Volatile Worlds, Vulnerable Bodies

Abstract

The abrupt climate change thesis suggests that climate passes through threshold transitions after which change is sudden, runaway and unstoppable. This concurs with recent themes in complexity studies. Data from ice cores indicates that major shifts in global climate regimes have occurred in as little as a decade, and that for most of the span of human existence climate has oscillated much more violently than it has over the last 10,000 years. This evidence presents enormous challenges for international climate change negotiation and regulation, which has thus far focussed on gradual change. It is argued that existing social theoretic engagements with physical agency are insufficiently geared towards dissonant or disastrous physical events. Wagering on the past and future importance of abrupt climate change, the paper explores a way of engaging with catastrophic climatic change that stresses the inherent volatility and unpredictability of earth process, and the no-less inherent vulnerability of the human body. Drawing on Bataille and Derrida, it proposes a way of nestling the issue of environmental justice within a broader sense of immeasurable indebtedness to those humans who endured previous episodes of abrupt climate, and considers the idea of experimentation and generosity without reserve.

Clashing Tactics, Clashing Generations: The Politics of the School Strikes for Climate in Belgium

“…If there is no reason to keep what we have, emancipatory politics become an option again. Furthermore, opening up the debate to more fundamental questions on how we as human beings, for the first time in history and self-consciously though mostly unwillingly, inscribe ourselves in geological processes can radicalise and even revolutionise the levels of change we allow in our imaginaries (Clark, 2010). Finally, such an approach makes it easier to connect with other struggles on the basis of which an emancipatory and intersectional frontier can be built.…”

Fossil modernity: The materiality of acceleration, slow violence, and ecological futures

“…On the other hand, there is a growing concern that the violence of climate change might be more sudden than we tend to think. Some climate scientists argue that beyond certain tipping points, the regulative mechanisms of the Earth System might flip giving way to an abrupt and self-reinforcing climate change (Clark, 2010). The prospect of slow violence suggests that acceleration engenders creeping devastations imperceptible by social observations adapted to high speeds.…”

Climate Cosmopolitics and the Possibilities for Urban Planning

“…In sum, cosmopolitical theory has been utilised by planners (and planning scholars) within city contexts to promote socially diverse, liveable urban spaces. However, there has been far less emphasis on the cosmopolitics inspired by Stengers, which consider how we "live together" in cities with other species and other inhuman geophysical agents (Clark, 2010;Steele and Vizel 2013). Urban planning systems, along with other "expert designs" of capital, science and the state have ignored and undermined the heterogeneous ecologies of cities and our political responsibilities toward them (Hinchcliffe et al 2006, p. 124).…”