RUBRICS - check listAccuracy, relevance• Is your sum.docx

RUBRICS - check list:
Accuracy, relevance:
• Is your summary and understanding of the reading accurate?
• Does your summary address the most important parts of the
argument made?
• Is your film scene selection relevant?
• Is your film scene analysis (description and interpretation)
accurate and clear?
Style and composition:
• Are your answers/arguments well-structured (intro, pros and
cons, conclusion) and
well supported?
• Are your sentences grammatical and complete? Is your use of
words accurate?
Have you used a spell and grammar checker before handing in
your work?
I. Answer 2 of the following prompts. Write about 3 paragraphs
each. (30 pts each =
total 60 pts)
1. Plastic. Summarize Heather Davis’s (P.347-358) main
arguments about plastic
(history, aesthetics, control and separation of the human and the
non-human, down-

cycling) and show how the films Waste Land, Albatross,
and The Island and the Men can
be seen to engage with (at least some of) these arguments. Pick
an exemplary scene in
each film to support your discussion. (“Pick” means: describe
what kind of shots, editing,
framing, soundtrack are used and what effect they produce or
how they invite us to feel.
Remember the Ivakhiv chapter if you need help with this.)
AND/OR
2. Islands
Summarize Hau’ofa’s and Patel and Moore’s arguments about
how capitalism is linked
to colonialism/imperialism and to the creation of the idea of
“nature” - and of certain
groups of people as part of this nature – making them available
as something to be
exploited, extracted, and disposed of.
Contrast the way Chris Jordan (director of Albatross)
and Iñaki Moulian (director
of The Island and the men0 have us thinking of islands, their
historical past and present,
and the way they have become available for capitalism. Pick an
exemplary scene in each
film to support your discussion. (“Pick” means: describe what
kind of shots, editing,
framing, soundtrack are used and what effect they produce or
invite us to feel. Remember

the Ivakhiv chapter if you need help with this.)
AND/OR
3. Non-humans
Summarize how De la Cadena explains three different
indigenous (Awajun Wampi,
Mapuche, and Quechua) views of the non-human. Summarize
how Haraway understands
entanglement. How do Daughter of the Lake and The Island and
the Men invite us to
sense non-human actants and human-non-human entanglements?
Pick an exemplary
scene in each film to support your discussion. (“Pick” means:
describe what kind of shots,
editing, framing, soundtrack are used and what effect they
produce or invite us to feel.
Remember the Ivakhiv chapter if you need help with this.)
II. Answer the following question. Write 1-2 paragraphs (20
pts)
The potential of open endings
Patel and Moore as well as Haraway encourage us to think less
about what things are
and more about how things become, how they happen,
transform, interrelate, impact on
each other. Give an exemplary quote from each text to illustrate
this. Ivakhiv discusses how films invite viewers to sense agency
for certain human and
non-human actants and how that can spill over into our own

sense of agency as
viewers. What happens when films have “open endings,” where
things are shown to be
in process, unfinished and messy, when they do not spell out
what we should do? I’d like
you to focus on the advantages of such open endings in contrast
with films that clearly
tell you what to do and think. Give 2 examples from the films
we have studied in this
class and discuss what impact they have had on your thinking,
acting, and or sense of
agency.
III. Answer this question. Write about 1 paragraph (10 pts)
Trempulcahue
The last sequence in the film The Island and the Men is titled
“Trempulcahue shows the
way.” The scene focuses on whales breaking through the surface
of an ink-black ocean. If
you google the word Trempulcahue, you’ll see it refers to a
Mapuche legend where the
machis (women healers) take on the form of whales to guide the
souls of the dead to an
island called Mocha where the souls are transformed into spirits
which then travel off to
the west. (The Mapuche live on both sides of the Andes, in what
is today Argentina and
Chile; the Chilotes have Mapuche, Chono, and Spanish
ancestry.) What do you make of
this ending?!

Total points 100
IT STRATEGY:
ISSUES AND PRACTICES
This page intentionally left blank
IT STRATEGY:
ISSUES AND PRACTICES
T h i r d E d i t i o n
James D. McKeen
Queen’s University
Heather A. Smith
Queen’s University
Boston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper
Saddle River
Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich
Paris Montréal Toronto

Delhi Mexico City São Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul
Singapore Taipei Tokyo
Editor in Chief: Stephanie Wall
Acquisitions Editor: Nicole Sam
Program Manager Team Lead: Ashley Santora
Program Manager: Denise Vaughn
Editorial Assistant: Kaylee Rotella
Executive Marketing Manager: Anne K. Fahlgren
Project Manager Team Lead: Judy Leale
Project Manager: Thomas Benfatti
Procurement Specialist: Diane Peirano
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Text Font: 10/12 Palatino LT Std
Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and
reproduced, with permission, in this
textbook appear on appropriate page within text.
Copyright © 2015, 2012 and 2009 by Pearson Education, Inc.,
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 07458. Pearson
Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States
of America. This publication is protected by
Copyright and permission should be obtained from the
publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage
in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or likewise. For information regarding

permission(s), write to: Rights and Permissions Department.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKeen, James D.
IT strategy: issues and practices/James D. McKeen, Queen’s
University, Heather A. Smith,
Queen’s University.—Third edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-13-354424-4 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-13-354424-9 (alk. paper)
1. Information technology—Management. I. Smith, Heather A.
II. Title.
HD30.2.M3987 2015
004.068—dc23
2014017950
ISBN–10: 0-13-354424-9
ISBN–13: 978-0-13-354424-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Preface xiii
About the Authors xxi
Acknowledgments xxii
Section I Delivering Value with IT 1
Chapter 1 DEVELOPING AND DELIVERING ON THE IT
VALUE

PROPOSITION 2
Peeling the Onion: Understanding IT Value 3
What Is IT Value? 3
Where Is IT Value? 4
Who Delivers IT Value? 5
When Is IT Value Realized? 5
The Three Components of the IT Value Proposition 6
Identification of Potential Value 7
Effective Conversion 8
Realizing Value 9
Five Principles for Delivering Value 10
Principle 1. Have a Clearly Defined Portfolio Value
Management
Process 11
Principle 2. Aim for Chunks of Value 11
Principle 3. Adopt a Holistic Orientation to Technology Value
11
Principle 4. Aim for Joint Ownership of Technology Initiatives
12
Principle 5. Experiment More Often 12
Conclusion 12� t� References 13
Chapter 2 DEVELOPING IT STRATEGY FOR BUSINESS
VALUE 15
Business and IT Strategies: Past, Present, and Future 16
Four Critical Success Factors 18
The Many Dimensions of IT Strategy 20
Toward an IT Strategy-Development Process 22
Challenges for CIOs 23
Conclusion 25� t� 3FGFSFODFT 25

Chapter 3 LINKING IT TO BUSINESS METRICS 27
Business Measurement: An Overview 28
Key Business Metrics for IT 30
v
vi Contents
Designing Business Metrics for IT 31
Advice to Managers 35
Chapter 4 BUILDING A STRONG RELATIONSHIP
WITH THE BUSINESS 38
The Nature of the Business–IT Relationship 39
The Foundation of a Strong Business–IT
Relationship 41
Building Block #1: Competence 42
Building Block #2: Credibility 43
Building Block #3: Interpersonal Interaction 44
Building Block #4: Trust 46
Appendix A The Five IT Value Profiles 50
Appendix B Guidelines for Building a Strong Business–IT
Relationship 51
Chapter 5 COMMUNICATING WITH BUSINESS MANAGERS
52
Communication in the Business–IT Relationship 53

What Is “Good” Communication? 54
Obstacles to Effective Communication 56
“T-Level” Communication Skills for IT Staff 58
Improving Business–IT Communication 60
Appendix A IT Communication Competencies 63
Chapter 6 BUILDING BETTER IT LEADERS FROM
THE BOTTOM UP 64
The Changing Role of the IT Leader 65
What Makes a Good IT Leader? 67
How to Build Better IT Leaders 70
Investing in Leadership Development: Articulating the Value
Proposition 73
MINI CASES
Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware 76
Investing in TUFS 80
IT Planning at ModMeters 82
Contents vii
Section II IT Governance 87
Chapter 7 CREATING IT SHARED SERVICES 88
IT Shared Services: An Overview 89
IT Shared Services: Pros and Cons 92
IT Shared Services: Key Organizational Success Factors 93
Identifying Candidate Services 94
An Integrated Model of IT Shared Services 95
Recommmendations for Creating Effective IT

Shared Services 96
Chapter 8 A MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR
IT SOURCING 100
A Maturity Model for IT Functions 101
IT Sourcing Options: Theory Versus Practice 105
The “Real” Decision Criteria 109
Decision Criterion #1: Flexibility 109
Decision Criterion #2: Control 109
Decision Criterion #3: Knowledge Enhancement 110
Decision Criterion #4: Business Exigency 110
A Decision Framework for Sourcing IT Functions 111
Identify Your Core IT Functions 111
Create a “Function Sourcing” Profile 111
Evolve Full-Time IT Personnel 113
Encourage Exploration of the Whole Range
of Sourcing Options 114
Combine Sourcing Options Strategically 114
A Management Framework for Successful
Sourcing 115
Develop a Sourcing Strategy 115
Develop a Risk Mitigation Strategy 115
Develop a Governance Strategy 116
Understand the Cost Structures 116
Chapter 9 THE IT BUDGETING PROCESS 118
Key Concepts in IT Budgeting 119
The Importance of Budgets 121

The IT Planning and Budget Process 123
viii Contents
Corporate Processes 123
IT Processes 125
Assess Actual IT Spending 126
IT Budgeting Practices That Deliver Value 127
Chapter 10 MANAGING IT- BASED RISK 130
A Holistic View of IT-Based Risk 131
Holistic Risk Management: A Portrait 134
Developing a Risk Management Framework 135
Improving Risk Management Capabilities 138
Appendix A A Selection of Risk Classification
Schemes 141
Chapter 11 INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: THE NEXUS
OF BUSINESS AND IT 142
Information Management: How Does IT Fit? 143
A Framework For IM 145
Stage One: Develop an IM Policy 145
Stage Two: Articulate the Operational
Components 145
Stage Three: Establish Information Stewardship 146
Stage Four: Build Information Standards 147
Issues In IM 148

