Sean, Brian, others, thank you for the interesting and engaging
contributions. (Some of it gets a bit cryptic since it refers to
political discourses that are not immediately apparent, at least to this
reader, but that's generally OK for a most-of-the-time lurker.)
Sean Cubitt wrote (Nov 24, 2020 at 3:53 PM):
> Any 21st century politics has to be formed by an alliance of the
> excluded - human, ecological and - I would add, though it needs a
> longer argument - technological.
(25.11.20 um 01:19):
Rancière argues that politics occurs when the excluded demand a part in
their governance - a demand that changes government permanently (as
women and ex-slaves have done already). It is unthinkable that oceans
and mountains should have a seat in government, just as it was
unthinkable for women - and still is unthinkable for migrants - to have
a say in how they are governed. The unthinkable has to be thought.
I wonder whether you could expand on this a bit; I understand the
argument (I don't know whether you would call it posthumanist, for lack
of a better word I would), but i cannot get my head around the idea how
the anthropo-logical systems of political representation, of governance,
could be transformed into systems that would encompass nonhuman beings,
incl. technological, as equals.
You are imputing that all of the following: women, ex-slaves, migrants,
oceans, mountains, [technics], are all "excluded" in a way that can be
overcome. I would maintain that what may have been unthinkable for some
people in some places in some past (that women, ex-slaves, migrants
would have a say in how they are governed), is of a different order, not
only because it relates to the way in which humans treat other humans
(thus an intra-anthropological issue), but because these once excluded
individuals and groups can speak for themselves in a human language.
I agree that all humans must factor the oceans, mountains, trees, etc.,
into the way they live on the Earth (some do), and I also agree that
capitalism systematically treats these as cheap or free resources. (But
maybe it is not only capitalism, but homo sapiens in general? What has
brought about and sustained the non-nature-exploitative civilisations?)
But I wonder what the "voice" of the oceans, mountains, trees is going
to be. Will that "voice" be the storms, the droughts, the fires? Or will
it be the voice of human scientists (some of whom search for the
sentience of trees and stones, while others support geo-engineering, and
yet others look for the next site for open pit mining)?
And then there is the question of how the "technological" is brought
into the alliance of the excluded...
Regards,
-a
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