Kathryn Yusoff is a professor at Queen Mary University of London. Yusoff is interested in demonstrating the way Blackness “as a material vector” has been a part of geology and geography in the past as well as continuing to affect it today (xii). Following Glissant, Yusoff defines Blackness as a relational state of difference designated through colonial assignment (Ibid.). Yusoff then details the history of geology seen through scientific investigation from the Enlightenment era forward to the nuclear age, demonstrating that the so-called Anthropocene erases the history of racism rather than more properly remembering the stories of the Other (2). Yusoff’s indictment is both a matter of making the record clear through altered discourse and a call for redress (7). Yusoff addresses the origins of geology as a “trajectory of power” and displays geology as inherently political, violent, and racist (25-26). The Anthropocene origin stories are further indicted as a cover for a presupposed black and brown death in producing and maintaining colonialism or its after-effects (66). Yusoff argues for an upended and insurgent geology that replaces one universal Anthropocene for a billion Black Anthropocenes (87). McKittrick’s summary of Sylvia Wynter’s work in geography also adds to this conception by addressing geography as demonic grounds, “always something else besides the dominant cultural logic going on” (123). Demonic grounds are the locus of placeless and silenced black women that provide a cartographic retelling and reframing of our current geographical understanding of the world (133-135). McKittrick further follows Wynter in advocating for a new form of life through black human geographies (143) while Yusoff seems to prepare for an upcoming and continued storm represented in an attempted decolonialization of the Anthropocene (104).
Walter Mignolo is not convinced that the Anthropocene is anything more than a “scientific narrative fiction” and he, like Yusoff, recognizes that the universal story as presented doesn’t exactly tell the whole truth (117). One wonders why one narrative (or many) is to be preferred over others since all seem to be reductionist in some way. Yusoff disallows or does not consider how particular black voices might speak to these realities in ways not offered by her own work. For example, how have black churches and theologians handle the geologic and geographic record of oppression and elements of the sciences in question that Yusoff/McKittrick/Wynter detail? What about the perspective of black geologists? How can redress be made for something that cannot be undone? Instead of exclusion, in forgiveness can we embrace the Other (Volf)? Can religion inform the (political) sciences of geology and geography with an eye to the oppressed, particularly by those who are or have been oppressed? The origin story found in Genesis 4:10 speaks to blood crying out (צֹעֲקִ֥ים, desperately shouting out) of the ground at the murder of the first brother with a term frequently used as the cry of the oppressed, Abel himself still speaking through his death according to Hebrews 11:4 (Hamilton, 231). The entire material universe has been broken by sin, groans, and suffers (Romans 8:22). Jesus himself is the stone that the builders rejected (Acts 4:22) and membership in him relocates one from being slave or free to being seated with him in the heavenlies (Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 2:6).[1]
Is there perhaps more to this political/social rendering of science to consider than Yusoff, McKittrick, or Wynter offers? One of the things I appreciate about Yusoff’s work is the honesty in which she lays out her case regarding the actual record of scientific inquiry. Part of what bothers me about much of today’s work with figures like Herder is not that folks disagree but that there is a general tendency in scholarship today to either clear the Enlightenment figure’s name or enlist him for a particular cause. I don’t mind at all saying that Herder’s work is both complex and difficult to wade through in characterizing his thinking. However, we cannot simply wave away things like the inherent racism present in his accounting of various cultures in Europe and elsewhere. While I don’t agree with the critical theory dictates of Kathryn Yusoff, she is completely right to notice all the incipient racism present in the Enlightenment that was materially responsible for later more full-blown accountings of the same as we see in Germany in the early twentieth century even in the practice of early modern and modern scientific endeavor. In short, we need honest appraisals of these figures and not merely the sort of revisionist glances that ignores or downplays the very problematic perspectives of these philosophical and theological masters that were still a work in progress even in their own day.
Notes
[1] Religion does display itself in the accounts provided above on occasion, though in most cases the witness is negative and Christianity, for example, is seen playing an oppressive part in the dominant cultural paradigm. The speed at which Wynter and Mignolo link the system of mass human sacrifice of the Aztecs to the Christian eschatological thinking of Columbus and the thought of Augustine’s City of God while only indicting the latter is breathtaking (Wynter, 1992, 15-17; Mignolo 2018, 117). The point here is not to take a side or even claim the comparison isn’t apt, but only mentioned to acknowledge that while systems of religion can be oppressive, they are also sources of great comfort, a matter of common human experience, and represent their own epistemological and other considerations in looking at scientific questions that have been largely ignored in these works. At least one of Yusoff’s colleagues seems to agree though imagines a different kind of spiritual consideration regarding a decolonization of the Anthropocene (Szerszynski 2017). Black liberation theology, liberation theology more generally, many currents of other black expressions of Christianity, as well as other religious accounts are mostly absent from the narratives provided by Yusoff et al. Given that what’s really being presented here is a different accounting of the world’s history and presence, in addition to a different worldview than other dominating paradigms, more complex and less reductionist accounts need to be put forward (McKittrick, 141). Trading one reductionist account for another (or a billion of them) does not seem exactly true to the full accounting of what needs to be said and done in moving toward a future for everyone.
References
Hamilton, Victor P. (1990). The Book of Genesis: Chapter 1-17. The New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, and M. E. J. Richardson, eds. (2000). The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Accordance electronic ed., version 3.0. Leiden: Brill.
McKittrick, Katherine. (2006). “Demonic Grounds: Sylvia Wynter” and “Stay Human.” In Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. University of Minnesota Press.
Mignolo, Walter D. (2018). What Does It Mean to Decolonize? In Walsh, Catherine E. and Walter D. Mignolo, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analysis, Praxis. Duke University Press.
Szerszynski, Bronislaw. (2017). Gods of the Anthropocene: Geo-Spiritual Formations in the Earth’s New Epoch. Theory, Culture & Society. 34 (2-3), 253-275.
Volf, Miroslav. (1996). Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Abingdon Press.
Wynter, Sylvia. (1992). 1492: A New World View. In Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View. Hyatt, Vera Lawrence and Rex Nettleford, Eds. Smithsonian Institute Press.
Yusoff, Kathryn. (2018). A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. University of Minnesota Press.