How to think about the end of the world and what we must do to rebuild
beyond that final moment, for readers of The Mushroom at the End of the
World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and Extinction: A Radical History by
Ashley Dawson
What are we to think as we facing the sixth extinction moment? Kant's
invitation to imagine an 'end of all things' no longer feels like just a
thought experiment.
Philosopher Ben Ware argues that we must accept this without looking
away. In fact, extinction is the very lens through which we see our
current reality. He argues that in order to map the catastrophic
present, we will first need to take a tiger's leap into the past in
order to construct a new 'dialectics of extinctions'.
On Extinction takes us on a breath-taking philosophical journey.
Bringing dialectical thought to bear on one of the most pressing issues
of our times, Ware argues that radical politics today should not be
concerned with merely averting the worst, but rather with beginning
again at the end bringing to completion a mode of political and
economic life which tethers us all-the yet to be born-to a sick but
undying present.
To think about the future in this way is itself a form of liberation
that might incubate the necessary radical solutions we need.
