Category Archives: Extra-Planetary Geographies

CFP, AAG 2014: Geophilosophy and the Geo-Social

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Elizabeth Johnson, Harlan Morehouse and myself are putting together some sessions at the 2014 AAG around the relationship between Geophilosophy and Geography, and particularly what we are calling the Geo-Social.

Please circulate the below CFP to anyone you think may be interested.
Many thanks

Geophilosophy and the Geo-Social

AAG 2014

Call for Panels/Papers

Elizabeth Johnson,

Harlan Morehouse, University of Minnesota

Rory Rowan, Wageningen University

There is a growing consensus that in the 21st century the planet is no longer the concern of geologists and climate scientists alone, but that philosophical and social thought must also increasingly engage with planetary concerns. Emergent literatures across the social sciences and humanities are struggling to generate new conceptual frameworks and research strategies to adequately account for the complex knots that bind social, geological, biological and technological forces together, as well as the catastrophic potentials that reside within them (see, for example: Braun and Whatmore 2010; Clark 2010; Ellsworth et al 2012; Saldanha 2013; Yusoff 2013; and the special issue of the Oxford Literary Review, 2012). At the recent RGS-IBG conference in London, Nigel Clark, Arun Saldanha and Kathryn Yusoff characterized this messy tangle of anthropogenic and nonhuman forces as the ‘Geo-Social.’ In many ways, this ‘Geo-Social’ can be considered the foundation of geographic scholarship. However, as many begin to examine the links between social history and geologic change in the context of Climate Change and the advent of the Anthropocene, the ‘Geo-Social’ invites a radical reassessment of fundamental conceptual frameworks across a number of registers – from the epistemological and ontological to the political and ethical – and a re-articulation of Geography’s relation to other disciplines. But just as these issues strain traditional disciplinary boundaries and standard methodological frameworks, they open the possibility for new forms of collaborative research stretching across the natural and social sciences and the humanities, and involving both empirically based work and speculative thought.

The massive transformations in human-planet relations also raise fundamental philosophical questions and invite re-evaluations of the complexity of concrete Geo-Social entanglements: How, for example, do planetary conditions affect our philosophical frameworks and how do we frame the Earth philosophically? Thus, in addition to examining the Geo-Social, we aim to examine Geophilosophy as a form of thought specifically committed to exploring the relationship between philosophy and the Earth. Geophilosophy has a rich heritage in modern Continental Philosophy arguably reaching from Kant and Nietzsche through Deleuze and Guattari to contemporary thinkers like Elizabeth Grosz (2008), Reza Negarestani (2011), John Protevi (2013), Michel Serres (2012) and Ben Woodard (2012). We aim to place Geography at the forefront of this debate in the belief that its critical traditions and recent efforts in rethinking human-nonhuman relations can provide crucial insights that deepen philosophical traction on the world whilst locating disciplinary concerns at the cutting edge of wider theoretical debates. We particularly seek to engage with recent attempts in Geography to re-interrogate the ‘geo’ as a way to engage with planetary questions without re-inscribing the economic and political over-determinations of ‘globalization.’

These sessions seek to advance conversations begun at the “Anthropocene” sessions at the 2013 AAG in Los Angeles and the 2013 RGS-IBG by further exploring the philosophical and empirical implications of the Geo-Social. We specifically seek papers that address any of the following concerns, among possible others:

· What modes of thought are best suited to understanding the matrix of human and non-human forces that make up the Geo-Social today? What are the political stakes of rethinking how we conceive of Geo-Social relations?

· How might Climate Change and the advent of the Anthropocene affect the ways in which we conceive of the Earth, and what new philosophical possibilities might be opened by these developments?

· What new perspectives can Geography bring to the philosophical traditions of Geophilosophy – from Kant to Negarestani – and how might it bear on its future trajectories?

· What questions and forms of knowledge production – imagined, emergent, or well established – are needed in the face of an emerging ecological catastrophe?

