Aesthetics of Geopower
Contested Planetary Imaginaries
Will be published approx. on 31. January 2027
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-3995-6201-0 (ISBN)
Description
This volume attends to geopower: the forces, both human and nonhuman, that are shaping and emanating from the earth. In a present marked by planetary ecological derangement, escalating geopolitical competition, and growing resistance to extractive regimes, it theorises the ways in which geopower intersects with aesthetics, taken expansively to include operational imaging, sensed materiality and embodied perception.
Bringing together sixteen interdisciplinary specialists, the collection shows that the aesthetic, far from being secondary or supplemental to geopower, is centrally embedded in its dynamics. Whether in the construction of new extractive frontiers or the fostering of alternative, decolonial modes of imagining and inhabiting the planetary environment, the aesthetics of geopower are shaping the earth's possible futures.
Bringing together sixteen interdisciplinary specialists, the collection shows that the aesthetic, far from being secondary or supplemental to geopower, is centrally embedded in its dynamics. Whether in the construction of new extractive frontiers or the fostering of alternative, decolonial modes of imagining and inhabiting the planetary environment, the aesthetics of geopower are shaping the earth's possible futures.
Reviews / Votes
A globally expansive yet creatively hopeful analysis of local strategies of resistance - many through art making - challenging the techniques of geological extraction and transformation inevitably remaking the earth and its underground, airborne and watery resources. This book makes clear that we need to radically rethink these relations to the earth. -- Elizabeth Grosz, Duke UniversityMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
4 black and white and 37 colour illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-3995-6201-0 (9781399562010)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Simon Ferdinand is a Veni Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, where he writes on the politics and poetics of mapping and cultural visions of the whole earth. Simon is the author of a monograph, Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity (Nebraska University Press, 2019), and coeditor of Heterotopia and Globalisation in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2020) and Other Globes: Past and Peripheral Imaginations of Globalization (Palgrave, 2019). Alongside his research, which is currently funded by the Dutch Research Council, Simon runs English Academic Editing, which supports scholars preparing research for publication. Colin Sterling is Senior Lecturer in Heritage, Museums and the Environment at the University of Amsterdam. His research explores the social, political and ecological dimensions of heritage and museums in the past and the present. He is the author of Heritage, Photography, and the Affective Past (Routledge, 2020) and co-editor of Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2020). Colin has published over fifty articles, essays, book chapters, reviews and other texts in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, exhibition catalogues and magazines. His research has been funded by - amongst others - the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, Horizon Europe, the British Academy, and the Dutch Research Council. He is editor of the journal Museums & Social Issues.
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction: An Aesthetics of the Earth for a New Age of Geopower
Simon Ferdinand and Colin Sterling
Part I.
Extractive Horizons: Introduction
Simon Ferdinand and Colin Sterling
1. Futures Under Water: Deep-Sea Mining and Aquatic Visuality
Theo Reeves-Evison
2. Between Geognosy and Geopower in Greenland: Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
Irina Souch
3. From Moulds to Energy Vessels: Reinventing the Socialist Subject in the Extractive Zone
Tim Shao-Hung Teng
4. Gas Flares and Oily Deaths: The Geo-Necropolitics of the Niger Delta in Tanure Ojaide's The Tale of the Harmattan
Tem Edwin Nji
5. Chimerica's Geopalette: Gendered Aestheticide in China's Technoeconomic Resurgence
Shana Leodar Ye
Part II
Conflicted Sovereignties: Introduction
Simon Ferdinand and Colin Sterling
6. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Noopiming: (W)righting Epistemic Injustices on and with Anishinaabe Land
Doro Wiese
7. A 'Fault Line of Pain': N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy, Global Risk and the Afrofuturist Planetary Imagination
David Shackleton
8. Enduring Currents: Oceanic Cosmologies, Va Praxis and Geopower in the Global Pacific
Helen Gilbert & Jasmin 'Ofamo'oni
9. Power Over, Power To, Power Through: Ukraine and Climate Imaginaries at Scale
Asia Bazdyrieva
10. Geo/power/lessness: On Post-Planetary Aesthetics
Brad Tabas
Part III
Earthly Vitalities: Introduction
Simon Ferdinand and Colin Sterling
11. Culture in the Web of Life: Geopower and Metabolism in Latin America
Santiago Acosta
12. Anatomy of the Planet: A Genealogy of the Sick Earth
Lijuan Klassen
13. On the Pluriversal Bodies of the Earth
Federico Luisetti
14. Geontological Survey of Ochre: Mapping Geopower
Elpitha Tsoutsounakis
15. Her?ubrei?: Mountainous Geopower and Deep Time
Edward H. Huijbens
Index
Introduction: An Aesthetics of the Earth for a New Age of Geopower
Simon Ferdinand and Colin Sterling
Part I.
Extractive Horizons: Introduction
Simon Ferdinand and Colin Sterling
1. Futures Under Water: Deep-Sea Mining and Aquatic Visuality
Theo Reeves-Evison
2. Between Geognosy and Geopower in Greenland: Peter Hoeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
Irina Souch
3. From Moulds to Energy Vessels: Reinventing the Socialist Subject in the Extractive Zone
Tim Shao-Hung Teng
4. Gas Flares and Oily Deaths: The Geo-Necropolitics of the Niger Delta in Tanure Ojaide's The Tale of the Harmattan
Tem Edwin Nji
5. Chimerica's Geopalette: Gendered Aestheticide in China's Technoeconomic Resurgence
Shana Leodar Ye
Part II
Conflicted Sovereignties: Introduction
Simon Ferdinand and Colin Sterling
6. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's Noopiming: (W)righting Epistemic Injustices on and with Anishinaabe Land
Doro Wiese
7. A 'Fault Line of Pain': N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy, Global Risk and the Afrofuturist Planetary Imagination
David Shackleton
8. Enduring Currents: Oceanic Cosmologies, Va Praxis and Geopower in the Global Pacific
Helen Gilbert & Jasmin 'Ofamo'oni
9. Power Over, Power To, Power Through: Ukraine and Climate Imaginaries at Scale
Asia Bazdyrieva
10. Geo/power/lessness: On Post-Planetary Aesthetics
Brad Tabas
Part III
Earthly Vitalities: Introduction
Simon Ferdinand and Colin Sterling
11. Culture in the Web of Life: Geopower and Metabolism in Latin America
Santiago Acosta
12. Anatomy of the Planet: A Genealogy of the Sick Earth
Lijuan Klassen
13. On the Pluriversal Bodies of the Earth
Federico Luisetti
14. Geontological Survey of Ochre: Mapping Geopower
Elpitha Tsoutsounakis
15. Her?ubrei?: Mountainous Geopower and Deep Time
Edward H. Huijbens
Index