And yet, in a strange and uncertain way, this dismantling creates a paradoxical form of unity. The “international order” is being systematically dismantled. Thus, we are witnessing a massive extension of conflicts and an extreme brutalization of politics. Yes, those conflicts are on a “global” or “planetary” scale, but they mobilize multiple incommensurable worlds and not simply, as in the past, different visions of the same natural world. To register this shift in the definition of geopolitical conflict-a shift we have summarized with the phrase “You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet”-we propose the hypothesis that people now live on different planets. Against all hope, what many eco-critics are calling the “ecological turn” has not resulted in more international unification but, on the contrary, in a new round of conflicts over land, water, air, resources, and oceans. For some states, the priority when thinking about the climate is the great risk of its catastrophic mutation for others, any reference to the climate is a mere passing inconvenience. It is clear, for instance, that “climate” does not mean or signify the same things for the United States, Europe, Brazil, or China. “Nature” is no longer the background to geopolitical conflict, but rather the very thing that is at stake. Everything unfolds as if there were no common world to fight over, but rather a generalized fight about the very definition of what the world is made of. Nations are no longer fighting one another on the same geographical stage. What makes the present political situation so dire and different from past moments of geopolitical tension throughout history is that today the meaning of the prefix “geo-” has changed altogether. Courtesy of the Artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Wooden structure, electronic circuits, sensors and software, dimensions variable. Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Soldado (red), 2001.
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