Cross-posting from Terrestri(e)alism. These cross-posts will end, so please subscribe there if you want to make sure you won’t miss any.
No, taking over Venezuela is neither about democracy nor about drugs. It’s about four closely related things:
oil, which means maintaining the fossil-fuel industrialism that is running the world into the ground;
power, specifically the continuing anti-constitutional takeover of the United States, which requires something new every day to prevent opposition from consolidating;
distraction, specifically, from the Epstein files and Trump’s plummeting approval ratings; and
geopolitics, specifically, the neo-imperialistic carve-up of the world between authoritarian power blocs (at least three of them, with one, China, now being pushed aside from Venezuela).
This is the new world order, which is the final flaring up of fossil-fuel imperialism. Opposition to it will have to be bottom-up, anti-imperialist, and thoroughly ecological.
We’re now a quarter of the way into the present century, and what a rollercoaster it’s become.
Every ten years this century I’ve posted a list of the “Books of the Decade in Ecocultural Theory.” (The last one was here; the previous, here.) Given how quickly things are evolving — and the precarious state of the world that’s accompanying them — it feels appropriate to take advantage of this quarter-turn in the century’s clock for a deep dig into the kinds of insights we need to make sense of our intertwined ecological and cultural, i.e., ecocultural, challenges.
Here’s a baker’s top ten (which makes eleven) of the books I am nominating for the most ecoculturally insightful of the last 25 years. Three of them were published since my last list, and only four of the remaining eight are repeated from previous lists.* A retrospective gaze enables a revised valuation of the earlier books’ significance, but also opens up an opportunity for me to think a bit more broadly about what’s needed these days. (And I smuggle in several other titles into the comments.)
As always, deep apologies to those whose excellent work is missing from this list. Among the authors who’ve published important work this century are Isabelle Stengers, Deborah Bird Rose, Thom Van Dooren, Marisol de la Cadena, Ursula Heise, Achille Mbembe, Jane Bennett, William Connolly, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Timothy Morton, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Nigel Clark, Joachim Radkau, Alf Hornborg, John R. McNeill, Malcom Ferdinand, Brian Burkhart, Sean Cubitt, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Stefan Helmreich, and plenty of others whose work I’ve cited elsewhere on this blog or in my own writing.
This list represents one person’s view of things at this particular moment in time. It has little to do with citations or influence, and is certainly not intended to cover any entire field, such as the environmental humanities (which has became too large to encompass) or anything that could be constituted as “ecocultural studies.” I offer it for what it is, and welcome your comments and suggestions for others you would recommend.
So I’ve started a Substack newsletter. It’s called “Terrestri(e)alism.”
It isn’t meant to replace Immanence, though there will be overlaps and we’ll see how things develop.
The reasons to go to Substack are multiple. It’s a thriving media ecosystem that’s both reader- and writer-friendly. Some of my favorite writers commenting astutely on today’s world are there, and likely some of yours, too. At the same time, it’s good to be aware that, like any single platform — especially one that’s a privately-held, venture-backed company — there’s a certain inevitability that that ecosystem will change, likely for the worse, for reasons that are outside the control of its users. (Cory Doctorow’s take on that is appropriate, and some say it’s already started to happen with Substack.) So there’s something about spreading one’s eggs across different baskets that’s relevant here.
I’ve loved this space here, and this WordPress platform hosted by the University of Vermont (where I’m still a faculty member, now technically “emeritus” and no longer salaried), and I don’t intend to leave it behind. Its 15-year archive of thinking and writing has been helpful for me and (I’m told) for others, and I intend to keep it that way.
But it hasn’t felt like it’s been growing with me recently. The early years of Immanence were particularly exciting, because it felt like there were a lot of us — bloggers (in the philosophical blogosphere, especially) and we were interacting much more — I’m thinking of the objects versus relations “wars,” for instance (they were friendly skirmishes, really), and the cross-blog book readings of texts like Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter. Substack seems like the best place that offers something akin to that level of interactivity today.
Reflecting on the last 15 years, it’s clear to me that blogging — writing a regular newsletter in plain view of the public — is a great way to keep one’s thinking active, alive, and accountable. A lot of what I’ve written here has worked its way into my writing, into books and articles that can now be read elsewhere (see the “Publications” links in the right-hand sidebar), and some of the feedback I’ve received here has been helpful for it. But much of that writing has not left an obvious “real-world” product, and it’s good to keep a record of that thinking, which this space will do.
That said, the Earth will go through its revolutions, technological systems will falter and fail, records and archives will pass and open up new niches for colonization by new life forms. (Selling my own vinyl record collection was one of those moments that forced me to reckon with the passing nature of all things loved. And of course we all know that from losing people we’ve loved. Fortunately, my Whiteheadian metaphysics is good with that, as one of my favorite books of comparative philosophy, Steve Odin’s Tragic Beauty in Whitehead and Japanese Aesthetics makes beautifully clear.) The moment will continue turning into the next moment, and communicating and sense-making from the midst of that transitional space — prehending, to use Whitehead’s word — will remain the most important thing we ever do. Maybe all we ever do, as I argued in Shadowing the Anthropocene.
