Death with Dignity

The world has “ended” many times before.  Whether in terms of major extinction events, socio-political upheavals, outbreaks of disease, war, famine or in terms of paradigm shifting breakthroughs in science, technology, medicine etc., natural-cultural patternings have been disrupted in such a way that we can speak of a particular world regime ending, and another beginning.  In The Ends of the World, Danowski and Viveiros de Castro stress that the end of the world per se can only ever be presented as a “mythical fabulation… …a schematization of certain transcendental conditions in empirical terms” and we must take care that our emphasis on “such supremely empirical sciences as climatology, geophysics, and biochemistry” (p. 6) does not obscure the meaningfully symbolic and revelatory dimensions of the current socio-ecological crisis.  For we require along with our representations and “accurate” models of nature a means to creatively participate in its perpetual becoming and ongoing processes of living-dying.