La communauté terrestre

Trilogie de la Terre #3

by Achille Mbembe

Traiter de la Terre, c'est avoir à l'esprit une chaîne symbiotique : celle du vivant, dans ses innombrables déploiements. Les humains, les espèces animales et végétales, les microbes, bactéries et virus, les corps inorganiques et les substances minérales ainsi que les dispositifs technologiques et autres appareillages artificiels font inséparablement partie de cette chaîne du vivant. Mais c'est aussi le cas, du moins dans les pensées animistes africaines, de toutes les forces invisibles, des génies, des esprits et des masques.
Prenant fermement appui sur l'insondable richesse de ces pensées, Achille Mbembe propose dans cet essai une réflexion stimulante sur la Terre, ses devenirs, et surtout la sorte de communauté qu'elle forme avec la cohorte des espèces animées et inanimées qui l'habitent, y ont trouvé refuge ou y séjournent.
Il montre comment notre relation fondamentale à la Terre ne peut être que celle de l'habitant et du passant. C'est en tant qu'habitant et passant qu'elle nous accueille et nous abrite, qu'elle entretient les traces de notre passage, celles qui parlent en notre nom et en mémoire de qui nous aurons été, avec d'autres et au milieu d'eux. C'est à ce titre qu'elle est la toute dernière des utopies, la pierre angulaire d'une nouvelle conscience planétaire.

Genres: Ecology

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Joseph-Achille Mbembe, known as Achille Mbembe (born 1957), is a Cameroonian philosopher, political theorist, and public intellectual.

He has written extensively in African history and politics, including La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun (Paris, Karthala, 1996). On the Postcolony was published in Paris in 2000 in French and the English translation was published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, in 2001. In 2015, Wits University Press published a new, African edition. He has an A1 rating from the National Research Foundation.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

“La cuestión decisiva es saber cómo articular una democracia de lo viviente que tome la multiplicidad como punto de partida de un nuevo proyecto de liberación, ya no del sujeto humano solo, sino del sujeto viviente en toda su extensión”.

[حكيم · Rating 2 out of 5]

ثرثرة في ترف ما بعد الاستعمار..
الكاتب وكأنَّه داخلٌ بنفسيَّة (أنا ضد الغرب، أنا إفريقي، إفريقي، إفريقي... اسمعوا) لذلك تراه يجمع الكونَ كلَّه في تراب إفريقيا، مستعدٌّ للإيمان بالخرافات القبلية الموغلة في الخيالات الأسطورية، فقط ليثبت أنه إفريقي مناهض للاستعمار! يذكِّرني بالمسلمين الذين بنفس نفسيَّتِه؛ فبحجة العودة للتراث عادوا للإيمان بأساطير الأقطاب الصوفية وعبادة الجثث!
الكاتب ينطلق من خيالات إفريقية قديمة عن الكون والطبيعة والحياة، أنا على ثقة أن لا عاقل يؤمن بها ولا حتى هو، لكن وجودها والاستمداد منها لنقد الاستعمار لازم. مع قليل من خرافات الإحيائيين التي هي شبيهة (ولعلها مسلوبة منها) بثقافات التصوف الشرقية، الإيمان بأن كل شيء فيه حياة ويندمج مع الطبيعة و... مع شيء من سب الاستعمار وتوسيع مفهومه إلى استعمار الطبيعة لا مجتمعات البشر، وكثير من مؤامرات التكنولوجيا والذكاء الصناعي، وخوف من طبقة الأوزون والاحتباس الحراري، وموت الأرض!
وفي النهاية: كلنا لإفريقيا...
النجمتان لبعض التحليلات الجيدة في نقد الاستعمار التي تجدها بين ثنايا الثرثرة.
ملاحظة: الترجمة سيئة.

[João Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

O eurocentrismo do cidadão europeu limita a compreensão do que se passa em territórios exógenos, em particular, África. Achille Mbembe tenta elevar-nos desta conceção centenária, não raramente injusta e até incompreensível, para uma visão mais humanista.

[Faisal Jamal · Rating 4 out of 5]

يتناول الصراع والتشابك بين الانسان والتكنولوجيا في العالم المتسارع حاليًا

[Juan Manuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

As expected, this short book is dense with critiques about where the path the colonial project - and its current techno-fascist permutation - has taken us. My most treasured takeaway of this generous and important text is that, as humanity advances towards artificialization, deploying computational thinking upon the earth, abstracting it into numbers in service of market, a return to a mystical relationship with the earth is a step towards utopia, one where the current synthetic fetish is neutralised by listening and opening space for all histories and ways of being in the planet.

