Every day media reports of the rapidly deteriorating state of the environment hit us with a growing force. Trends such as microplastics in water, airborne toxins, topsoil degradation, and dangerous levels of carbon dioxide have upset the delicate ecological balance that has until now been sustaining life on the planet.

Analyzing the devastation that is the reality of the 21st century, philosopher Michael Marder provides a frightening yet mesmerizing intellectual perspective in his new book. In the book "Dump Philosophy: A Phenomenology of Devastation" (Bloomsbury, 2020) the author argues that the Earth, together with everything that lives and thinks on it, is at the stage of turning into a landfill for industrial products and consumer waste.

In the original treatise by Marder, the Anthropocene is depicted as a global dump that pollutes not only the environment, but also our perceptions and thinking in such a way that they cease to be nuanced, and ideas are reduced to interjections and chains of free associations. Describing the main characteristics of the "Dump Era", the philosopher examines its influence on our bodies and minds, as well as on philosophy itself and its role in a situation where philosophy is now being held hostage.

Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. His writings span the fields of phenomenology, political thought, and environmental philosophy. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and monographs, including Plant-Thinking (2013); Phenomena—Critique—Logos (2014); The Philosopher’s Plant (2014); Pyropolitics (2015), Dust (2016), Energy Dreams (2017), Heidegger (2018), Political Categories (2019), Dump Philosophy (2020), and Hegel’s Energy (2021), among others. For more information, consult his website michaelmarder.org.