Culture and Behavior 148
Information Risk Management 149
Information Value 150
Privacy 150
Knowledge Management 151
The Knowing–Doing Gap 151
Getting Started in IM 151
Appendix A Elements of IM Operations 155
MINI CASES
Building Shared Services at RR Communications 156
Enterprise Architecture at Nationstate Insurance 160
IT Investment at North American Financial 165
Contents ix
Section III IT-Enabled Innovation 169
Chapter 12 INNOVATION WITH IT 170
The Need for Innovation: An Historical
Perspective 171
The Need for Innovation Now 171
Understanding Innovation 172
The Value of Innovation 174
Innovation Essentials: Motivation, Support,
and Direction 175
Challenges for IT leaders 177
Facilitating Innovation 179

Chapter 13 BIG DATA AND SOCIAL COMPUTING 182
The Social Media/Big Data Opportunity 183
Delivering Business Value with Big Data 185
Innovating with Big Data 189
Pulling in Two Different Directions: The Challenge
for IT Managers 190
First Steps for IT Leaders 192
Chapter 14 IMPROVING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE:
AN IT PERSPECTIVE 195
Customer Experience and Business value 196
Many Dimensions of Customer Experience 197
The Role of Technology in Customer Experience 199
Customer Experience Essentials for IT 200
First Steps to Improving Customer Experience 203
Chapter 15 BUILDING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE 206
Understanding Business Intelligence 207
The Need for Business Intelligence 208
The Challenge of Business Intelligence 209
The Role of IT in Business Intelligence 211
Improving Business Intelligence 213
x Contents

Chapter 16 ENABLING COLLABORATION WITH IT 218
Why Collaborate? 219
Characteristics of Collaboration 222
Components of Successful Collaboration 225
The Role of IT in Collaboration 227
First Steps for Facilitating Effective Collaboration 229
MINI CASES
Innovation at International Foods 234
Consumerization of Technology at IFG 239
CRM at Minitrex 243
Customer Service at Datatronics 246
Section IV IT Portfolio Development and Management 251
Chapter 17 APPLICATION PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT 252
The Applications Quagmire 253
The Benefits of a Portfolio Perspective 254
Making APM Happen 256
Capability 1: Strategy and Governance 258
Capability 2: Inventory Management 262
Capability 3: Reporting and Rationalization 263
Key Lessons Learned 264
Appendix A Application Information 266
Chapter 18 MANAGING IT DEMAND 270
Understanding IT Demand 271
The Economics of Demand Management 273
Three Tools for Demand management 273
Key Organizational Enablers for Effective Demand

Management 274
Strategic Initiative Management 275
Application Portfolio Management 276
Enterprise Architecture 276
Business–IT Partnership 277
Governance and Transparency 279
Contents xi
Chapter 19 CREATING AND EVOLVING A TECHNOLOGY
ROADMAP 283
What is a Technology Roadmap? 284
The Benefits of a Technology Roadmap 285
External Benefits (Effectiveness) 285
Internal Benefits (Efficiency) 286
Elements of the Technology Roadmap 286
Activity #1: Guiding Principles 287
Activity #2: Assess Current Technology 288
Activity #3: Analyze Gaps 289
Activity #4: Evaluate Technology
Landscape 290
Activity #5: Describe Future Technology 291
Activity #6: Outline Migration Strategy 292
Activity #7: Establish Governance 292
Practical Steps for Developing a Technology
Roadmap 294

Appendix A Principles to Guide a Migration
Strategy 296
Chapter 20 ENHANCING DEVELOPMENT
PRODUCTIVITY 297
The Problem with System Development 298
Trends in System Development 299
Obstacles to Improving System Development
Productivity 302
Improving System Development Productivity: What we
know that Works 304
Next Steps to Improving System Development
Productivity 306
Chapter 21 INFORMATION DELIVERY: IT’S EVOLVING
ROLE 310
Information and IT: Why Now? 311
Delivering Value Through Information 312
Effective Information Delivery 316
New Information Skills 316
New Information Roles 317
New Information Practices 317
xii Contents
New Information Strategies 318
The Future of Information Delivery 319

MINI CASES
Project Management at MM 324
Working Smarter at Continental Furniture International 328
Managing Technology at Genex Fuels 333
Index 336
PREFACE
Today, with information technology (IT) driving constant
business transformation,
overwhelming organizations with information, enabling 24/7
global operations, and
undermining traditional business models, the challenge for
business leaders is not
simply to manage IT, it is to use IT to deliver business value.
Whereas until fairly recently,
decisions about IT could be safely delegated to technology
specialists after a business
strategy had been developed, IT is now so closely integrated
with business that, as one
CIO explained to us, “We can no longer deliver business
solutions in our company
without using technology so IT and business strategy must
constantly interact with
each other.”
What’s New in This Third Edition?
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IT shared services; big data and social computing; business
intelligence; manag-
ing IT demand; improving the customer experience; and
enhancing development
productivity.
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resourcing options; and innovating with IT.
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Working Smarter at Continental Furniture and Enterprise
Architecture at Nationstate
Insurance.
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from the second edition being moved to the Web site.
All too often, in our efforts to prepare future executives to deal
effectively with
the issues of IT strategy and management, we lead them into a
foreign country where
they encounter a different language, different culture, and
different customs. Acronyms
(e.g., SOA, FTP/IP, SDLC, ITIL, ERP), buzzwords (e.g.,
asymmetric encryption, proxy
servers, agile, enterprise service bus), and the widely adopted
practice of abstraction
(e.g., Is a software monitor a person, place, or thing?) present
formidable “barriers to

entry” to the technologically uninitiated, but more important,
they obscure the impor-
tance of teaching students how to make business decisions about
a key organizational
resource. By taking a critical issues perspective, IT Strategy:
Issues and Practices treats IT
as a tool to be leveraged to save and/or make money or
transform an organization—not
as a study by itself.
As in the first two editions of this book, this third edition
combines the experi-
ences and insights of many senior IT managers from leading-
edge organizations with
thorough academic research to bring important issues in IT
management to life and
demonstrate how IT strategy is put into action in contemporary
businesses. This new
edition has been designed around an enhanced set of critical
real-world issues in IT
management today, such as innovating with IT, working with
big data and social media,
xiii
xiv Preface
enhancing customer experience, and designing for business
intelligence and introduces
students to the challenges of making IT decisions that will have
significant impacts on
how businesses function and deliver value to stakeholders.
IT Strategy: Issues and Practices focuses on how IT is changing

and will continue to
change organizations as we now know them. However, rather
than learning concepts
“free of context,” students are introduced to the complex
decisions facing real organi-
zations by means of a number of mini cases. These provide an
opportunity to apply
the models/theories/frameworks presented and help students
integrate and assimilate
this material. By the end of the book, students will have the
confidence and ability to
tackle the tough issues regarding IT management and strategy
and a clear understand-
ing of their importance in delivering business value.
Key Features of This Book
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sions, enabling problem-based learning
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A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO TEACHING IT STRATEGY
The real world of IT is one of issues—critical issues—such as
the following:
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media, in our business?
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However, the majority of management information systems
(MIS) textbooks are orga-
nized by system category (e.g., supply chain, customer
relationship management, enterprise
resource planning), by system component (e.g., hardware,
software, networks), by system
function (e.g., marketing, financial, human resources), by

system type (e.g., transactional,
decisional, strategic), or by a combination of these.
Unfortunately, such an organization
does not promote an understanding of IT management in
practice.
IT Strategy: Issues and Practices tackles the real-world
challenges of IT manage-
ment. First, it explores a set of the most important issues facing
IT managers today, and
second, it provides a series of mini cases that present these
critical IT issues within the
context of real organizations. By focusing the text as well as the
mini cases on today’s
critical issues, the book naturally reinforces problem-based
learning.
Preface xv
IT Strategy: Issues and Practices includes thirteen mini cases—
each based on a real
company presented anonymously.1 Mini cases are not simply
abbreviated versions of
standard, full-length business cases. They differ in two
significant ways:
1. A horizontal perspective. Unlike standard cases that develop
a single issue within
an organizational setting (i.e., a “vertical” slice of
organizational life), mini cases
take a “horizontal” slice through a number of coexistent issues.
Rather than looking
for a solution to a specific problem, as in a standard case,
students analyzing a mini

case must first identify and prioritize the issues embedded
within the case. This mim-
ics real life in organizations where the challenge lies in
“knowing where to start” as
opposed to “solving a predefined problem.”
2. Highly relevant information. Mini cases are densely written.
Unlike standard
cases, which intermix irrelevant information, in a mini case,
each sentence exists for
a reason and reflects relevant information. As a result, students
must analyze each
case very carefully so as not to miss critical aspects of the
situation.
Teaching with mini cases is, thus, very different than teaching
with standard cases.
With mini cases, students must determine what is really going
on within the organiza-
tion. What first appears as a straightforward “technology”
problem may in fact be a
political problem or one of five other “technology” problems.
Detective work is, there-
fore, required. The problem identification and prioritization
skills needed are essential
skills for future managers to learn for the simple reason that it
is not possible for organi-
zations to tackle all of their problems concurrently. Mini cases
help teach these skills to
students and can balance the problem-solving skills learned in
other classes. Best of all,
detective work is fun and promotes lively classroom discussion.
To assist instructors, extensive teaching notes are available for
all mini cases. Developed
by the authors and based on “tried and true” in-class experience,

these notes include case
summaries, identify the key issues within each case, present
ancillary information about the
company/industry represented in the case, and offer guidelines
for organizing the class-
room discussion. Because of the structure of these mini cases
and their embedded issues, it
is common for teaching notes to exceed the length of the actual
mini case!
This book is most appropriate for MIS courses where the goal is
to understand how
IT delivers organizational value. These courses are frequently
labeled “IT Strategy” or
“IT Management” and are offered within undergraduate as well
as MBA programs. For
undergraduate juniors and seniors in business and commerce
programs, this is usually
the “capstone” MIS course. For MBA students, this course may
be the compulsory core
course in MIS, or it may be an elective course.
Each chapter and mini case in this book has been thoroughly
tested in a variety
of undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs at Queen’s
School of Business.2
1 We are unable to identify these leading-edge companies by
agreements established as part of our overall
research program (described later).
2 Queen’s School of Business is one of the world’s premier
business schools, with a faculty team renowned
for its business experience and academic credentials. The
School has earned international recognition for
its innovative approaches to team-based and experiential
learning. In addition to its highly acclaimed MBA

programs, Queen’s School of Business is also home to Canada’s
most prestigious undergraduate business
program and several outstanding graduate programs. As well,
the School is one of the world’s largest and
most respected providers of executive education.
xvi Preface
These materials have proven highly successful within all
programs because we adapt
how the material is presented according to the level of the
students. Whereas under-
graduate students “learn” about critical business issues from the
book and mini cases
for the first time, graduate students are able to “relate” to these
same critical issues
based on their previous business experience. As a result,
graduate students are able to
introduce personal experiences into the discussion of these
critical IT issues.
ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK
One of the advantages of an issues-focused structure is that
chapters can be approached
in any order because they do not build on one another. Chapter
order is immaterial; that
is, one does not need to read the first three chapters to
understand the fourth. This pro-
vides an instructor with maximum flexibility to organize a
course as he or she sees fit.
Thus, within different courses/programs, the order of topics can
be changed to focus on
different IT concepts.

