Terracene: A Crude Aesthetics

by Salar Mameni PhD

Overview

In Terracene Salar Mameni historicizes the popularization of the scientific notion of the Anthropocene alongside the emergence of the global war on terror. Mameni theorizes the Terracene as an epoch marked by a convergence of racialized militarism and environmental destruction. Both the Anthropocene and the war on terror centered the antagonist figures of the Anthropos and the terrorist as responsible for epochal changes in the new geological and geopolitical world orders. In response, Mameni shows how the Terracene requires radically new engagements with terra (the earth), whose intelligence resides in matters such as oil and phenomena like earthquakes and fires. Drawing on the work of artists whose practices interrogate histories of settler-colonial and imperial interests in land and resources in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Syria, Palestine, and other regions most affected by the war on terror, Mameni offers speculative paths into the aesthetics of the Terracene.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478020066
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	08/31/2023
Series:	ANIMA: Critical Race Studies Otherwise
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Salar Mameni is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Creation Story 1
Part 1. Terracene 11
1. Terror and the Anthropocene 13
2. Anti-Colonial Critique of the Anthropocene 22
3. Provincializing the Anthropocene; or, Why Artists, Feminists, and Yemeni People Have Much to Say about the Cosmos 27
4. The Anthropocene Is a Work of Art 40
5. The Terracene 46
6. Sensing the Terracene 51
7. Crude Aesthetics 70
Part 2. The Sounds of Terracene 81
8. The Class Shattered at My Feet 83
9. Listening to the Terracene 85
10. Shelter 104
11. Silence 106
Part 3. Terran Deities: Oil, Fires, Fevers 111
12. Lamassu 113
13. Huma 126
14. Homa
15. Pazuzu 134
Part 4. Narrative Terrorism 141
16. The Red Star 143
17. Narrative Terrorism 146
Part 5. Crude Aesthetics 161
18. Texas Crude 163
19. A Fire! 171
20. The Devil's Excrement 185
Acknowledgments 189
Notes 193
Bibliography 211
Index 223

Editorial Reviews

In compelling visual analysis, Salar Mameni shows us how the colonial construction of terror has violently homed in on racialized bodies and environments. Through an aesthetics of revolt forged in opposition to the pincer movement of the inhumane-inhuman, Mameni confronts the weaponization of environments in their narrativization.

A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None - Kathryn Yusoff

An innovative, timely, and eminently teachable book, Terracene is part of an exciting new wave of new materialist thought that challenges speciesism, decenters the human, and destabilizes the category of the human altogether. Salar Mameni writes beautifully, weaving memoir and personal vignettes with deep theorizing that demonstrates bright flashes of genius throughout. They bring together the best of critical race, Indigenous, and postcolonial scholarship to bear on the dystopian here and now of climate chaos and terrorized world-making. In short, Terracene is a sensation.

Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War - Ronak K. Kapadia

"What makes this book particularly refreshing is its formal qualities. Between its more academic close readings, Mamani weaves poetic personal narratives and autobiographical accounts of his aesthetic experiences. Terracene demonstrates an avenue for academic writing that can more readily navigate the divide between academic and public intellectualism."

H-Environment, H-Net Reviews - Kyle Sittig