To name is not to say what is true but to confer on what is named the power to make us feel and think in the mode that the name calls for…
(Isabelle Stengers)
For Stengers, the intrusion of Gaia is an event that forces the recognition that Gaia is “blind to the damage she causes”, that Gaia “holds together in its own particular manner”. We can no longer afford to conceive of nature as the stable backdrop for human affairs upon which we can isolate likewise stable entities (whether atoms, ideas, Truths) and thereby secure a predictable future for ourselves. As Latour forcefully expresses it, “it is as if the décor had gotten up on stage to share the drama with the actors [and] from this moment on, everything changes in the way stories are told”. With the intrusion of Gaia and concomitant breakdown of ecosystemic functioning, the limitations of a worldview implicitly motivated by certainty and control becomes evident. It is here that we are invited to reimagine earth and our role therein.
medium thoughts 