Furthermore, because each mini case includes multiple issues,
they, too, can be
used to serve different purposes. For example, the mini case
“Building Shared Services
at RR Communications” can be used to focus on issues of
governance, organizational
structure, and/or change management just as easily as shared
services. The result is a
rich set of instructional materials that lends itself well to a
variety of pedagogical appli-
cations, particularly problem-based learning, and that clearly
illustrates the reality of IT
strategy in action.
The book is organized into four sections, each emphasizing a
key component of
developing and delivering effective IT strategy:
r� Section I: Delivering Value with IT is designed to examine
the complex ways that
IT and business value are related. Over the past twenty years,
researchers and prac-
titioners have come to understand that “business value” can
mean many different
things when applied to IT. Chapter 1 (Developing and
Delivering on the IT Value
Proposition) explores these concepts in depth. Unlike the
simplistic value propo-
sitions often used when implementing IT in organizations, this
chapter presents
“value” as a multilayered business construct that must be
effectively managed at
several levels if technology is to achieve the benefits expected.
Chapter 2 (Developing
IT Strategy for Business Value) examines the dynamic
interrelationship between

business and IT strategy and looks at the processes and critical
success factors
used by organizations to ensure that both are well aligned.
Chapter 3 (Linking IT
to Business Metrics) discusses new ways of measuring IT’s
effectiveness that pro-
mote closer business–IT alignment and help drive greater
business value. Chapter
4 (Building a Strong Relationship with the Business) examines
the nature of the
business–IT relationship and the characteristics of an effective
relationship that
delivers real value to the enterprise. Chapter 5 (Communicating
with Business
Managers) explores the business and interpersonal competencies
that IT staff will
need in order to do their jobs effectively over the next five to
seven years and what
companies should be doing to develop them. Finally, Chapter 6
(Building Better IT
Leaders from the Bottom Up) tackles the increasing need for
improved leadership
skills in all IT staff and examines the expectations of the
business for strategic and
innovative guidance from IT.
Preface xvii
In the mini cases associated with this section, the concepts of
delivering
value with IT are explored in a number of different ways. We
see business and
IT executives at Hefty Hardware grappling with conflicting
priorities and per-

spectives and how best to work together to achieve the
company’s strategy. In
“Investing in TUFS,” CIO Martin Drysdale watches as all of the
work his IT depart-
ment has put into a major new system fails to deliver value. And
the “IT Planning
at ModMeters” mini case follows CIO Brian Smith’s efforts to
create a strategic
IT plan that will align with business strategy, keep IT running,
and not increase
IT’s budget.
r� Section II: IT Governance explores key concepts in how the
IT organization is
structured and managed to effectively deliver IT products and
services to the orga-
nization. Chapter 7 (IT Shared Services) discusses how IT
shared services should be
selected, organized, managed, and governed to achieve
improved organizational
performance. Chapter 8 (A Management Framework for IT
Sourcing) examines
how organizations are choosing to source and deliver different
types of IT functions
and presents a framework to guide sourcing decisions. Chapter 9
(The IT Budgeting
Process) describes the “evil twin” of IT strategy, discussing
how budgeting mecha-
nisms can significantly undermine effective business strategies
and suggesting
practices for addressing this problem while maintaining
traditional fiscal account-
ability. Chapter 10 (Managing IT-based Risk) describes how
many IT organizations
have been given the responsibility of not only managing risk in
their own activities

(i.e., project development, operations, and delivering business
strategy) but also
of managing IT-based risk in all company activities (e.g.,
mobile computing, file
sharing, and online access to information and software) and the
need for a holistic
framework to understand and deal with risk effectively. Chapter
11 (Information
Management: The Nexus of Business and IT) describes how new
organizational
needs for more useful and integrated information are driving the
development of
business-oriented functions within IT that focus specifically on
information and
knowledge, as opposed to applications and data.
The mini cases in this section examine the difficulties of
managing com-
plex IT issues when they intersect substantially with important
business issues.
In “Building Shared Services at RR Communications,” we see
an IT organiza-
tion in transition from a traditional divisional structure and
governance model
to a more centralized enterprise model, and the long-term
challenges experi-
enced by CIO Vince Patton in changing both business and IT
practices, includ-
ing information management and delivery, to support this new
approach. In
“Enterprise …
A r t i n t he
A nt h ropo c ene

E nc ou nter s A mong A e s t het ic s , Pol it ic s ,
E nv i ron me nt s a nd E pi s te molog ie s
Edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin
A r t i n t he
A nt h ropo c ene
Critical Climate Change
Series Editors: Tom Cohen and Claire Colebrook
The era of climate change involves the mutation of systems
beyond 20th
century anthropomorphic models and has stood, until recently,
outside
representation or address. Understood in a broad and critical
sense, climate
change concerns material agencies that impact on biomass and
energy,
erased borders and microbial invention, geological and
nanographic time,
and extinction events. The possibility of extinction has always
been a latent
figure in the textual production and archives; but the current
sense of deple-
tion, decay, mutation and exhaustion calls for new modes of
address, new

styles of publishing and authoring, and new formats and speeds
of distri-
bution. As the pressures and re-alignments of this re-
arrangement occur, so
must the critical languages and conceptual templates, political
premises and
definitions of “life.” There is a particular need to publish in a
timely fashion
experimental monographs that redefine the boundaries of
disciplinary fields,
rhetorical invasions, the interface of conceptual and scientific
languages,
and geomorphic and geopolitical interventions. Critical Climate
Change is
oriented, in this general manner, toward the epistemo-political
mutations
that correspond to the temporalities of terrestrial mutation.
A r t i n t he
A nt h ropo c ene
E nc ou nter s A mong A e s t het ic s , Pol it ic s ,
E nv i ron me nt s a nd E pi s te molog ie s
Edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin
London
2015
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS

First edition published by Open Humanities Press 2015
Freely available online at
http://openhumanitiespress.org/books/art-in-the-anthropocene
Copyright © 2015 Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin,
chapters by respective Authors.
This is an open access book, licensed under Creative Commons
By Attribution Non-
Commercial No-Derivatives license. Under this license, authors
allow anyone to
download, display, print, distribute, and/or copy their work so
long as: the authors
and source are cited, the work is not altered or transformed, and
the purpose is
non-commercial. No permission is required from the authors or
the publisher in
these cases. Statutory fair use and other rights are in no way
affected by the above.
Read more about the license at:
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0.
Cover art, figures, and other media included with this book may
be under different
copyright restrictions. Please see the Permissions section at the
back of this book
for more information.
Cover Art Details: Mary Mattingly, House and Universe, 2013.
© Mary Mattingly.
PDF-ISBN-978-1-78542-017-7

Open Humanities Press is an international, scholar-led open-
access publishing
collective whose mission is to make leading works of
contemporary critical
thought freely available worldwide. More at
http://openhumanitiespress.org.
OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS
Contents
001 Acknowledgements
003 Art & Death: Lives Between the Fifth Assessment
& the Sixth Extinction
introduction by Heather Davis & Etienne Turpin
031 Edenic Apocalypse:
Singapore’s End-of-Time Botanical Tourism
project by Natasha Myers
043 Diplomacy in the Face of Gaia
Bruno Latour in conversation with Heather Davis
057 Becoming Aerosolar:
From Solar Sculptures to Cloud Cities
project by Tomás Saraceno, Sasha Engelmann &
Bronislaw Szerszynski

063 In the Planetarium:
The Modern Museum on the Anthropocenic Stage
essay by Vincent Normand
079 Physical Geology / The Library
project by Ilana Halperin
085 The Existence of the World Is Always Unexpected
Jean-Luc Nancy in conversation with John Paul Ricco
translated by Jeffrey Malecki
093 Cloud Writing:
Describing Soft Architectures of Change in the Anthropocene
essay by Ada Smailbegović
109 The Cerumen Strata:
From Figures to Configurations
project by Richard Streitmatter-Tran & Vi Le
117 Geochemistry & Other Planetary Perspectives
essay by Ursula Biemann
131 Images Do Not Show:
The Desire to See in the Anthropocene
essay by Irmgard Emmelhainz
143 The Fates of Negativity
Anselm Franke in conversation with Etienne Turpin
155 Design Specs in the Anthropocene:
Imagining the Force of 30,000 Years of Geologic Change
project by Jamie Kruse & Elizabeth Ellsworth (smudge studio)
167 The Marfa Stratum:

Contribution to a Theory of Sites
essay by Fabien Giraud & Ida Soulard
181 On the Building, Crashing, and Thinking of
Technologies & Selfhood
Peter Galison in conversation with Etienne Turpin
191 We’re Tigers
project by Ho Tzu Nyen
199 Technologies of Uncertainty in the Search for MH370
essay by Lindsay Bremner
213 Last Clouds
project by Karolina Sobecka
223 Islands & Other Invisible Territories
essay by Laurent Gutierrez & Valérie Portefaix (MAP Office)
233 Plants that Evolve (in some way or another)
project by Mixrice (Cho Jieun & Yang Chulmo)
241 Indigenizing the Anthropocene
essay by Zoe Todd
255 Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulhocene
Donna Haraway in conversation with Martha Kenney
271 Ecologicity, Vision, and the Neurological System
essay by Amanda Boetzkes
283 My Mother’s Garden:
Aesthetics, Indigenous Renewal, and Creativity
essay by Laura Hall

