Introduction to Comparative Planetology by Lukáš Likavčan

Introduction to Comparative Planetology by Lukáš Likavčan

Author:Lukáš Likavčan [Likavčan, Lukáš]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Strelka Press
Published: 2019-12-02T21:00:00+00:00


V. Earth-without-us

If the existing responses to the globalist approach all eventually dismantle and fragment the planet — reversing or at least problematising abstract gestures, and pointing back towards the local as the scale where the ecological emergency should be addressed (if addressed at all) — what are the possibilities of re-engaging with scales far exceeding contingent human experience? Comparative planetology bets on the figure of the Planetary. According to Schmitt, “planetary” is too broad a notion because despite the fact that its visions “refer to the whole earth, [they] fail to capture its characteristic type of division.”154 For this reason, it is of no geopolitical importance to Schmitt. Yet, seen from the vantage point of comparative planetology, this figure can secure the presence of exteriority in our geopolitical discourse, breaking with a tendency for the containment and enclosure of the planetary assemblage; the “container masochism” of “an over-sheltered settled existence”155 that uncritically favours familiarity and intimacy, and which is biased against alienation and abstraction. Alienation might actually be a productive and transformative aspect of the well-crafted concept of the planet, giving principal constraints to our interventions on the planetary scale. The alienation of abstraction prevents us from dispensing with the planet-wide, supra-individual (and supra-human) scales, and instead guides us to critically elaborate and examine them.

Three intuitions of the Planetary

The Planetary brings three productive moments for the upcoming discussion of the new figure of comparative planetology. First, from an Earth-system perspective, it is true that the planet is really a system of magnificent forces, which at best temporarily uses or misuses us as mediators for its own purposes, and at worst does not need us at all. Second, regarding critical-subjective perspective, it is true that the planet does not give us any guarantees of permanent settlement or grounding, and instead faces us as something completely unfamiliar. Both moments converge in the general media approach to the human, treating us as “the most unfortunate, most delicate and most evanescent beings,”156 i.e. as the media of alterity. In both critical-subjective and Earth-system perspective, this alterity is not strictly bounded within the category of the human, and it shows the possibility of disconnection and misalignment, and thus is exterior to humans; it harbours independent evolutionary trajectories that can be extended beyond ourselves, despite us being its temporary vectors. The Anthropocene is a geological epoch defined through the medium of the human — but there were eons of geological processes that did well without the help of this species, and they will surely do well too after humanity’s extinction. In this affirmation of the existence of exteriority defined as path-dependencies anterior and posterior to the human species (the great outdoors),157 we are on track to find a conceptualisation of the planet that would resist exhaustive internalisation into the social, cultural, economic, and political circumstances of humanity, and would in fact constrain and place conditions on these circumstances, requiring their reorganisation.

Finally, the third productive moment of the Planetary is an integration of the technosphere. This moment



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.