Whose Universalism? Dipesh Chakrabarty and the Anthropocene

Abstract

Dipesh Chakrabarty has drawn criticism from leftist thinkers for his insistence that humanity as a whole is responsible for climate change, and thus that humanity as a whole has a shared responsibility to confront it. While it has been repeatedly pointed out that this highly abstract universalism covers over massive and analytically crucial disparities in responsibility for and vulnerability to climate change, few critics have closely examined Chakrabarty's pivot from a staunchly anti-universalist stance to this strong universalist humanism. I argue that reconstructing and critiquing the intellectual-historical arc that lead Chakrabarty to this surprising shift can help to soften antagonisms between Marxism and postcolonial thought that currently stand in the way of an adequate understanding of the climate problem.