[D H · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing I can say about this book is that it moves along an axis of meaning I don't seem to have access to. The worst thing I can say is that perhaps this is because of a lack of actual meaning.

This is like the literary equivalent of a band of jazz musicians who are so deep in theory - who are so relentlessly freaking on their instruments - that they've forgotten that music is supposed to make one feel things.
It's philosophy as 90% a language game where terms and theories are endlessly strung together without ever properly defining or explaining what's going on. It's writing as pure association, constantly making connections that - although in the pure abstract can be made - don't make much sense in the practical world.

I read the book in Dutch, so forgive me, I've had to translate this to English, but here's the passage that finally broke my resolve:

"Beyond soil and wood, stone, clay and dust, iron and other metals, air, fire and water, there is a metamorphic force that animates earthly matter, a force that gives it a certain consistency, solidity and stability. The same life force, which is both strength and energy, is at the origin of its substances. These substances, hard, soft, fluid, volcanic, or airy, mobile or immobile, sometimes volatile, often scorching hot or icy cold, and always elusive, have awakened in humans what Gaston Bachelard called "muscular joys," and that is also the other name we can give to technological action, which, at least in ancient Africa, was never separate from that other organ, namely the word. Therefore, if we speak of the evolution of the earth, we must also consider the evolution of technology, and thus the connections between the human species and the totality of living things."

I just have so many questions:
- why name all these aspects? Why not just say: "Beyond the material of the earth, there is a"
- What does Mbembe mean with this life force? It's never defined.
- What does it mean for a life force to be both strength and energy? Again, I don't know because it's never defined
- Why are all these substances named? What does that add?
- Why are these substances "always elusive"? What does he mean by that? It stands in contrast with the aspects of these substances he just named, which don't sound elusive.
- I wasn't familiar with Bachelards term here, but looking up the term doesn't clarify much as it defines as "dynamic and vital pleasure one feels in engaging with the world through the poetic imagination" - I'm just not sure what the role of poetic imagination is.
- "Muscular joys" is the "other name we can give to technological action"? Why? I suppose I can see a role for poetic imagination in technological development, but I'm not sure what the term is supposed to add here.
- I suppose we can't see "poetic action" as separate from "the word" but why is "the word" an organ? And why does that connection matter here? What does it add?
- And here's the real kicker: "if we speak of the evolution of the earth, we must also consider the evolution of technology, and thus the connections between the human species and the totality of living things" I mean obviously, this is just a true-ism, but how does this follow from the vague things he just said? What is he actually trying to say here that actually means anything?

The last part is my main gripe with the book beyond the words: it feels like what Mbembe is trying to say can be said rather more simply. So why doesn't he? Why all this prose? Why the scarcely relevant associations? Why not just say what you want to say?

Overall, to me this is like the modern art equivalent of philosophy. There are times in modern art museums where I'll stand in front of a piece - like an ordinary surfboard that has been hacked into seven equal pieces - and just be puzzled by the meaning of it. In fact, I wonder if it has any meaning at all. I mostly just feel annoyed. But then, as I go back into the world, I notice that I feel a little more happy. Entertained somehow.

[Karla Ballesteros · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Cómo transformar el orden del mundo que hemos heredado?
¿Como tomar conciencia de la finitud de la vida cómo la conocemos?
Estas y otras preguntas pone sobre la mesa Achille Mbembe en este libro, así, nos adentra a una serie de reflexiones y análisis sobre todo lo que habita la tierra y nuestra relación con ella, desde los seres vivos, los ecosistemas y la tecnología, así como la colonialidad y sus terribles consecuencias en el mundo. Este texto nos propone reconocernos dentro de una comunidad terrestre como una realidad que tenemos que tener en cuenta para nuestra propia subsistencia, no es buscar otros planetas, es poner los pies sobre lo único certero que tenemos y volverlo habitable para todos los seres.

[adeline Bronner]

Cet essai est un catalogue des idées convenues des sciences sociales autour des thèmes du climat, des technosciences et des fatigues des démocraties libérales, vaguement unies par des considérations assez lunaires sur l’idéal de vie d’une Afrique primordial mythique et par le laïus habituel autour de la racisation par une Europe uniment barbare. Des idées pour changer la marche du monde? 3 pages autour des idées d’Edouard Glissant. Convenu donc.
Bref, si vous avez envie de faire une thèse vous aurez au moins une première bibliographie 🤷🏻‍♀️.

[ACB · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was an assigned socsc reading! kinda hard to read because it was translated from french, nonetheless very substantial and insightful.
3.5 ⭐️

[Marian Pālie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Subtil, profund și impetuos.