Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth

by Bruno Latour (Editor), Peter Weibel (Editor), Jonathan W. Y. Gray (Contributor)

Artists and writers portray the disorientation of a world facing climate change. This monumental volume, drawn from a 2020 exhibition at the ZKM Center for Art and Media, portrays the disorientation of life in world facing climate change. It traces this disorientation to the disconnection between two different definitions of the land on which modernizing humans the sovereign nation from which they derive their rights, and another one, hidden, from which they gain their wealth—the land they live on , and the land they live from . Charting the land they will inhabit, they find not a globe, not the iconic “blue marble,” but a series of critical zones—patchy, heterogenous, discontinuous. With short pieces, longer essays, and more than 500 illustrations, the contributors explore the new landscape on which it may be possible for humans to land—what it means to be “on Earth,” whether the critical zone, the Gaia, or the terrestrial. They consider geopolitical conflicts and tools redesigned for the new “geopolitics of life forms.” The “thought exhibition” described in this book can opens a fictional space to explore the new climate regime; the rest of the story is unknown. Contributors include Dipesh Chakrabarty, Pierre Charbonnier, Emanuele Coccia, Vinciane Despret, Jerôme Gaillarde, Donna Haraway, Joseph Leo Koerner, Timothy Lenton, Richard Powers, Simon Schaffer, Isabelle Stengers, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Jan A. Zalasiewicz, Siegfried Zielinski Copublished with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

Genres: Art, Nature, Philosophy, Nonfiction

560 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2020

About the author

Bruno Latour, a philosopher and anthropologist, is the author of Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Our Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, and many other books. He curated the ZKM exhibits ICONOCLASH and Making Things Public and coedited the accompanying catalogs, both published by the MIT Press.

Reviews

[Mi Kr · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anyone who find this book “inspiring” must confront Latour’s application of Nazi philosophers (Heidegger and Schmitt) in his theories’ constructions. I am not saying that he must not be read because Gaia is an extension of the Hobbesian-Schmittian Leviathan, but the environmental humanities paradigm is gradually slipping into an obsession of unity that has been evidenced in astonishing proximity with that of Nazisim for Heidegger (not to mention the similar distrust of science).

[Benji · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of the human body
as the history of prosthesis
converging with
the history of the earth
as the history of prosthesis
The earth becomes a human body.

Tools and technical culture
originate from exteriorizations
of man's body.

...

The conquest of the universe
continues the exteriorization of the body.
Satellites and space ships are
not only exteriorizations of the body
but also exteriorizations of the earth.

...

The earth becomes a kind of prosthesis
a tool of man.

...

Satellites are eyes, ears
and cameras of the human earth

...

Space ships are
the first cells of the cloned earth.

Peter Wiebel

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me almost two years to read the entire book. I learned a lot about our planet, other species, biology, geography and the symbiosis of everything. Since there were a lot of repetitions concerning the philosophical theories, I had trouble keeping on reading. I very much appreciate the graphic design of the catalogue.

I'm really impressed by how much work they put into this exhibition and the catalogue.