Post-sustainability: A hermeneutic literature review

Abstract

The Anthropocene, as a shared existential concern, is catalysing current scholarly paradigms, and one example is the recent emergence of ‘post-sustainability’. This first ever literature review surveys the meanings of post-sustainability in 116 texts, from a wide range of scholarly fields. Alongside a thematic classification of post-sustainability, a general characterization is suggested; Post-sustainability describes the tension between the implausibility of the sustainability paradigm and the seeming impossibility to deal with the future eco-social predicaments such as the Anthropocene. Articulations of post-sustainability are committed to the well-being of humankind and living nature, within the limits of emerging conditions. Post-sustainability is stimulating self-reflection within a range of scholarly fields by raising timely questions: Is sustainability behind us? If so, in what sense, and what should be done about it? Future conceptualizations of post-sustainability are suggested to take into account (a) the plural meanings of the prefix ‘post-’, and (b) the demarcation between post- and anti-sustainability positions.