The Climate of History: Four Theses Author(s): Dipesh Chakrabarty Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 197-222 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/596640 Accessed: 18-12-2017 11:01 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Critical Inquiry This content downloaded from 35.176.47.6 on Mon, 18 Dec 2017 11:01:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Climate of History: Four Theses Dipesh Chakrabarty The current planetary crisis of climate change or global warming elicits a variety of responses in individuals, groups, and governments, ranging from denial, disconnect, and indifference to a spirit of engagement and activism of varying kinds and degrees. These responses saturate our sense of the now. Alan Weisman’s best-selling book The World without Us sug- gests a thought experiment as a way of experiencing our present: “Suppose that the worst has happened. Human extinction is a fait accompli.... Picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished....Might we have left some faint, enduring mark on the universe?...Isitpossible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us would miss us?”1 I am drawn to Weisman’s experiment as it tellingly dem- onstrates how the current crisis can precipitate a sense of the present that disconnects the future from the past by putting such a future beyond the grasp of historical sensibility.