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Intervening eloquently into our relationship with planet Earth, Howard Caygill examines the two diverging conceptions of planetary consciousness that emerged from the cultural shock of Apollo 8''s seminal ''Earthrise'' image. Where earth sciences have taken a holistic view of our planet informed by ideas of systematicity - earth, environmental and activist art are instead united by their disjunctive view of tension and tectonic connectivity. Caygill starts by explaining the role of NASA and the instruments of planetary measurement and objectification in shaping much of today''s discourse around our presence on Earth. He frames the conceptual assumptions packed into this science, and its central role in informing climate activism, as being overdue philosophical scrutiny. From this point, the book pivots to the view that is so often proposed as an alternative, built around artists'' fascination with contested sites and fault lines in areas like forests, rivers, ice, sea, air and deserts. Ultimately, Caygill''s conclusion is that neither approach gives us exactly the tools that we need to deal with our planet''s ills. Working between the two, his new and disjunctive understanding of Earth instead corrects the trajectories of thought that span off from our first shared glimpse of it.
List of contents
Introduction: Planetary Aesthetic between Synopsis and Synechis
Part One: Synoptic Consciousness and Earth System Science1. The Planet as Battlefield
2. The Making of 'Earthrise'
3. NASA's Earth System Science Mission
4. The Anthropocene, Extinction and the Aton Bomb
Part Two: Synechic Consciousness and the Earth Arts 5. Art's Rethinking the Earth
6. Arts of the Forest
7. Art of the River
8. Arts of the Sea
9. Arts of the Desert
10. Arts of Air and Ice
Conclusion Activism and Planetary Consciousness
About the author
Howard Caygill is Professor of Modern European Philosophy at CRMEP, Kingston University, London, UK. He is author of
On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance (Bloomsbury, 2013) and
Kafka: In Light of the Accident (Bloomsbury, 2017).
