Geophilosophies is a multi-modal project that fosters cross-cultural philosophical thinking and practice as a way of healing our fractured relationship to the self and the world at a time of ecological crisis. Adapted from the later work of Deleuze and Guattari, geophilosophies provides a conceptual matrix for exploring how the very project of philosophy can be not only pluralized but differentialized so as to shelter and animate modes of thinking and knowing that continue to be erased, discredited or ignored by dominant cultures of the global North – even at their most self-critical. We imagine the history and structure of the term geophilosophies to offer an open-ended organizational impulse, a node through which to route and amplify those praxes stymied by the disciplinary interdictions of modern knowledge. Correlatively, we wish to explore the freedom of new modes of thinking and living between and across cultures and thought-traditions, in relations to new conceptions of ‘earth’ as opposed to ‘world’ or ‘globality’, and in doing so to shift the image of thinking away from the inherent oppositionality embedded in dualistic frameworks.

To speak of ‘geophilosophies’ is also to hold in tension the incomplete promise and the risk of philosophy as the arbiter and site of multitudinous, unbound thinking potential—to untie the geo-location of bodies, experiences, concepts and practices from their distribution within the colonial hierarchy of nation-states, rejecting also the hegemonic politics by which that order was produced. By taking a conceptual rather than disciplinary (i.e., territorialized) starting point, the geophilosophies project seeks to enlist and augment ongoing efforts to embrace the differential interlacing of theoretical idioms across the globalized platforms of world and global philosophies, religion and spirituality, ethnic and areal studies, critical theory, anthropology, comparative literature, musicology, psychology, ecology and environmental studies, critical techno-humanities, consciousness studies, political theory, gender theory, theology, sociology, technology studies, among other internal projects to dislodge Eurocentric thought.

Through this collaborative project we will be soliciting papers, blog-posts (or ‘Provocations’), and podcasts around these questions: How can a conceptual rather than disciplinary starting point afford a more welcome “home” to hold in common and furnish creative opportunity for these various endeavors? How and in what terms might “world/global philosophies” no longer be at odds with anti-imperialist politics? Papers and ‘Provocations’ may address a variety of contexts that trouble the relationship between the universalizing idiom of “philosophy” and “religion,” the persistence of colonial knowledge production and control in the academy, and assess how the diagnoses of ‘geophilosophies’ can create space for redress.

The Project:

Geophilosophies offers a space where difference can speak differently. Around the academy, in religious and spiritual venues, in the literary world and beyond, “non-Western” thought is treated  merely as the object of “inclusion” in a knowledge system that ultimately segregates difference. That is, a variety of conversations that once insisted on granting agency and value exclusively to “Western” subjects seem to be ceding the terms of their unspoken universality to geolocated particularities: philosophy can now also be Indigenous, Asian, Indian, African and much more. This is the problem of the postcolonial function of ideas, split between universal, defined by a history of Eurocentrism and imperialism, and particular, defined by a history of exclusion. While each of these disciplines, in their own way, have made some room for inclusion in the name of diversity, to what extent do the structural requirements of their fundamental operations, whether thought, political theology, secularism, or literary theory allow for a true expression of difference? To what extent does participating in existing modes of producing academic knowledge, articulating artistic production, or participating in interfaith dialogue or theological inquiry require a degree of similitude, or even ceding structural, political, or conceptual threat, in exchange for participation?

While many rubrics have been proposed to stage new encounters between non-Western or otherwise postcolonial philosophy, religion, and forms of life, this forum will offer the potential and limits of a conceptual stage, in the name of “Geophilosophies.” The term Geophilosophies aims to marshal the many conversion points of globally diffuse asymmetries, forms of resistance, and flight from structure. Rather than holding up forms of belonging, we place “geophilosophy” at the fore to emphasize a “de-territorialization” of the Earth, which might undo the grid of relations between place, language, religion, race, and ethnicity that keep culture and politics orderly, legible, and governable to Western imperial structures.

Our forum will test new forms and terms of alliance among those experimenting with alternatives to the unspoken imperialisms governing knowledge production, spiritual inquiry, and artistic poesies. For philosophy, this may require imagining the impossibility of multiple epistemologies, ontologies, and metaphysics. For literature, relations between language, politics, and translation could be made more malleable to regimes of expression beyond the novel. For traditions that have been translated as ‘religions’, spiritualities, or practices, this might mean undoing the means of capture by which its forms of life, embodiment, and spiritual praxes have been re-organized by the categories of religion and secularity.

To actualize some of these possibilities Geophilosophies also offers a space for new experiments in fiction which utilize the marginalized experience of dark bodies and black reason to innovate a radical imaginary haunted by hybrid time and impossible spaces. At the heart of this visceral process of writing is the churn of otherness churning up the lineaments of a globalized autonomy. In addition, the series invites the use of autotheory as a key practice for unravelling this hegemonic form of subjectivity. Geophilosophies embraces the potential of the diasporic experience to reprocess itself, an act of kinetic reasoning which exposes the scandalous heresies of inhabited knowledge and alternative epistemologies.

Through the presentation and discussion of brief, conceptually oriented papers (or ‘Provocations’), we will test this form of conversation as a mode of encounter with difference. Specifically, we are interested in its potential as a way to forge solidarity between the affirmation of new modes of enunciating global traditions across existing disciplines, and the deconstruction of lingering structures of Western imperialism in all areas of life, thought, and praxis. Rather than trying to find “common ground,” we will attempt to add together and multiply means of escape from a shared challenge, that is, of needing to begin with something in common, more often than not articulated in the name of Western markers of identity. Through experiments with narrative, myth, and poetics, disarticulating genealogical threads at the core of “thinking” itself, and exploring untranslatability and unruly hermeneutic multiplicities, our hope will be to

PODCAST: Podcast episodes will consist of an interview, conversation or debate with a scholar who has recently, or in the past, published an article with something to say to the general public. Within each episode one of our editors or guest editors will engage the scholar about her or his article through a series of questions, with the aim of translating difficult ideas into a language understandable by a wide-ranging public.

PROVOCATIONS: We use the term ‘Provocation’ rather than ‘blog’ to indicate brief conceptually oriented writings from independent researchers, activists, artists and scholars on any topic related directly or tangentially to the field of geophilosophies, but especially written pieces on current fast-moving issues that require a speedier mode of communication. Provocations can be anywhere between 800 and 2500 words long.

WEBINARS: The webinar is essentially a research forum for scholars to present new research that resonates with the broader themes of the geophilosophies series. Each meeting will consist of two main presentations (30-40 min) followed by a book colloquium. We invite graduate students, established scholars and independent researchers to send us abstracts or titles of papers they may wish to present.