· Do 21st century environmental conditions call for new forms of experimental research and praxis-based approaches that bridge the physical and social sciences? How might we develop modes of examination that refuse the distinction ‘physical or social’ without reinforcing the neoliberal university’s call for ‘transdisciplinarity’?

· What is the relationship between existing Geo-Social formations and histories of capitalism? Beyond the privatization/neoliberalization of non-human life through carbon markets and ecosystem services, around what forms of value might post-capitalist Geo-Social formations organize?

Please send inquiries / abstracts of no more than 250 words to Geophilosophy.AAG2014@gmail.com by October 5th 2013.

References:

Braun. B. and Whatmore, S., editors. (2010). Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Chakrabarty, D. (2009). The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry, 39. 197-222.

Clark, N. (2011). Inhuman nature sociable life on a dynamic planet. Los Angeles: SAGE.

Clark, N., Saldanha, A., and Yusoff, K. editors. (forthcoming 2014). Capitalism and the Earth. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books.

Ellsworth E., Kruse, J., and Beatty. editors (2012). Making the Geologic Now: Repsonses to Material Conditions of Contemporary Life. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books.

Grosz, E. (2008). Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press.

Negarestani, R. (2011). Globe of Revolution: An Afterthought on Geophilosophical Realism. Identities, 17, 25-54.

Protevi, J. (2013). Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Saldanha, A. (2013). Some Principles of Geocommunism. Retrieved from:

http://www.geocritique.org/arun-saldanha-some-principles-of-geocommunism/

Serres, M. (2012). Biogea. Minneapolis, MN: Univocal.

Woodward, B. (2013). On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books.

Yusoff, K. (2013). Insensible Worlds: Postrelational Ethics, Indeterminacy and the (K)nots of relating. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31(2), 208–226. doi:10.1068/d17411

Yusoff, K. editor. (2013). 400ppm: Exit Holocene, Enter Anthropocene. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Retrieved from http://societyandspace.com/2013/07/26/400ppm-exit-holocene-enter-anthropocene

Capitalism and the Earth – Punctum Books

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I am excited to announce that the ever-brilliant Nigel Clark, Arun Saldanha and Kathryn Yusoff are editing a book entitled Capitalism and the Earth to be published with Punctum Books next year.

It will build particularly on the two sessions Nigel, Arun and Kathryn have put together at the upcoming RGS-IBG conference in London on the theme of Geo-Social Formations: Capitalism and the Earth (the second of which I will chair).

The book will bring together a number of critical geographers committed to thinking through the relationship between capitalism and the earth philosophically and politically, in ways that critically engage with debates around the Anthropocene – taking them seriously whilst troubling them conceptually. The book will contain contributions from the three editors, Kai Bosworth, Noel Castree, Stuart Elden, Lesley Head and Chris Gibson, Kevin Surprise, Jan Zalasiewicz and myself (and perhaps a surprise special guest).

The collection is sure to make an important contribution to a growing set of debates around the philosophical and political stakes of Geo-Social relations in light of the Anthropocene and the emerging climate catastrophe. Earlier this Spring I had the good fortune to attend, back to back, the Critical Climate Change Scholarship Workshop at the University of Minnesota (organized by Jessi Lehman and Sara Holiday Nelson) and the five Anthropocene sessions at the AAG (organized by Elizabeth Johnson and Harlan Morehouse), both of which played a key role in focusing these discussions and producing a genuine intellectual community working on these issues (with the forthcoming book’s editors and a number of others, such as Stephanie Wakefield [CUNY], also taking part at both events).

Elizabeth, Harlan, Jessi and Sara have done a great job in keeping momentum from these sessions going with the wonderful GeoCritique blog which features a news feed and commentaries on related themes by the site’s editors and guest contributors, such as Arun’s recent work on Geo-Communism. Kathryn Yusoff, in her new capacity as reviews and open-site editor at Society and Space has also done great work in organizing the recent set of on-line interventions around the Anthropocene, 400ppm: Exit Holocene, Enter Anthropocene.