293 A History According to Cattle
project by Terike Haapoja & Laura Gustafsson
299 PostNatural Histories
Richard W. Pell in conversation with Emily Kutil & Etienne
Turpin
317 Dear Climate
project by Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl, Oliver Kellhammer
& Marina Zurkow
327 The Anthropocene:
A Process-State at the Edge of Geohistory?
essay by Peter Sloterdijk, translated by Anna-Sophie Springer
341 Public Smog
project by Amy Balkin
347 Life & Death in the Anthropocene:
A Short History of Plastic
essay by Heather Davis
359 Ecosystems of Excess
project by Pinar Yoldas
371 The Last Political Scene
Sylvère Lotringer in conversation with Heather Davis
& Etienne Turpin
379 #MISANTHROPOCENE:
24 Theses
poem by Joshua Clover & Juliana Spahr
385 Contributors

401 Permissions
Acknowledgements
We would like to begin by thanking all the contributors to this
volume for their
patience and perseverance; the book is a machine for
provocation because of your
generosity, solidarity, and commitment. We are also grateful to
Oscar Santos and
Human Resources Los Angeles for hosting an early discussion
of the book with
Sylvère Lotringer. A very special thank you to Lucas A.J.
Freeman for tireless inter-
view transcription and editing, to Jeffrey Malecki for translation
support and dis-
turbingly thorough copy editing, to Erik Bordeleau for ad hoc
translation support,
and to Anna-Sophie Springer for advice, support, and
translation in this collection.
Thanks also to Mary Mattingly for sharing artwork for the
cover, and to the Institute
for Figuring for images of their beautiful crochet coral reef
project. We also owe a
debt of gratitude to Sara Dean for her patient and precise design
of this book. This
project has benefited tremendously from the advice and
mentorship of our editors
in the Critical Climate Change series, Claire Colebrook and
Tom Cohen, as well as
our allies at the Open Humanities Press, Sigi Jottkandt and
David Ottina, to whom

we are especially grateful for the chance to bring this collection
together, and to
make it available as an open-access publication.
Heather Davis owes an enormous debt of gratitude to all those
who listened and pro-
vided advice on this project as it has unfolded, especially to
Michael Nardone for his
patience, love, and support throughout. I would also like to
thank Elizabeth Grosz,
Dehlia Hannah, Nicole Starosielski, Margaret Wertheim, and
Ada Smailbegović for
their friendship and intellectual generosity. This project would
not have been pos-
sible without the financial support of the FQRSC. I am
especially grateful to Michael
Bérubé and the Institute for the Arts and Humanities for
continued support.
Etienne Turpin would like to thank the many contributors to this
volume who are
also dear friends and collaborators, as well as the many friends,
mentors, and col-
leagues who have shaped his views on the Anthropocene,
including Nabil Ahmed,
Lauren B. Allen, Brock Baker, George Beccaloni, Pierre
Belanger, Andrew Berry, Lori
Brown, Melissa Cate Christ, Nigel Clark, Sonja Dahl, Seth
Denizen, Stefania Druga,
Anna Feigenbaum, Matthias Glaubrecht, Jason Groves, Nasrin
Himada, Stuart
Kendall, Eduardo Kohn, Sanford Kwinter, Adrian Lahoud, Dian
Ina Mahendra,
Miho Mazereeuw, Kiel Moe, Rudolf Mrazek, Hammad Nasar,
Dietmar Offenhuber,
Godofredo Pereira, Karen Pinkus, Rick Prelinger, Simon Price,

Robert Prys-Jones,
Farid Rakun, Alessandra Renzi, Laura Rozek, Megan Shaw
Prelinger, AbdouMaliq
Simone, Kyle Steinfeld, Paulo Tavares, Jane Wolff, and Joanna
Zylinska. A special
thanks again to Sigi Jottkandt and David Ottina for their
continued friendship and
support. I would also like to thank my University of
Wollongong senior colleagues
Pascal Perez, Katina Michael, Lesley Head, as well as my
research collaborators at
the SMART Infrastructure Facility, especially Matthew
Berryman, Robert Ogie, and
2
Rohan Wickramasuriya. A special thanks to Tomas Holderness
for countless hours
of conversation and collaboration, and my ongoing gratitude
goes out to our in-
credible research team at PetaJakarta.org, without whom this
work would not have
been possible, especially Sara Dean, Yantri Dewi, Fitria
Sudirman, Alifa Rachmadia
Putri, Ariel Shepherd, Mohammad Kamil, Tatyana Kusumo,
Olivia Dun, and Frank
Sedlar. Finally, terimah kasih banyak to my colleagues in
Indonesia from Universitas
Indonesia, BPBD DKI Jakarta, Jakarta Timur, and Lembaga
Ilmu Pengetahuan
Indonesia, for their continued support, advice, humour, and
hospitality.

Art & Death:
Lives Between the Fifth Assessment
& the Sixth Extinction
Heather Davis & Etienne Turpin
In the 1930s Henri Cartier-Bresson remarked indignantly, “The
world is going to
pieces and people like [Ansel] Adams and [Edward] Weston are
photographing
rocks!”1 With his condemnation of the inorganic as an
unworthy subject for photo-
graphy, we understand Cartier-Bresson to be arguing for a more
socially engaged
art practice, one that would recognize the political economic
realities of the
Depression and the ways in which this decisively human context
is precisely what
allows art to share meaning and transform values. It is a
strangely contemporary
question: in the face of exploitation, brutality, and
impoverishment, shouldn’t art
address human suffering and struggle? Such a perspective—
albeit one contested
by Adams even then—assumes a difference in kind between the
shameful reality
of human exploits and their stony substrate. It is remarkable
that in less than a
century we should find the terms of this debate uncannily
entangled: what does it
mean for art to encounter the Anthropocene? If art is now a
practice condemned
to a homolithic earth—that is, to a world “going to pieces” as
the literal sediment
of human activity—how can aesthetic practices address the
social and political

spheres that are being set in stone? Becoming-geological undoes
aesthetic sensibil-
ities and ungrounds political commitments. As such, this
collection brings together
a multitude of disciplinary conversations concerned with art and
aesthetics that
are emerging around the Anthropocene thesis, drawing together
artists, curators,
scientists, theorists, and activists to address the geological
reformation of the hu-
man species.
Necessarily, this volume exceeds itself and its editors in every
respect, reaching
urgently beyond its paginated form toward environmental
concerns, aesthetic pre-
dilections, epistemological limits, and ethical aporiae. We
certainly didn’t set out
to contain the discourse of the Anthropocene, nor is it our
intention to exhaust the
potential lines of flight it provokes; the book is an intellectually
dissipative struc-
ture, operating as a conceptual centrifuge for further speculation
and future action.
It is not from some desire to add another conjunctive term to the
growing literature
on the Anthropocene that we turn to art; rather, art, as the
vehicle of aesthesis, is
central to thinking with and feeling through the Anthropocene.
And we believe the
inherent relation between the two occurs at a number of strata
and across various
scales. First, we argue that the Anthropocene is primarily a
sensorial phenomenon:
the experience of living in an increasingly diminished and toxic
world. Second, the

way we have come to understand the Anthropocene has
frequently been framed
through modes of the visual, that is, through data visualization,
satellite imagery,
4
climate models, and other legacies of the “whole earth.”2 Third,
art provides a pol-
yarchic site of experimentation for “living in a damaged
world,”3 as Anna Tsing has
called it, and a non-moral form of address that offers a range of
discursive, visual,
and sensual strategies that are not confined by the regimes of
scientific objectiv-
ity, political moralism, or psychological depression.4 To
approach the panoply of
complex issues that are aggregated within and adjacent to the
Anthropocene, as
well as their interconnections and intra-actions, it is necessary
to engage with and
encounter art.5 But before going further, we’d like to get some
formalities out of the
way regarding the Anthropocene thesis.
As you’ve probably heard by now, the International
Commission on Stratigraphy
and the International Union of Geological Sciences are
currently debating the rele-
vant scientific merits of the so-called Anthropocene Epoch,
which would allow the
organization to recognize a diachronic rift separating the epoch
of the Holocene—
since the last Ice Age receded almost twelve millennia ago—

from our current “hu-
man epoch.”6 The term was first popularized by the Dutch
chemist Paul J. Crutzen
in a 2002 paper he published in Nature, after which references
to the Anthropocene
began to appear within scientific publications regarding
hydrospheric, biospheric,
and pedospheric research.7 As both an acknowledgement of this
creeping informal
nomenclature and an attempt to reify it with the requisite
scientific standardiza-
tion, in 2007, the British stratigrapher Jan Zalasiewicz, then
serving as chairman of
the Geological Society of London’s Stratigraphy Commission,
asked his colleagues
to review the merits of these yet-to-be-substantiated (at least
from the point of
view of stratigraphic science) epochal claims. Since then, the
Anthropocene thesis
has made its way into a number of other scientific studies, as
well as nearly every
corner of the social sciences, humanities, and arts.
To determine whether or not the Anthropocene satisfies the
necessary criteria
for a new geological epoch, stratigraphers and geologists are
considering various
anthropogenic effects, including, but certainly not limited to:
the rise of agricul-
ture and attendant deforestation; the extraction of coal, oil, and
gas, and their
atmospheric consequences; the combustion of carbon-based
fuels and emissions;
coral reef loss; ocean acidification; soil degradation; a rate of
life-form extinction
occurring at thousands of times higher than throughout most of

the last half-billion
years; and, perhaps most surprisingly, a rate of human
propagation—a completely
unabated explosion in population growth—which, according to
the renowned
biologist E.O. Wilson, is “more bacterial than primate.”8
Even from this abbreviated list of possible considerations,
evidence suggests a
dramatic human impact; however, from the point of view of
geology, the obvious
problem is that, unlike all other geological epochs (and the even
longer eras
within which they accumulate), the Anthropocene is still in the
making. Because
we cannot know precisely how the stratifications that register
our anthropogenic
effects will stack up, the stratigraphic assemblage of the
Anthropocene is produced
through a process of speculative geology, operating according
to an intensive
Art and Death | Heather Davis & Etienne Turpin 5
physical intertext of geohistories, present concerns, and future
imaginaries. Not
least among its intellectual virtues, this speculative dimension
helps call attention
to—and occasionally overturn—certain bad habits of thinking
that allow humans
to conceive of objects, whether micro- or hyper-, aesthetic or
mundane, as distinct
from the processes of their emergence and decay.9

