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Fiery arts : pyrotechnology and the political aesthetics of the anthropocene
Full text linkThe effects of combustion feature prominently in the planetary predicament signaled by the Anthropocene thesis. Historical studies of pyrotechnology—the application of heat to transform earth materials—suggest a wide-ranging inquiry into human fire use might bring new insights to the practical and political challenges of the Anthropocene. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, I use the term pyrotechnic phylum to refer to the multimillennial developments of metallurgy, ceramics, and related “fiery arts” centered on the enclosed fire of the oven, kiln, and furnace. As an engagement with the forces and properties of the Earth, pyrotechnical innovation has a pronounced experimental and playful dimension—opening up possibilities that human geological agency might have aesthetic origins. Pyrotechnic histories also highlight the widely distributed character of innovation, raising questions about a singular thermo-industrial revolution centered on Europe. Bringing together a feeling for the creative, world-shaping aspects of the pyrotechnic arts and a sense of the decentered, collaborative nature of their development, it is suggested that the pyrotechnic phylum might be seen as a kind of a shared platform for political action. Although attentive to its current contraction and marginalization, I speculate about the possible role of pyrotechnology in a political aesthetics for the Anthropocene
Politics of Strata
Full text linkModern western political thought revolves around globality, focusing on the partitioning and the connecting up of the earth’s surface. But climate change and the Anthropocene thesis raise pressing questions about human interchange with the geological and temporal depths of the earth. Drawing on contemporary earth science and the geophilosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, this article explores how geological strata are emerging as provocations for political issue formation. The first section reviews the emergence – and eventual turn away from – concern with `revolutions of the earth’ during the 18-19thC discovery of `geohistory’. The second section looks at the subterranean world both as an object of `downward’ looking territorial imperatives and as the ultimate power source of all socio-political life. The third section weighs up the prospects of `earth system governance’. The paper rounds up with some general thoughts about the possibilities of`negotiating strata’ in more generative and judicious ways
Infernal Machinery : Thermopolitics of the Explosion
Full text linkCombustion – especially the burning of fossil fuels – is central to the problematic of human geologic agency and to any meaningful political or cultural response to the current planetary predicament. But a consideration of the politics of combustion raises the issue of another kind of fire: the explosive combustion that is at the core of state or military arsenals and the crux of most forms of insurrectionary force. While fire has been part of our planet’s history for hundreds of millions of years, there is no natural equivalent to the high-speed combustive chain reaction that is the blast of gunpowder. This paper traces the ‘thermopolitics’ of firearms that began with the discovery of explosive powders in 9th century China, but which builds on a much longer history of experimentation with and application of chambered fire. While the fire of the artisan brought enchanting and beautiful objects into the world, escalating military use of gunpowder installed new powers of destructiveness into the very core of modern social life. Moving from a biopolitical to a thermopolitical perspective, it is argued that the shocking demands of functioning in proximity to the explosion turns the social organization and cultural sensibilities of modernity into a kind of infernal machinery. In our own era, the internal combustion engine has inherited something of the ‘infernal’ power of the militarized explosion, and ramped it up to the scale of global environmental change. This raises questions not only about to get the runaway forces of planetary fire under control, but about what other uses – more gratuitous and glorious – might yet be made of the explosive firepower we have brought into the world
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