So: Immanence will remain here, and I’ll continue publishing on it the things that seem most relevant to it. (My other blog, UKR-TAZ: A Ukrainian Temporary Autonomous Zone, will also continue in its form, where you can find things directly relevant to my research in Ukraine, the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the like. The multi-author book talk on my edited anthology Terra Invictacan be found there.) And I’ll keep writing for other venues, scholarly and otherwise.
But if you want to follow my thinking closely, over the coming months and perhaps longer, I recommend that you subscribe to “Terrestri(e)alism.” The About page gives you a sense of what to expect there. If it sounds like a rephrasing of what I’ve been writing here for years, that’s exactly what it is. But a rephrasing for riding the current of our times.
There’s a scene about 35 minutes into “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” the harrowing Ukrainian war documentary that aired on Frontline last week, where a soldier and the embedded cameraman-director are complimenting each other on their Ukrainian speech. One is from the near-border city of Kharkiv, the other from just outside it, and both mention how they have “transitioned” to speaking Ukrainian from Russian. (“Я переходив, навчився…” “Ми теж переходили всі…”/“I transitioned, learned it…” “We all transitioned as well…”)
The verb “transitioned” resonates in an interesting way for western viewers, who may be accustomed to hearing it in the context of trans identity discourses, in which people typically “find themselves” when they establish their chosen gender identity after years of a confusing dysphoria. In Ukraine, as it would be in many parts of the world, the “finding oneself” might happen in circumstances of war, when a choice has to be made between taking the side of good over that of evil (however these are perceived), or — as in this case — between speaking a (perceived) colonizer’s language and speaking one’s mother tongue. It also happens, more commonly perhaps, in religious contexts, when confronted with an option that comes to make sense for a newly self-proclaimed believer or “convert.”
The parallels are instructive, because they raise the question: what kind of transitions or conversions are allowed and encouraged, and which ones discouraged or foreclosed in a society? What are the circumstances that shape these options, and what is it that is called out from “within” an individual that compels that person in one direction or another? The issue appears to hinge on a choice, as if they are an individual option, but really they have to do with choice points, forks in roads, that are placed before people by their circumstances. In sociological terms, the individual’s sense of agency is always a matter of the larger social structure.
I’m happy to share the news that Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth, the first English-language book-length anthology of wartime Ukrainian environmental humanities writing (and art), is out now — and that it’s available as a fully open access downloadable file thanks to McGill-Queen’s University Press and the Olga M. Ciupka Memorial Fund.
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek writes about the book that “Terra Invicta deserves to become an instant classic, a volume that everyone who wants to grasp the contours of our global crisis should read.” Writer Andrey Kurkov adds that “The war in Ukraine affects the ecology of nature and the ecology of consciousness throughout the world. This book is the best way to understand Ukraine today and the impact of Russian aggression on your life, no matter what country you live in.”
The book’s comprehensive introduction contextualizes the Russo-Ukrainian war within the historical processes — of politics, economics, culture, and ecology — that made it possible, and assesses it as the kind of environmental war that (sadly) presages wars likely to come as climate change intensifies. It then introduces the remainder of the book, with its 30+ authors and artists and rich array of topics, from place-based memory and trauma, ecocultural relations with amphibians, plants, trees, and fungi, and mappings of Indigenous (Tatar) musical landscapes and wartime soundscapes, to the role of art in war, ecological “war-rewilding,” decolonization of Europe’s last remaining empire (Russia), the possibilities of international solidarities across colonial contexts, and the tensions between extractive capitalism and democracy in the “full-scale Anthropocene.” To read the Introduction, see below.
In preparation for the public conversation, which veered off in many directions (with a lot of questions and comments from audience members), Am sent me some questions ahead, to which I’ve written out responses. I’m sharing those here, as I think they’re helpful in elucidating both what’s in the book and a few things that go beyond it.
Here, then, is our full “print conversation” (really, a Q & A). The actual public conversation that took place at Harbour Centre, with a lot of audience participation, will feature in the podcast, which should come out in February at Below the Radar.
I’ve just returned from a nine-day trip to China, where I spoke at the “International Symposium on Ecological Images and Media” at Jimei University in Xiamen, and lectured at four different universities (Jimei University, Xiamen Technological University, Shanghai’s East China Normal University, and Shanghai University). My hosts, including Minjiang Scholar and professor Kunyu Wang, lead translator of my book Ecologies of the Moving Image, were gracious and delightful.
I want to share two sets of thoughts here: one on academic relationships with Chinese universities, and the second on the politics of media.
When the president of the world’s most powerful country posts a video of himself as a jet-flying, Dr. Strangelove-like “King Trump” defecating all over his protesting critics, it is a call not just for Americans, but for humanity also, to ask itself how we got to this place.
