecosystem for a 170-year voyage to another solar system. The significance of knowledge practices and eco-logical complexity is most evident when failures or crises arise, and Aurora tells the story of many such failures. However, I argue that Robinson’s novel and Wark’s ‘low theory’ ultimately function as hopeful accounts of Anthropocene knowledge practices. Among other things, these practices show the material importance of storytelling and point the way toward more complexly realist theories of human agency.