ABSTRACT
With the Anthropocene, the possibility of human extinction is no longer only the stuff of dystopian science fiction. What conceptual framework will be adequate to this new, already catastrophic reality? Many point out it is not humanity as such but industrial capitalism as developed from European colonialism, heterosexism, racism, and anthropocentrism that has heated the planet’s atmosphere. What concepts can describe the various levels of uneven organisation which the Anthropocene names, not simply for the sake of description, for science, but in order to formulate collective responses which could halt the catastrophic course of capitalism – that is, for politics? Guattari was one of the few post-war theorists, especially in France, who had a keen interest in environmentalism, and he folded its more-than-human scope into his eclectic vision of social change. This chapter will argue many of his concepts were constructed for confronting exactly the kind of capitalist crisis the Anthropocene entails. We will focus on strata, Integrated World Capitalism, machinic enslavement, and communism.
