Progress or Return? Capitalism and Eternal Recurrence in the Anthropocene A talk from Miguel Vatter who is a Professor of Politics at Deakin University and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Lancaster University.

The Anthropocene is not simply a new geological age: it signifies the entrance of the ‘deep history' of the cosmos and of our planet into our late modern historical consciousness. The planet no longer offers itself as a stable, predictable stage for the res gestae of human world history: it has become an actor in it. The Anthropocene is symptomatic of both a new, and yet very ancient, cosmological and astral framing given to human historicity and politics. In this lecture I shall argue the following points. First, that this cosmic approach to history is the form taken by the critique of progress in the 20thcentury. Second, and more precisely, that cosmology impacts late modern historical consciousness in the form of the hypothesis of the eternal recurrence. Third, I shall discuss the relation between eternal recurrence and what I call a ‘political theology of entropy' through which one can think about capitalism and communism in the Anthropocene.