“The Infinite Go-Before of the Present”

Abstract

This chapter highlights geology's association with a modern, civilized and, in the US, distinctly Anglo-American whiteness, which was held to be the apex of planetary development. It shows how geological fantasy worked in tandem with the reconstruction of New World lands as potentially productive space in which the future of Man could unfold. Geology made visible long-vanished worlds that were both appealing in their alienness and flattering to those designated as their rightful heirs. This perspective on the past enabled US-based writers to construct planetary histories about the understanding of life and death around which biopower was organized, supporting the establishment and expansion of US American whiteness across the North American continent. At the same time, accounts of planetary morality could also be positioned against the outsized ambitions of the American epoch.