Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming

by William E. Connolly

In Facing the Planetary William E. Connolly expands his influential work on the politics of pluralization, capitalism, fragility, and secularism to address the complexities of climate change and to complicate notions of the Anthropocene. Focusing on planetary processes—including the ocean conveyor, glacier flows, tectonic plates, and species evolution—he combines a critical understanding of capitalism with an appreciation of how such nonhuman systems periodically change on their own. Drawing upon scientists and intellectuals such as Lynn Margulis, Michael Benton, Alfred North Whitehead, Anna Tsing, Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, Pope Francis, Bruno Latour, and Naomi Klein, Connolly focuses on the gap between those regions creating the most climate change and those suffering most from it. He addresses the creative potential of a "politics of swarming" by which people in different regions and social positions coalesce to reshape dominant priorities. He also explores how those displaying spiritual affinities across differences in creed can energize a militant assemblage that is already underway.

Genres: Environment, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

Published February 10, 2017

About the author

William E. Connolly is a political theorist known for his work on democracy and pluralism. He is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. His 1974 work The Terms of Political Discourse won the 1999 Benjamin Lippincott Award
--
wiki

Reviews

[Lewis Winstanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree mostly, but it also feels a bit naive at times and a bit too entrenched in the world of academia.

[D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo más interesante del trabajo de Connolly es cómo conecta tradiciones teóricas que parecen incompatibles: los enfoques de la filosofía (pos)continental, en su tradición foucaultiana y latouriana, con una mirada más típica de la teoría política norteamericana. A veces es difícil seguir el modo en que el autor relaciona, por ejemplo, a Hayek con Lazzaratto, o cómo pasa de analizar a Rousseau a pensar lo "planetario" como una nueva categoría para superar el gradualismo de la ecología profunda.
Sin embargo, la originalidad del abordaje no debe despreciarse, y efectivamente logra una serie de ideas productivas. En particular, la tesis polémica contra la idea de "tiempos lentos" en los que se dan los procesos ambientales y evolutivos: Connolly argumenta que también hay cambios rápidos y de corto plazo que inciden sobre la totalidad. Su humanismo entrelazado, que busca pensar en términos de ensamblajes sin perder la centralidad de la humano, no me termina de convencer, y tampoco lo hace su crítica al marxismo, que desarrolla mejor en otros libros.
Por otra parte, saludo la primera traducción al español de este pensador y el lanzamiento del nuevo proyecto editorial Interferencias, dentro de Adriana Hidalgo Editora. Es muy importante que las obras de autores como Connolly empiecen a penetrar fuera de la anglósfera.

[Jacqui · Rating 5 out of 5]

My politicoscientific reading group chose this book, and while it’s outside my expertise I know these topics (climate change and the Anthropocene, “entangled humanisms”, extractive capitalism, decolonizing environmentalism, micropolitics, &etc...) are VERY important.

[Esteban Sanchez · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldnt get past the reading of the Book of Job lmao

[Nils · Rating 4 out of 5]

Against anthropocentrism, sociocentrism, genocentrism…

In favor of teleodynamism as a method for moving beyond critique toward conceptualizations of more positive alternatives. He distinguishes teleodynamism from teleology in that the latter is one in “which the implicit becomes explicit as it progressively expresses the natural bent of the world.” (48)

Feels in many ways like it's Kubler-Ross bargaining, turning the light down low to keep hope alive for the human.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprising weave of a book. I better understand Deleuze and Whitehead from reading Connolly’s interpretation of these process philosophers as he strung them into current enviro/ecological thought. His concepts of entangled humanism, passive nihilism and scars of being are fresh without deepening into unnecessary jargon. Although I do not hold strong such political urgency as him, the book is highly recommended for those interested in alternative strands of thought.

[Mills College Library]

322.4 C7529 2017