Facing the planetary: entangled humanism and the politics of swarming

Description

In Facing the Planetary William E. Connolly expands his influential work on the politics of pluralization, capitalism, fragility, and secularism to address the complexities of climate change and to complicate notions of the Anthropocene. Focusing on planetary processes—including the ocean conveyor, glacier flows, tectonic plates, and species evolution—he combines a critical understanding of capitalism with an appreciation of how such nonhuman systems periodically change on their own. Drawing upon scientists and intellectuals such as Lynn Margulis, Michael Benton, Alfred North Whitehead, Anna Tsing, Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, Pope Francis, Bruno Latour, and Naomi Klein, Connolly focuses on the gap between those regions creating the most climate change and those suffering most from it. He addresses the creative potential of a "politics of swarming" by which people in different regions and social positions coalesce to reshape dominant priorities. He also explores how those displaying spiritual affinities across differences in creed can energize a militant assemblage that is already underway. Prelude: Myth and the Planetary 1. Sociocentrism, the Anthropocene, and the Planetary 2. Species Evolution and Cultural Creativity 3. Creativity and the Scars of Being 4. Distributed Agencies and Bumpy Temporalities 5. The Politics of Swarming and the General Strike 6. Postcolonial Ecologies, Extinction Events, and Entangled Humanism Postlude: Capitalism and the Planetary Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index