Habitability as a historical category for interpreting the Anthropocene

Abstract

The article examines the development of a new discourse on habitability in the sixteenth century, which breaks with the ancient notion that distinguished between habitable and uninhabitable spaces according to their climate and location. In it, a new conception of the world as completely habitable and exploitable is articulated, and the European ideal of a temperate climate as a reference to characterize the territories and inhabitants of various latitudes is put forward. I considered more than sixty texts related to cosmography, and a hundred maps and diagrams that were published and circulated as Europe expanded around the globe in the early modern period, and that exhibit new semantics and meanings about habitability. This study, through the analysis of these specific sources, aims to contribute to the debate on the origins of the Anthropocene and the political and imaginative logic that enables its development. The author suggests that the discursive pillars that shaped modern thinking about habitability were crucial in giving life to the ideas of extractivism, speculation, and unlimited connectivity that structures the Anthropocene.