Posthuman Geopolitical Culture(s): Decentering the State in the Anthropocene Epoch

Drawing on critical, feminist, Indigenous, and imaginative approaches to planetary crises, this chapter critiques the anthropocentrism of contemporary geopolitical thinking. While certain scholars have made efforts to update geopolitics to reflect the realities of the Anthropocene Epoch and its attendant warping of the field of action (i.e. the geos), there has yet to emerge a new paradigm that decenters the state. Despite the fact that nearly aspect of geopolitics is or soon will be shaped by global environmental destabilization, states—from plural democracies to authoritarian regimes—continue to demonstrate a stultifying short-sightedness in addressing the challenges of the New Human Epoch. As part of our remit as geopoliticians, it is incumbent on researchers operating in the field to chart a new path that includes the other-than-human. Using the Anthropocene as a tool to think with, this chapter proposes a new form of “geospolitics” as an indispensable orientation for navigating the coming world defined by climate chaos, rising seas, biogeochemical disruptions, mass extinctions, ocean acidification, and ecosystem collapse.