Against Polycrisis

We seem to be living in an unprecedented polycrisis. Multiple crises – mass forced migration, imminent climate doom, pandemics, and the rise of the far right, to name a few – intersect and amplify each other to a degree never seen before. But the fact that voices from journalists to academics can so easily label this moment unprecedented, argues anthropologist Daniel M. Knight, is a problem. With this book, Knight builds a case against the polycrisis framework as an example of toxic presentism, in which our analytical gaze is blurred by deeply engrained assumptions about historical progression and linear time.

Against Polycrisis employs diverse lines of thought from anthropology, history, philosophy, and popular culture to unpack recent fascinations with the unprecedented polycrisis trope. Knight critically examines previous historical eras of overlapping crises – from Greece's recent economic collapse to the 1600s General Crisis to the fall of the Ottoman Empire – in conversation with philosophers, historians, and the next generation of humanistic thinkers, all enriched by reflections on science fiction and popular culture. Knight concludes that the toxic presentism perpetuated in politics, academia, and the media only serves to obscure how the world could be otherwise.