‘The Door to Hell’, burning gas deposits in Derweze, Turkmenistan
Book Forum On an Ungrounded Earth, reviewed by Kai Bosworth, Harlan Morehouse, Rory Rowan and Jordan Skinner
Ben Woodard, On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy. New York, Punctum Books, 2013, 118 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0615785387. OPEN-ACCESS e-book + $12.00 [€11.00] in print.
Ben Woodard’s On an Ungrounded Earth is an innovative work of philosophy with a powerful aesthetic allure. It is also a timely book situated at the intersection of two emerging trends in contemporary thought: so-called ‘speculative realism’ in Continental philosophy, and the ‘geological turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. Woodard leads his readers into dark and circuitous corridors, at turns subterranean and cosmic, through the Naturphilosophie of the German idealist F.W.J. Schelling, the mutant philosophies of Georges Bataille, Nick Land and Reza Negarestani, and the uncanny worlds of science fiction populated with Lovecraftian horrors and alien death stars, before resurfacing at a rather unsettling terminus: a planet Earth which is neither ‘whole world’ or secure ‘ground,’ but a clump of decaying matter, enslaved to the sun’s energy and indifferent to the plight of humanity.
On an Ungrounded Earth presents alternative, perhaps even heretical, ways of ‘thinking the planet’ making it of clear relevance to critical Geography, which has long understood that idealized and homeostatic conceptions of Nature are incapable of accounting for the radical uncertainties of the planet’s material contingencies. However, whilst Woodard is content to pursue these lines of thought into the abyssal, inhuman depths, few geographers seem willing to follow (Nigel Clark and Kathryn Yusoff being notable exceptions). Yet, the organizers of this forum maintain that the discipline of Geography is well positioned to respond to, if not take the lead in, contemporary developments in geophilosophy, the area to which Woodard’s book makes such an important contribution. Indeed, they hold that radical changes in the relationships between human life and the Earth raise profound philosophical, ecological and political questions that make an engagement with geophilosophy important for the future of Geographic thought.
In what follows the organizers – three emerging scholars working along the borderlands of Geography and Continental Philosophy – critically assess On an Ungrounded Earth in loosely defined geographical terms. Leading off the exchange, Kai Bosworth engages the speculative tenor of Woodard’s work, suggesting that the proclamation of a decaying planet can serve to uncover an alternative politics of the Earth with liberatory potentials. Following this, Harlan Morehouse situates Woodard’s work within the vein of cosmic pessimism, and examines the risks and rewards associated with this mode of thought. Rory Rowan takes up Woodard’s notion of ungrounding, examining its role in the critique of anthropocentric metaphysics and exploring its political and ecological stakes in light of the book’s grim conclusion. Concluding the forum, Ben Woodard offers a generous response, laying out a serious of clarifications about the relationship between ontology and politics, the role of aesthetics in his work and the necessity of squarely facing dark horizons of thought that offer little scope for comforting existential or political self-confirmations.
Kai Bosworth, Notes towards a Geological Uprising by way of Dark Feminism
Harlan Morehouse, In Space no one can hear you philosophize
Rory Rowan, Undermining the Ends of the Earth
Ben Woodard, Response: Terrestrial Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness
In addition to this forum, Jordan Skinner offers a philosophical topology to locate the genealogy of Woodard’s ideas and forms.
Jordan Skinner, A Philosophical Topology
[…] Additionally, Jordan Skinner offers a philosophical topology to locate the genealogy of Woodard’s ideas and forms, here. […]