Insurgent Geology and Fugitive Life

Abstract

Chapter 1 begins with an overview of the material and metaphysical dynamics of geology. First, the historic consolidation of the techniques of colonial geology in the history of Western geology—white geology—is discussed. The examination of key moments of epistemic and theoretical formation of geology situates how earth theories identify and structure much more than rocks, metals, and minerals. It shows how racialization (and its gendered and sexualized forms) became inextricably imbricated in ideas of the earth, the narrativizing of temporality, and material practices of extraction. Second, the chapter examines how race is produced within the context of geologic paleontological practices and colonial world-building. This geologic praxis is productive of racialized forms of life—geologies of race—that substantiate the geophysical conditions of subjective life. Third, the chapter introduces the analytic of geologic life as a challenge to colonial grammars of geology and their syntax of the ground.