Beyond Metabolism: On the Pluriversal Bodies of the Earth
Type
conference keynote
Date Issued
2023-09
Author(s)
Abstract
In an age of socio-environmental breakdown, thinking planetary metabolism becomes crucial once again, as it was for Karl Marx in the second half of the nineteenth century, when he formulated his critique of capitalist agriculture and industrial labour. Biogeochemical cycles are now disrupted and material, social, and epistemic “metabolic rifts” are scarring the Earth and deepening the Global South/Global North divide. Grasping geopower through the lens of planetary metabolism captures the proliferation of environmental conflicts and forces critical theory to acknowledge the geohistorical roots of the crisis: the colonial inhabitation of the Earth inaugurated by plantations and slave labour. Yet, the notion of metabolism is deeply entrenched in the lexicon of liberal political biology, and often presupposes autonomous organic individualities in relation with their “outside” through metabolic exchanges (Maurizio Meloni). This paradigm of physiological modernism informs also political ecology and does not account neither for symbiotic and postgenomic understandings of biological life, nor for the metabolic mode of existence of non-biological entities such as stones, valleys, and rivers. My contribution addresses metabolism from the perspective of decolonial ecologies that question liberal biocentric premises. I will explore the decolonial concept of a pluriversal “body-territory” and show how it reshapes current descriptions of geopower.
Funding(s)
Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis and Dutch Research Council
Language
English (United States)
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Event Title
The Aesthetics of Geopower: Imagining Planetary Histories and Hegemonies
Event Location
University of Amsterdam
Event Date
April 4-5, 2024
Contact Email Address
federico.luisetti@unisg.ch
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
The Aesthetics of Geopower Program.pdf
Size
13.24 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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