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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Collapse VI: Geo/philosophy

The new issue of Collapse is now available. I have a couple photos in the issue which accompany Nicola Masciandaro's 'Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy' essay.

Contributors to the volume include:
Charles Avery, Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, Stephen Emmott, Owen Hatherley, F I E L D C L U B, Iain Hamilton Grant, Renée Green, Gilles Grelet, Manabrata Guha, Nicola Masciandaro, Timothy Morton, Greg McInerny, Robin Mackay, Reza Negarestani, Drew Purves, F.W.J. Schelling, Eyal Weizman, Rich Williams.

Following Collapse V's inquiry into the legacy of Copernicus' deposing of Earth from its central position in the cosmos, Collapse VI: Geo/philosophy poses the question: How should we understand the historical and contemporary bond between philosophical thought and its terrestrial support?

Collapse VI: Geo/philosophy begins with the provisional premise that the Earth does not square elements of thought but rather rounds them up into a continuous spatial and geographical horizon. Geophilosophy is thus not necessarily the philosophy of the earth as a round object of thought but rather the philosophy of all that can be rounded as an (or the) earth. But in that case, what is the connection between the empirical earth, the contingent material support of human thinking, and the abstract 'world' that is the condition for a 'whole' of thought?

Urgent contemporary concerns introduce new dimensions to this problem: The complicity of Capitalism and Science concomitant with the nomadic remobilization of global Capital has caused mutations in the field of the territorial, shifting and scrambling the determinations that subtended modern conceptions of the nation-state and territorial formations. And scientific predictions present us with the possibility of a planet contemplating itself without humans, or of an abyssal cosmos that abides without Earth - these are the vectors of relative and absolute deterritorialization which nourish the twenty-first century apocalyptic imagination. Obviously, no geophilosophy can remain oblivious to the unilateral nature of such un-earthing processes. Furthermore, the rise of so-called rogue states which sabotage their own territorial formation in order to militantly withstand the proliferation of global capitalism calls for an extensive renegotiation of geophilosophical concepts in regard to territorializing forces and the State. Can traditions of geophilosophical thought provide an analysis that escapes the often flawed, sentimental or cryptoreligious fashions in which popular discourse casts these catastrophic developments?

Continuing to combine and connect work from different disciplines and perspectives in innovative ways, this new volume of Collapse brings together philosophers, theorists, eco-critics, leading scientific experts in climate change, and artists whose work interrogates the link between philosophical thought, geography and cartography. This multiplicity of engagements makes Collapse VI a philosophically-rich yet accessible examination of the present state of 'planetary thought'.

Visit Collapse's website at www.urbanomic.com to purchase a copy. A PDF preview of the editorial introduction to the volume is also available on the website.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Survival group against God?? LOL. Good luck with that. Truth is, no one knows the exact time this will happen except the man upstairs, however, I firmly believe that there are people placed here by God that post the warning signs and it's up to you to take heed.
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