| |
| author |
O'neil Van Horn
| | title |
On the Ground: Terrestrial Theopoetics, Environmental Justice, and the Anthropocene
| | abstract |
Anthropogenic climate change portends cataclysms of unthinkable proportions. These
eco-disasters—very much already underway—amplify other manifestations of injustice,
not transcending them but grounding them. This moment, in all of its precarity, demands
more robust conceptualizations of our planetary condition, at once entangled and
critically different. By folding social and ecological location together, it may yet be
possible to theorize contextuality in conjunction with interconnection. This dissertation
proposes a reimagination of the notion of "ground," positing that the earth-ground
itself—or, soil—offers a conceptual model and material matrix by which one can more
robustly conceive of the simultaneity of particularity and planetarity. The central aim of
this project is offer the critical theoretical exploration of ground as a milieu of both
possibility and particularity, of contextuality and creativity, for the sake of critical
activism. Drawing interdisciplinarily on feminist philosophy, critical race theory,
constructive theopoetics, poststructuralism, and soil science, On the Ground carves space
for imagining that which undergirds as that which catalyzes potentiality for
fecundity—of the ecological, theological, and ethico-political sort.
| | school |
The Theological School, Drew University
| | degree |
Ph.D. (2020)
|
| advisor |
Catherine Keller
|
| committee |
Laurel Kearns
Traci C. West
Andrea C. White
|
| full text | OVanHorn.pdf - requires Drew uLogin |
| |
