About this Volume
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: Is there nevertheless an enduring bond between philosophical thought and its terrestrial support, or conversely, is philosophy’s task to escape the planetary horizon?
Following early-modern geophilosophical experiments in utopia, geographies and cartographies real and imaginary have played a double role in philosophy, serving both as governing metaphor and as an ultimate grounding for philosophical thought.
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 presents 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?
Collapse VI 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, in order to create a portrait of the present state of ‘planetary thought’.
Contents
ROBIN MACKAY
Editorial Introduction
NICOLA MASCIANDARO
Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy
IAIN HAMILTON GRANT
Introduction to Schelling’s On the World Soul
F. W. J. SCHELLING
On the World Soul (Extract)
GREG MCINERNY, DREW PURVES, RICH WILLIAMS, STEPHEN EMMOTT
New Ecologies (Interview)
TIMOTHY MORTON
Thinking Ecology: The Mesh, the Strange Stranger and the Beautiful Soul
F I E L D C L U B
How Many Slugs Maketh the Man?
OWEN HATHERLEY
Fossils of Time Future: Bunkers and Buildings from the Atlantic Wall to the South Bank
EYAL WEIZMAN
Political Plastic (Interview)
ANGELA DETANICO AND RAFAEL LAIN
A Given Time / A Given Place
MANABRATA GUHA
Introduction to SIMADology: Polemos in the 21st Century
REZA NEGARESTANI
Undercover Softness: An Introduction to the Architecture and Politics of Decay
ROBIN MACKAY
Philosophers’ Islands
CHARLES AVERY
The Islanders: Epilogue
GILLES GRELET
Theory is Waiting
RENEÉ GREEN
Endless Dreams and Waters Between
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