The sessions on Geo-Sociio Formations: Capitalism and the Earth at the RGS-IBG and the panel discussion I have put together there on Thinking the Anthropocene with Nigel, Kathryn alongside Angela Last and Jan Zalasiewicz will provide a further opportunity for some of the issues to be thrashed out and for future collaboration to emerge. Elizabeth, Harlan and I are also drafting a call for papers around the Geo-Social and Geophilosophy for next year’s AAG which will appear soon. Harlan, Kai Bosworth and I also plan to collaborate on an extended on-line review of Ben Woodard‘s excellent On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy in the coming months, to which he has generously agreed to provide a written response.

It is also great to see that Punctum Books, a brilliant Brooklyn-based open-access press, will be putting the book out. They are leading the charge of quality open access publishing and already have a great record of related publications including last year’s superb Making the Geologic Now: Responses to Material Conditions of Contemporary Life, edited by Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse (of Smudge Studios / F.O.P) and On an Ungrounded Earth. The press has also played a central role in the development of debates around object oriented ontologies/philosophies and ‘speculative realism’ through Leper Creativity, a collection of essays on Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, and the journals O-Zone: A Journal of Object Oriented Studies and Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism (although this phrase is increasingly redundant, seemingly more a mechanism of capture and dismissal than indicative of any common trajectories of thought).

For my part, I am particularly interested in developing some ideas around Geophilosophy and the politics of planetary thought in relation to broader debates on the Geo-Social and climate crisis on the one hand, whilst on the other, exploring the geopolitical and philosophical importance of emerging extra-planetary geographies. I have included below the abstract for my contribution to Capitalism and the Earth where I hope to make some initial tentative steps in this direction.

Capitalism and The Extra-Planetary Condition

Social science scholarship has increasingly turned its attention to the complicated, mutually constitutive relationship between the earth’s systems and human social formations, a trend to which frequent reference to the anthropocene bares witness. However, this literature has for the most part not only understood human social be bound to the earth but to principally take shape on the earth. This paper will argue that the relationship between social formations and the earth is neither limited to the terrestrial surface of the earth nor the planet as a whole, including its atmosphere. It will rather examine the ways in which human social formations are tied to the earth through an extensive and expanding network of extra-planetary relations. Indeed, it will be argued that the system of orbiting satellites now constitutes an integral part of social relations on earth but further of the earth’s systems, amounting to a novel extra-planetary strata that expands socio-geological relations – and hence the anthropocene – beyond the bounds of the earth’s atmosphere.

But what relation does capitalism have to this cosmic anthropocene? Whilst orbiting satellites have been integral to human-earth relations and the global economy for over half a century and space exploration was a key part of the so-called Cold War ‘space age’ the recent emergence of commercial space exploration marks a new development in relations between capitalism and the earth. The dominance of speculative extraction points to the expansion of the existing capitalist economy into the cosmos with new forms of astral-accumulation emerging to compliment the existing mineral basis of the capitalist economy and the wider energy economy it relies upon. But might this be a sign not of the confident extension of capitalism in to the cosmos but an indication that capitalism is an earth-bound social formation that has exhausted its mineral basis and met its planetary limitations?

The further question arises as to what political significance the expansion of capitalist economics into the cosmos might entail. Will it see the emergence of what some have referred to as ‘astropolitics’ – a field of supposedly realist determinism complimenting an earthly and earthy geopolitics – and the extension of existing concepts of territory, sovereignty, citizen and property into a new extra-planetary frontier and an intensification of existing inequalities on earth? Or rather will a new politics accompany these new spaces of intervention defined by new political formations in planetary and extra-planetary space?

This paper will argue that these questions are not confined to the realm of science fiction even if they have been largely overlooked within the critical social sciences and excluded from respectable philosophical and political discussion. Rather, these are questions that have important bearing on key questions about the existing and future nature of social relations and the ways in which they are bound to the earth’s systems and indeed the cosmos, that deserve critical attention as the commercial space age rapidly accelerates.