Today I received a call for papers for a conference panel on Postcolonial Environments, a topic on which I have read, written, taught, and thought a great deal, and one of the suggested topics was "planetarity." If I were still among the untenured I would nod and smile and find a way to work the word into a sentence, preferably along with "hegemony" and "alterity" and my all-time least favorite piece of lit-theory jargon, "imaginary" used as a noun. But I have tenure so I'm not afraid to ask: what the heck is "planetarity"? From the context I suspect that it's a sort of anthropocentricsm on a planetary level, a tendency to view one's own planet as the center of the universe, the standard by which all other heavenly bodies might be measured (and, most likely, found wanting).
But I don't know. On the topic of planetarity I suffer from ignorance on a global scale. In fact, perhaps my use of the word "global" itself reeks of planetarity, suggesting an unthinking willingness to accept my own paltry planet as the measure that matters in the universe. But that's just quibbling: I'm perfectly willing to say my ignorance of the topic is universal if that will save me from accusations of planetarity--but first someone will have to tell me what it means.
No comments:
Post a Comment