Curating the Polycrisis: Affective Assemblages, the Interactive Synopticon, and Trans-Corporeal Narratives in the Anthropocene

Humanity currently navigates an era defined by the Anthropocene and the “polycrisis”—a complex, destabilizing web of interconnected ecological, social, and political emergencies. Concurrently, our primary mode of processing, debating, and governing these existential threats is mediated through the algorithmic infrastructure of digital platforms. This said, this paper synthesizes five distinct but deeply interconnected domains of contemporary scholarship to propose a novel theoretical framework: Digital Anthropocene Studies. By integrating theories of algorithmic curatorial assemblages, the interactive synopticon of live media, affective media practices in networked feminism, the macro-political sustainability trilemma, and the literary conceptualization of transcorporeality in the Anthropocene, this study argues that contemporary digital and political infrastructures attempt to address the polycrisis using the exact neoliberal and anthropocentric logics that created it. Digital platforms function as curatorial assemblages that commodify human affect, ranging from feminist outrage to deviant public disruption, into engagement metrics. This interactive synopticon traps public discourse in a reinforcement-amplification loop, characterized by lagged accountability and Eurocentric geopolitical realism. To transcend this metacrisis, we need to look beyond algorithmic feeds toward “trans-corporeal” narratives that reimagine the human condition not as a dominant, world-ending force (anthropos), but as a deeply entangled, ecological participant (homo). The present work offers a comprehensive paradigm for understanding how digital visibility, affective governance, and postcolonial intersectionality should evolve to foster genuine planetary survival.