Of course, speculative considerations regarding the legibility of
anthropogenic
change also stir up the disputatious matter of when the period
can be said to have
begun.10 Three dominant positions now shape the geological
debate. In the estima-
tion of paleoclimatologist William Ruddiman, the eight-
thousand-year-old inven-
tion of agriculture and its attendant deforestation led to an
increase in atmospheric
carbon dioxide; this suggests that humans have been a primary
geological force on
the planet since nearly the beginning of the Holocene, making
the Anthropocene
nearly co-extensive with the last eleven and a half thousand
years, since the most
recent ice age. Crutzen has suggested his own date for the
beginning of the epoch,
putting the invention of the steam engine in the late-eighteenth
century at the
beginning of an uninterrupted rise in carbon dioxide emissions
that can be read
in ice-core samples. This date might be more precisely located
in 1789, the year
that witnessed the invention of the steam engine by James
Watt—the technology
that enabled human forces to exceed the modest limits of
muscle- (whether hu-
man or animal), wind-, and water-power—as well as the
publication of Immanuel
Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment?” This date is thus
especially peculiar, since,
for Crutzen, the moment at which human and natural history
become inseparable
coincides with the most decisive event of their (philosophical)
separation, Kant’s

alleged “Copernican Revolution.”11 Finally, a decisive mark for
the beginning of this
new epoch could be located in the irradiated soil that is
immediately apparent in
the sedimentary records following the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki,12 and at
the test sites on appropriated Indigenous territories. Not only
did the end of WWII
mark the proliferation of these radionuclides, but it also
designated the dramatic
postwar spike in population growth, consumption, and
technological development
referred to as the “Great Acceleration.”13 This potential
starting point would also
highlight the recent explosive growth of the global human
population, which now
exceeds seven billion.14
In his remarkable essay reflecting on nuclear catastrophe from
Hiroshima to
Fukushima, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy makes an appeal to
remain “exposed,”
that is, to endure our encounter with catastrophic loss by
allowing ourselves to
sense it. If we move too quickly, even catastrophes, like
everything else under capi-
talism, become little more than general equivalents of exchange.
“We are being ex-
posed to a catastrophe of meaning,” Nancy asserts, adding,
“Let’s not hurry to hide
this exposure under pink, blue, red, or black silks. Let us
remain exposed, and let us
think about what is happening [ce qui nous arrive] to us: Let us
think that it is we
who are arriving, or are leaving.”15 The Anthropocene invites
these considerations

of arrival and departure, ones that are variously taken up
throughout the book. The
broad areas of concern that form the subtitle of this book are
too common among
6
the contributions, and too entangled within each contribution, to
be parcelled out
sectionally; we thus decided to leave the book as a collection of
forces, vectors, con-
cerns, and perspectives that can be engaged and read in multiple
orders. While the
collection itself is not divided thematically, we nevertheless
want to provide a few
lines of entry—lines that have animated our own thinking,
writing, and activism—
to the volume that follows. In order to embrace this abundance
without reducing
it to generalities, the remainder of the introduction proceeds
according to four
especially intense trajectories of the Anthropocene. We begin
with “Extrapolations
Beyond Geology,” examining how the proposal for an era of the
anthropos has both
disrupted and enticed other intellectual orbits well beyond
stratigraphy and geol-
ogy; in “Aesthesis and Perception,” we address the role of
sensation in constituting
experience, as well as the potential for sharing sensation across
genres, disciplines,
and species; we then move to “Spatial Politics to Contested
Territories” in order
to narrate some of the critical transformations within the field

of aesthetics that
have occurred over the last half century, as tools for data
visualization, forensics,
and territorial analysis have shaped art in both concept and
practice; finally, in
“Numeracy and the Survival of Worlds,” we consider the role of
numeracy as a
requisite epistemic guide for temporal knowledges dealing in
difficult-to-conceive
sequences of time, such as the Anthropocene. We conclude this
introduction by
asking what imaginaries might be possible under the sign of the
Anthropocene,
and how they could be constructed to refuse both false hope and
the apocalyptic
foreclosure of possible futures. We also want to acknowledge
that whatever the
outcome of the International Stratigraphic Commission in
considering the merits
of the Anthropocene thesis, the cultural, aesthetic, and
theoretical implications of
this discourse are neither isomorphic, nor easily dismissed.
What follows, then,
might be considered a propositional itinerary, accompanied by
some preliminary
heuristics, for encountering art in the Anthropocene.
Extrapolations Beyond Geology
This is exactly what I fear with the Anthropocene thesis; it
proposes a
“future perfect continuous” tense, which puts theorists into a
very agreeable
position.
— Isabelle Stengers16

Beyond the stratigraphic discussion, the Anthropocene can be
felt as a call to
re-imagine the human through biology and geology.17 It is a
call, in other words,
to place our industrialized present—a present that consumes
time itself—
within a temporal frame that is at once evolutionary and
geologic. As a
charismatic mega-concept (and one that seems to herald its own
extinction
through its enunciation), it emphasizes the need, as Donna
Haraway says, “for a
word to highlight the urgency of human impact on this planet,
such that the effects
of our species are literally written into the rocks.”18 The
Anthropocene is a term that
Art and Death | Heather Davis & Etienne Turpin 7
beckons environmental justice thinking, asking what worlds we
are intentionally
and inadvertently creating, and what worlds we are foreclosing
while living within
an increasingly diminished present. It has become a concept that
speaks not just to
the hallmarks of our time, such as climate change and the so-
called Sixth Extinction,
but creates a need to think through the interconnections and
interactions of these
events in conjunction with political economic logics and their
attendant debts to the
future.19 This is because, despite its emergence from a
relatively unknown corner

of the geological sciences, the Anthropocene is a collective
assemblage of scientific
enunciation that is also an inherently political concept, albeit
one that many critics
have suggested remains inadequate for describing the present
situation.
As many contributors to this volume make clear, the devastation
that characterizes
the Anthropocene is not simply the result of activities
undertaken by the species
Homo sapiens; instead, these effects derive from a particular
nexus of epistemic,
technological, social, and political economic coalescences
figured in the contem-
porary reality of petrocapitalism. This petrocapitalism
represents the heightened
hierarchical relations of humans, the continued violence of
white supremacy, colo-
nialism, patriarchy, heterosexism, and ableism, all of which
exacerbate and subtend
the violence that has been inflicted upon the non-human world.
The dissatisfaction
with the term Anthropocene, due to its etymological obfuscation
of these forms
of specific and historical violence, has lead to a proliferation of
alternative terms,
with “Capitalocene” the most widely circulated alternate
designation for our
contemporary epoch.20 The Capitalocene, as articulated by
Donna Haraway, points
directly to a voracious political economic system that knows no
bounds, one where
human lives, the lives of other creatures, and the beauty and
wealth of the earth
itself are figured as mere resources and externalities. “Profit

above all else,” the
logical extension of the surplus value accumulated through
colonialism and slavery,
has proven to be the most destructive force the world has ever
seen. In the Judeo-
Christian tradition, it is the law that is written in stone; in the
Anthropocene, it is
the violence of a lawless, murderous order called capitalism. If
the Anthropocene
calls us to imagine humanity written into the rock of the Earth
itself, capitalism
is the instrument of this brutal inscription, for it is not the
products of humanity
that will come to be stratified, but the externalities of Monsanto
and Dupont, the
radiation of nuclear bombs, and the oil spills of Exxon Mobile,
as Haraway makes
clear in this volume. In other words, figuring the Anthropocene
as a “species ques-
tion” hides the most significant problem of our present
situation: the asymmetrical
power relations that have resulted in the massive transformation
of the Earth
through industrialized agriculture, resource extraction, energy
production, and
petrochemicals. Nevertheless, using the Anthropocene to simply
restate one’s po-
litical commitments more emphatically, without addressing the
pressing questions
of population growth, technological interdependencies, and the
contingent obliga-
tions of human settlement patterns, is an exercise in ideological
futility; finding
new approaches to posing problems is the work of both making
art and making
theory in the Anthropocene.21

8
To emphasize the historical specificity of the Anthropocene,
Jean-Luc Nancy and
Peter Sloterdijk both propose the term “Technosphere” in order
to emphasize the
significance of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, and to name
technological
processes as well as the attendant belief in a teleological
orientation to technology.
This, of course, is not detached from particular people and
particular epistemolo-
gies named by Sloterdijk’s alternate designation, the
“Eurocene.”22 Indeed, a word
like Eurocene might open up spaces for thinking more
coherently about the colonial
implications of the Anthropocene, which are made even more
explicit by the term
“Plantationocene.”23 In a recent article published in Nature,
Simon Lewis and Mark
Maslin argue that the Anthropocene should be dated to 1610
(the “Orbis Spike”),
as the Columbian Exchange “led to the largest population
replacement in the past
13,000 years, the first global trade networks linking Europe,
China, Africa, and the
Americas, and the resultant mixing of previously separate
biotas.”24 This biological
evidence for the Anthropocene also highlights how these
systems of globalization
and trade were dependent on genocide and slavery. The
Anthropocene, by this
dating, is thus the era of colonial genocide.

