Introduction
15
exploration, from eighteenth-century electrical theories of earthquake
formation to Jarry’s pataphysics. The earth sciences are the site of
both exhaustive empirical fieldwork and the wildest abstract speculation, affording French writers and thinkers a key transitional conceptual space in which to work, accommodating what we might call parasciences that allow their practitioners to rethink the human, indeed to
think beyond the human. For the geo-sciences are also the cradle of a
French ecological consciousness in this period. If, as these chapters
suggest, the Earth is a text, it is one inscribed with a persistent antianthropocentrism, from Buffon’s vision of a irreversibly cooling globe
to the irresistible rise of the “ferromagnétaux” in Rosny’s science-fiction. The human is but one species among many hosted by the Earth,
and is unique only in pursuing an exploitation of the planet’s natural
resources that might hasten its own extinction. These texts, then, are
biocentric, giving equal weight to all life-forms, the more radical of
them postulating the ultimate revenge of the mineral realm over the
animal and vegetal kingdoms.
Nonetheless, in the early decades of the twentieth century, when
the human race seemed increasingly bent on self-destruction, the earth
sciences offer French writers such as Gide and Malraux telling metaphors with which to stake out their ideological positions. Hence Gide
opposes empirical experiences of agricultural reform and intellectual
nomadism to the blood-and-soil rhetoric of extreme right-wing ideologues such as Barrès. As for Malraux, the Earth becomes an apposite
figure of the gruff authenticity and noble endurance of both peasantry
and the Resistance, articulating in part his flight from Communism to
Gaullism in this period. And, even though the Second World War
marks the beginning of a paradigm shift in geological thinking, earth
science metaphors of an earlier era persist in French culture in general,
and in French politics in particular, as is evidenced by terms such as
“paysage politique”, “raz-de-marée électoral”, “la déferlante
médiatique”, “la faille démocratique”, “les couches populaires”, “un
gisement d’emplois”, etc., or most spectacularly the recurrent use of
“séisme” to describe socio-political shocks such as Jean-Marie Le
Pen’s success in the 2002 presidential elections.
5 Hence, the diverse
studies in this book present original insights into the formation and
___________________________
5 For a couple of examples among many, see the editions of Le Monde for 23 and 27
April 2002.
15
exploration, from eighteenth-century electrical theories of earthquake
formation to Jarry’s pataphysics. The earth sciences are the site of
both exhaustive empirical fieldwork and the wildest abstract speculation, affording French writers and thinkers a key transitional conceptual space in which to work, accommodating what we might call parasciences that allow their practitioners to rethink the human, indeed to
think beyond the human. For the geo-sciences are also the cradle of a
French ecological consciousness in this period. If, as these chapters
suggest, the Earth is a text, it is one inscribed with a persistent antianthropocentrism, from Buffon’s vision of a irreversibly cooling globe
to the irresistible rise of the “ferromagnétaux” in Rosny’s science-fiction. The human is but one species among many hosted by the Earth,
and is unique only in pursuing an exploitation of the planet’s natural
resources that might hasten its own extinction. These texts, then, are
biocentric, giving equal weight to all life-forms, the more radical of
them postulating the ultimate revenge of the mineral realm over the
animal and vegetal kingdoms.
Nonetheless, in the early decades of the twentieth century, when
the human race seemed increasingly bent on self-destruction, the earth
sciences offer French writers such as Gide and Malraux telling metaphors with which to stake out their ideological positions. Hence Gide
opposes empirical experiences of agricultural reform and intellectual
nomadism to the blood-and-soil rhetoric of extreme right-wing ideologues such as Barrès. As for Malraux, the Earth becomes an apposite
figure of the gruff authenticity and noble endurance of both peasantry
and the Resistance, articulating in part his flight from Communism to
Gaullism in this period. And, even though the Second World War
marks the beginning of a paradigm shift in geological thinking, earth
science metaphors of an earlier era persist in French culture in general,
and in French politics in particular, as is evidenced by terms such as
“paysage politique”, “raz-de-marée électoral”, “la déferlante
médiatique”, “la faille démocratique”, “les couches populaires”, “un
gisement d’emplois”, etc., or most spectacularly the recurrent use of
“séisme” to describe socio-political shocks such as Jean-Marie Le
Pen’s success in the 2002 presidential elections.
5 Hence, the diverse
studies in this book present original insights into the formation and
___________________________
5 For a couple of examples among many, see the editions of Le Monde for 23 and 27
April 2002.