L’Antropocene come dispositivo governamentale

The notion of the Anthropocene has met with a success probably unexpected by its own promoters. In a short time, the Anthropocene ha become a subject of debate not only among scientists of the earth and of life but also among philosophers and social scientists and has reached the wider public sphere. The article reflects on the notion not as an expression of scientific evidence or of the spirit of the time, but as a governmental apparatus in the sense of Foucault: a way of governing the conduct in which what gains relevance is not only institutions, architectures and procedures but also, and in a certain sense above all, veridictive processes that prevent or at least hinder the conceivability of an alternative.