On Loan
A syllabus entry, which starts from one quotation and pushes on it.
"The planet is in the species of alterity, belonging to another system; and yet we inhabit it, on loan… If we imagine ourselves as planetary creatures rather than global entities, alterity remains underived from us; it is not our dialectical negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away."
— Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline (2003), pp. 72–73
Spivak's move against sovereignty is the oldest and, in a sense, the cleanest: deny that anyone ever held title. We are tenants on the planet, not owners of it, and no lease was ever signed. It's an argument in the register of alterity — otherness that can't be assimilated, not even by the state.
The engineering question I keep returning to is narrower and more exposed: if nobody holds title, on what basis does a tenancy get renewed or revoked? "On loan" needs a lender, or at least something that functions like one. Metabolic Standing is my attempt at specifying what that would actually have to check.