The neologism maintains a relationship with the geological concept of the Anthropocene, insofar as it relates to what is scientifically disseminated, broadly speaking, regarding human agency within the environment — that is, the diverse anthropic actions that have transformed the world since the so-called Great Acceleration beginning in the 1950s and, progressively, by contemporary societies propelled by capitalism, in this temporal understanding.
The new term not only acknowledges the scientific fact of impacts affecting natural processes on a global scale, with evidence in the stratigraphic context of recent geological time — identified, for instance, in surveys throughout the planet — but, above all, designates the existence of our species in the world, a presence that dwells and thereby acts in the mutation of landscapes across time: distinct anthropic actions have occurred and continue to occur in places / stages of human scenes — a reference to the theatre — in a first symbolic instance.
Therefore, Antropocenica ["anthropo" + "cênica" (scenic)] encompasses the scientific concept identifying the proposed new geological epoch — the Anthropocene — in which we recognise the intensity and acceleration of transformations provoked by humanity on Earth; whilst reviving the metaphor of the "world as theatre," opening pathways to think and imagine "the scenes of human drama in the theatre of a changing world"; and theatre, in turn, as a term that also embraces the concept of built environment. Such scope transgresses the boundaries between Holocene and Pleistocene when we encounter, within this deeper temporality, the earliest members of our species. For Antropocenica, what matters ranges from the reflections of Earth System Sciences to the philosophical considerations on the Anthropocene, as conceptualised in this glossary.
Antropocenica observes this social actor entering the scene from a distant past, who lives and dwells in society; a transformative being whose technological advances progressively influence, at multiple levels and with varied impacts, the planet's dynamics through interaction with the environment, with other beings, and with itself — that is, considering human societies. A plural character, protagonist of its own drama, an ambivalent, ambiguous subject, creator and destroyer, who elaborates and engages within its scene. Antropocenica encompasses both the diverse landscape of human existence, which acts and expands its actions in the theatre of the world, and the narratives of this human agency, whence we may identify scenes of this active presence, whether expressed in ancient or contemporary ruins, in urban networks, and so forth.
The term also gestures towards other artistic expressions beyond theatre — painting, engraving, photography, cinema — expressive media through which diverse artists have elaborated and continue to elaborate images and imaginaries of human actions; and it suggests the diffuse and massive production of images — whether by the cultural industry more broadly or by individuals possessing mobile communication devices with integrated cameras — in social relations mediated by electronic screens within the contemporary existence of our species, marked by acceleration and instantaneity, by the incessant production and consumption of the spectacular human scenes of the present time.
Silvio Luiz Cordeiro