In this collection, Laura Hall and Zoe Todd both insist on an
ethical relationality
with Indigenous Peoples and philosophies to begin the process
of decoloniza-
tion, one that would help us move away from the conditions that
created the
Anthropocene, and perhaps from the notion of the Anthropocene
itself. Hall writes:
“As vitally important as it is to take on the human and
ecological challenges facing
our species as a result of environmental degradation,
perspectives that do not seek
to understand the Creation stories and truths of Indigenous
Peoples globally—and
which pin evolutionary nihilism equally on all groups involved
throughout time and
history—exacerbate existing ecologically damaging colonial
relationships.”25 Todd
argues forcefully in her essay that the increasing prominence of
the Anthropocene
is tantamount to a colonizing move, as a space marked by white
supremacy—or
what Sara Ahmed has called “white men as buildings”—that
serves to erase other
ways of being and other kinds of knowledge, epistemologies
that are often drawn
on implicitly without proper citation or acknowledgement.
Rather, the move to-
ward an ethical relationality that Todd highlights would bring
attention to the …

Dialogue
_____________________________________________________
________________________
Our Sea of Islands
EPELI HAU‘OFA
The Contemporary Pacific, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 1994,
147–161. First published in A New
Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, edited by Vijay
Naidu, Eric Waddell, and Epeli
Hau‘ofa. Suva: School of Social and Economic Development,
The University of the South Pacific,
1993.
Our Sea of Islands

Epeli Haucofa
T his essay raises some issues of great importance to our region,
and
offers a view of Oceania that is new and optimistic. What I say
here is
likely to disturb a number of men and women who have
dedicated their
lives to Oceania and for whom I hold the greatest respect and
affection,
and always will.
In our region, two levels of operation are pertinent to the
purposes of
this paper. The first is that of national governments and
regional and
international diplomacy, in which the present and future of
Pacific island
states and territories are planned and decided on. Discussions
here are the
preserve of politicians, bureaucrats, statutory body officials,
diplomats
and the military, and representatives of the financial and
business com-
munities, often in conjunction with donor and international
lending
organizations, and advised by academic and consultancy
experts. Much
that passes at this level concerns aid, concessions, trade,
investment,
defense and security, matters that have taken the Pacific further
and fur-
ther into dependency on powerful nations.
The other level is that of ordinary people, peasants and

proletarians,
who, because of the poor flow of benefits from the top,
skepticism about
stated policies and the like, tend to plan and make decisions
about their
lives independently, sometimes with surprising and dramatic
results that
go unnoticed or ignored at the top. Moreover, academic and
consultancy
experts tend to overlook or misinterpret grassroots activities
because they
do not fit with prevailing views about the nature of society and
its devel-
opment.
Views of the Pacific from the level of macroeconomics and
macropoli-
tics often differ markedly from those from the level of ordinary
people.
The vision of Oceania presented in this essay is based on my
observations
of behavior at the grass roots.
Having clarified my vantage point, I make a statement of the
obvious-
that views held by those in dominant positions about their
subordinates
148
DIALOGUE I49
could have significant consequences for people's self-image and
for the

ways they cope with their situations. Such views, which are
often deroga-
tory and belittling, are integral to most relationships of
dominance and
subordination, wherein superiors behave in ways or say things
that are
accepted by their inferiors, who in turn behave in ways that
serve to per-
petuate the relationships.
In Oceania, derogatory and belittling views of indigenous
cultures are
traceable to the early years of interactions with Europeans. The
wholesale
condemnation by Christian missionaries of Oceanic cultures as
savage,
lascivious, and barbaric has had a lasting and negative effect on
people's
views of their histories and traditions. In a number of Pacific
societies peo-
ple still divide their history into two parts: the era of darkness
associated
with savagery and barbarism; and the era of light and
civilization ushered
in by Christianity.
In Papua New Guinea, European males were addressed and
referred to
as "masters" and workers as "boys." Even indigenous policemen
were
called "police boys." This use of language helped to reinforce
the col-
onially established social stratification along ethnic divisions. A
direct
result of colonial practices and denigration of Melanesian
peoples and cul-

tures as even more primitive and barbaric than those of
Polynesia can be
seen in the attempts during the immediate postcolonial years by
articulate
Melanesians to rehabilitate their cultural identity by cleansing it
of its
colonial taint and denigration. Leaders like Walter Lini of
Vanuatu and
Bernard Narokobi of Papua New Guinea have spent much of
their energy
extolling the virtues of Melanesian values as equal to if not
better than
those of their erstwhile colonizers.
Europeans did not invent belittlement. In many societies it was
part and
parcel of indigenous cultures. In the aristocratic societies of
Polynesia par-
allel relationships of dominance and subordination with their
parapherna-
lia of appropriate attitudes and behavior were the order of the
day. In
Tonga, the term for commoners is me'a vale 'the ignorant ones',
which is a
survival from an era when the aristocracy controlled all
important knowl-
edge in the society. Keeping the ordinary folk in the dark and
calling them
ignorant made it easier to control and subordinate them.
I would like, however, to focus on a currently prevailing notion
about
Islanders and their physical surroundings that, if not countered
with more
constructive views, could inflict lasting damage on people's
images of

themselves, and on their ability to act with relative autonomy in
their
15° THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC. SPRING 1994
endeavors to survive reasonably well within the international
system in
which they have found themselves. It is a belittling view that
has been
unwittingly propagated, mostly by social scientists who have
sincere con-
cern for the welfare of Pacific peoples.
According to this view, the small island states and territories of
the
Pacific, that is, all of Polynesia and Micronesia, are much too
small, too
poorly endowed with resources, and too isolated from the
centers of eco-
nomic growth for their inhabitants ever to be able to rise above
their
present condition of dependence on the largesse of wealthy
nations.
Initially, I agreed wholeheartedly with this perspective, and I
partici-
pated actively in its propagation. It seemed to be based on
irrefutable evi-
dence, on the reality of our existence. Events of the 1970S and
1980s con-
firmed the correctness of this view. The hoped-for era of
autonomy
following political independence did not materialize. Our
national leaders

were in the vanguard of a rush to secure financial aid from
every quarter;
our economies were stagnating or declining; our environments
were dete-
riorating or were threatened and we could do little about it; our
own peo-
ple were evacuating themselves to greener pastures elsewhere.
Whatever
remained of our resources, including our exclusive economic
zones, was
being hawked for the highest bid. Some of our islands had
become, in the
words of one social scientist, "MIRAB societies"-pitiful
microstates con-
demned forever to depend on migration, remittances, aid, and
bureauc-
racy, and not on any real economic productivity. Even the better
resource-
endowed Melanesian countries were mired in dependency,
indebtedness,
and seemingly endless social fragmentation and political
instability. What
hope was there for us?
This bleak view of our existence was so relentlessly pushed that
I began
to be concerned about its implications. I tried to find a way out
but could
not. Then two years ago I began noticing the reactions of my
students
when I described and explained our situation of dependence.
Their faces
crumbled visibly, they asked for solutions, I could offer none. I
was so
bound to the notion of smallness that even if we improved our
approaches

to production, for example, the absolute size of our islands
would still
impose such severe limitations that we would be defeated in the
end.
But the faces of my students continued to haunt me mercilessly.
I began
asking questions of myself. What kind of teaching is it to stand
in front of
young people from your own region, people you claim as your
own, who
have come to university with high hopes for the future, and you
tell them
DIALOGUE
that our countries are hopeless? Is this not what neocolonialism
is all
about? To make people believe that they have no choice but to
depend?
Soon the realization dawned on me. In propagating a view of
hopeless-
ness, I was actively participating in our own belittlement. I
decided to do
something about it, but I thought that since any new perspective
must
confront some of the sharpest and most respected minds in the
region, it
must be well researched and thought out if it was to be taken
seriously. It
was a daunting task, and I hesitated.
Then came invitations for me to speak at Kona and Hilo on the

Big
Island of Hawai'i at the end of March 1993. The lecture at
Kona, to a
meeting of the Association of Social Anthropologists in
Oceania, was
written before I left Suva. The speech at the University of
Hawai'i at Hilo
was forming in my mind and was to be written when I got to
Hawai'i. I
had decided to tryout my new perspective, although it had not
been prop-
erly researched. I could hold back no longer. The drive from
Kona to Hilo
was my "road to Damascus." I saw such scenes of grandeur as I
had not
seen before: the eerie blackness of regions covered by recent
volcanic erup-
tions; the remote majesty of Maunaloa, long and smooth, the
world's
largest volcano; the awesome craters of KIlauea threatening to
erupt at
any moment; and the lava flow on the coast not far away. Under
the aegis
of Pele, and before my very eyes, the Big Island was growing,
rising from
the depths of a mighty sea. The world of Oceania is not small; it
is huge
and growing bigger every day.
The idea that the countries of Polynesia! and Micronesia are too
small,
too poor, and too isolated to develop any meaningful degree of
autonomy
is an economistic and geographic deterministic view of a very
narrow kind
that overlooks culture history and the contemporary process of

what may
be called world enlargement that is carried out by tens of
thousands of
ordinary Pacific Islanders right across the ocean-from east to
west and
north to south, under the very noses of academic and
consultancy experts,
regional and international development agencies, bureaucratic
planners
and their advisers, and customs and immigration officials-
making non-
sense of all national and economic boundaries, borders that
have been
defined only recently, crisscrossing an ocean that had been
boundless for
ages before Captain Cook's apotheosis.
If this very narrow, deterministic perspective is not questioned
and
checked, it could contribute importantly to an eventual
consignment of
groups of human beings to a perpetual state of wardship wherein
they and
THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC. SPRING 1994
their surrounding lands and seas would be at the mercy of the
manipula-
tors of the global economy and "world orders" of one kind or
another.
Belittlement in whatever guise, if internalized for long, and
transmitted
across generations, may lead to moral paralysis, to apathy, and
to the

kind of fatalism that we can see among our fellow human beings
who have
been herded and confined to reservations or internment camps.
People in
some of our islands are in danger of being confined to mental
reservations,
if not already to physical ones. I am thinking here of people in
the
Marshall Islands, who have been victims of atomic and missile
tests by the
United States.
Do people in most of Oceania live in tiny confined spaces? The
answer
is yes if one believes what certain social scientists are saying.
But the idea
of smallness is relative; it depends on what is included and
excluded in any
calculation of size. When those who hail from continents, or
islands adja-
cent to continents-and the vast majority of human beings live in
these
regions-when they see a Polynesian or Micronesian island they
naturally
pronounce it small or tiny. Their calculation is based entirely on
the extent
of the land surfaces they see.
But if we look at the myths, legends, and oral traditions, and the
cos-
mologies of the peoples of Oceania, it becomes evident that
they did not
conceive of their world in such microscopic proportions. Their
universe
comprised not only land surfaces, but the surrounding ocean as
far as they

could traverse and exploit it, the underworld with its fire-
controlling and
earth-shaking denizens, and the heavens above with their
hierarchies of
powerful gods and named stars and constellations that people
could count
on to guide their ways across the seas. Their world was
anything but tiny.
They thought big and recounted their deeds in epic proportions.
One leg-
endary Oceanic athlete was so powerful that during a
competition he
threw his javelin with such force that it pierced the horizon and
disap-
peared until th~t night when it was seen streaking across the sky
like a
meteor. Every now and then it reappears to remind people of the
mighty
deed. And as far as I'm concerned it is still out there, near
Jupiter or some-
where. That was the first rocket ever sent into space. Islanders
today still
relish exaggerating things out of all proportion. Smallness is a
state of
mind.
There is a world of difference between viewing the Pacific as
"islands in
a far sea" and as "a sea of islands."2 The first emphasizes dry
surfaces in a
vast ocean far from the centers of power. Focusing in this way
stresses the
smallness and remoteness of the islands. The second is a more
holistic per-

DIALOGUE 153
spective in which things are seen in the totality of their
relationships. I
return to this point later. Continental men, namely Europeans,
on enter-
ing the Pacific after crossing huge expanses of ocean,
introduced the view
of "islands in a far sea." From this perspective the islands are
tiny, isolated
dots in a vast ocean. Later on, continental men-Europeans and
Ameri-
cans-drew imaginary lines across the sea, making the colonial
bounda-
ries that confined ocean peoples to tiny spaces for the first time.
These
boundaries today define the island states and territories of the
Pacific. I
have just used the term ocean peoples because our ancestors,
who had
lived in the Pacific for over two thousand years, viewed their
world as "a
sea of islands" rather than as "islands in the sea." This may be
seen in a
common categorization of people, as exemplified in Tonga by
the inhabi-
tants of the main, capital, island, who used to refer to their
compatriots
from the rest of the archipelago not so much as "people from
outer
islands" as social scientists would say, but as kakai mei tahi or
just tahi
'people from the sea'. This characterization reveals the
underlying as-
sumption that the sea is home to such people.

