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Gaia, Gender, and Sovereignty in the Anthropocene

Gaia, Gender, and Sovereignty in the Anthropocene Gaia, Gender, and Sovereignty in the Anthropocene Danielle Sands In a 2011 lecture addressing ecological crisis, sociologist Bruno Latour advanced James Lovelock ’s Gaia model as a way of re-conceptualizing nature in an Anthropocene or “postnatural” (Latour 2011, 9) world. For Latour, Gaia, a mythological goddess reinvented by Lovelock as a scientific metaphor, embodies the collision between discourses, “this mix up of science and politics” (Latour 2011, 8), which the Anthropocene represents. In its deviation from benevolent images of Mother Nature, Gaia provides an alternative account of the human relationship with the natural world, one that implies that our response to the Anthropocene crisis should not derive from a solely scientific framework. Latour seizes upon the image of Gaia with fervor, celebrating “her” not only as an assemblage of different discourses, but, in “her” disunity and non-sovereignty, as an alternative political paradigm. Of less political interest for Latour is the gendering of Gaia; like Lovelock before him, Latour regards the feminizing of Gaia as an affective metaphorical device and not a political issue. It is hard not to view Latour’s “Gaia politics” (Latour 2004, 5) as part of a broader tendency to revivify conservative frameworks in the face of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png philoSOPHIA State University of New York Press

Gaia, Gender, and Sovereignty in the Anthropocene

philoSOPHIA , Volume 5 (2) – Feb 3, 2016

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Publisher
State University of New York Press
Copyright
Copyright © State University of New York Press
ISSN
2155-0905

Abstract

Gaia, Gender, and Sovereignty in the Anthropocene Danielle Sands In a 2011 lecture addressing ecological crisis, sociologist Bruno Latour advanced James Lovelock ’s Gaia model as a way of re-conceptualizing nature in an Anthropocene or “postnatural” (Latour 2011, 9) world. For Latour, Gaia, a mythological goddess reinvented by Lovelock as a scientific metaphor, embodies the collision between discourses, “this mix up of science and politics” (Latour 2011, 8), which the Anthropocene represents. In its deviation from benevolent images of Mother Nature, Gaia provides an alternative account of the human relationship with the natural world, one that implies that our response to the Anthropocene crisis should not derive from a solely scientific framework. Latour seizes upon the image of Gaia with fervor, celebrating “her” not only as an assemblage of different discourses, but, in “her” disunity and non-sovereignty, as an alternative political paradigm. Of less political interest for Latour is the gendering of Gaia; like Lovelock before him, Latour regards the feminizing of Gaia as an affective metaphorical device and not a political issue. It is hard not to view Latour’s “Gaia politics” (Latour 2004, 5) as part of a broader tendency to revivify conservative frameworks in the face of

Journal

philoSOPHIAState University of New York Press

Published: Feb 3, 2016

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