Aesthetics of GeopowerContested Planetary Imaginaries

Brings together globally diverse perspectives on how the forces shaping the earth, both human and nonhuman, are articulated in art and cultural practice

• Engages with the critical discourse of geopower to conceptualise both human environmental governance and the nonhuman forces of the earth
• Combines theoretical perspectives from the environmental and energy humanities, geography, visual culture, critical design, space humanities, literary studies, gender studies, and film studies
• Develops an expansive account of earth aesthetics in dialogue with a range of theories of geopower, political ecology and planetary space
• Examines case studies from diverse countries and regions of the world, including China, Iceland, Nigeria, the Pacific, Venezuela, the United States and Ukraine, foregrounding Black, non-Western and Indigenous perspectives on geopower
• Shows how aesthetic practices inform and respond to contemporary geopolitical struggles, including the US–Sino “chip war” and the Russian war in Ukraine

This volume attends to geopower: the forces, both human and nonhuman, that are shaping and emanating from the earth. In a present marked by planetary ecological derangement, escalating geopolitical competition, and growing resistance to extractive regimes, it theorises the ways in which geopower intersects with aesthetics, taken expansively to include operational imaging, sensed materiality and embodied perception.

Bringing together sixteen interdisciplinary specialists, the collection shows that the aesthetic, far from being secondary or supplemental to geopower, is centrally embedded in its dynamics. Whether in the construction of new extractive frontiers or the fostering of alternative, decolonial modes of imagining and inhabiting the planetary environment, the aesthetics of geopower are shaping the earth’s possible futures.