with Jeremy Bendik-Keymer

This talk begins with Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach, a story about the interpersonal meaning of the Bronx’s landscape.  The story allows us to consider two things: (1) the land of the Mundus Novus (“New World”) and (2) the interpersonal meaning of planetary life. In dialogue with environmental critical theorist Steven Vogel, who also wrote about the G.W. Bridge as Ringgold did, I explore how to make use of the claim that “1492 is a beginning of planetary injustice.” Contextualizing current work on planetary justice and post-nationalist “planetarism,” I argue that 1492 can usefully be a marker of a set of immoral relations in a critical genealogy of the present.  This genealogy is useful for Verganenheitsbewältigung (working through the past), which should be distinguished from eco-modernist “exnovation” of “pathologically path dependent” institutions. In the process of resolving immoral relations, Vogel’s critical theory might be strengthened by decolonial philosophy, while his Lukács-inspired approach supports being critical with the “practice of being human.” One point of contention is how to understand the interpersonal meaning of lands, and so I suggest a way to critique Vogel’s philosophy that also includes a cautionary note for how we should approach planetary science in planetary justice claims. 

Jeremy Bendik-Keymer works in the philosophy department at Case Western Reserve University as Professor of Philosophy and serves as a Senior Research Fellow with the Earth System Governance Project, Universiteit Utrecht. He lives with his family in Shaker Heights, Ohio, once land of many older nations.