Thacker’s Ecological Framework: World, Earth, Planet
We can ... offer a new terminology for thinking about this problem of the non-human world. Let us call the world in which we live the world-for-us. This is the world that we, as human beings, interpret and give meaning to, the world that we relate to or feel alienated from, the world that we are at once a part of and that is also separate from the human. But this world-for-us is not, of course, totally within the ambit of human wants and desires; the world often “bites back,” resists, or ignores our attempts to mold it into the world-for-us. Let us call this the world-in-itself. This is the world in some inaccessible, already-given state, which we then turn into the world-for-us. The world-in-itself is a paradoxical concept; the moment we think it and attempt to act on it, it ceases to be the world-in-itself and becomes the world-for-us.
So, while we can never experience the world-in-itself, we seem to be almost fatalistically drawn to it, perhaps as a limit that defines who we are as human beings.
Let us call this spectral and speculative world the world-without-us.
We can even abbreviate these three concepts further: the world-for-us is simply the World, the world-in-itself is simply the Earth, and the world-without-us is simply the Planet.
—Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet
This is a quick-spliced intro to some useful conceptual terminology that will hopefully draw you directly to the text. Note also that the world-for-itself paradox relates to the notion of monstrosity as essentially unknowable (so when we assimilate it, it stops being monstrous), per Levina and Bui. Anyway, the preface to Thacker’s book is highly recommended.
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