In
1972, an image of the whole earth as seen from space circulated across the
whole earth. Has a planetary perspective different from the parochialisms,
imperialisms, and globalizations that still beset our politics emerged as a
possibility as that whole earth has become one of the mostly widely distributed
images in history? Just how are the politics of catastrophic climate change and
resource descent exacerbated by planetary networks, planetary migrations,
planetary exploitation, and planetary governance? What are the differences
within the planetary frame between environmentalisms as sites of
identification, as subcultures, as movements, as political programs, as
research programs, and as rhetorical perspectives? How has Green education, agitation,
organization, and consciousness changed over time and in what ways does
Greenness abide for earthlings like us? We will read a number of canonical and
representative environmentalist discourses and vantages-from transcendentalism
and deep ecology to eco-feminism, eco-socialism, and environmental justice
critique; from permaculture and mindful eating to futurological geo-engineering
and corporate-military greenwashing-seeking to understand better how to read
and write and make the planet Greenly. Tracking through these texts each of us
will struggle to weave together and testify to our own sense of the planetary
as an interpretive register, as a critical perspective, as a writerly
skill-set, as a site of imaginative investment, and as a provocation to collective
action and personal transformation.
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