“Who Makes the Earth Habitable? From a Metaphysics of Production to a Metaphysics of Alliance”: Talk by Baptiste Morizot

Who Makes the Earth Habitable? From a Metaphysics of Production to a Metaphysics of Alliance

If we are to imagine a society that does not undermine the conditions of its own sustenance and the myriad wild life forms that contribute to it, we must radically reject a metaphysics of production according to which we humans are those who make the Earth nourishing and habitable. Instead of this metaphysics of production, Morizot proposes a metaphysics of alliance: a world-view that acknowledges non-human life forms and the wild dynamics they create, as irreplaceable producers of the earth’s habitability for all life forms of which we are a part. For it is not only human societies that are in crisis, on the one hand, and the living world that is in crisis, on the other. We are living through a fundamental crisis of our relations to the living. These relationships must be rethought through a politics of interdependence that is supported by concrete alliances between humans and the rest of life on Earth.

Baptiste Morizot was born in 1983 at Draguignan. After studying philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon, he started teaching at Aix-Marseille University. A rising star in the field of the environmental humanities, his prizewinning books include Wild Diplomacy, On the Animal Trail, Ways of Being Alive and Rekindling Life.

Sponsored by the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry, the Center of Excellence in French and Francophone Studies, the Kadish Center for Morality, Law, and Public Affairs, and the Villa Albertine of San Francisco.

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