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Panel 4 - Thinking Democracy in the Anthropocene

🌍 Conference Highlights – Panel 4: Thinking Democracy in the Anthropocene The panel, chaired by Ana Matan, explored how democracy must be rethought in an uncertain Anthropocene world. 🔹Jessica Schmidt analysed democracy crisis literature as split between a “liberal awakening” and “critical redemption”*. She argued that what we call a democracy crisis actually reveals the present’s indecipherability and the uncertainty around what democracy is— but this lived uncertainty may help us move beyond externalising threats like populism. 🔹David Chandler described democracy in the Anthropocene as both impossible and necessary. He framed democracy as a continuous, relational process of becoming — an open-ended co-creation between humans, non-humans and the environment, moving beyond fixed institutions and social contracts. 🔹Julia Feine explored three eco-political fantasies: eco-authoritarian, technocratic and post-apocalyptic. She warned that the first two risk deepening democratic erosion, while post-apocalyptic imaginaries may open space for democratic renewal through reflexive, experimental and justice-oriented engagement. 🔹Caroline van Taysen critically challenged relational and vitalist ontologies, arguing they can reproduce modernity’s structural violence by universalising Western ideas and masking power structures behind narratives of self-organised complexity. 🔹Kari Palonen interpreted the Anthropocene as 'language', advocating a contingent democracy grounded in debate, elections, and opposing perspectives — a “sensual democracy” that embraces contingency over predetermined plans.