Due to our situatedness within time and space, human beings are not able to access the earth nor the universe as a whole. Therefore, everything we know about the planetary - about the world as a living planet including celestial bodies, multi-species and the biosphere - is formed by representations. It is a result of a staging of knowledge, grouped under the header of science or politics. Inevitably, these representations are framed. That is, the ‘representor’, whether it be a journalist, a politician, a teacher or a scientist, carries out a planetary narrative that is both contextually dependent and influenced by interest.
Examples of these performances of the planetary range from president Donald Trump who has openly denied global warming, on to the earth’s famous Blue Marble picture and the environmentalist activist connotation it got in the 1970’s. They range from history books presenting Darwinian evolution and others presenting Intelligent Design. Another example would be the late Medieval church resisting the Copernican Revolution by holding tightly to the geocentric world view. Or, lastly, cartographic attempts to map the earth, where certain continents seem to be strategically proportioned slightly bigger or smaller than their actual size. As a concept to understand how these phenomena are all forms of staging, I suggest the term Planetary Performatism. In the next sections I will contextualize this concept through the work of several authors.
In Shooting the Moon, Brian Willems lays out multiple cinematographic strategies that have been used to perform the moon. Through analysis of films like Le Voyage dans La Lune, Destination Moon and Apollo 18, Willems argues that historical lunar representations all give different narratives that are often in conflict with one another.[1] Willems uses the metaphor of a Cubist painting to explain the incapability of fully grasping this celestial body. Just as the Cubists did, the original image is cut up and rearranged into new forms. The real object is never really there, it is performed.[2] In line with this, Bigg and VanHoutte offer a historical overview of performance of astronomic knowledge. Astronomy has always been one of the most popular fields of investigation. It has been serving both those in search of myth and meaning and those pursuing scientific truth and progress. Therefore, ‘astronomical spectacles often evoked history, the history of interpreting constellations as guides to human destiny, in Ancient or distant cultures.’[3] Because of its hybrid character, the line between ‘sensational entertainment’ and ‘scientific demonstration’ of the cosmos was rather blurred in the 19th and early 20th century.[4] Cervera takes on a similar approach by focusing on the relationship between performing space and knowledge production.[5] He sees a strong correlation between the two because ‘we [humans] bridge cosmological immensity and our limited capacities to apprehend it by way of enacting Space at our spatial, temporal and perceptual scales, effectively making it appear as a sensible and knowable entity.’[6] What is required, he says, is a critical attitude towards the scientific, geopolitical and formal correctness of the multiple forms of staging space.[7]
From a more linguistic line of thought is Timothy Clark, who argues how the psychology of narrative is problematic in representing the planetary. In his argument he refers to George Marshalls experiment on climate change denial, that shows how exactly the same narrative structures are being deployed both by the camp of environmental activist as well as by those in denial of climate change. The narrative structure that turns out most compelling always contains an issue, a cause, an effect, a perpetrator and a motive.[8] Clark concludes that we must be attentive to the suggestively indisputable stories by authoritative figures about the ‘real state of the world’.[9] In line with this or perhaps as an answer, Karen Barad actually pleads for performativity in research, as an alternative to linguistic representation. While acknowledging the elusiveness of the planetary to human perception, Barad argues we have become obsessed with language in our eagerness to explain the physical world.[10] By proposing a ‘posthuman performativity’, she instead hopes to shift the focus to practices, doings, and actions as a means to gain knowledge. Precisely because ‘practices of knowing and being are not isolatable, but rather they are mutually implicated.’[11]
It seems that an integral part of exploring the planetary is to take into account its performative aspects. Planetary Performatism could serve as a guiding concept in this task. It could stimulate literacy towards the narratives and sensitivity towards the performances by authorities and so-called experts. Indeed, the planetary is ubiquitous and encompassing, omniscient and mysterious. It is hybrid and fierce; infinite in its treasures and myriad in its lifeforms. Perhaps a next step would be to look for performative tools that aim to capture exactly these qualities.
Suggestions for further reading
On Posthumanist Performativity, Spectacular Astronomy, Astroaesthetics, Planetary Astronomy, Performing the Moon
[1] Brian Willems, Shooting the Moon (Winchester: Zero Books, 2015), PP.
[2] Willems, Shooting the Moon, 11.
[3] Charlotte Bigg and Kurt Vanhoutte, "Spectacular Astronomy," Early Popular Visual Culture 15, no. 2 (2017): 118, doi:10.1080/17460654.2017.1319037.
[4] Bigg and Vanhoutte, "Spectactular Astronomy," 115.
[5] FELIPE CERVERA, "Astroaesthetics: Performance and the Rise of Interplanetary Culture," Theatre Research International 41, no. 03 (2016): 259, doi:10.1017/s0307883316000353.
[6] CERVERA, "Astroaesthetics," 259.
[7] CERVERA, "Astroaesthetics," 259.
[8] Timothy Clark, Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene As a Threshold Concept (2016), 178-179.
[9] Clark, Ecocriticism on the Edge, 178.
[10] Karen Barad, "Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 3 (2003): 801-802, doi:10.1086/345321.
[11] Barad, "Posthumanist Performativity," 829.
Barad, Karen. "Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 3 (2003), 801-831. doi:10.1086/345321.
Bigg, Charlotte, and Kurt Vanhoutte. "Spectacular Astronomy." Early Popular Visual Culture15, no. 2 (May/June 2017), 115-124. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17460654.2017.1319037.
Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York [u.a.]: Routledge, 2008.
CERVERA, FELIPE. "Astroaesthetics: Performance and the Rise of Interplanetary Culture." Theatre Research International 41, no. 03 (2016), 258-275. doi:10.1017/s0307883316000353.
Clark, Timothy. "Imaging and Imagining the Whole Earth: The Terrestrial as Norm." In Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene As a Threshold Concept, 29-46. Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Cook, Alexander. “The Use and Abuse of Historical Reenactment: Thoughts on Recent Trends in Public History.” Criticism 46:3 (2004) 487-496 2. Martin, Carol. Theatre of the Real. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Limited. 2013. ProQuest Ebook.
Elias, Amy J., and Christian Moraru. "Archetypologies of the Human: Planetary Performatism, Cinematic Relationality, and Iñárritu’s Babel." In The Planetary Turn; Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century, 89-105. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2015.
Elias, Amy J., and Christian Moraru. "Planetarity, Performativity, Relationality: Claire Denis’s Chocolat and Cinematic Ethics." In The Planetary Turn; Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century, 107-124. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2015.
Nitzke, Solvejg, and Nicolas Pethes. "A Whole Earth Monument; Planetary Mediation in Dietmar Dath’s The Abolition of Species." In Imagining Earth Concepts of Wholeness in Cultural Constructions of Our Home Planet, 155-170. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2017.
Schorn, Ronald A. Planetary Astronomy: From Ancient Times to the Third Millennium. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1999.
Willems, Brian. Shooting the Moon. Winchester: Zero Books, 2015.