L’Institut des sciences de l’environnement reçoit l’historien Marco Armiero (Université autonome de Barcelone), auteur de l’essai « Poubellocène. Chroniques de l’ère des déchets » (LUX).  

En réponse aux limites du concept de l’ère géologique de l’Anthropocène, Marco Armiero propose d’introduire un nouvel âge, celui de la « Poubellocène », où la production insensée de déchets, qu’ils soient théoriques ou physiques, devient vectrice de « rapports socioécologiques voués à [re] produire l’exclusion et les inégalités ». Usant de métaphore et d’exemples de divers pays, il propose ainsi de décortiquer les récits de toxicité qui rythment notre monde et perturbent l’humain comme le non-humain et qui renforcent des inégalités sociales et environnementales. À ces récits de toxicité, il appose une guérilla narrative ou des initiatives, actions, moments et récits qui luttent contre cette « Poubellocène ».  

Venez filer la métaphore de cette stratigraphie de pouvoir et de toxicité qui compose notre environnement, le 2 avril prochain, de 9h30 à 11h30 au pavillon Président-Kennedy (salle PK-1140).  

** La rencontre se déroulera en anglais.**  

Lien d’inscription : https://forms.office.com/r/is9P89Qnim

Résumé : The geological Anthropocene may have faltered, but it remains relevant to examine the narratives it has mobilized and the need to cultivate counter-hegemonic storytelling. Toxic strata have sedimented into human (and more-than-human) bodies. By examining this embodied stratigraphy of power and toxicity, we may find ourselves in the Wasteocene—the Age of Waste. One might argue that the Wasteocene reveals the true face of the supposedly neutral and universal Anthropocene, exposing the unequal power relations and systemic violence that shape this new era. The Wasteocene is not merely about the production of waste but, more critically, about the production of wasted people and places. The imposition of wasting relationships on subaltern human and more-than-human communities constructs a toxic ecology—one built not only from contaminating substances but also from contaminating narratives. Against this Toxic Narrative Infrastructure, which renders injustice invisible, normal, and natural, thousands of guerrilla narratives bloom in an attempt to sabotage it. 

Biographie :  Marco Armiero is an ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for the History of Science, Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies. From 2019 to 2022, he served as the president of the European Society for Environmental History. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of the International Consortium for Environmental History Organizations. From 2013 to 2022, he directed the Environmental Humanities Laboratory in Stockholm, establishing it as a global leader in this emerging field. His research bridges the environmental humanities and political ecology, contributing significantly to both disciplines. Among his recent publications are: Wasteocene: Stories from the Global Dumps (Cambridge University Press, 2021), which has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, and is forthcoming in Portuguese, Chinese, and Indonesian; Mussolini’s Nature (with R. Biasillo & W. Graf von Hardenberg, MIT Press and Einaudi, 2022), forthcoming in Spanish; and La Tragedia del Vajont: Ecologia politica di un disastro (Einaudi, 2024, forthcoming in English).