Speaker
Description
Among the different definitions of politicizing the death, an inclination occurred between necropolitics -often directed to humans- and anthropocene -often directed from humans- that renders the agency of nature or a non-human agency as a smaller category to an absolute passivity. Only in the frame of a passive existence could natural elements be named as dead. On the other hand, even this coerced dead identity of nature as a force, a surrounding and a resource can still mediate for certain political contexts, especially in times of crisis. On 2020, the Marmara Sea in Turkey suffered from the long-term impacts of pollution and claimed to be dead. This situation, which is also approved by marine biologists, resulted with a widespread criticism towards the politics of pollution and ecocide blaming anthropocene or capitalocene as an era and effect. While for recruiting people against the agents endangering ecology; a non-human agent is pacified as well during the interpretation of the crisis. The acceptation of the sea as a dead entity, brings the question of agency for both human and non-human agents in vital politics. Discourses on the protection of nature also bring human agency superior to natural forces and bring solutions from a human-led political economy the non-human agents and nature’s own agency fades away temporarily. The pollution and protective attempts towards Marmara Sea has been recorded officially since 18th century, during the Ottoman Rule. In the meantime, while the sea has been claimed to be dead for a couple of times, neither the mainstream fishing activities nor the industries neighboring the sea have been stopped. The paper discusses the two terms, necropolitics and anthropocene, as politics and practices under a certain political economy which sustain themselves over the temporal dead-silencing of the nature and agents of nature; yet get endangered over the temporal death of natural elements as a political capital during crisis.
| Keywords | necropolitics, anthropocene, non-human agency, Marmara sea, agency of nature |
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