Antropocennosti: Průvodce světem antropocénu. Ed. Eliška Fulínová & Anna Kvíčalová (Academia 2024). Antropocennosti is a collection of twenty-three essays written by various authors from different disciplinary backgrounds. These essays guide the reader through the Antropocene by introducing both common and unusual objects as being results of events and processes typical of the Anthropocene. The term “Anthro- pocene” itself has multiple meanings: it is a proposed geological epoch, in which human activity has left a deep imprint on the Earth’s surface; it is a critique of humankind’s impact on the planet and its exploitation of natural resources and it is an uncomfortable look in the mirror that brings about a new reflection on the position of humans in the world. This book understands the Anthropocene as both a new environmental situation and a specific reflection of it, a double turn: both material and intellectual.
Antropocén. Ed. Petr Pokorný & David Storch (Academia 2020) The year 2000 saw the unexpected announcement of the Anthropocene, a global age of man, in which humanity’s impact on the planet has supposedly reached a level on par with most natural factors. For some, the Anthropocene is a crisis, even a catastrophe, while for others it is an opportunity. At one time it is a scientific hypothesis based on various measurements and technical definitions, at other times an artistic inspiration. For some it is a demonstrable reality “out there”, for others a political and time-conditioned construction. Will the Anthropocene become a permanent part of science, politics and (popular) culture? Or will the groundswell of interest subside over time, as it has for so many other great concepts of the past? This book, written by a collective of twenty Czech scientists, critically maps the current state of the debate and comes with the added value of a broad interdisciplinary dialogue. It does not agree to all fashionable tendencies and moods, especially not apocalyptic ones. It does not offer easy solutions, but encourages the necessary distance and deeper reflection.
Krajina mezi pamětí a zapomínáním: Studie z Čech. Karolína Pauknerová (Karolinum 2019). Karolína Pauknerová’s book reveals the variability of the ways in which memory becomes part of the landscape, sedimenting in it, reproducing itself and disappearing. Using several examples – the surroundings of the Příbram road, the recollection of vanished settlements in the borderlands, megalithic buildings in southern Bohemia – she presents the landscape as a process that is co-created by memory as well as forgetting. To be in the landscape entails thinking about memory, immersing oneself in the passage of time, experiencing its traces and their absence. Without this immersion, it is impossible to understand either the landscape or the memory hidden in it.
The City Inside Out: Terrain vague, inner periphery and places in-between. Ed. Radan Haluzík (Academia 2020) The city is not only buildings, streets, squares, infrastructure, green spaces and parks – that is, places with a clear function – but also thousands of places in between that seemingly “do not serve any purpose”. Some of them we pass by unnoticed, others we find a little frightening with their bushes, weeds and rubbish, others we think of as nature. Places between places – the flip side of the city, a vague terrain whose life we don’t know much about… How did these places come into being in history, how are they coming into being today, and why are there so many of them in our cities today? What kind of urban, ecological and social life do they have? What do their peculiar aesthetics encourage us to do? Do they even have a place in today’s city? This book looks at our post-socialist, post-industrial and globalised cities from an inside-out perspective.