The difference between the two perspectives is reflected in the
two
terms used for our region: Pacific Islands and Oceania. The first
term,
Pacific Islands, is the prevailing one used everywhere; it
denotes small
areas of land sitting atop submerged reefs or seamounts. Hardly
any
anglophone economist, consultancy expert, government planner,
or de-
velopment banker in the region, uses the term Oceania, perhaps
because it
sounds grand and somewhat romantic, and may denote
something so vast
that it would compel them to a drastic review of their
perspectives and
policies. The French and other Europeans use the term Oceania
to an
extent that English speakers, apart from the much-maligned
anthropolo-
gists and a few other sea-struck scholars, have not. It may not
be coinci-
dental that Australia, New Zealand, and the United States,
anglophone
all, have far greater interests in the Pacific and how it is
perceived than
have the distant European nations.
Oceania denotes a sea of islands with their inhabitants. The
world of
our ancestors was a large sea full of places to explore, to make
their homes
in, to breed generations of seafarers like themselves. People
raised in this
environment were at home with the sea. They played in it as

soon as they
could walk steadily, they worked in it, they fought on it. They
developed
great skills for navigating their waters, and the spirit to traverse
even the
few large gaps that separated their island groups.
Theirs was a large world in which peoples and cultures moved
and
mingled, unhindered by boundaries of the kind erected much
later by
imperial powers. From one island to another they sailed to trade
and to
marry, thereby expanding social networks for greater flows of
wealth.
They traveled to visit relatives in a wide variety of natural and
cultural
surroundings, to quench their thirst for adventure, and even to
fight and
dominate.
Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Niue, Rotuma, Tokelau, Tuvalu, Futuna,
and
Uvea formed a large exchange community in which wealth and
people
with their skills and arts circulated endlessly. From this
community people
ventured to the north and west, into Kiribati, the Solomon
Islands,
Vanuatu, and New Caledonia, which formed an outer arc of less
intensive

exchange. Evidence of this voyaging is provided by existing
settlements
within Melanesia of descendants of these seafarers. [Only blind
landlub-
bers would say that settlements like these, as well as those in
New Zealand
and Hawai'i, were made through accidental voyages by people
who got
blown off course-presumably while they were out fishing with
their
wives, children, pigs, dogs, and food-plant seedlings-during a
hurri-
cane.] The Cook Islands and French Polynesia formed a
community simi-
lar to that of their cousins to the west; hardy spirits from this
community
ventured southward and founded settlements in Aotearoa, while
others
went in the opposite direction to discover and inhabit the
islands of
Hawai'i. Also north of the equator is the community that was
centered
on Yap.
Melanesia is supposedly the most fragmented world of all: tiny
com-
munities isolated by terrain and at least one thousand languages.
The
truth is that large regions of Melanesia were integrated by
trading and cul-
tural exchange systems that were even more complex than those
of
Polynesia and Micronesia. Lingua francas and the fact that most
Melane-
sians were and are multilingual (which is more than one can say
about

most Pacific rim countries), make utter nonsense of the notion
that they
were and still are babblers of Babel. It was in the interest of
imperialism
and is in the interest of neocolonialism, to promote this blatant
miscon-
ception of Melanesia. 3
Evidence of the conglomerations of islands with their
economies and
cultures is readily available in the oral traditions of the islands,
and in
blood ties that are retained today. The highest chiefs of Fiji,
Samoa, and
Tonga, for example, still maintain kin connections that were
forged centu-
ries before Europeans entered the Pacific, to the days when
boundaries
DIALOGUE 155
were not imaginary lines in the ocean, but rather points of entry
that were
constantly negotiated and even contested. The sea was open to
anyone
who could navigate a way through.
This was the kind of world that bred men and women with skills
and
courage that took them into the unknown, to discover and
populate all
the habitable islands east of the BOth meridian. The great fame
that they
have earned posthumously may have been romanticized, but it is

solidly
based on real feats that could have been performed only by
those born and
raised with an open sea as their home.
Nineteenth-century imperialism erected boundaries that led to
the con-
traction of Oceania, transforming a once boundless world into
the Pacific
Island states and territories that we know today. People were
confined to
their tiny spaces, isolated from each other. No longer could they
travel
freely to do what they had done for centuries. They were cut off
from their
relatives abroad, from their far-flung sources of wealth and
cultural
enrichment. This is the historical basis of the view that our
countries are
small, poor, and isolated. It is true only insofar as people are
still fenced in
and quarantined.
This assumption is no longer tenable as far as the countries of
central
and western Polynesia are concerned, and may be untenable also
of
Micronesia. The rapid expansion of the world economy in the
years since
World War II may have intensified third world dependency, as
has been
noted from certain vantage points at high-level academia, but it
also had a
liberating effect on the lives of ordinary people in Oceania, as it
did in the
Caribbean islands. The new economic reality made nonsense of

artificial
boundaries, enabling the people to shake off their confinement.
They have
since moved, by the tens of thousands, doing what their
ancestors did in
earlier times: enlarging their world as they go, on a scale not
possible
before. Everywhere they go, to Australia, New Zealand,
Hawai'i, the
mainland United States, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere, they
strike roots
in new resource areas, securing employment and overseas
family property,
expanding kinship networks through which they circulate
themselves,
their relatives, their material goods, and their stories all across
their
ocean, and the ocean is theirs because it has always been their
home.
Social scientists may write of Oceania as a Spanish Lake, a
British Lake,
an American Lake, and even a Japanese Lake. But we all know
that only
those who make the ocean their home and love it, can really
claim it as
their own. Conquerors come, conquerors go, the ocean remains,
mother
only to her children. This mother has a big heart though; she
adopts any-
one who loves her.

The resources of Samoans, Cook Islanders, Niueans,
Tokelauans,
Tuvaluans, I-Kiribati, Fijians, Indo-Fijians, and Tongans, are no
longer
confined to their national boundaries. They are located
wherever these
people are living, permanently or otherwise, as they were before
the age of
western imperialism. One can see this any day at seaports and
airports
throughout the central Pacific, where consignments of goods
from homes
abroad are unloaded as those of the homelands are loaded.
Construction
materials, agricultural machinery, motor vehicles, other heavy
goods, and
a myriad other things are sent from relatives abroad, while
handcrafts,
tropical fruits and root crops, dried marine creatures, kava, and
other
delectables are dispatched from the homelands. Although this
flow of
goods is generally not included in official statistics, much of
the welfare of
ordinary people of Oceania depends on an informal movement
along
ancient routes drawn in bloodlines invisible to the enforcers
of'the laws of
confinement and regulated mobility.
The world of Oceania is neither tiny nor deficient in resources.
It was
so only as a condition of the colonial confinement that lasted
less than a
century in a history of millennia. Human nature demands space
for free

movement, and the larger the space the better it is for people.
Islanders
have broken out of their confinement, are moving around and
away from
their homelands, not so much because their countries are poor,
but
because they were unnaturally confined and severed from many
of their
traditional sources of wealth, and because it is in their blood to
be mobile.
They are once again enlarging their world, establishing new
resource
bases and expanded networks for circulation. Alliances are
already being
forged by an increasing number of Islanders with the tangata
whenua of
Aotearoa and will inevitably be forged with the native
Hawaiians. It is not
inconceivable that if Polynesians ever get together, their two
largest home-
lands will be reclaimed in one form or another. They have
already made
their presence felt in these homelands, and have stamped
indelible
imprints on the cultural landscapes.
We cannot see the processes outlined here clearly if we confine
our
attention to things within national boundaries and to events at
the upper
levels of political economies and regional and international
diplomacy.
Only when we focus on what ordinary people are actually doing,
rather

DIALOGUE 157
than on what they should be doing, can we see the broader
picture of
reality.
The world of Oceania may no longer include the heavens and
the
underworld, but it certainly encompasses the great cities of
Australia,
New Zealand, the United States, and Canada. It is within this
expanded
world that the extent of the people's resources must be
measured.
In general, the living standards of Oceania are higher than those
of
most third world societies. To attribute this merely to aid and
remittances
-misconstrued deliberately or otherwise as a form of dependence
on rich
countries' economies-is an unfortunate misreading of
contemporary
reality. Ordinary Pacific people depend for their daily existence
much,
much more on themselves and their kin, wherever they may be,
than on
anyone's largesse, which they believe is largely pocketed by the
elite
classes. The funds and goods that homes-abroad people send
their home-
land relatives belong to no one but themselves. They earn every
cent
through hard physical toil in the new locations that need and
pay for their

labor. They also participate in the manufacture of many of the
goods they
send home; they keep the streets and buildings of Auckland
clean, and its
transportation system running smoothly; they keep the suburbs
of the
western United States (including Hawai'i) trimmed, neat, green,
and
beautiful; and they have contributed much, much more than has
been
acknowledged.
On the other hand Islanders in their homelands are not the
parasites on
their relatives abroad that misinterpreters of "remittances"
would have us
believe. Economists do not take account of the social centrality
of the
ancient practice of reciprocity, the core of all oceanic cultures.
They over-
look the fact that for everything homeland relatives receive,
they recipro-
cate with goods they themselves produce, by maintaining
ancestral roots
and lands for everyone, homes with warmed hearths for
travelers to
return to permanently or to strengthen their bonds, their souls,
and their
identities before they move on again. This is not dependence but
interde-
pendence, which is purportedly the essence of the global
system. To say
that it is something else and less is not only erroneous, but
denies people
their dignity.

