Punctum Books (2013)
I.
When I hear the term geophilosophy my first thought is not to Deleuze and Guattari's work, but, rather, back to Zarathustra's injunction that above all things his followers should remain true to the earth and not listen to those who speak of superterrestrial hopes [a].
So a study such as Woodard's - author also of the darkly vital text Slime Dynamics (2012) [b] - was always one I'd feel obliged to get around to reading sooner or later.
That said, I'm not sure his attempt to unground the earth will be something I'll be entirely comfortable with, although maybe that's the point and I'm certainly not adverse to the idea that we might denaturalise, destabilise, and deterritorialise the earth if that's what it takes to challenge certain models of thought that justify themselves by showing how they are grounded (and anchored) in the security of terra firma.
For I know what Nick Land means when he writes of a dark fluidity that rebels against such philosophies [c] - one wouldn't be able to continue with a blog called torpedo the ark if that wasn't the case. But, it's important not to be too swept up and carred away by talk of dark fluidity and solar waves etc.
For ultimately, I agree with Negarestani writing in his Cyclonopedia (2008) - and quoted here by Woodard - that whilst the earth with its solidity, gravity, and wholeness can be restrictive, the destruction of all ground to stand on only results in another hegemonic regime.
Ungrounding, therefore, has to be about something more than mere destruction; has to involve the discovery or unearthing of an underside to the ground, or what I suppose those excited by the demonology of a new earth might call an underworld - although it's more the realm of worms [d] rather than horned devils; a place of decay and decomposition rather than evil.
Does Woodard wish for man to inhabit such a world? I'm not sure - although he does point out that humans have, at times, lived beneath the surface of the earth and does insist that we "must burrow deeper into the earth, into the
strange potentiality of infernal geologies" [70].
Personally, I wouldn't fancy such an existence; living in a network of tunnels and underground bunkers, like a smuggler or terrorist. I don't even like riding the Tube.
II.
To be honest, Woodard's book only really came alive for me when, in chapter 4, he took us on a tour of that chthonic underworld that is commonly referred to as Hell, explaining along the way how the latter "in its chthonic configuration,
suggests an odd short circuit between the earth as a shallow
phenomenological playground and a deeper understanding of
the earth as a complex geological system" [72].
For Woodard, Hell is best thought of as a volcanic inferno, rather than the dwelling place of demons; it is unfortunate, he says, when infernology is overridden by demonology (something that Deleuze is often guilty of).
III.
I also enjoyed the concluding fifth chapter on a monstrous dark earth that generates life which eventually rots back into compost and chaos, and a malevolent black sun, about which I have myself have written on numerous occasions: click here for example.
Of the dark earth, Woodard writes:
"The earth [...] does not require much labor to become a monster. The earth
is a stratified globule, a festering confusion of internalities
powered by a molten core and bombarded by an indifferent star. This productive rottenness breeds the possibility of
escaping the solar economy through the odd chemistry of
ontology." [83-84]
I'm not sure I entirely understand what he means at the end there, but I do like the thought of this earth as a storm of forces and a darkly productive monster - one that is "far removed from the Earth discussed in
ecology studies and in popular culture, where it is caught
between a thing to be worshiped and a thing to be exploited" [86].
I do not like the sons of Prometheus. But nor do I care for those sons of Orpheus who subscribe to a naive neo-pagan fantasy set in some post-industrial eco-utopia in which man is supposed to live once more in perfect harmony with nature.
As for the sun, Woodard reminds us it's not simply the life-giving yellow star that so many philosopher's worship, but also a darkly malevolent monster that burns your skin and causes cancers and madness [e]:
"Again it is tempting to return to Land and his pseudo-Bataillean nature philosophy. The sun must be the illuminator
for Plato and Socrates. But there is, for Bataille, a second
sun, a dark sun, a black sun: 'The sensations we drink from
the black sun afflict us as ruinous passion, skewering our senses upon the drive to waste ourselves.'" [90] [f]
Woodard rightly notes how certain thinkers have strange dreams "about surviving this aspect of
the sun, which culminates in the cataclysm of its destruction
preceded by its darkening, its blackening, and its degradation
towards meltdown" [90], but the fact is we're not going to outlive solar cataclysm.
As Ray Brassier writes: "Solar death is catastrophic because it vitiates ontological temporality
as configured in terms of philosophical questioning's constitutive horizonal relationship to the
future." [g]
That's a pretty nihilistic note on which to end - but there's really not much that can be done about it. For whether we like it or not, it's all going to end and not merely in the elimination of all terrestrial life, but, ultimately, in the annihilation of all matter.
Woodard is by no means the greatest thinker or writer in the world, but he's to be congratulated for reminding us that oblivion is the name of the game and any humanistic optimism on this
point - whether secular-scientific or mytho-religious in character - is
simply pitiful [h].
Notes
[a] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathusra, Prologue 3. The original German reads: "bleibt der Erde treu und glaubt Denen nicht, welche euch von überirdischen Hoffnungen reden!"
[b] Woodard's Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation,and the Creep of Life, (Zero Books, 2012) is another text I've not got round to fully reading, although I have previously mentioned it on Torpedo the Ark: click here.
[c] Woodard quotes the line from Land that I refer to on p. 6 of Ungrounded Earth. It reads: "A dark fluidity at the roots of our nature rebels against the security of terra firma." See The Thirst for Annihilation (Routledge, 1992), p. 106. Note that all future page references to Woodard's book will be given directly in the post.
[d] Woodward has a fascination with worms of all kinds (real and fictional); he calls them "engines of a terrestrial weirdness". See On an Ungrounded Earth, p. 21.
[e] I have written elsewhere and at length on this; see the essay 'Sun-Struck: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism', published on James Walker's Digitial Pigrimage (14 Jan 2019): click here.
[f] Woodard is quoting Land writing in The Thirst for annihilation, p. 29.
[g] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 223. Woodard also quotes this line in his text, see. pp. 90-91.
[h] See the recent post published on oblivion (22 Nov 2023): click here.
