Planetary Alterity is the Earth as a radically alien system, one that won't be totalized or controlled, which we inhabit on loan. I think of it as the third decentring, after Copernicus kicked us out of the centre of the cosmos and Darwin out of the centre of life.
How the word moved
I coined it in Apr 2026 while trying to rehabilitate space in the Planetarity Syllabus, and the wedding-vow line "To have and hold, but not possess" came with it. By Jul 2026 it had become the third design problem of habitability. In the face of what otherness are we making a home? That's the question it holds.
In my words
"Planetary alterity asks us to recognize that the Earth is not just where we are, but who and what we are with."
from The Planetarity Syllabus. Space, Part III: Alterity, and the Condition of Planetarity, 23 Apr 2026
"To have and hold, but not possess."
from The Planetarity Syllabus. Space, Part III: Alterity, and the Condition of Planetarity, 23 Apr 2026
Related
- Inherited from Gayatri Spivak - what I take from Spivak is the planet in the species of alterity.
- Related Earthworm View - the earthworm's view is the posture alterity asks of us.
- Related Habitability - alterity is the third design problem of habitability.
- Related Mahayanics - the Bodhisattva vow, applied to space.
- Related Hyperobject - hyperobjects are one way to picture that viscous otherness.
Still open
Will we ever develop the empathy it takes to transcend that alterity? I don't know.