Interpreting the video is not so difficult. By imagining himself as King Trump flying over protesters and dumping poop on their heads, the president of the United States is presenting a juvenile-delinquent’s regressive-infantile fantasy of white-male rebellion against the social order that, in normal times, would be able to contain it. It’s a naughty little boy’s poop fantasy, one that suggests that a pooping toddler, Donnie, along with his enabler friends — Jimmy D, Stevie, Russie, Lonnie & the silicon poopers, et al — just don’t wanna grow up.
But they also want it both ways: they want the transgressive jouissance of the boy-rebel AND to inherit the kingdom of the patriarch. They want their poopy-colored chocolate cake and the poopy-farty joy of spreading it all over the nursery walls. They want to break the rules and to force others to follow their rules.
The questions this raises are questions for all of us: How did we allow a political-economic system to emerge that would enable such a person to become the most powerful person in the most powerful nation on Earth? And, equally importantly, what in his fantasy appeals to so many people who support his rule?
The nearly 400-page, richly illustrated anthology Terra Invicta: Ukrainian Wartime Reimaginings for a Habitable Earth, which I conceived and edited as part of a Fulbright award held in Berlin (originally meant to be held in Ukraine, but displaced due to the war), is now available for pre-ordering. Please encourage your libraries and bookstores to order it.
The full-color book features the work of 30+ Ukrainian authors and artists that together articulate “what in the world is worth fighting for” — a world in which, in the face of history’s repetitions and the future’s uncertainties, we nevertheless persist, in Katya Buchatska’s words, in “plant[ing] a garden so that we have something to lose.”
Political philosopher Slavoj Žižek writes that “Terra Invicta does something urgently needed but nonetheless new: it makes it clear that there is no choice between ecological concerns and the struggle against military aggression. In Ukraine, they are two moments of the same struggle. Terra Invicta deserves to become an instant classic, a volume that everyone who wants to grasp the contours of our global crisis should read.”
It’s what informs my analysis of images, imagination, and the digital in The New Lives of Images. Here is the three-minute version of it.
The universe is a living, dynamic, and responsive universe. It is made not of static objects, but of events — events which elicit other events. Its most basic unit is an event of “response” to “things given.”
Events elicit other events: they evoke or draw out responses. At its simplest, this elicitation is directly causal, as with a billiard ball in motion hitting another billiard ball and setting it into predictable motion. But as this relationality gets complex — and the universe we know is quite complex — the elicitation, and the responsiveness to it, take on higher-order forms. Things — which make up the events we perceive and experience — come to “stand for” other things, which they do in three basic ways: through their directly causal force (the billiard ball model), through their resemblance to the “other things” they come to stand for (the recognition model), and through their being interpretable within a system of meaning-making (the interpretation model).
I’ve just gotten my hands on an advance print copy of The New Lives of Images, and it looks and feels wonderful to hold and handle. I’m quite happy with what Stanford University Press has done with the book — the artwork, the typography, and the entire editorial and publication process was and is commendable. And being part of the Sensing Media: Aesthetics, Philosophy, and Cultures of Media series is an honor.
One thing that’s missing from the book is a layered (two layers deep) table of contents — Stanford likes simplicity in that respect — so I thought I’d share that here. Note that the list of sub-headings does not exactly reflect the length of the respective chapters. The book’s first, theoretical “half” — a long essay on images and six “image regimes,” culminating in the digital — clocks in at a crisp 125 pages. The second, empirical half of the book, with its three lengthy and more-or-less-standalone investigations into the imaginal interface between contemporary humans and the earth (the Anthroposcene), humans and nonhuman animals (the Therioscene), and humans and our gods (the Theoscene), comes in at close to 200 pages. And there are nearly 60 pages of notes, and a 30-page index. Which makes it feel like a big book. I’m looking forward to the paperback, which should be out simultaneously with the cloth-bound and digital versions.
There are three main hypotheses explaining Donald Trump’s eagerness to please Vladimir Putin.
The first is “conspiratorial”: that Putin has something over Trump, related perhaps to the Steele dossier, Trump’s real estate shenanigans, the KGB’s long-term efforts to cultivate Trump as a “Russian asset,” or maybe even the Epstein files (Trump and Putin do, after all, connect within the ranks of the uber-rich masculinist jet set, where sexist pedophilia seems readily appeasable).
The second is psychoanalytical: that Trump is a pathological narcissist with a fragile father-damaged ego, and that he only looks up to other, more “successfully” imperial father figures. Putin is one of the few who fit his criteria.
The third is “realist,” which acknowledges that there are benefits, from Trump’s perspective, to a cozier relationship with Russia. Allying with Russia could, for instance, steer the latter away from China. More importantly, and more specifically these days, is that Russia is a fossil fuel superpower — and Trump’s authority is also reliant on a perpetuation of the global power of fossil fuels. Rehabilitating Putin will enable Trump to “make deals” around Russia’s only assets, which are its oil and gas deposits. When other prices are rising all around Trump, he could at least keep gas prices down by dealing directly with Putin.
