terrapolis

Terrapolis is a fictional integral equation, a speculative fabulation.
Terrapolis is n-dimensional niche space for multispecies becomingwith.
Terrapolis is open, worldly, indeterminate, and polytemporal.
Terrapolis is a chimera of materials, languages, histories.
Terrapolis is for companion species, cum panis, with bread, at table
together—not “posthuman” but “com-post.”
Terrapolis is in place; Terrapolis makes space for unexpected companions.
Terrapolis is an equation for guman, for humus, for soil, for ongoing
risky infection, for epidemics of promising trouble, for permaculture.
Terrapolis is the sf game of response-ability.

Staying with the trouble

Making Kin in the Chthulucene

D o n n a J. H a r a w a y

notes from

Companion species are relentlessly becoming-with.

Tentacularity is about life lived along lines
—and such a wealth of lines—not at points,
not in spheres. “The inhabitants of the world,
creatures of all kinds, human
and non-human, are wayfarers”;
generations are like “a series of interlaced
trails.” String figures all.

the term sympoiesis for “collectively-producing systems that
do not have self-defined spatial or temporal boundaries. Information
and control are distributed among components. The systems are evolutionary and have the potential for surprising change.”

The earth of the ongoing Chthulucene is sympoietic, not autopoietic.

By contrast, autopoietic systems are “self-producing”
autonomous units “with self defined spatial or temporal boundaries that tend to be centrally controlled, homeostatic, and predictable.”

the term refers to growing evidence for the transformative effects of human activities on the earth

Anthropocene

her objections to the Anthropocene
as a tool, story, or epoch to think with:

(1) The myth system associated with the Anthropos is a setup,
and the stories end badly. More to the point, they end in double death;
they are not about ongoingness.
It is hard to tell a good story with such a bad actor.
Bad actors need a story, but not the whole story.

(2) Species Man does not make history.

(3) Man plus Tool does not make history. That is the story of History human exceptionalists tell

(4) That History must give way to geostories, to Gaia
stories, to symchthonic stories; terrans do webbed, braided, and tentacular
living and dying in sympoietic multispecies string figures; they do
not do History.

(5) The human social apparatus of the Anthropocene
tends to be top-heavy and bureaucracy prone. Revolt needs other forms
of action and other stories for solace, inspiration, and effectiveness.

(6)Despite its reliance on agile computer modeling and autopoietic systems
theories, the Anthropocene relies too much on what should be an “unthinkable”
theory of relations, namely the old one of bounded utilitarian
individualism—preexisting units in competition relations that take up
all the air in the atmosphere (except, apparently, carbon dioxide).

(7)The sciences of the Anthropocene are too much contained within restrictive
systems theories and within evolutionary theories called the
Modern Synthesis, which for all their extraordinary importance have
proven unable to think well about sympoiesis, symbiosis, symbiogenesis,
development, webbed ecologies, and microbes. That’s a lot of trouble
for adequate evolutionary theory.

(8) Anthropocene is a term most easily
meaningful and usable by intellectuals in wealthy classes and regions; it
is not an idiomatic term for climate, weather, land, care of country, or
much else in great swathes

Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet with Keynote speech by Ursula K. Le Guin

we must learn to tell “Gaïa stories.”

If that word is too hard, then we can call our narrations “geostories,” in which “all the former props and passive agents have become active without, for that, being part of a giant plot written by some overseeing entity"