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In Geologic Life, Kathryn Yusoff theorizes the processes by which race and racialization emerged geologically. Examining both the history of geology as a discipline and ongoing mineral and resource extraction, Yusoff locates forms of imperial geology embedded in Western and Enlightenment thought and highlights how it creates anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and anti-Brown environmental and racial injustices. Throughout, she outlines how the disciplines of geology and geography—and their conventions: surveying, identifying, classifying, valuing, and extracting—established and perpetuated colonial practices that ordered the world and people along a racial axis. Examining the conceptualization of the inhuman as political, geophysical, and paleontological, Yusoff unearths an apartheid of materiality as distinct geospatial forms. This colonial practice of geology organized and underpinned racialized accounts of space and time in ways that materially made Anthropocene Earth. At the same time, Yusoff turns to Caribbean, Indigenous, and Black thought to chart a parallel geologic epistemology of the "earth-bound" that challenges what and who the humanities have chosen to overlook in its stories of the earth. By reconsidering the material epistemologies of the earth as an on-going geotrauma in colonial afterlives, Yusoff demonstrates that race is as much a geological formation as a biological one.
Price: $36.95
Pages: 608
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Publication Date:
10 May 2024
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781478030300
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
“Destined to be as influential as Kathryn Yusoff's masterful first book, Geologic Life thinks with geopower and geontopower in order to open rifts in the racist matrixes of time that divide and rank existence and to energize efforts seeking a more porous, less fungible encounter with subjectivity. As Yusoff sinks into the archives that compose the history of white geology, she lifts into view a multitude of missing earths—Indigenous, Black, and Brown earths—visible in seams of geologic ledgers. We must read Yusoff to see what is in front of our blinded eyes.”—Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of, Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism
“This is a groundbreaking book of anticolonial praxis that brilliantly excavates the long racialized history of white geology as well as the ghost geologies that are critical foundations to our current and historical practices of extraction.”—Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey, author of, Allegories of the Anthropocene
"Yusoff’s book, in drawing out the geologic foundation of colonial modernity in an intricate yet incisive way, is a watershed, demanding a rethinking of many familiar concepts in the humanities. Indeed, despite its originality, I am struck by Yusoff’s intellectual generosity and breadth. Geologic Life ranges across the humanities and social sciences, combining the insights of some of the most important intellectual movements of the current moment... as well as demonstrating the power of artists and writers, from Dionne Brand to Natalie Diaz, in resisting geopower."—Joe Davidson, H-Environment
"An expansive history of geology that fuses philosophy, aesthetics, Black critical studies, and grim forensics. ... The scope of Geologic Life is vertiginous: the mathematical formulas, (often painful) archival accounts of dehumanization, and analyses of contemporary art woven into the book contribute to this expansiveness."—Eyad Houssami, Critical Inquiry
"The scope of Geologic Life is vast, and Yusoff deftly handles the task."—Helen Ganiy, ISLE
“This is a groundbreaking book of anticolonial praxis that brilliantly excavates the long racialized history of white geology as well as the ghost geologies that are critical foundations to our current and historical practices of extraction.”—Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey, author of, Allegories of the Anthropocene
"Yusoff’s book, in drawing out the geologic foundation of colonial modernity in an intricate yet incisive way, is a watershed, demanding a rethinking of many familiar concepts in the humanities. Indeed, despite its originality, I am struck by Yusoff’s intellectual generosity and breadth. Geologic Life ranges across the humanities and social sciences, combining the insights of some of the most important intellectual movements of the current moment... as well as demonstrating the power of artists and writers, from Dionne Brand to Natalie Diaz, in resisting geopower."—Joe Davidson, H-Environment
"An expansive history of geology that fuses philosophy, aesthetics, Black critical studies, and grim forensics. ... The scope of Geologic Life is vertiginous: the mathematical formulas, (often painful) archival accounts of dehumanization, and analyses of contemporary art woven into the book contribute to this expansiveness."—Eyad Houssami, Critical Inquiry
"The scope of Geologic Life is vast, and Yusoff deftly handles the task."—Helen Ganiy, ISLE
Kathryn Yusoff is Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University of London and author of A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None.
Introduction. Coordinates (0°0' Longitude, 51°N Latitude) 1
Geologic Life Analytic 27
Geologic Life Lexicon 31
I. Geology’s Margins
1. Insurgent Geology and Fugitive Life 39
2. Rift Theory 77
3. Underground Aesthetics 97
II. Geologic Histories and Theories
4. “Fathering” Geology 121
5. Geologic Grammars 193
6. Stratigraphic Thought and the Metaphysics of the Strata 236
7. Geopower: Materialisms before Biopolitics 255
III. Inhuman Epistemologies
8. Inhuman Matters I: Black Earth and Abyssal Futurity 295
9. Inhuman Matter II: Deep Timing and Undergrounding in the Carceral Mine 343
10. Inhuman Matters III: Stealing Suns 378
11. Inhuman Matters IV: Modernity, Urbanism, and the Spatial Fix of Whiteness 401
12. Inhuman Matters V: Trees of Life (and Death), “Strange Fruit,” and Geologies of Race 438
IV. Paradigms of Geologic Life
13. Ghost Geology 477
Acknowledgments 497
Notes 501
References 559
Index 583
Geologic Life Analytic 27
Geologic Life Lexicon 31
I. Geology’s Margins
1. Insurgent Geology and Fugitive Life 39
2. Rift Theory 77
3. Underground Aesthetics 97
II. Geologic Histories and Theories
4. “Fathering” Geology 121
5. Geologic Grammars 193
6. Stratigraphic Thought and the Metaphysics of the Strata 236
7. Geopower: Materialisms before Biopolitics 255
III. Inhuman Epistemologies
8. Inhuman Matters I: Black Earth and Abyssal Futurity 295
9. Inhuman Matter II: Deep Timing and Undergrounding in the Carceral Mine 343
10. Inhuman Matters III: Stealing Suns 378
11. Inhuman Matters IV: Modernity, Urbanism, and the Spatial Fix of Whiteness 401
12. Inhuman Matters V: Trees of Life (and Death), “Strange Fruit,” and Geologies of Race 438
IV. Paradigms of Geologic Life
13. Ghost Geology 477
Acknowledgments 497
Notes 501
References 559
Index 583