"Why Gaia is not the Globe." Panel debate with Bruno Latour

[@BillyMcBride]

Percy Bysshe Shelley has Gaia in "Prometheus Unbound" and Shakespeare's theater was the "Globe," but in poetry there are more instances of "Earth" and "world" than "Globe" or "Gaia." As scientic/political/philosophical battles strive against poetical views, I wonder if this is related to the difference between what seems to me a battle between "Gaia" and "Earth." Are we just fighting over a conceptual diction? If so, then it is a poetical battle, but if we are fighting for justice, then it is something more to learn than which words we need to chose to get good action done.

[@BillyMcBride]

Some people may mistake Gaia for the Globe, and the Globe for Gaia, calling them by the wrong names.

[@edwinbywater]

But that's irrelevant according to Latour, because that's all British

[@aristakelso5655]

@@BillyMcBride I am one of these persons. I don´t get the difference between Gaia and Globe, can you please explain it to me? I mean fish and animals in general live on the globe, right? So people live on the globe too, but seperate themselves through material things and think they live in Gaia? please tell me, it would make me really happy

[@BillyMcBride]

@@aristakelso5655 the way I see things is through the eyes of poetry. "Earth" and "world" are words which are what the poets use more than "Globe" or "Gaia." When the "Globe" comes to my mind, I think of Shakespeare and his theater by that name. And, when I think of "Gaia," it is a word Shelley uses for a character in his "Prometheus Unbound." I don't know where Shelley got it, but it would be interesting to know. As Gaia is a more mythological term, and Shelley is a more mythological and romantic poet, one who goes further back into tradition, in one way, to choose this word "Gaia' for his character, it makes for a poem which has a flavor of something much more ancient than "Globe." In this way, "Gaia" recalls the ancient mythologies, and "globe" more modern realities. So in this case, the difference is of a distance in time span. To choose between words is to have various freedoms between effects of choosing those words. And yet both Gaia and Globe are valid for getting our meaning across for the same thing, except as with Latour, he wishes to stir the pot by looking at how we use these words, and he derives this idea that when we choose one word over the other, it does not mean the other, and he gives reasons for why that is so. I may not completely be answering your question, however since I love poetry much more than philosophy, when it comes to diction, I think of the process of coming up with a poem in the making, but when I think of longer phrases of that process, I think of poetry. I have never used "Gaia" in any poem I have written but I may one day. But since I love poetry more than philosophy, my understanding of Latour's analysis is limited by what I am interested by. Fish and animals live, and we live, and we are the ones who use language. It may not make much difference for them what we call the place where they dwell, but for us it seems rightly paradoxical to not be in one when we feel we are in the other. I think that that paradox is at the heart of Latour's argument. I happen to like paradoxes, so I think he is interesting. But I don't think there is an easy way out of this paradox, so I am willing to see if anyone else in the future is moved to clear up the matter too. But I can live more tolerably with paradoxes as long as I can still have those raptures of flight which make me happy when I read good poetry.

[@graffitiabcd]

@@BillyMcBride @aristakelso5655 very briefly, the difference is between the "globe" of globalization and the "gaia" of political ecology. Globalization is a result of the continuation of modernity, which, as Latour writes in his book "We have never been modern," is built on several binaries, primarily ones such as human vs non-human, nature vs culture, based on which it understands the world. For Latour, these binaries are not necessarily correct, but only create a very specific eurocentric view of the world, where a "universalism" is imposed on the "globe" by a small group of actors (rich, European, colonial, modern, men, etc, whatever dominant modes of thinking you could associate with universalisms) whereas the world is actually much more complicated than can be captured by any such false universalisms. Gaia, on the other hand, is a dynamic system (as opposed to static globe) of all living and non-living entities in a complex network of interconnections, one that we know as the Earth. This explanation too is quite reductive, I'm not an expert myself, but hopefully, you can understand the philosophical basis of this, and what precisely Latour is trying to challenge---modernism (in philosophy and science, not sure what precisely modernism means in literature).

[@HipHopLived]

Anyone who says we must be protected from the stupidity of ordinary people is firstly someone who should reflect on themselves and secondly some one who we urgently must be protected against.

[@paolomath]

Is there something meaningful and interesting amongst the word salads on the table? I sincerely would like to know.

[@FlatStuffEarth]

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