The shock of the Anthropocene and a margin of hope: On possibilities for critical thinking in the Arctic context

As the limitations of anthropocentric thinking become more apparent, some critical research is becoming justified with recourse to the language of performativity. This essay considers this development from an Arctic setting, through the work of Michel Serres. The shock of the Antropocene and the new forms of knowledge production oblige Arctic universities to become ‘useful’ to the global economy and to draw funding from outside the Arctic. Serres’s discussion of the parasite provides conceptual orientation towards and practical orientation within this predicament. In order to survive in the Arctic universities without losing heart to technocracy, critical researchers, I argue, should transform into what I call parasitic cyborgs or assemblages of actors navigating the Arctic passages.