Call for papers for the Special Issue ''Anthropocentrism and History''

Humanities bear anthropocentrism in their very name. History is no different. Ever since it was institutionalized and defined by tradition as the “science of men [sic] in time” (Marc Bloch), history has been viewed as the history of [hu]mankind. The anthropocentrism of the discipline had been questioned by several streams of thought in the last decades. Its notion of a stable, universal human essence that can serve as the measure of all things was called into question by poststructuralist, postcolonial, feminist and gender theory critiques, as well as postcolonial and posthumanist studies. This special issue, in dialogue with contemporary challenges of our time such as climate change, pandemic, migration, technological and mass extinction prospects, wars and violence, proposes to gather scholarly works questioning the limits of such an anthropocentric view of history and explore the possibilities of non-anthropocentric (or at least less anthropocentric) historical scholarship.

This is not an easy task. What is at stake is not only anthropocentrism — understood as an extremist avatar of humanism — but also historicity, the creed that views the flow of history and the passage of time as inherent and universal aspects of life and death, as well as of evolution and extinction. We also recognize that whether or not to promote non-anthropocentrism — and the question of human exceptionalism in general — involves a broad discussion on responsibility and ethics in history (Domańska, 2024).

Along with Donna Haraway (1988) and many other authors, we are convinced that the foundational notions of human exceptionalism and historicity excluded and marginalized alternative ways of being and knowing. Rather than a position of nowhere, they should be seen in their situatedness that arises from specific social, cultural, and historical contexts. Revisiting these notions, while acknowledging the diverse perspectives, worlds, and forms of knowledge, is a generational task; one invested in the search for new concepts able to cope with the challenges of a new historical condition. It is a task to debate future-oriented meanings ascribed to emergent experiences – some radically new, some arising from haunted pasts — against the backdrop of rapid and profound human-induced transformations of an entangled environmental and technological domain, full of enriched agencies, non-human and human, spanning across epochal and Anthropocenic landscapes (Simon, 2020).

Questioning the foundations of history as a discipline therefore involves not only a task of deconstruction but, even more urgently, the elaboration of “bridging concepts” and relational approaches toward the coexistence and collaboration between Western and non-Western knowledges, humans and nonhumans, humanities and natural sciences (Marino, 2022; Domańska, 2020), or assuming the form of “connective concepts” (Simon 2020) via worldwide public debates such as the Anthropocene predicament or the perils of Artificial Intelligence, referring to a more-than-human, environmental, and technological reality (Bonaldo, 2023; Tamm & Simon, 2020).

We warmly invite a diverse range of contributions to our upcoming special issue that equally aims to put to scrutiny the workings of traditional human-centric historical narratives and venture into exploring holistic and relational alternatives for history. On the one hand, we seek pieces that study the limitations of the construction of humanity within a largely Eurocentric framework, acknowledging the influences of colonialism and global capitalism, and the intersections with technology, nature, and non-Eurocentric knowledge systems. On the other hand, we hope to receive contributions aimed at exploring the contemporary historical condition, the active role of non-human entities in shaping history, and the mutual influences between humans, nonhumans, and the environment. We particularly welcome approaches that integrate perspectives from environmental history, animal history, big history, deep history, the Anthropocene's implications for reexamining human history, and insights from trans- and interdisciplinary fields, such as ecology, ethology, and science and technology studies (STS). Finally, we also encourage submissions that employ innovative methodologies for capturing non-human agency and reflect on the ethical considerations of anthropocentrism.

The ultimate goal of the special issue is to compile a collection that promotes a more entangled and multispecies historiography, acknowledging the coexistence of all life forms and entities in building historical knowledge. To that end, it seeks to foster contributions that broaden the scope of traditional historiography to include more-than-human interactions and ethical considerations, promoting a comprehensive understanding of our entangled temporalities.