This book strives to establish a close relationship between Critical Theory and social practice. Given the enormous global contemporary challenges humanity faces, the contributors to this volume urge for sustained efforts to link critical theory and innovative practice in a way that is effective for global publics and transcends disciplines, cultures and generations. Featuring academics and artists, the book takes a critical perspective on geopolitical developments, the irresponsible treatment of nature, the neoliberal and populist challenge as well as the permanent violation of human rights in most of today’s societies. Against the backdrop of the recent ‘discovery’ of the Anthropocene, the emerging certitude that humanity is provoking devastating climate change, the contributions to this volume discuss different dimensions of critique–including psychoanalytical, feminist and historical, technological and media-related–from a wide range of academic and sociocultural viewpoints, with specific emphasis on the tensions across theoretical reflection and social practice.

This volume offers a broad, critical, and important approach to the question of the role and possibilities of critical theory within the Anthropocene. Among other themes, the book addresses the issue of feminist emancipation, non-European perspectives, as well as the potential of art, both from theoretical angles and from the viewpoint of artists. This makes visible how many fields are affected and which also in turn have a prospective for critical intervention — Anders Bartonek, Södertörn University

Stefan Baumgarten is professor of Translation Studies and head of the Translation, Society and Digitalization Research Department at the University of Graz. He is co-editor (with J. Cornellà-Detrell) of the special journal issue Translation in Times of Technocapitalism (Target, 2017) and of Translation and Global Spaces of Power (Multilingual Matters, 2018).

Susanne Kogler is professor of Musicology at the University of Graz. She is co-speaker (with Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl) of the Core Research Area “Perception: Episteme, Aesthetics, Politics” of the Faculty of Humanities and author of numerous articles on music history and aesthetics from the 19th to the 21st centuries.