What I have stated so far should already have provided
sufficient
response to the assertion that the islands are isolated. They are
clearly not.
Through developments in high technology, communications and
trans-
THE CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC· SPRING 1994
portation systems are a vast improvement on what they were
twenty years
ago. These may be very costly by any standard, but they are
available and
used. Telecommunications companies are making fortunes out
of lengthy
conversations between breathless relatives thousands of miles
apart.
But the islands are not connected only with regions of the
Pacific rim.
Within Oceania itself people are once again circulating in
increasing num-
bers and frequency. Regional organizations-intergovernmental,
educa-
tional, religious, sporting, and cultural-are responsible for much
of this
mobility. The University of the South Pacific, with its highly
mobile staff
and student bodies comprising men, women, and youth from the
twelve
island countries that own it and from outside the Pacific, is an
excellent
example. Increasingly the older movers and shakers of the
islands are

being replaced by younger ones; and when they meet each other
in Suva,
Honiara, Apia, Vila, or any other capital city of the Pacific,
they meet as
friends, as people who have gone through the same place of
learning, who
have worked and played and prayed together.
The importance of our ocean for the stability of the global
environ-
ment, for meeting a significant proportion of the world's protein
require-
ments, for the production of certain marine resources in waters
that are
relatively clear of pollution, for the global reserves of mineral
resources,
among others, has been increasingly recognized, and puts paid
to the
notion that Oceania is the hole in the doughnut. Together with
our exclu-
sive economic zones, the areas of the earth's surface that most
of our
countries occupy can no longer be called small. In this regard,
Kiribati,
the Federated States of Micronesia, and French Polynesia, for
example,
are among the largest countries in the world. The emergence of
organiza-
tions such as SPACHEE (South Pacific Action Committee for
Human Envi-
ronment and Ecology), SPREP (South Pacific Regional
Environment Pro-
gramme), the Forum Fisheries Agency, and SOPAC (South
Pacific Applied
Geosciences Commission); of movements for a nuclear-free
Pacific, the

prevention of toxic waste disposal, and the ban on the wall-of-
death fish-
ing methods, with linkages to similar organizations and
movements else-
where; and the establishment at the University of the South
Pacific of the
Marine Science and Ocean Resources Management programs,
with link-
ages to fisheries and ocean resources agencies throughout the
Pacific and
beyond; all indicate that we could playa pivotal role in the
protection and
sustainable development of our ocean. There are no people on
earth more
suited to be guardians of the world's largest ocean than those
for whom it
DIALOGUE 159
has been home for generations. Although this is a different issue
from the
ones I have focused on for most of this paper, it is relevant to
the concern
for a far better future for us than has been prescribed and
predicted. Our
role in the protection and development of our ocean is no mean
task; it is
no less than a major contribution to the well-being of humanity.
Because it
could give us a sense of doing something very worthwhile and
noble, we
should seize the moment with dispatch.
The perpetrators of the smallness view of Oceania have pointed

out
quite correctly …
Donna Haraway
Tentacular
Thinking:
Anthropocene,
Capitalocene,
Chthulucene
We are all lichens.
Ð Scott Gilbert, ÒWe Are All Lichens NowÓ
1
Think we must. We must think.
Ð Stengers and Despret, Women Who Make
a Fuss
2
What happens when human exceptionalism and
bounded individualism, those old saws of
Western philosophy and political economics,

become unthinkable in the best sciences,
whether natural or social? Seriously unthinkable:
not available to think with. Biological sciences
have been especially potent in fermenting
notions about all the mortal inhabitants of the
Earth since the imperializing eighteenth century.
Homo sapiens Ð the Human as species, the
Anthropos as the human species,Modern Man Ð
was a chief product of these knowledge
practices. What happens when the best biologies
of the twenty-first century cannot do their job
with bounded individuals plus contexts, when
organisms plus environments, or genes plus
whatever they need, no longer sustain the
overflowing richness of biological knowledges, if
they ever did? What happens when organisms
plus environments can hardly be remembered for
the same reasons that even Western-indebted

people can no longer figure themselves as
individuals and societies of individuals in
human-only histories? Surely such a
transformative time on Earth must not be named
the Anthropocene!
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWith all the unfaithful offspring of the sky
gods, with my littermates who find a rich wallow
in multispecies muddles, I want to make a
critical and joyful fuss about these matters. I
want to stay with the trouble, and the only way I
know to do that is in generative joy, terror, and
collective thinking.
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMy first demon familiar in this task will be a
spider, Pimoa cthulhu, who lives under stumps in
the redwood forests of Sonoma and Mendocino
Counties, near where I live in North Central
California.
3

Nobody lives everywhere; everybody
lives somewhere. Nothing is connected to
everything; everything is connected to
something.
4
This spider is in place, has a place,
and yet is named for intriguing travels elsewhere.
This spider will help me with returns, and with
roots and routes.
5
The eight-legged tentacular
arachnid that I appeal to gets her generic name
from the language of the Goshute people of Utah
and her specific name from denizens of the
depths, from the abyssal and elemental entities,
called chthonic.
6
The chthonic powers of Terra

infuse its tissues everywhere, despite the
civilizing efforts of the agents of sky gods to
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09.18.16 / 17:33:21 EDT
A pro-composting bumper sticker designed by Annie Sprinkle
and Beth Stevens with Kern Toy Design.
astralize them and set up chief Singletons and
their tame committees of multiples or subgods,
the One and the Many. Making a small change in

the biologistÕs taxonomic spelling, from cthulhu
to chthulu, with renamed Pimoa chthulu I
propose a name for an elsewhere and elsewhen
that was, still is,and might yet be: the
Chthulucene. I remember that tentacle comes
from the Latin tentaculum, meaning Òfeeler,Ó and
tentare, meaning Òto feelÓ and Òto tryÓ; and I
know that my leggy spider has many-armed
allies. Myriad tentacles will be needed to tell the
story of the Chthulucene.
7
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe tentacular are not disembodied figures;
they are cnidarians, spiders, fingery beings like
humans and raccoons, squid, jellyfish, neural
extravaganzas, fibrous entities, flagellated
beings, myofibril braids, matted and felted
microbial and fungal tangles, probing creepers,
swelling roots, reaching and climbing tendrilled

ones. The tentacular are also nets and networks,
it critters, in and out of clouds. Tentacularity is
about life lived along lines Ð and such a wealth
of lines Ð not at points, not in spheres. ÒThe
inhabitants of the world, creatures of all kinds,
human and non-human, are wayfarersÓ;
generations are like Òa series of interlaced
trails.Ó
8
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊAll the tentacular stringy ones have made
me unhappy with posthumanism, even as I am
nourished by much generative work done under
that sign. My partner Rusten Hogness suggested
compost instead of posthuman(ism), as well as
humusities instead of humanities, and I jumped
into that wormy pile.
9
Human as humus has

potential, if we could chop and shred human as
Homo, the detumescing project of a self-making
and planet-destroying CEO. Imagine a
conference not on the Future of the Humanities
in the Capitalist Restructuring University, but
instead on the Power of the Humusities for a
Habitable Multispecies Muddle! Ecosexual
artists Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle made a
bumper sticker for me, for us, for SF:
ÒComposting is so hot!Ó
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊShaping her thinking about the times called
Anthropocene and Òmulti-faced Ga�aÓ (StengersÕs
term) in companionable friction with Latour,
Isabelle Stengers does not ask that we
recompose ourselves to become able, perhaps,
to Òface Ga�a.Ó But like Latour and even more like
Le Guin, one of her most generative SF writers,
Stengers is adamant about changing the story.

Focusing on intrusion rather than composition,
Stengers calls Gaia a fearful and devastating
power that intrudes on our categories of thought,
0
2
/
1
7
09.18.16 / 17:33:21 EDT
Humans are the entitled minority in the face of the sixth great
extinction. Copyright: Oregon Institute of Marine Biology,
University of Oregon
0
3
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09.18.16 / 17:33:21 EDT
that intrudes on thinking itself.

10
Earth/Gaia is
maker and destroyer, not resource to be
exploited or ward to be protected or nursing
mother promising nourishment. Gaia is not a
person but complex systemic phenomena that
compose a living planet. GaiaÕs intrusion into our
affairs is a radically materialist event that
collects up multitudes. This intrusion threatens
not life on Earth itself Ð microbes will adapt,
to put it mildly Ð but threatens the livability of
Earth for vast kinds, species, assemblages, and
individuals in an ÒeventÓ already under way
called the Sixth Great Extinction.
11
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊStengers, like Bruno Latour, evokes the
name of Gaia in the way James Lovelock and
Lynn Margulis did, to name complex nonlinear

couplings between processes that compose and
sustain entwined but nonadditive subsystems as
a partially cohering systemic whole.
12
In this
hypothesis, Gaia is autopoietic Ð self-forming,
boundary maintaining, contingent, dynamic, and
stable under some conditions but not others.
Gaia is not reducible to the sum of its parts, but
achieves finite systemic coherence in the face of
perturbations within parameters that are
themselves responsive to dynamic systemic
processes. Gaia does not and could not care
about human or other biological beingsÕ
intentions or desires or needs, but Gaia puts into
question our very existence, we who have
provoked its brutal mutation that threatens both
human and nonhuman livable presents and

futures. Gaia is not about a list of questions
waiting for rational policies;
13
Gaia is an intrusive
event that undoes thinking as usual. ÒShe is
what specifically questions the tales and refrains
of modern history. There is only one real mystery
at stake, here: it is the answer we, meaning
those who belong to this history, may be able to
create as we face the consequences of what we
have provoked.Ó
14
Anthropocene
So, what have we provoked? Writing in the midst
of CaliforniaÕs historic multiyear drought and the
explosive fire season of 2015, I need the
photograph of a fire set deliberately in June 2009
by Sustainable Resource Alberta near the

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