The Fourth Blow: Thinking in the Anthropocene

Krebs V.J. · Technomorphisms and the Posthuman Turn: A Challenge to Contemporary Psychoanalysis (2026) · DOI: 10.4324/9781003783862-9

Resumen

Victor J. Krebs formulates the “fourth blow” to human narcissism: the Anthropocene, which reveals humanity as a planetary force capable of self‑destruction. Building on Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud, Krebs argues that the ecological crisis dislodges the human from any privileged ontological position and exposes the interdependence between life, technology, and environment. He explores how digital culture intensifies this displacement: algorithmic mediation, virtuality, and hyperconnectivity reshape perception, presence, and desire. The subject becomes an assemblage of biological, technological, and informational processes. Krebs articulates a posthumanist ethics that challenges anthropocentric fantasies of mastery and emphasizes vulnerability, relationality, and ecological responsibility. Drawing on philosophy, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis, he interrogates how digital infrastructures impact memory, temporal experience, and the formation of the ego. He also considers how destructiveness, repetition, and the death drive manifest in planetary processes – from environmental degradation to extractive capitalism – suggesting that human destructiveness has acquired geological scale. For psychoanalysis, this implies rethinking the relation between subjectivity and world, expanding the conceptual space of the unconscious to include ecological and technological forces. Krebs ultimately calls for a renewed ethics of care grounded in recognition of our implication in planetary systems and the limits of human exceptionalism.

Instituciones: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú